Moog Google Doodle open sourced!

2012-07-11

Google open sourced a simplified version of the Moog Google Doodle featuring the Web Audio code. Not that we’re obsessed with the Moog Google Doodle, but we’re sort of obsessed with the Moog Google Doodle.

Get it here: http://code.google.com/p/bob-moog-google-doodle/

Also, if you check out the readme and you’re a little intimidated like we were, here’s all you have to do at the command line in order to try it out:

cd ~/Desktop/
git clone https://code.google.com/p/bob-moog-google-doodle/
cd bob-moog-google-doodle
git submodule init && git submodule update
open demo.html

One last note: on our Macs, it worked in Chrome, but not Firefox or Safari.

(We see what you did there, Google.)

Moog Google Doodle knob diagram

2012-05-22

The latest Moog synth Google Doodle from May 24, 2012 is amazing. Here’s a handy diagram we made of what each knob does.

(Thanks to Jon Tan for sharing the original doodle on Twitter.)

Is there anything the iPad can't do?

2012-03-08

Heh. via @rands

Making a Courier plugin for Dropmark

2012-02-16

We’ve always had a bit of a professional crush on the guys at Oak. They do amazing work, and glide so effortlessly between design and development, which we consider to be both completely badass and completely unfair. So when Skylar asked us if we’d be into working together on a Courier plugin for their Dropmark web app, we jumped at the chance.

Dropmark is a super handy web app for creating collaborative collections of images, PDFs, and other files. It’s great for doing research, making “mood boards”, and, yes, collecting cute cat photos. If you’d like to try Dropmark, Oak is celebrating the release of the Courier plugin by opening up beta signups for a short time, so go grab a login while you still can (use “courier” as the invite code).

Courier is a fun, gorgeous Mac app from Realmac that lets you very quickly and easily upload images and other files to web services like Flickr, Dropbox, Facebook, CloudApp, etc. You create “envelopes” by pre-configuring one or more “stamps” that represent each service and after that it’s just drag and drop any time you want to upload new items.

As part of Courier, Realmac has provided an SDK for third parties like Dropmark to make a plugin for their own web service, which users can either install directly or download from the Realmac Addon area. There’s a great writeup on the Dropmark blog about the new plugin, so check there for more details on how to install and use the plugin with Courier.

Making the Dropmark plugin was a fun challenge. A Courier plugin is written Objective-C and built in Xcode, just like a Mac or iOS app. The plugin amounts to a very simple Dropmark client that also needs to implement subclasses of a couple of specific components from the Realmac SDK for authentication and upload. The mini-UI for the login view and other app-specific preset selections are created with regular old .xib files. The rest of the UI is part of the Courier app, which the plugin communicates with via notifications.

One of the tricky parts about getting started was that, among the two main Courier plugin examples out there (the Realmac Ember plugin source code example and the open source CloudApp plugin), neither project compiles right away in Xcode 4 / Mac OS 10.7. There’s also an Xcode 3 blank plugin template that wouldn’t open in Xcode 4. The documentation from Realmac is quite helpful, but there’s still a lot that is “left as an exercise to the reader.”

The Dropmark plugin ended up requiring only four Dropmark API calls (authentication, get existing user collections, create new user collection, and upload). Apart from that, it was just a matter of tying the input UI and response UI into the creation and responses of those API calls. Once we got our heads around all of the moving parts and figured out what needed to happen, it ended up being pretty straightforward.

If anyone is interested in more details on building a Courier plugin, please get in touch, we’d be happy to share what we have learned. If there’s enough interest, we might even put together an example tutorial and starter project that is up-to-date for Xcode 4 and 10.7.

The Dropmark plugin is free, and Courier is available for purchase in the Mac App Store.

Hello, world!

2012-02-15

We’re excited to launch the new version of houseoflegend.com!

We’ll be rolling out our inaugural series of blog posts on iOS development over the next several days. In the meantime, you web nerds can try pressing the letter ‘g’. (High five to 960.gs).

Thanks to Chris Shiflett, Raul Guiterrez, Bekka Palmer, and Cameron Koczon for saying helpful stuff while we were putting this site together.

House of Legend - Handcrafted iOS and iPad apps

Moog Google Doodle open sourced!

Moog Google Doodle knob diagram

Is there anything the iPad can't do?

Making a Courier plugin for Dropmark

Hello, world!