This is a post in my series “Road to Xcode.” I am currently reading Become An Xcoder by Bert Altenburg, Alex Clarke and Philippe Mougin.
04: Printing on screen
This chapter mainly introduced me to NSLog() and using it to display results even though its main function is to display error messages. The basic idea was mainly for formatting output in a readable way by adding padding to a column of data in integer form or the use of escaping to add special characters like \n for starting a new line.
I have to remind myself that the chapter mainly talked about how to format data being outputted by the NSLog() and not actually dealing with Objective C just yet.
Well, i now theoretically know the process to printing data to the screen and next up is opening up Xcode and compiling the example program the book has been working through so far to introduce me to the basics of declaring a function, defining variables, using operators, and importing header files (I almost sound like I know what I am talking about).
Small heads up for anyone in the iPod market, Apple will be holding a media even on September 9th to show off a refresh of their iPod line. I’ll have liveblog links and the QuickTime stream once it is available.
As of late I have been trying out all the microblogging sites that seem to be springing up overnight. I decided a month ago to go ahead and give Identi.ca a try. It is a microblogging service running on open source software called Laconica. While I love the idea of a “CMS” that is openly redistributed to run your own “Identi.ca” (or Twitter if you will), the actual service is not for me with Twitter and Jaiku being much more feature rich and widely used.
I can’t say anything particularly negative about Identi.ca except for the fact that is just isn’t used widely enough. The service is responsive (given its user base is rather small right now), and easy to use. I wish the distributed “CMS” would actually interconnect each server running it could post notices between each other rather than just separating out each new microblogging site to start up its own user base. This would also help avoid the growing pain problems Twitter was having not so long ago.
While I wish Identi.ca and Laconica success, I don’t think they could be as main stream as some of the other heavy weight microblogging services. It will go in the way of Pligg (CMS for running your own Digg like service), as it will be used for sites that want to run their own service for fans, but nothing to take the place of their predecessors.
For those who might have been following me on Identi.ca (all one of you), I will no longer be updating there. You can continue to catch my updates on Jaiku and Twitter.
Update: Thanks to Evan Prodromou of Control Yourself, Inc., I have been corrected on Laconica not having the ability to be interconnected to other sites running the microblogging software. It is actually made to interconnect using the OpenMicroBlogging standard. Even with the interconnectivity, my earlier opinion stands the same.