Below you will find pages that utilize the taxonomy term “crimson cactus”
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Easy Exchange Email Extraction
Okay, that should be forwarding, but I wanted some alliteration :)
Some time ago, I posted a very technical approach to forwarding email properly using Microsoft Exchange, which is useful if you work at an organisation that uses it. At the time, I was aware that the steps involved were to technical for some people, so I didn't really expect too many people to take it up.
Some colleagues at work expressed some interest in using themselves, but didn't want to go to the effort of setting up their own man-in-the-middle server to fix the emails.
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TI introduces a customisable watch which does HRM out of the box
Engadget have just reported that TI have released a hackable watch, which can do all sorts of things including HRM straight out of the box. This is really interesting. I wonder if I can make it work with Bleep. Of course I should probably concentrate of finishing Bleep first. At $49 I reckon its a steal! I might ask Santa for one for Christmas
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Who plays the part of transformation in mashups?
In the last week, two people have independently told me about an Australian government sponsored conference to create interesting mashup applications from government data. I love the idea, and I'm really glad that the government believes that its data should be freely available. I think most app providers are realising the power of providing open access to their data to drive adoption now. In my opinion however, independent transformation of data between web applications is still missing as a generic tool to mashup creators.
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Interesting article on app pricing
Gizmodo have an interesting article on the price of iPhone applications, how they have dragged the consumer's expectation of app pricing down, and how this might not be a good idea in the future.
I can certainly say that I won't be expecting to make much money out of Bleep. Its taken longer than expected to develop, and I don't think I'm going to sell lots of copies. How anyone can make a business out of developing these things is beyond me.
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Another Heart Rate monitor device/app for the iPhone
There's another company that is producing a heart rate monitor device for the iPhone. Its outlined at fastcompany.com, and looks great. Its exactly the sort of thing that would render Bleep irrelevant. Sadly, its not going to be made into a product at this stage :(
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New blog format for the crimson cactus
When I started Crimson Cactus, I started up a blog for it. It seemed to make sense, and I could keep the company posts separate from holiday pictures and musings and whatnot that way. As its turned out, I find that I want to cross-post. That is, I want to be able to post to both of my blogs.
There are a couple of ways of doing this, but I think it just goes to show that I'm doing it wrong.
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Fitbit review on engadget
Engadget have released a review of the fitbit networked pedometer. I remember first seeing this about 12 months ago, when it had just launched at techcrunch 50. I like the idea of the device, but it is yet another thing to carry around, and yet another thing to charge.
It makes me thing of the belt valet computers in David Marusek's Counting Heads (Thanks for the reccomendation @doctorow). One day, not too far away, we will have computers that we carry, strapped to our person (perhaps in belt form), that can handle all of the biometric sensing that we want.
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Gizmodo AU running a blog theme of fitness for geeks this week
Gizmodo are running a theme of playing with balls this week, which fits right up the alley for Bleep. In the linked article, they mention heart rate monitor gadgets in particular. At least my approach will be relatively inexpensive. What a pity that Bleep isn't ready for the publication yet. I'll be following their posts with interest.
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Ahh, there _are_ heart rate monitor accessories for the iPhone already
I was operating under the impression that nobody had created a heart rate monitor system for the iPhone yet. This seemed illogical to me as it is such an obvious thing to do.
As it turns out, there is one. I found it today at Smheartlink's site. It looks like a great product, but it is a lot of money to spend, especially after you have already purchased a HRM belt.
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Apple approves how many apps a day?!?
I saw an article on gizmodo a few minutes ago that says that apple approved almost 1400 iphone apps last friday. Even on the slow days they approve hundreds of applications.
Its massively impressive that Apple have got so many applications. It just goes to show how much of a runaway success they have on their hands. I can't help wonder though how hard it will be for anyone to find the app that they want when there are so many apps to choose from.
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Progress on Bleep
I had hoped to finish Bleepto the point where it could be submitted to Apple over the weekend. Sadly, I’ve run into some problems causing the application to crash on the iPhone, even though it runs fine in the simulator. I’m also trying to polish the user interface to make it a better experience for users.
In the mean time, I’ve uploaded a sneak peek video of Bleep in action. Bear in mind that this is an early version of the software, and it is still being tweked.