I'm pretty happy with how the implementation has worked out. It's build on essentially three background scripts:

• Parsing replies every minute looking for the friend code pattern (1234-1234-1234 for game codes, with dashes or spaces).
• Taking queued users and pulling everyone they are following into the database.
• Generating and caching the RSS feed for recently tweeted friend codes.

The system currently only pulls the first 300 followers, but it's running smoothly enough that I will bump that up to 500 this week. Over 150 people are currently using it, and the database has about 10,000 records to keep track of friends. I feel like it's architected well enough to grow significantly from here, so I may do some casual promotion of the service this week.

If you own a Wii and use Twitter, give it a try. If you have any questions or feature requests, please send me an email or reply on Twitter. Enjoy!

Speed. This is where the Flip shines. It is compact enough to take anywhere, and simple enough that you can take it out of your pocket and start shooting video in seconds. I've already shot way more video than I would with my traditional DV camcorder.

Battery. It runs on two AA batteries. I was able to record a ton of video before replacing them, accumulating 3 GB of files over several weeks. This is unheard of compared to any other still camera or video camera I've owned.

Transfer. The Flip saves as the Xvid flavor of MPEG-4, which is not supported natively by QuickTime. Luckily a quick Perian install later and you can view and edit them in QuickTime Player or any app that supports QuickTime. Just mount the camera and copy them over, or convert to H.264 with something like VisualHub. The Wii Transfer 2.6 beta also supports Xvid to convert and share to your Wii.

Quality. I wanted to do a side-by-side comparison with Motion JPEG used on most digital still cameras, but this isn't a video hardware review site so an in-depth analysis is beyond the scope of what I need or have expertise in. To my eyes it looks pretty good though. Make sure to get the Ultra, not the regular Flip Video which has a lower bitrate.

Complaints. You need to give the power slider and record buttons some real pressure, and on a few occasions I've clicked record only to realize 1 minute later that it didn't start. I understand that the designers didn't want us turning it on or recording unintentionally, but this negates some of the speed advantage mentioned above.

In a nutshell: The Flip isn't for everyone, but at just $140 it's hard to argue with its strengths. I take it everywhere now. One pocket for iPhone, one pocket for Flip.

Here are the best ways to get Wii Transfer:

• Buy a copy! Just $19. Simple checkout with PayPal and you'll get an automatic email within minutes.
• Write a review for a blog or magazine. Email me first and I'll give you a full license, even if it's just your personal blog.
• Become a beta tester. From time to time, I need people to test the latest in-progress features. Free copy if you send any useful feedback on a beta.

Thanks for your support! I hope one of these options appeals to you.

Rather than bicker with my friends who support Obama, I changed my tone to emphasize our shared values and launched a new site: unitetheparty.com. I've been posting there regularly since March, and hope to build a group of like-minded Democrats to write on this topic, as well as a list of supporters who want to see a joint ticket happen.

Thinking about the endgame of the race in this context provides an excellent backdrop for discussing the real issues important to voters. There's still an opportunity to use these campaigns for good: setting the right tone against McCain and bringing awareness of the Democratic agenda to everyone.

My first question to her: "Was it Ollie?"

And of course it was. Ollie Johnston passed away at the age of 95, the last of Disney's "Nine Old Men". See the epic Cartoon Brew post for more. I had blogged about the death of his friend Frank Thomas in 2004, and also of colleague Ward Kimball in 2002.

For those who don't know me very well, and even many who do, I'll let you in on a little secret. One day my boss is going to wonder why I don't answer his emails, and it will be because I've thrown the computer in the trash, set my USB devices on fire, and returned to the first passion of my life.

Sure, I have an old-school animation desk (old office 2005 and new office this year, next to computer stuff) and a bunch of paper and sharpened pencils to play with. Sure, I'll still always love building software, designing user interfaces, and am grateful for the friends I have at work and in the Mac development community. Sure, I can't support a family and giant mortgage doing silly portraits on the street corner.

But damn it. Ollie Johnston died.

I've also been wrapping up the next version of Wii Transfer, which hopefully smoothes over most of the rough spots in the current release. After sending beta copies to a few customers, I'm opening up a new forums section as an experiment in getting early builds out without a more formal public beta. (It's not linked from the main site yet, but will be soon.) Every developer handles betas in a different way, but I like the balance Jesse at Hog Bay Software has achieved between his released software page and the early builds and developer notes in the forums section, for those customers willing to dig a little bit below the surface.

Imagine two programs: one is ugly and hard to read, but it compiles and is bug-free; the other is beautiful and readable, and it also compiles and is bug-free. To the user they are identical. They both succeed.

Now take those two and give them both identical beauty and readability, but accidentally break one so that it either does not compile or runs so horribly buggy and slow that it is useless to everyone. Writing code for other programmers to read isn't enough. You have to start with code that works before you get all fancy-pants.

This growing trend to raise beautiful code and programmer productivity above the performance or functionality of the final product is dangerous. The final product is what counts. Not how you build it, but what you've built: how it scales, how it performs, how it solves a particular problem.

And sure, there are many times when I write slow, lazy code that doesn't work well. But that's a compromise you make when you have to meet a deadline, or because you aren't sure how to optimize yet, not because you start out by deprecating user experience. If you believe Ryan, it sounds like there is a whole "movement" of programmers who toss any potential performance achievements out the window before they even get started.

You can say that great products are complex, and so you need to focus attention on how the software is built and maintained. That is true. When I ported a large application from Carbon to Cocoa a few years ago I made the decision to do so because of future productivity.

You can say that happy programmers create high-quality products. That is also true. When I am feeling most productive I am usually enjoying myself because the work environment I'm in is encouraging.

But don't put the practice of software development above the actual result, because to do so means you care more about writing code than solving problems.

"Until that time, the SDK is under NDA and the apps cannot be distributed to the general public." (Scott Stevenson)

"The iPhone SDK is very well done (can't say more because of the NDA)" (Florent Pillet)

"To answer without getting into NDA stuff, let's talk about Mac OS X in general." (Scott Stevenson)

I've also been hit by this community-killer. At WWDC last year I posted to Twitter about new .Mac features and it remains the only tweet I have ever deleted. I had this sudden paranoia that conference staff would kick me out of Moscone and revoke my ADC account. Silly.

But let's look at reality. Over 100,000 people have downloaded the SDK. This couldn't be more different than WWDC, which effectively encourages discussion only while in San Francisco by requiring an investment of at minimum $2-3k between conference, hotels, food, and travel. The SDK by comparison is totally free to download.

Put simply, how can Apple expect us to take an NDA seriously while at the same time they spread the applications and documentation covered under this NDA to every corner of the Mac universe?

I'm not a lawyer, but this one seems legally ridiculous. There are a few issues handled by the license:

• Don't distribute apps created with the beta SDK. That's fine, because there's no good way to do that anyway and giving everyone a level "June launch" playing field makes sense for both Apple and developers.
• Don't rip-off Apple's ideas and use them in your own phone before the SDK ships. That's also fine, because I don't care about other phones and generally think Apple already has a insurmountable development platform advantage.
• Don't talk about confidential capabilities of the SDK. This is the one I have problems with, because I question if something can be considered confidential if it is shared with 100,000 people.

For years Mac developers have asked Apple for an official, closed mailing list to discuss APIs still under NDA. Maybe things would be different now if Apple hadn't refused that request, but with a release as mainstream as the iPhone SDK it's too late to try to control the conversation. I expect a healthy discussion of APIs and business practices to happen on blogs and Twitter and IRC and email, and that's how it should be.

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