Custom use of 360Voice

I got mentioned (People making cool stuff: rwgriersr) on 360Voice.com yesterday. They were showing off a web-app that I had thrown together for the iPod Touch. It uses the 360Voice API and is designed specifically for the iPhone/iPod Touch.

It took me about 8 hours of poking through the their API, re-learning what PHP I had forgotten (I used to be really good, but have lost some most skills - it’s been a few years), and testing out my changes on my iPod Touch. I managed to have a bit of time to work on this over a few days (which was odd).

Custom use of 360Voice Popup

I had just gotten my iPod Touch and wanted to develop something specific for it (Web-app based). I had also wanted to play around with the 360Voice API. I have been a member of their site for almost a year now. I have really enjoyed using their site and obsessively check my Xbox 360’s blog there everyday. I also try to make sure that I play every day so that my 360 doesn’t start to talk bad about me.

When I was finished (far enough along to share), I had sent the 360Voice team an email letting them know what I had done. They asked me for some pictures, so I took some (less than stellar pictures) and sent them along. I thought that they had forgotten about me until I saw the post yesterday. I’m happy that they posted something to their development blog.

Custom use of 360Voice Popup w/keyboard

Click here to check out what I’ve done. It is by no means perfect. I know of about 5 or 10 things that I am not happy about with it, but I will fix those over time. I would like to add more features as I have time. I also offered to give 360Voice the code, but they haven’t taken me up on that (I’m sure that their PHP-foo is much greater than mine).

* Click on the images for larger versions.

Since I’ve lost my train of through and have been de-railed…. I found this interesting article:

All I Need To Know To Be A Better Programmer I Learned In Kindergarten [biit.com]

I haven’t posted much about any development work lately.  Honestly, outside of work, I haven’t done any development in a long time.  Things have been too busy with the kids.

I would love to be able to do some more open-source development.  The most I have done is submitting bugs (and possible) fixes to other open-source projects.

Of course, I also wish I had the time to work on some of my non-open source projects.

Last night I had a few minutes to look at the Tivo SDK [sourceforge.net] (and gave the demo a try). The Demo had three applications included. There was a Weather application and two games (Skull & Bones and The Same Game).

I checked out the weather (it’s about time!!). I like the weather. They have the major cities (like Philidephia, New York, etc…). It would be nice if you could enter your own zip code (may an idea here) and have it be remembered.

I also played The Same Game. The animation is really slow. I’m not sure if this is because of the implementation or a network issue or what.

I have downloaded the SDK and given the Javadocs a glance. I may try something this weekend (if I have time). I look forward to playing around with the SDK.

Tivo [tivo.com] has announced that have released the Tivo HME Software Development Kit [sourceforge.net].

I honestly can’t wait to try this out. It would be nice to implement a few wishes that I have wanted on my Tivo. I’ve waiting this long to do any ‘Tivo hacking’. But this SDK is written in Java.

I think I am going to read into it a bit more tonight.