MPMoviePlayerController – Then and Now

With iOS 3.2 a new class named MPMoviePlayerViewController was introduced. It completely changed the way movies were displayed all this while in the iPhone apps. MPMoviePlayerController was also changed considerably for good. This created one issue for the developers with existing apps using these classes and framework. Even if they decided to update, they still has to support users with iOS 3.1 and earlier. Here we create a Class MoviePlayer which detects users iOS version and creates appropriate object.

A typical Indian news site

Ridiculous number of advertisements and all are flash. Notice that the ad “Sponsor a child today” is not flash and its very likely that its placed for free.

5 characteristics of a successful freelancer

In this highly competitive world, its very difficult to become successful freelancer. It’s very important for a freelancer to earn and maintain a very good reputation. Reputation cannot be built overnight but it can definitely be spoilt overnight. Apart from completing client’s work in time and delivering excellent work, there are few other traits that a successful freelancer demonstrates. We look at the top 5 of them here.

Building xcode project from command line : A tutorial

Recently, I had to integrate a xcode project into a build script such that the code compiles from command line and then installs into the required location. xcode doesn’t use Makefile to build the project. It has its own build system. However, it does have a way to build the project very easily from the command line.

Twitter – Something is technically wrong

Another twitter page.

Twitter is over capacity

5 Simple ways to increase productivity

All of us want to do lots of things in the limited time that we have. We all have deadlines to meet and are under constant pressure. In today’s world its more important to be productive than being smart or talented. Its very important to produce results faster without compromising on quality. If you want to be more efficient at getting things done without burning out, then here are some simple tips and strategies to follow.

Detecting taps and events on UIWebView – The right way

Recently, I was working on a project which required detection of tap and events on the UIWebView. We wanted to find out the HTML element on which the user taps in the UIWebView and then depending on the element tapped some action was to be performed. After some Googling, I found out the most of the users lay a transparent UIView on top of the UIWebView, re-implement the touch methods of UIResponder class (Ex: -touchesBegan:withEvent:) and then pass the events to the UIWebView. This method is explained in detail here. There are multiple problems with the method.

1. Copy/Selection stops working on UIWebView
2. We need to create a sub-class of UIWebView while Apple says we should not sub-class it.
3. A lot other UIWebView features stop working.

Freelancers versus Employees: The Difference

One might think that there is not much difference between a freelancer and an employee because at the end of the day, both complete the tasks assigned to them and get paid for the work they do. However, there are some major differences if we look closely. The differences include from the method of hiring to method of interaction, costs and much more.

Detecting a shake using iPhone SDK

Accelerometer has added an all new dimension to the iPhone. There is no limit on how we can use the accelerometer API in iPhone SDK. The following are some of the well known simple uses of shake/motion detection

1. Refresh the current view
2. Go to next/previous screen
3. Start editing
4. Shuffle
5. and the list goes on

Today lets check out how we can detect a simple shake using the API