McCarron's Piece O' Mind

Hello Friends,

As some of you may not know I've been working on an iPhone application
for the past few weeks. The idea of this website was to provide users
of the iPhone with a fairly user friendly web-based application to
launch other web-based applications from. So I burned a few midnight
oils and got the site up and running with the help from some friends.

This is a necessity because of the lack of an open application
development kit from Apple. I also wanted to create a place where
fans of the device could chat in an online web forum. So that's where
I got the name, the iPhone Fan Club.

The site is launching today, and I'm looking for feedback and ideas to
help improve it. Keep in mind, you'll need to be running Apple's
Safari (now available on Windows) to get the best result from the
site. Other web-browsers don't work so well right now.

http://www.iphonefanclub.com/

Upcoming features I'm planning on having soon:
- Add to home screen function for your favorite apps. This will make
them easier to get to.
- Custom Icons for Software Applications.
- Star Ranking (1-5) of Applications
- More on the fly sorting/filtering of content.
- Better theme for the forums just for the iPhone
- iPhone Accessory Reviews
- More custom games

Also included in this launch is an early version of a web-based
Blackjack game I made for the iPhone. It's got a few quirks, but once
I work them all out and add a few more features it'll be the first of
many web-based iPhone games that I hope to make.

You can play it today on most web browsers at:
http://www.iphonefanclub.com/games/blackjack/

Also if you are going to be one of the first to get an iPhone at
launch, let me know I may need testers for some more upcoming games!

Thanks in advance for taking a look and providing feedback. It's much
appreciated!

Now for some sleep for once!
Patrick McCarron

Labels: iphone

I've been meaning to put a rant-blog together for sometime now. I finally got the motivation today to do it.

I really can't believe how hard it is for MySpace to keep spammers off of it's website. Everytime I log in to check who has posted comments to my profile, or sent me messages I get spammed. I literally get a whole handful of messages and friend requests from random people within seconds of logging in. The longer I stay logged in, the more I may get.

The friend requests usually come from fake profiles, all bearing the same common elements: attractive female model posing provoctively or no image at all. Funny how many times they are all the same girl, with different names. Many times I've noticed their profiles are exactly the same. Or their names repeat. Here's an example from my friend request inbox.



Then a few months ago, it started to happen to my messages as well. Those have mostly been from users with no faces. I don't even bother reading these messages. Here's another example.



How hard is it for MySpace to make it a bit harder to create an account? Add more image passwords that are difficult for their spam bots to hack into. I wouldn't mind having to use one everytime I logged in if it prevented some of this crap.

I really think MySpace should fix this issues, along with many others that I'll cover in future rants, if they want to stay popular. But at the rate they continue to fall, other similar sites like Virb start to gain ground over MySpace.

UPDATE

Well it seems that MySpace is going to do something soon. A system notice post from "Tom" sent out to everyone this morning (after my posting) noted to read his blog about their anti-spam measures going into place soon. Lets see if they can keep their promise.

Labels: myspace, rant, spam

Last night I walked into my garage to be greeted by a cricket. Knowing that my two cats, Yin and Yang, love insects I figured I'd introduce them all. My cats had fun batting "Jiminy Cricket" around for a while. They don't like to eat bugs, just like to play with them. So I started to take some photos.



I eventually switched over to video mode, to catch it on video. Well silly Yin freaked out a bit and knocked the cricket to the safety of under the fridge!! I actually caught that on video.




Luckily, a day later and I still haven't heard any cricket chirps.

You can see more photos on my Cats vs Cricket Picture Gallery.