RocketPack rockets!

Here we go - caffeinated publishes RocketPack!

Get it on iTunes or from caffeinated Web site.

Join the family!  More to come!

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Noteless - Promo Codes to Giveaway

We have 20 copies of this app to giveaway

via appgiveaway.com

Would you like a copy of Noteless, that so many users loved already, absolutely free?

Not sure? Check out this video.

Noteless raises the bar for iOS note taking applications. The elegant interface uses natural swiping gestures as the core of it's functionality.

Want a new note? Simply swipe across the screen from right to left as if you were pulling back the top sheet of a real pad of paper.

Want to find an existing note? Swipe across the screen from left to right. Your paper will move out of the way and you will be able to see a complete list of previous notes. We've also included full text search, so if you have hundreds of notes you can now easily find the ones you're looking for.

Want to have your notes everywhere? Noteless includes powerful syncing functionality that allows you to sync your notes with either Dropbox or Google Docs so your notes are available anywhere you need them.

Noteless includes all of the standard functionality you expect from a note application including the ability to email your notes and change the typeface your notes are presented with.

With Noteless, we've drastically reduced the standard note-taking interface while improving the overall user experience. We know you'll agree that in the case of Noteless, less is more.

Try your luck.

http://www.appgiveaway.com/id/311/Productivity/2011/24/10/Noteless-apple-iPho...

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iOS Game Revenue Survey

What is really interesting to me is that developers do seem to generate more revenue over time (on average). This should be encouraging if you really want to make games, but your first game was a flop. Fear not! 50% of developers who have only released one game made under $500 on that game. However, the more games developers had released, the more per-game average revenue they seem to generate. This seems to validate the old adage: practice makes better than doing something once. Wait…that’s not quite right…

Figure 8. Median Per-Game Revenue by Number of Games Released

via streamingcolour.com

Great (and long) post with results of iOS game revenue survey. Good tool to make a decision whether to enter this market, or buy yourself a beer and stay at home. :)

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Free Computer Science Courses Offered Online by Stanford Engineering School

Stanford Engineering professors are offering three of the school’s most popular computer science courses for free online this fall, and at the same time launching an experiment that could transform the way online education is delivered.

The professors are taking technologies designed to enhance learning for Stanford students and extending them to a broad online audience. They are delivering lectures as short, interactive video clips that allow students to progress at their own pace through course materials. They are offering live quizzes with instant feedback.  And they are testing new technologies that allow students to rank questions that should be posed to the instructors.

The professors also hope to extend the benefits of Stanford-style education to those who lack access.

“Both in the United States and elsewhere, many people simply do not have access to a high-quality education.  By putting out this initial set of courses, we hope to teach some of the latest computing technologies to anyone who wants to learn it – for free,” said Andrew Ng, an associate professor of computer science who is teaching a new online machine learning course.

The three courses – Machine Learning, Introduction to Artificial Intelligence and Introduction to Databases – cover material that forms the basis of some of the most prevalent technologies today, from online shopping to web search and robotics.

via stanford.edu

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Simply notes, synced with Dropbox, Google Docs and more - Noteless for iPhone

I'm sick and tired of Notes app on iPhone.  What makes it even worse, is that they are out of sync all the freaking time.  If I need something to remember on the go, I can't just make a note - I feel that I have to deal with the whole world to keep them up.  It makes my life complicated and less joy.

Until today.  I welcome Noteless for iPhone http://www.notelessapp.com  This is kick-ass app for iPhone that can make simple notes, and sync them everywhere.  If this doesn't appeal to you enough that means you probably don't live in information era, yet.

What could be better?  Only if you will get it for free (it's still cheap, while it's new on the market).  Updated: Unfortunately, I have only limited number of promo codes, and they run away fast.

Do you want to get it for free?  This is easy.  Twit about it and comment to this post why you want it - tell me any situation when you wanted it so much but it wasn't around (until today :).  And you'll get it.

First come - first served.  Free it is.

