Writing software for the iPhone

The long-awaited iPhone software development kit is here, and overall I’m pretty impressed with the amount of power and flexibility Apple is giving to third-party developers. Beating Daniel’s expectations, Apple is giving access to the iPhone’s native API. There are a few gotchas though. For example, only one third-party app can run at a time, …

From concrete to water

A few months ago, the Wall Street Journal ran a feature article on Lee Myung-Bak, the then-presidential candidate (and now president) of South Korea. As an aside, the article said that as mayor of Seoul, Lee had ordered an elevated highway torn down to unearth a buried stream and turn it into a park. Of …

Roundup

A few months ago I said I’d blog about the highlights I had gleaned from my friends’ blogs. Well, here they finally are: Twitter is the latest social software craze from the valley, whose appeal I barely understand. Anyway, if you want to know what the buzz is about, Thomas Han, an avid user, has …

What do you mean, Super Tuesday was only two weeks ago?

It’s amazing how fast this year’s primary season is going, thanks to the compressed primary schedule. Two weeks ago Senators Clinton and Obama were essentially tied. A little over one week ago, Willie Brown, former San Francisco mayor, former speaker of the California State Assembly, and all-around political guru, said that since Obama was favored …

Microsoft’s Building 7: now you see it, now you don’t

Last month, Danyel blogged about Microsoft Research’s moving into a new building, Building 99, and linked to several newspaper articles about Microsoft’s expansion in general. I’m somewhat familiar with the Microsoft campus, having interned there in 1995 and visited a few times since, so I was curious to find out even more. On Microsoft’s web …