Matt

  • Meditation For Programmers

    Programmers have one of the most intensive intellectual jobs.  It requires great focus and concentration to write software productively. If you measure the productivity of a programmer you might be surprised at the range. At the bottom there are software developers that actually create negative productivity; every line of code they write is one that…

  • Candy Crush Game Analysis

    Candy Crush Saga from King has been dominating the top grossing charts for a very long time now.  The game mechanic itself is not new or particularly innovative and is of similar type as Bejewelled that was originally released in 2001 – long before the iPhone was invented.  What is it that differentiates CCS from…

  • Creating Feedback Loops

    A feedback loop for success is anything that looks at your past or current state and if you have fallen off the tracks does something to get you back on them. That’s kind of vague. So here are some examples of feedback loops: For a weight lifter – keeping a log of past lifts encourages…

  • Buying Code

    As a developer I have strong opinions about what makes good software and there is a desire to rewrite code that I find from other people so that it is ‘better’. This makes it difficult  to justify purchasing code.  I could just write something similar/better myself.  Yet, buying code is probably the cheapest most effective way…

  • Top Grossing Apps Has Stabilized – Keeping you out

    I like to keep an eye on the top grossing apps in the app store.  They are the ones killing it, and rolling in much of the money players spend, they are the games that I look to for ideas to model in my own apps. The big games have it mostly figured out, and…

  • Api First Web Development

    The web is still suffering through a page refresh disaster. HTTP started with simple pages where full page reloads when navigating wasn’t so bad. Modern sites have boatloads of images, css, js and html files on each page that need to be requested each time a page loads and checked to see if the file…

  • Distraction Free Writing

    I have just discovered a feature in wordpress to do full-screen distraction free writing. The idea is to remove all visual distractions from the computer so that the only thing you can focus on is your writing. Managing distractions is something that I have always done at work. I turn of notifications for emails and…

  • How to find time

    One of the hardest things in getting productive work done has always been finding time to get focused work done.  There are so many demands on our time that what we want to accomplish gets pushed out in favour of other more immediate or more pleasurable things. Back in the day when Ben Franklin, Albert…

  • App Kontrol

    My next project has got underway and it will be launching as App Kontrol sometime in the next month.  This app will be a business dashboard that can be used to pull together download and advertising revenue numbers from various mobile services into one place.  With this information gathered we can produce metrics to help…

  • Announcing AffiliTunes

    I’m happy to say that the first service under the new Halotis.com is open now for it’s first users. Affilitunes is a simple service to geo-target iTunes affiliate links. You provide your affiliate keys for PHG and Trade Doubler and AffiliTunes will redirect clicks to the correct affiliate program depending on where the click came…