Racism

I was just reading a post on Techcrunch about the crunchpad.

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/12/04/crunchpad-litigation/

The racism in the comments of that article are disgraceful. Here is a small selection.

jason – December 4th, 2009 at 6:48 pm PST

That’s what you get for doing business with someone whose name you can’t pronounce.

shakra – December 5th, 2009 at 1:30 pm PST

Having developed several products in cooperation with the chinese, I would have to agree with jason. I hate working with the chinese, I hate everything about them except their low prices.

David Ord – December 4th, 2009 at 8:55 pm PST

Yep, Chandra is a Tamilian, from South India. Tamilians are not well-liked in India. They are known for being shady and “tit-fot-tat.”

Mike D – December 4th, 2009 at 8:33 pm PST

Not that I agree with your comment on the name but when you are dealing with Asia especially with Chinese and Taiwanese, you have to be extremely careful with IP. The Chinese and Taiwanese have no heart and will find every possible loophole to make money.

Mircea @ MyTestBox.com (@mirceagoia) – December 4th, 2009 at 10:56 pm PST

Sorry to say and I’m sorry for other Indians, but I just got scammed by one of them, specifically the guy behind …

hmmm – December 5th, 2009 at 3:13 pm PST

These guys are just plain stupid.. I mean seriously it’s known that Indians are lying cheating bastards.. not all of them but there’s an element in the culture where this is accepted.

And I am delighted that they try to pull this shit on you… it will be fun to watch how they will get their asses handed to them.. they defenitely picked the wrong target… These amateurs are done… please rip them a new one…. to make up for all the bs Indians have pulled on me in the past… I have moved to Russia these days for off shore work, those guys are much more honest… and smarter on top of that…

Jeff Manes (@gizmotastic) – December 4th, 2009 at 7:59 pm PST

I’m sure you probably have thought of this, but maybe the Department Homeland Security should check the information Chandrasekhar Rathakrishnan is taking out of the country. If he would cut his business partners’ throats he would likely sell embargoed technology to North Korea or Iran.

nicholas marx (@nicholasmarx) – December 4th, 2009 at 8:21 pm PST

This is just another example of Asia stealing IP, and trying to strong arm their way to get away with it.

jake – December 5th, 2009 at 5:13 am PST

None of the eariler comments are racist. As a white 5th generation having lived and worked in Asia for the past 15 years, I can say… MOST Indians are cheats, scammers and liars, it’s ingrained in their culture at a very deep level. That isn’t racists, it’s reality.

hmmm – December 5th, 2009 at 3:18 pm PST

Please rip those lying cheating Indian bastards a new one… it is known that the culture has an element where BS lying and cheating is accepted… but these idiots defenitely picked the wrong target here.. I mean the stupidity of those guys is mind blowing.. talking about destroying credibility.. no body right in their mind will go and a touch those guys not even with a 10 foot pole, they are DONE in tech, and please clean out those bastards, I hate un honorable people and I have had similar experiences in the past from that corner of the world. Lying cheating bastards.. PLEASE TEACH THOSE IDIOTS a lession.. I am sorry it went that far Mike.. but trust me when I tell u you do us all a favor by shoing those guys that America does not accept that… I’d even donate some cash… if needed to teach those dudes a lession…

imran (@loyals) – December 6th, 2009 at 9:10 am PST

I am Muslim and come from Pakistan, I had similar experience with my Muslim and other South East Asian origin contacts including Pakistani, Indians, Srilankans and Bangaledeshi, Irananis they are all the same. Jewish and Christians on the other hand most of the time have been fair in their dealings.

Brisbane

Well the cat is out of the bag. We are moving to Brisbane.

Honestly I can’t wait. I feel like it is time for a change!

Remote Kitten Development

Well I purchased a new Mac Book Pro 13.3″ laptop on the weekend.

Very sexy piece of hardware

That gave me the opportunity to do a bit more work on Remote Kitten. Functionality wise Remote Kitten has received very favourable reviews. The biggest complaint is that it is UGLY.

I am trying to rectify that. I have replaced all the buttons and removed the dark gradients. They are all black now with thin borders. You can choose the colour scheme in the application settings.

I am not sure what functionality I will add to the free version. At the moment the free and paid version are identical except one has advertisements. I think any new functionality I will only add to the paid version. I need something to differentiate them.

- Jared

Presentation

It’s funny how hard it was doing a presentation at school. In the real world it is so much easier.

Well it feels like it. I will know for sure in a few hours

Obama peace prize? hahahaha.

First iPhone App Impressions

Remote Kitten is live on the App store. Here are some of my thoughts.

• In my case the apple review process was pretty painless. 13 days ( 9 business days ) from submission to approval.
• It’s not so easy to get 100% add fill rates. I signed up with two add companies and used adwhirl to switch between them. Most of the time there are no adds available to display. I threw in a custom add once I realised this to upsell users to the paid version of the App.
• I am supprised at how many downloads I am getting. I don’t know anyone else who uses Windows Media Center. I guess the market is just that large. Gotta love globalization.
• People will pay for software if it is cheap enough. 5% of my downloads are for the paid version. I am pretty happy with that.

Remote Kitten Submitted

Finally I have finished one of my projects!

I have submitted two versions of Remote Kitten to the app store. One for $0.99 and one free version with banner adds through adwhirl.

Now just to wait for the review!

iPhone Windows MCE Remote

Development is finished I should be able to submit this baby to Apple tonight.

Woo Hoo

The paperwork aspect is a bit of a killer, ABN, GST, possible export compliance, contracts with ad companies, contracts with apple. yada yada.

It would be silly to give up now though after spending so much time on it.

iPhone Windows Remote Update

Just posted some screenshots of Remote Kitten.

iPhone MCE Remote Screenshots

Basically finished development. I still need to link up a few of the buttons. 2/3 of them are done.

Kyle Sandilands Ausradio’s Scapegoat

I am not defending the segment that got the show cancelled but I think Kyle Sandilands is just the fall guy.

The 14 year old girl said she got raped and he asked her another question about her sex life. That was pretty stupid BUT the his excuse is that he was shocked and spoke whilst not thinking while he was trying to get the segment off the air.

The real outrage should be directed at the producers of the show and 2Day FM. Why was the segment put to air in the first place? What about the mother. Fancy putting your daughter through that.

Everyone should remember the Kyle is paid to be outrageous and a jerk on the radio. The listeners lap it. He is just doing his job. The media slant on the story is that he was sacked from the show. The show was cancelled because Kyle refused to go on air.

The correct approuch would be to work out who had editorial control over the segment and hang them out to dry.

Windows Media Remote For iPhone

This is another one of my little side projects. I think I might finally finish this one though.

http://www.kared.net/rk

It is an App for the iPhone that acts as a Windows Media center remote over wifi. Apple provide something similar to control iTunes.

The only competition I could find had a horrible interface. I want to replace my media center remote with my iPhone. The interface needs to suit sitting on the couch flicking through channels.

The App controls Media Center through a program you install on the media center PC. That part of the software is finished. The website is also finished.

The App needs a few modifications to the interface. Once that is done I will get a few people to test it and then send it to Apple to put on the App store. I am thinking of selling it for around $5 but having a fully featured free version as well supported by advertisements.