# Posted via email from opportunity__cost

Free AWS For 1 Year

AWS Free Usage Tier (Per Month):

• 750 hours of Amazon EC2 Linux Micro Instance usage (613 MB of memory and 32-bit and 64-bit platform support) – enough hours to run continuously each month*
• 750 hours of an Elastic Load Balancer plus 15 GB data processing*
• 10 GB of Amazon Elastic Block Storage, plus 1 million I/Os, 1 GB of snapshot storage, 10,000 snapshot Get Requests and 1,000 snapshot Put Requests*
• 5 GB of Amazon S3 storage, 20,000 Get Requests, and 2,000 Put Requests*
• 30 GB per of internet data transfer (15 GB of data transfer “in” and 15 GB of data transfer “out” across all services except Amazon CloudFront)*
• 25 Amazon SimpleDB Machine Hours and 1 GB of Storage**
• 100,000 Requests of Amazon Simple Queue Service**
• 100,000 Requests, 100,000 HTTP notifications and 1,000 email notifications for Amazon Simple Notification Service**

In addition to these services, the AWS Management Console is available at no charge to help you build and manage your application on AWS.

via aws.amazon.com

Amazon is giving away the small Linux instances for free starting the 1st of November for 1 year. Sounds like a decent bait for developers.

# Posted via email from opportunity__cost

2 Tools I Enjoy Making Wireframes

After dozens of wireframed projects I found myself using only 2 tools, that I would like to share with you.

Tool number 1: Pencil Project http://pencil.evolus.vn/

http://pencil.evolus.vn/en-US/Handlers/PictureHandler.ashx?ResourceId=4be6736...

The only one reason why I put it as number 1, because it is free. Being free is a powerful argument, sometimes a deal breaker.

There are many people who complain about it, but it worked fine for me for a while. Yes, it is buggy, sometimes crashes (never lost any data though) and is not the nicest looking thing out there, but it does its job well. Pencil doesn’t have a native wrapper for Mac, yet, and you have to open it from the Firefox (which I am not using at all).

Tool number 2: Balsamiq Mockups http://balsamiq.com/

Well, they don’t deserve to my number 2, actually, because they are almost perfect. I hate Adobe Air wrap-up though, but it’s manageable. Everything else makes it an absolute winner. You will never buy anything better for $79, speaking about mockup editors and wireframing tools. (People who know me, know that I am really conservative about spending money for software, and I am very picky about whom to pay.)

# Posted via email from opportunity__cost

Getting Bumbed From A Flight

Getting bumped from a flight could be either a blessing or a curse. Here's how to make the most of getting bumped, whether it's voluntary or not.

via blog.hipmunk.com

I have never been bumped from a flight, but frankly speaking I don't flight that much. Odds are small indeed, however, the most people whom I know and who got bumped are not frequent flyers either. And the biggest score was the free upgrade to business class for a 3 hours flight for giving up a whole day in airport (good for my friend, he was local, so he just returned back home). Good to know anyway.

# Posted via email from opportunity__cost

HTML5 must read

...many early adapters (web developers and geeks) started creating some cool stuffs wtih the cleaner HTML5/CSS3 codes. In case you wanted to be one of them but don’t know where to start, here are list of useful HTML5 tutorials to get you started.

via webhostingsecretrevealed.com

Ten first steps to master HTML5.

# Posted via web from opportunity__cost

Free to paid through obstacles

I'm facing a dilemma here and would like to ask for some advice.  

Say, I'm operating a resource, which was free for some period of time, has established community of users and monetizes through other means (ads, sponsors, etc).  Management has decided to start offering paid plans to users (although, with no good sounding plan on table, yet).  Meanwhile, I've spent some time researching the needs of visitors and came up with a list of things that would definitely make users happy.  

However, I'm hesitating to proceed with those changes, as the management is afraid that some of those changes (most of them being minor though) might be used as a tool to push users towards a paid plan.  And once they are offered free, the users might be less happy moving into paid, and would be angry to know that we're taking something away from them.

So, the question is: 

1. How should we deal with taking away something that was free (for a while) and making it for-pay, and 
2. Should we consider bundling up minor changes to make a good reason for people to upgrade their plans, while not offering much else?

Thanks!

