Lately, I’ve been reading Joshua Becker’s book Simplify about minimalist lifestyle. It’s a very short book, but hey, it has to be, this is minimalism!

This is an inspiring book about removing clutter and stuff you don’t actually need from your life and enjoy your life –not the things. Here are my key takeaways from the book:

• Which you hold, holds you. Things you own actually begin to own you after some time. You clean them, organize them, buy them, sell them etc. More you own, the more time they rob from your lives.
• “There are things more you should value more than possessions –God, family, relationships, character etc.”
• Give things away or sell them if you are not really using. You won’t lose that much.
• Spend money on life experiences than possessions.

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iTunes has a nice public music search API which offers 30-second previews and detailed information about music albums and tracks. However I could not play these previews on Android or Chrome browser —but it was playing perfectly in iOS apps and OS X Safari browser. (See sample audio here.) With the help of a little bit of packet capturing I found out the reason why iTunes previews cannot be played outside of iOS and OS X. Read more →

Yaay! Happy birthday pal. It all started with a handmade blog written in classic ASP.

This weekend I decided to practice my iOS skills with a simple utility app. The TV satellite receiver box in our home Vu+ Duo runs on Linux and it has an API to simulate remote control, change channels, set volume, list channels etc. After connecting to the device over WiFi local area network, it can be used to “zap” channels instantly or controlling device with a virtual remote. So I put these down in an app and submitted to App Store today for free. Read more →

Some exciting news to share today! October 1st will be my first day at Microsoft Windows Azure. This is going to be my first full-time job. I am joining the same team which I had an internship last year. My position is software development engineer in test and my team produces end-to-end automated testing systems for Azure cloud services. I’ll be moving to Redmond, WA (where Microsoft headquarters is located) in Seattle area. Read more →

iPhone 5 is announced today with a bigger 4-inch screen resolution today. It corresponds to 1136 x 640 px. Compared to old 960 x 640 px resolution, the new screen is 176 px wider. Apple announced that old applications in the App Store will still run at their original (old) size and will be centered on the screen. That means there will be 88 px empty (black) spaces at the end and at the bottom. Read more →

Many people in startups these days trying to be “the next” Instagram, Pinterest, Path, Foursquare or whatever. The main point many people (including me) miss is that making products for masses is not for three-kids-with-zero-money job. You literally need strong connections with online press and a team to gain a traction and growth –and of course several millions of dollars. Think about Foursquare, before it came out, people did not need to publish their locations. Read more →

Here’s how I keep my inbox 0 unread everyday. Unsubscribe from all newsletters. They are probably just information load for you. If you are not a serious Groupon user, just opt-out. You’ll check that out when you seriously need information. Unsubscribe from email notifications. You use Facebook, Twitter or Github, Quora every day. You are already going to see who followed you on Twitter or mentioned you on Facebook when you log in. Read more →

As Jason Fried (CEO, 37signals) puts it down: It seems like in a lot of companies we are reaching “peak people”. There’s a shortage of talent out there, and if there’s a shortage of resources, you want to conserve those resources. Although there are quite a number of programmers, designers, product guys are around (and many others are at the other end of the world, working from their homes, like 37signals does) there is a shortage of talented people. Read more →

I’ve been reading Tapworthy: Designing Great iPhone Apps book by Josh Clark for a while. Not because I am trying to be a designer, I just want to see principles behind user interface design and user experience. First book is written in 2010, since then iPhone is not changed but the UI examples given in the book are a little bit poor compared to today’s quite fancy apps. That’s when I realized how humankind made a huge progress in app UI designs. Read more →