Rainbows End - Vernor Vinge

This future, imminent, plausible and so appealing (to me anyway) had me enthralled from first page to last.

Augmented reality apps on the iPhone have always struck me as clunky and pointless. This story made me realise that those apps are the necessary baby steps (on inadequate hardware) towards a future that I hope I am around to see.

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Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole

When I saw the first three books on Audible for a single month credit, it seemed like a good idea. I had heard some favorable comparisons to the Potter books and I liked the premise. Sadly the books didn't live up to my expectations and by the end of the 16 hours of audio, I was quite happy to be finished with it.

This might be unfair, but the series seems like a pale Potter imitation with some owl biology thrown in. Perhaps if I had never read the Potter books (and found the audio narrator less annoying) I would have enjoyed this more than I did, but I doubt it.

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iPhone apps and cappuccinos

Ok. I need to preface this rant with a couple of things:

I love coffee, it is totally worth the three bucks and that I have been doing 'on the side' development projects for 15 years and I never made any money untill the App store came along.

The other day Glasshouse Apps (awesome apps you should check out) had a small rant about users expectations for mobile app pricing:

Just read yet another app review from a well known blog which concluded that the $1.99 app didn't have enough zing for the hefty price.

This is not a new idea, but it is a contagious one, amongst app developers anyway.

Is an iPhone app that took months of technical work worth more than a cup of delicious coffee?

I have a handful of apps on the store, the first of them is a glossary of Ballet terms (I have daughters) and it is hard to imagine an app that is less complicated. It has a searchable index of terms, a callout to a view showing some HTML defining the term and a handful of images, it is a universal app (native iPhone and iPad), it has a simple self testing mode and keeps track of your favorite terms. So the minimum price point of 99c is appropriate for an app that took so little to build?

Actually this app took months and months of ongoing effort to build and update. The first 95% of the functionality took relatively little time to write, but the last 5% of polish took far longer. The content itself is the product of careful research and is a project that I imagine I will be working on for years to come. So why do I feel reluctant to charge more?

Mostly it's a fear of pricing myself out of the market, but it's also the understanding that before the iPhone came along, I spent months & months on programming projects that made zero money. Both of these arguments are closely tied to how programmers value our own work.

I have made a few thousand bucks from my Ballet glossary, and that is awesome, but it doesn't come close to the amount that the market values my time as a developer. So can app developers collectively raise our prices and our users expectations? Probably not, but it would be nice.

I am heading over to the app store right now to raise my prices. I am sure I will chicken out in a few weeks and drop them again, but it is worth a shot.

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American Gods - Neil Gaiman

Before my trip to the US for the Launch conference, I was about half way through American Gods. A few evenings alone at 54 Mint, my new favorite restaurant in San Francisco, and I finished it off.

This was definitely the way to read this book. Sitting in a darkened bar with several glasses of wine and a bowl of Cacilucco alla Livornese. A dark, complex plot, revealing gods of the old world withering in the new. The story revolves around a likeable protagonist that frequently takes an unexpected path. Loved it.

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More Podcasts

It's been a while since I talked about the podcasts I listen to and I have expanded my set of regulars a little:

• Techzing - Two developers (Justin Vincent and Jason Roberts) natter about a whole host of interesting topics and interview some great people (I got into the show after the Jason Calacanis interview). Really enjoying this show. It is very easy to identify with these guys. This show has become one of my favorite tech podcasts.
• This Developers Life - Since the demise of the StackOverflow podcast, this podcast fills the gap in my lineup for purely entertaining chatter about life as a programmer. Mostly great stuff ('Drive' went a little off the rails).
• This American Life - The single greatest thing about 'This Developers Life' is that it introduced me to this show. Consistently brilliant.
• The Pipeline - Dan Benjamin interviews a host of interesting creative types. I have gone back and consumed the entire backlog.

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