# Posted via email from opportunity__cost

MPMM Software Giveaway

I have got a copy (actually, a few) of MPMM Professional edition that I want to giveaway to PM community.  While it's not about so trendy agile way, but more classic waterfall-and-all-around approach, one can find it super helpful in many occasions.

See the software brochure and download a free trial of it.  If you like it, read on, I can save you $495 (or $595 - whatever is on the price tag) and give it for free.

Let me quote a few things from the site:

MPMM Professional includes an entire methodology for managing projects. It steps you through every phase, activity and task needed to complete a project from start to finish. And it comes with all of the templates and examples you need, to save time. 
 
This edition also helps you customize your own project management methodologies. You can import your existing methodologies, processes and templates to manage them all in one place. And you can customize the methodology already included in MPMM, to use for your projects today. 

Sounds interesting?  It can be yours.  Absolutely free.

So here is the deal:

1. Drop me a line to my Twitter @iwhite and tell me why do you want it.
2. Follow me on Twitter @iwhite and subscribe to my blog live.prokhorenko.us. (I can't really check this and not like I'm going to, so it's pretty much voluntarily, but at least you know I've asked for. :)
3. Spread the word. I have more than one copy available and I want to make sure I'm giving it to people who will enjoy using it.

That's it.  No strings attached.  I'll send you a registration code (you have to download software yourself) and you're good to go.

P.S. If you know me personally, it's even better.  Send me an email, and it's yours.

# Posted via web from opportunity__cost

Amazon's stopped converting PDF for free?

"Damn, no!" - that was what I though when I send a PDF to my @free.kindle.com email and... got it back.  Not like really back, but it was saying:

You can download the file(s) here Dont Just Roll the Dice.pdf, then transfer the file(s) by connecting Kindle to your computer over USB. 

instead of:

You can download the file(s) here Dont Just Roll the Dice.azw, then transfer the file(s) by connecting Kindle to your computer over USB. 

And, well, it was the PDF there.  The original one.  However, after a quick call to Amazon (I like their call-to-phone feature with always less then 1 minute of waiting time for me), I found out that they actually rolled a new version, that requires to put word "convert" in the subject line now.

Now it worked.

However, while you manage to keep me pretty happy during the full cycle of communication with me, how did you manage to screw so badly with new "feature" out and even not including anything in the email you send back?

Well, my wild guess is that you desperately need beta testers for the native PDF support that you've in the new firmware, so that's the way to push people to try and see it.  And I feel that I'm not that wrong in this direction.

I don't feel really hurt because of this, but I still think you need to be less tricky (if it's intentional) or think a step ahead (if it's a glitch).  Yeah, I know the Nook is being trashed badly last days, but still its an option.

# Posted via email from opportunity__cost

ApacheCon Evening Meetups

ApacheCon hosts evening meetups.  If you're interested in any of these popular open source projects (NoSql, Tomcat, Lucene, Hadoop, Subversion, etc), come and join for an evening of presentations and discussion with the creators and committers working on the projects themselves.  Hosted by and located at the ApacheCon, these five special community meetings are taking taking place on the days before the ApacheCon conference in Amsterdam. 

Location of meetups is Oakland, CA.

http://wiki.apache.org/apachecon/ApacheMeetupsUs09

Monday 2nd (BarCamp Apache during the day)

20:00 - 22:00  NoSqlMeetup  Room 1&2

20:00 - 22:00 Tomcat Room 6

Tuesday 3rd (BarCamp Apache during the day)

20:00 - 22:00 Lucene Room 1&2

20:00 - 22:00 OSGi/Felix Room 3

20:00 - 22:00 Traffic Server Podling Room 4

Thursday 5th

20:00 - 22:00 Content Tech 1&2

20:00 - 22:00 Web Services 3

20:00 - 22:00 SocialAndWidgetsMeetup

20:00 - 22:00 Web Crawlers Room 5

20:00 - 22:00 Hadoop Room 6

20:00 - 22:00 Subversion Room 7

Register quick here at http://wiki.apache.org/apachecon/ApacheMeetupsUs09

# Posted via email from opportunity__cost

Free Blackberry

via tmo-web.com

Here is how you can get a free Blackberry (after $50 mail-in rebate). However, it looks like it's for new lines only. Or whatever. You can give it a try yourself. :)

# Posted via web from opportunity__cost

Giveaways thru Twitter

It seems that different drawings, giveaways and just ad campaigns are getting high on Twitter nowadays.  

