DigitalDeejay today announced mix.dj for iPad. This app gives you access to thousands of mixes from DJ’s around the World in one click. Listen to more than 25,000 mixes straight from your iPad, streaming whenever and wherever you want, all via WiFi or 3G. Choose from 25 pre-programmed moods and genres; One choice and mix.dj HD takes care of the playlist for you. mix.dj HD allows you to create your own playlist simply by selecting your favorite mixes for playback.
By Greg Robbins, Software Engineer
(Editor’s note: Long-time readers know we sometimes publish posts aimed at programmers, and this is one of those. If you’re not a software developer, don’t worry. Our usual non-technical stuff will return.)
It’s rare today for any software to live in isolation. And often, applications want to connect to data in your Google Account. Social networks seek access to your Gmail contacts, finance programs try to sync with your Google Finance portfolio, and photo editing software would like to add eyeglasses and mustaches to the photos in your Picasa Web Albums account. But you probably don’t want your photo editing program to be able to download your financial portfolio, spend money with your Google Checkout account, or have access to any of your other personal data.
The fundamental problem is that giving your username and password to a program hands it access to all of your data. Recently, Internet software developers have converged on a solution called OAuth. When sites and software support OAuth, you only need to give your username and password—your credentials—to the site where your data belongs, and that site passes a token with strictly limited authorization rights back to other sites and software.
For example, if you want to use the new SuperAwesomeEditor application to trim your YouTube videos, the editing program can use OAuth to ask YouTube for permission to edit your videos, and then YouTube will ask you to verify your identify. Once you give your username and password to YouTube, it will hand back to SuperAwesomeEditor a token allowing it access just to your YouTube videos for editing. SuperAwesomeEditor won’t know your password, so it won’t be able to grab your financial documents or check out your Gmail contacts. And tomorrow, if you change your mind, you can tell YouTube to cancel that token, and suddenly SuperAwesomeEditor will be unable to access your videos at all. Now you’re in control of your personal data.
OAuth offers another big advantage: it gives the data provider flexibility in how it authenticates you. So today you may be asked for your username and password, and also to solve a captcha to prove you’re human. Tomorrow, with tighter security, the provider can add another means of authentication, perhaps by sending a text message to your phone with an extra passcode to type when signing in. Improvements in user authentication over time like this aren’t possible in software that only knows how to ask for a username and password.
Unfortunately, the rose of OAuth comes with thorns. One bit of pain is that it takes a lot of tricky programming for applications to use OAuth for authentication. Another downside stems from OAuth having been designed to allow one website to obtain authorization from another; it is not well-suited for use in installed applications, such as native iPhone, iPad, or Mac OS X software.
To encourage adoption of OAuth by Mac and iOS apps, we have released the Google Toolbox for Mac OAuth Controllers. This small set of Objective-C classes makes it easy for developers to add OAuth sign-in embedded into Cocoa apps. Since adoption of OAuth extends beyond Google, the OAuth controllers work with both Google and non-Google data providers.
Here’s how easy it is for developers to let users sign in to Google Contacts with OAuth from an iPhone application:
#import "GTMOAuthViewControllerTouch.h" NSString *keychainItemName = @"HotSocialNetwork: Google Contacts"NSString *scope = @"http://www.google.com/m8/feeds/"; // scope for Google Contacts API GTMOAuthViewControllerTouch *viewController = [[[GTMOAuthViewControllerTouch alloc] initWithScope:scope language:nil appServiceName:keychainItemName delegate:self finishedSelector:@selector(viewController:finishedWithAuth:error:)] autorelease];[[self navigationController] pushViewController:controller animated:YES];
When the user finishes signing in, the controller will invoke the application’s callback method:
- (void)viewController:(GTMOAuthViewControllerTouch *)viewController finishedWithAuth:(GTMOAuthAuthentication *)auth error:(NSError *)error { if (error == nil) { // Authentication succeeded; retain the auth object }}
That’s it. The controllers handle displaying an embedded web view and interacting with the server, and optionally saving the authorization token in the keychain. Later on, the application can use the auth object provided to the callback to authenticate and sign requests it makes to the server, like this:
[auth authorizeRequest:myNSURLMutableRequest];
Authenticating to non-Google services takes a few more lines of code to specify the application’s identity and the server addresses needed for authorization, but it’s almost as simple.
The OAuth protocol is in transition, as a newer version is currently being developed. But if you are a developer, there is already benefit to adopting OAuth for letting your users sign in to Google and other services. For more information about using the GTM OAuth controllers in your app, read the introduction at the project site, and join the discussion group. Google also maintains a site for our ongoing research into OAuth and related subjects.
The OAuth Controllers are an independent sibling project to the Google Toolbox for Mac, a collection of useful classes for iPhone and Mac developers. The controllers incorporate the newly-liberated GTM HTTP Fetcher project, our networking wrapper class, which I’ll discuss in an upcoming post. You can find more of our open-source Mac and iPhone toys on the Google Mac Developer Playground at http://code.google.com/mac.
To use a case or not on your iPad? It’s an age-old question with two staunchly divided factions. If you subscribe to the no-case philosophy — for whatever reason — you can probably skip this post. However, if you prefer to keep your iPad in a case, then read on.
I put cases on my gadgets for one simple reason: safety. I’m rough on them and I have two young kids. The safety and protection of a case is self-evident. Gadgets simply have a longer life-span when they’re covered by something. Especially if you use them outdoors or while traveling. Out in the field high-use devices are more likely to get damaged due to a slip, drop or fall. And with kids, cases are even more essential.
