Introducing SuperLoader: a better AS3 library for fetching images

This post is way overdue but in any case, I’d like to introduce (rather belatedly) SuperLoader, an image loading library for AS3. The library grew out of my work when I was building the magazine view for EspressoReader. The magazine view builds a visual grid from the images found in a collection of blogs you [...]

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Air for mobile’s weird touch implementation

Let me begin by saying that after playing with Adobe AIR for mobile for the last couple of weeks, I have been really pleasantly surprised by general performance. I have done quite a bit of mobile device development off late with both iOS and Android, but AIR might actually be a contender for my next [...]

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Location Check-Ins are the new Photos

Off late I have started using quite a few location based services like Foursquare, Foodspotting etc, and everyday more interesting apps crop up. However the current model for location based apps requires me to check into each app individually. The problem is when I am at someplace interesting enough to check in to, I am [...]

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The prettier side of Android

A lot has been said about the lack of UI polish in Android (sometimes rather obnoxiously), but over the last few months I have started debating how much of that is still relevant. When I first saw Android (around version 1.6) I was not a fan, but over the last couple of years having it [...]

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Thoughts on inter-app communication and Siri-izing Android apps

Coming from developing iOS applications, the concept that struck me most interesting in Android app development was the way it handled inter-app communications. For the uninitiated, here is a simple way to understand how Android apps work: Each Android app is composed of a few different parts: Activities, Services, ContentProviders and BroadcastRecievers An Activity represents a [...]

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Doodler

I am a chronic doodler, and have always struggled to keep my notebooks clear of doodles and seem more “information heavy”. So watching this video was quite an eye opener: Another link from Time here goes deeper into a study that shows how doodling actually helps you pay attention! If you really enjoy doodling, I [...]

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Its comments like these …

…that keep me working on EspressoReader I know this video was posted a year back. Could not stop myself from praising about your marvelous work. Really made my Google Reader mess an enjoyable read. Thanks and congrats for the awesome piece of software On the first “sneak peek” video of EspressoReader posted July of last [...]

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The wrong metrics

The world lost a creative genius yesterday with the passing of Steve Jobs. While there have already been a number of posts on the web on his vision and creative leadership which is how most of us will remember him, it reminded me of how we often measure things in life. This post basically came [...]

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On Better Printers

After another fairly annoying morning with my printer, I was reminded of this satirical post that the Onion ran on Tim Cook and Printers. The premise of this was basically that printers were as dull as a topic anyone could think of (basically emphasizing the difference between the creative Steve Jobs and the very operationally [...]

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Building TimePiece: My presentation from Philly Android Alliance this week

I gave a talk this week at the Philadelphia Android Alliance User Group on TimePiece, my open source Android World Clock app. We discussed some of the code and design patterns used in the application. Here is the slide deck from that presentation. Building TimePiece View more presentations from Arpit Mathur. Thanks to everyone who [...]

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