In late April, I had the wonderful opportunity to fly out to Palm’s corporate headquarters in Sunnyvale, California and be a part of the first ever Developer Day conference. This recap is long overdue, and for that I apologize. In any case, here’s a (hopefully) concise recap of my time in sunny Sunnyvale.

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That’s right! This humble website right here turned six years old today! I’ve been too busy lately to post, but I have a lot of work started in the way of improving the site and the quality of the content (i.e. better apps pages). This website has come a long way and I can’t wait to get the new version launched in a few weeks when I launch my next app!

Digloo 1.2 launched today! Go ahead and update it to see all of the new features! Unfortunately, there are a couple of little quirks.

• If you view a YouTube video and you have in-app browsing enabled, the YouTube mobile page will show but the video will not play. This can be fixed by tapping the options menu on the lower-right and choosing “View in Browser.” This will load a blank card followed by the YouTube app. This will be fixed in the next update later this week.
• If you are viewing sub replies (replies to another reply), sometimes swiping back will load a different set of previous replies, instead of the correct previous replies. Sounds confusing but this will also be fixed.
• Occasionally the Dugg ribbon does not show up.

Anyway, I’ll get an update out for these bugs tonight! Enjoy the update and thanks for your support!

Above is the new demo video for Digloo 1.2 (the only other video demo that was out there was from version 0.6 two months ago). I didn’t really detail all of the new features in the video so here’s the official changelog:

• Landscape support. Just turn the app sideways or upside down and continue reading! There is a preference to disable this.
• In-app story browsing: tapping the story’s title will open it in a built-in browser rather than a new card. There is a new preference to disable this if you’d like.
• Gesture area now supported for navigating pages: This worked before webOS 1.4 was released, and now it’s back again. Swipe forward or backward on the gesture area to change pages
• The replies panel now takes up much more of the screen (90% to be exact) so it’s easier to view replies. There is also a new close button on the replies panel.
• If you view the replies to another reply, you can swipe back and view the original reply thread. Previously the panel would close.
• Tapping a story on the main stories list now offers better visual feedback
• Story list items now render better and use less screen space on average
• Various bug fixes
• New icon (for better visibility in App Catalog as a Digg app)

Anyway, the update has been submitted to Palm and should be available any day now!

Over the years, the data on my laptop has become increasingly vital. This includes financial records, source code, freelance projects, invoice histories, and all sorts of crucial data. If I were to lose that data, my life would pretty much be over. My business would fall apart, I’d have to start many projects from scratch…there would be no end to my suffering. For a while, I’ve kept local backups of my information. Unfortunately, it’s hard to remember to back up on a frequent basis and it’s kind of a pain. I tried Mozy and Crashplan (based in Minnesota), but they didn’t work very well on a Mac (both programs crashed during the first backup and significantly slowed down my computer).

Enter Backblaze. Backblaze is an online backup service that works on Mac OS X and Windows and costs $4.99/month. Backblaze operates under the philosophy that all data should be backed up without having the user select particular folders. I like that. No matter how organized I am when it comes to data (and I’m pretty dang organized), there are always those little files that get saved somewhere other than my “usual” destination. Backblaze backs everything up, worry free. Upon install, Backblaze produces a list of all of the files on my hard drive and begins sending them to the remote servers. And that’s it. As a bonus, I’ve had no problem with Backblaze slowing down my computer or crashing during the month or so that I’ve used it.

If my computer ever crashes or gets stolen, I just sign into Backblaze from my new machine and begin downloading my files. Additionally, I have the option to pay to have a hard drive mailed to me with all of my data (which might be faster than downloading hundreds of gigs of documents).

Thanks to Backblaze and periodic Time Machine backups, I no longer have nightmares about losing my laptop. Sure, it would still be a tragedy, but at least I could bounce back from it without losing anything else.

Everyone and their mother is offering their opinions on the recent Palm buyout rumors, so I thought I’d join in on the fun and share my thoughts as a developer. My latest opinion was influenced by the great editorial at webOSroundup by Dan Ramirez.

PC Mag has another good article on the matter, presenting some very valid points (though I disagree with their choices).