Author Archives: Richard Rodger

The Six Key Mobile App Metrics you Need to be Tracking.

Mobile applications are web sites, and traditional web analytics are not appropriate for mobile applications. What you need is insight that will make your app more effective. You will not find this insight by tracking downloads and installs, phone platforms … Continue reading




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Debug PhoneGap Mobile Apps Five Times Faster

PhoneGap is a fantastic open source project. It lets you build native mobile apps for iPhone, Android and others using only HTML, CSS and JavaScript. It’s a real pleasure to work with. It makes developing mobile apps a lot faster. … Continue reading




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The Difference Between Alchemy and Chemistry

Paris. It is the 8th of May, 1794. Antoine Lavoisier, a partner in the despised Ferme général, stands before the guillotine. As a senior partner of the Ferme général, a tax collection agency for Louis XVI, Lavoisier is one of … Continue reading




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Do Something Practical With CSV Files!

Want to be able to export and import tables from your database using a web interface? You've come to the right place! I've just finished a new tutorial for our CSV Manager product: Uploading and Downloading CSV Files from a … Continue reading




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Spark Lines Without the Spark

Sparklines are one of those great ideas that you just know is “right” the moment you see it. Edward Tufte invented them, and let me tell you, he knows his stuff. Here's an example: . Want to make some yourself? … Continue reading




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Some Volatile Patterns

I've always regarded Java's volatile variables as voodoo variables. In fact, I've been scared off by very many articles telling you how terribly dangerous they are. In cases like these I tend to retreat to the safety of a few … Continue reading




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How to Beat Nasty Interview Programming Tasks

Shane Bell does a write-up of an interview he went through. Apparently the company just dumped a programming exercise on him and left him with a pencil and paper for an hour. Nasty! While the basic idea of a “real” … Continue reading




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Level 3!

Well you might have thought that I had given up on the touch typing. I've been trying to learn to touch-type for the last two years. It's all going tragically slowly. But, I can tell you that I am in … Continue reading




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Boxes and Lines, Boxes and Lines…

Charles Miller posted a great comment on his blog that absolutely cracks me up: Pretty much any computing problem, given a sufficient level of abstraction, can be reduced to a diagram of boxes joined together with lines. At this level … Continue reading




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How to Create a Comment Archive Using CSV to Generate HTML

I've been trying to find a workable way to manage my comments for quite some time. By which I mean, the comments that I make on other people's blogs. You need to be able to go back and see if … Continue reading




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