So I thought that it's an appropriate time for the product performing the full-cycle of running a giveaway on Twitter, giving the owner full set of tools to monitor activity, choosing the winner, publishing the results; as well as providing an entrant's with some analytics on the competition they are entering into, as well as some statistical calculations (according to different giveaways run though the product) on how many tweets do you need to post, what's the typical profile of the winner, etc.  

This product doesn't need top be an academic innovation though.  It should be:

1. Easy for businesses to use.  (It should NOT be free.  Charge for it!)
2. Fun, Fun, Fun for entrants.  Stimulate.  Advertise.  Entertain. (Do you see an extra value for #1 already here?)

That's it folks.  Anyone?

# Posted via email from opportunity__cost

iTunes CyrFix

For those who missed the release of iTunes CyrFix, here is the link back to it http://prokhorenko.us/itunescyrfix/. That page is completely in Russian. However, I doubt this is a problem. Otherwise, why do you need Cyrillic support then? ;)

The code has got some issues and might not work for all "problematic" names in your iTunes. But I found it to be usefull in the most cases for myself. Hopefully, you'll find it useful, too. ;)

Drop me a line if you have any quesions.

iPhone pseudo-GPS code (iLoJack)

This is an iPhone pseudo-GPS. The one that I called iLoJack. You can download it here at http://prokhorenko.us/white/iphonegps.zip.

Yes, it works. ;) There were some issues, but I'll give you a chance to discover them and fix yourself. ;)

I've developed a simple wrapper to run the Erica Sadun's findme-muchbetter to get the location of the phone and send it to Twitter. Also, it uses Erica's pingwifi, however, I didn't find this to be useful for myself (and my iPhone).

Your iPhone has got to be jailbroken and should be running a decent software update. I don't remember which one is the absolute requirement, but as far as I can recall 1.1.3+ was okay. If you are not sure what all this mean, you should better stay away. I don't think you can screw something up with my application, but you definately can end up with full restore. ;)

It's a pretty smart wrapper (with the most of constants left at the top of the script), but you've got to be tech savvy and kind of geeky, too. It knows how to use proxy. So, it'd be helpful if you're using T-Zones and don't want to pay any penny more. ;)

I didn't have any spare minute to provide an Installer.app wrap for it. There were few guys that volunteered to do this, however, I'm not aware of any repository that carries such an application. I also included a small code that allows your iPhone to wake up from the sleeping in specific period of time. (No source code for it, but I will include it upon request. Just leave me a comment here.)

The archive has a .plist file that you need to use for starting the keeper.sh when the iPhone boots up. Everything else would be done by keeper.sh and twee.sh. Make sure that you adjust them for your situation. They are pretty simple, but you still need to understand at least something about /bin/sh. ;)

Here are some notes on installation:

1. Make sure you have BSD subsystem installed.
2. Upload all files to your iPhone to some directory.
3. Use Terminal.app from computer or directly from iPhone.
4. Change to the directory where you uploaded files.
5. Run cp -v ./com.qwe3.twee.plist /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.qwe3.twee.plist
6. Run cp -v ./findme-muchbetter /var/root
7. Run cp -v ./pingwifi /var/root
8. Run cp -v ./twee.sh /var/root
9. Run cp -v ./keeper.sh /var/root
10. Check /var/root/twee.sh for your proxy settings (if you are using T-Zones you may want to use the proxy for curl) and for your Twitter username and password.
11. Check /var/root/keeper.sh for timing. I found 20 minutes to be good enough. When the phone is sleeping, the updates are coming every 30 minutes (keeping in mind that you set your Mail.app be checked every 15 minutes). When the phone is up, the updates are coming every 20 minutes. You can find the best numbers for yourself.
    
12. Launch keeper launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.qwe3.twee.plist

Feel free to use the code or to share it with anyone. If you want to use it for commercial application, drop me a line and I think I can get a written license for you (but you still need to come up with a deal with Erica for her code).