Tag Archive for 'appcelerator'

ATL Appc Office Closed - No more Wii Tanks In the Conference Room :[

Published
by
amro
on October 15, 2008
in appcelerator
. 0 Comments

I left Appcelerator a while back, mainly looking for new challenges and the like. Today, I was pretty surprised (read shocked) to find out that Appc closed its Atlanta office and laid off its entire staff there. I received a text message: “decelerated.” That totally sucks (understatement of the day?). Jeff’s public post explained the tough decision the leadership at Appc had to make.

I feel pretty bad for all of the folks from the ATL Appc office. I know that Appc is already talking to local folks to find homes for the affected and that several local companies offered positions to the unfortunate souls. Although I’m generally concerned for my friends (not a McCain reference), the fact is that they’re brilliant people and they’ll be on their feet in no time. I wish them all the best. As Nolan would say, it is what it is (followed by some facetious comment, of course — it’s how he rolls).

Crazy week

Published
by
amro
on September 14, 2008
in Other
. 0 Comments

So I had my first week at Good Egg and it was great. Everyone’s passionate about the company and its mission — the whole startup atmosphere is there and I love it. I feel a little overwhelmed because I’m jumping into a new code base and trying to get up to speed and do something useful for them quickly, but I’m sure I’ll get it done. Next week will be equally crazy for me with the day job as I really want to make some quick headway on the API I’m working on.

On top of that, Drew and I have been hard at work on the r7 stuff — CastCatcher 1.0 is now for sale, 1.1 was pushed to Apple for review, and we launched the return7 site today. Many thanks to my pal Tyrus for getting the design together so quickly and on such short notice. I decided to use MooTools to build out the client (as opposed to my dear Appcelerator), mainly because I wanted to learn something new and figured using Appc to do it wouldn’t help that much (with the learning something new part, I mean). I think MooTool is pretty cool — mainly like the fact that animations seem smoother than those of Scriptaculous, but it did take more time to do things than it would have with Appc (maybe part of it was the learning curve). Oh, how I missed the state machine.

Drew and I have an idea for our next app, but we’re not sure where to start — might solicite some help from the community (hint: we need some cartoon fish and aquarium decorations — pngs w/ transparent ). Any takers?

Last Day @ Appcelerator, Transition to Good Egg Studios

Published
by
amro
on September 4, 2008
in Other
. 3 Comments

Tomorrow is my last day at Appcelerator. I’ve decided to move on for a few reasons, foremost of which is my wanting a new challenge. I’ve learned a lot from my work and interactions at Appcelerator and very much appreciate the opportunity to grow there. I wish the folks at Appcelerator: Andrew, Dan, Hamed, Joe, Mark, Marshall, Martin, Matt, Tejus, Tyrus, and of course the founders, Jeff and Nolan, the best of luck. I would also like to wish the Accelerator team at Ptek the best, especially Brandon. I think the gents are taking me out to lunch, so that’ll be fun. My intent is to stay on as a core contributor to Appcelerator.

So what the heck am I doing that’s cool enough to pull me away from Appcelerator? Well, a couple of things:

My day gig and my top priority, will be server work at Good Egg Studios. I’ll be working on a game, which is cool but better than that, the company gives a lot back to the community, which I love. It’s still a startup (although a little further on than some), which I like because I’m not a huge fan of bureaucracy. Many thanks to Rob, Craig and Melanie for helping me find a new place to grow and learn professionally.

I’ve also co-founded a mobile software company called return7 with my long time friend Drew Conner. We’ve just pushed the 1.0 versions of two apps to Apple and are awaiting their release (probably another 4-5 days). We’re also looking at the Android SDK to see whether or not we want to enter that market as well.

You can find me on twitter, facebook, and linkedin (I’m sure there are other networks I’m missing) so don’t be shy.

Appcelerator Dynamic Code + IE = Be careful

Published
by
amro
on August 12, 2008
in appcelerator
. 0 Comments

So you want to insert widget code using element.innerHTML in IE? That’s fine, but wrap the string you’re innerHTMLing in a call to “Appcelerator.Compiler.addIENameSpace(string).”  Why?  When inserting XML into IE’s DOM, you need to prefix it w/ “<?xml:namespace prefix = app ns = “http://www.appcelerator.org” />” so IE knows what to do.  It sort of makes sense, actually, but we’re all spoiled by Firefox and the like.

AMChat for AppEngine?

Published
by
amro
on May 6, 2008
in ajax, ajx, amchat, appcelerator and appengine
. 0 Comments

I just received my AppEngine invite and wanted to give it a whirl, so I threw together a web-based AMChat using the AppEngine backend for Appcelerator that Mark Luffel wrote.  I came up with this.