I’ve tried a lot of different cases for the iPad, including the Apple iPad case, various skins, shells (like the Otterbox Commuter case) and sleeves (like the Waterfield sleevecase). While each has its merits, I’ve found what I believe to be the holy grail of iPad cases: BookBook for iPad ($69.99) from Twelve South.
For starters, it’s drop dead gorgeous. It’s beautifully aged and feels like an antique leather bound copy of Huckleberry Finn. I especially like that fact that the faux-book design makes it completely anonymous allowing you to go into a meeting, class, coffee shop without the inevitable “Say, is that an iPad?!” It’s also extremely secure because it doesn’t scream “Steal me!” when people see it. It’s more like, “Oh, he’s a bookworm, better leave him alone.”
When you open the zipper, you’ll see the iPad on the right nestled snugly under two leather corners at the bottom and held in place by an elastic band at the top. It creates a nice snug fit without obscuring any of the iPad’s ports or buttons. The genius though, is in in the black leather string and button visible to the left. They allow the BookBook to be pitched into an A-frame stand for watching movies, videos or slideshows. Simply open the BookBook past 180 degrees to your desired viewing angle and bring the string under the case and tie it around the leather button. It works surprisingly well.
Twelve South also makes BookBook cases for the MacBook Pro (in two colors) that are just as beautiful. Pictured above is the iPad case sitting on top of the MBP case.
I can’t recommend the BookBook for iPad enough. After using one on my MacBook Pro, I couldn’t wait for the iPad version to arrive — and I wasn’t disappointed. The iPad’s size and thin form factor work particularly well with a case like the BookBook and result is an awesome synthesis of form and function. Granted it’s a little spendy at $70, but for this level of material and build quality, it’s money well spent. After all, you spent $500-800 for your iPad, it’s worth a few extra bucks to protect it.
Do you use a case on your iPad?
I was thrilled when I first saw a tweet about the release of Parallels Desktop 6, followed closely by an e-mail from Parallels saying, “Upgrade NOW for the low, low price of $49.95.” In the press release it promised two things that immediately intrigued me:
Earlier this year, I wrote a lengthy evaluation of gaming on virtual machines. I thought I’d run the same games through Parallels 6 to see how its claims work out in the real world. Before we get going, though, one quick note: upgrading to this version will force your copy of Windows to re-authenticate, so, if like me you’re near your limit, be warned.
The fine print. These tests were run on a MacBook Pro 13″ with 4GB of ram, 500GB hard drive and an NVIDIA 9400M graphics chip. The release version of Parallels Desktop 6 was used — at least the version that was available on September 9 — with Windows 7 Professional (the virtual machine was accessing the boot camp parition) with all the latest service patches as my OS of choice. The games tested were Lord of the Rings Online, Dungeons and Dragons Online, and EverQuest 2. These were scientifically chosen from a pool of games that, frankly, are the ones I play a lot. Also, MMOs tend to be the most demanding of games so they make great test subjects. Also, note: Lord of the Rings Online has gone free-to-play, and this or Boot Camp are the only ways to run it currently on a Mac.
For the most part, the claims held true. Without breaking out a calculator, I did find the load times for games to be better on Parallels 6 over Parallels 5. Interestingly, EverQuest 2 was slightly longer on the load times with version 6. The OS itself took exactly the same time to load on both versions. The oddity I mentioned in the earlier article, where it took Parallels longer to launch on a clean boot of OS X, still holds true.
After seeing increased load performance, I expected to also see much better FPS. Now, the FPS tests aren’t scientific; none of the games have a true benchmark test. If I’d been thinking straight, I’d have run Speedmark tests on both versions. However, I’ve never really trusted the benchmark tests over actual in-game observations.
I did not see the increased performance Parallels was claiming. The tests were pretty much a wash, with both versions testing within any margin of error of each other. They may appear slightly better or slightly worse than the previous version, but statistically it’s a wash.
Version 6 has support for 64-bit and 5.1 surround sound. Frankly, I couldn’t tell a difference with the 64-bit support and I don’t have 5.1 surround on my MacBook.
Before version 5, upgrading Parallels quickly became a regretted decision. It felt like things were worse, not better, and I’d have a host of performance-related issues. That’s changed, and after an afternoon with Parallels 5 I don’t regret upgrading.
That said, I can’t really tell a difference. It does feel slightly more responsive, but I can’t measure how. I really wish there was quantitative way to say “It’s snappier!”
Do I recommend upgrading if you’re a gamer? Yeah, I do. While “It didn’t make things worse” is hardly an enthusiastic recommendation, I’ll be the first to admit that testing three games by two different developers is an incredibly small sample set. That said, since upgrading is a one-way street (I’ve never had much luck backing down a version), I can’t recommend checking the Windows Guest forums at Parallels’s official site before upgrading. There is no shame in letting people like myself be your canaries.
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Jim Dalrymple likes the iPod nano and does the best (and maybe only) sales job for the device the Macalope’s seen from someone who doesn’t work for Apple.
The brown and furry one hasn’t laid a hoof on the new nano yet, but he’s only slightly more amenable to the device he called a “red-headed stepchild” in his column last week after reading Dalrymple’s paean.
The place where Dalyrmple and the equally hirsute one agree the most is probably what category it fills. The Macalope said it’s “less of a multitouch nano than it is a multitouch shuffle” and Dalrymple’s piece seems to back that up.
The difference is, Dalrymple thinks that’s a good thing while the Macalope thinks multitouch alone doesn’t warrant the $100 price difference. The 8 GB iPod touch is just $80 more than the 8 GB nano. Now think about the difference in utility between the nano and the touch that you get for $80 versus the difference in utility between the shuffle and nano that you get for $100.
Personally he thinks the old nano provided more utility, but reasonable people can disagree.
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