I’ve been critical of web apps recently. I ran across 280Slides today. It looks slick and appears to do a lot of things. But is it a replacement for KeyNote or PowerPoint? Read More...

It was noted recently that Apple has made huge improvements with Javascript with webkit. See this article that talks about the authors opinion that Apple should extend OSA (Open Scripting Architecture) to not just AppleScript but to include Javascript. I’d take that one step further and say that RBScript should be added as well. Read More...

I listen to music all day long while I'm working. It's a habit (good or bad) that I developed in college while studying for hours on end and have kept up since. Heck, I became a DJ at the college radio station (WOUI - pumping out an amazing 10,000 milliWatts!) to listen to a lot of different music and did a study marathon one finals week because it was the 'quietest' place on campus. I love music and it's one of the reasons why I have such a large music collection and why I fell in love with iTunes and my first iPod.
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I've been tell you about my agile project over the past couple of months. This sprint was about laying the foundations for future additions to our prototype. It was also the sprint where we documented as much as we could. In addition to that we tried out a couple of bug tracking systems.

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Real Software engineer, Nathan, posted an item on the NUG list today that I find most interesting and heartening. They asked people who use RBScript to take a survey. That's pretty interesting.
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This is an oldie but a goodie. This one is sure to get me all riled up because, to me anyway, it strikes at the heart of stupidity and why people hate Microsoft so much: Windows activation. Read More...

I've had the 'pleasure' of working with some web applications recently and I can't say I'm overly impressed. I've been a desktop application user since 1986 and it seems that web apps are lacking standard features that desktop users have had for years. Read More...

Real Software scares me sometimes. This week they told us they were switching to FogBugz as their new bug tracking system. I think that's awesome! But then they said that the old feedback system was being shutdown and no longer available and oh, by the way, the new system isn't searchable. Talk about a sh**storm. I have to file this one under the "What the Hell Were They Thinking!?" category.

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In the grand scheme of things, a name doesn't mean much but as we've seen with Apple and Microsoft operating systems, a name gives 'meaning' to a product. There are a lot of people that, when hearing the word 'basic' in reference to programming, think of the bad old days where you numbered each line of code and it was interpreted (i.e. slow). They think of QBasic or GW-basic! Didn't they die with DOS?
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Mars, THE compiler guy is leaving Real Software. The official announcement is here. Read More...

I've been pondering why the 3rd party plugin and controls market isn't bigger for REALbasic. Certainly part of the barrier to entry is the size of the market. Part of it is RS' reluctance to actively promote the 3rd party solutions. Another barrier to entry is that the existing plugins are so inexpensive that it's tough for a new competitor to enter the space dominated by MonkeyBread and Einhugur (both of which we own and use and highly recommend). Read More...

Let's play CEO for a minute and pretend that we're Steve Jobs who takes (and probably deserves) the credit for a successful Apple turnaround. In a minute we'll also pretend that we're Steve Ballmer who is at the helm of the most dominate software company in the history of computing. Do you really think either one of them cares about REALbasic and REAL Software? Read More...

It seems that the idea of having a professional association for REALbasic has some legs. Many people have left messages and contacted me privately offering their support and giving us some ideas...

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For the past couple of weeks I've been talking about things I'd like to see in REALbasic and what, I think we, as users, can do for REALbasic. The comments have been great - I appreciate all the time and effort all of you have put into them. I think I've settled upon one thing that I'd like to see changed in REALbasic.

The Language Reference in RB is, depending upon who you ask, is either barely adequate or downright horrible. I tend to leans towards the former because I think it's lacking depth to be very useful. For every object, property, method and event there's information needed but not in the LR. Sometimes this includes bugs but more often than not, just clarification on what's changed.
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I have my wish list for what RB can do for us. Now, to be campy, what can we do to help REALbasic? Read More...

There's been an interesting discussion going on over at Norman Palardy's blog. It started innocently enough by Norman complaining that he's been getting support and change requests for some of his free and unsupported code that he has on his site. The discussion has morphed into a life of its own so I figured I'd start the "My Wish List For REALbasic in 2008" thread and get some additional feedback.
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