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09/24/08
So while I’m still against building my own iPhone App (too risky with Apple denying good apps), I am a big user of iPhone apps. But I am frustrated with the iTunes interface for finding them. So I built my own. You can see my iPhone Apps directory over at MacMost. I still have some features I want to add (like search). But for now, at least it is easy to see which apps are new — and by new I mean really new, not just “featured” like they are in iTunes.
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09/14/08
Here’s a blog post by Dave Winer. The first paragraph says it all. So I’m not the only one who sees iPhone App development as too risky.
In fact, I often thought that the ideal first App for me to develop would be a copy of the Urinal Game. It is a simple App, developed originally in Flash 2, so it has to be simple. I thought it would be a good way to cut my teeth on iPhone App development, and I could distribute it for free to test the market.
But now that Apple has banned the “Pull My Finger” application, I’m not sure they would go for a humorous App like the Urinal Game. I wouldn’t risk it. If Apple denies the application, then all my work would be for nothing because there is really no other way to distribute the App. As a small business, I simple can’t spin my wheels like that. I’ll stick with my Web-based iPhone games, where there isn’t a single gatekeeper.
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09/03/08
The idea of doing work for “clients” predates my career as a programmer. I was doing desktop publishing work for clients back in college. I wasn’t necessarily in business, I was just a poor college student always on the lookout for some cash.
So when I quit my job and started working for myself back in 1996, it was natural for me to look for “contracts.” And I found them, especially after my first book on programming was published.
So I have been doing client work ever since. Sometimes it has been a minor part of my work, sometimes a major part. At two points in the last 12 years I even expanded my company with employees specifically set aside to do only client work.
But during the entire 12 years, I have also been saying: “Soon, I will stop doing client work.”
I guess I’m enough of a creative individual that I really want to be creating my own content, not developing someone else’s. No matter how cool or challenging a contract seems when I first take it on, it always ends up being very uninteresting by the time I’m halfway done. The client, of course, wants their job done and done right. I just want to move on.
There is also a business side to the whole thing. When you do client work, you get paid cash for your time. Trading time for money. But developing my own content can continue to pay off years after the effort. For instance, games I have made for my free online games site GameScene.com back in 1996 are still earning ad revenue today. The books I have written still create royalties. I hope the same is true in the long run for the Mac videos that I’m making.
So, once agian, I’m declaring an end to client work. But I mean it this time. I have one client project that I am working on right now. I have a few clients that come back to me from time-to-time for updates. My plan is to finish everything up and declare independence from client work by the end of the year. Definitely.
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