Facebook has announced “Hip Hop”, a PHP to C++ compiler stack that they hope will overcome some of the scaling and speed issues associated with PHP apps. The video above lays out the reasons they started the project and the types of things they want to accomplish with it. As a PHP developer, this project is of great interest to me. Most encouraging is the fact that someone other than Zend, the primary developers of PHP, is putting significant resources toward the popular language for Web apps. The project is set to be released to the open source community in the near future.
© AP (Photo by Logan Abassi/MINUSTAH via Getty Images)
As just about everyone knows by now, a massive and deadly earthquake has struck the island of Haiti leaving hundreds of thousands dead. As relief services are trying to help, they are quickly running out of resources to provide the care needed for a tragedy of this scale. This is just a quick post to encourage you, if you are financially able, to donate to a relief organization that is on the front lines in Haiti. Our help is needed now more than ever. Below are some quick links to some relief organizations, but there are many others. Again, I really encourage you to contribute something regardless of the amount.
In a strange mix of religion and technology, the Times is reporting on the Anglican parish of St. Lawrence Jewry in London holding a public “blessing of the smartphones.” Apparently picking up on the medieval “Plough Monday” tradition of blessing agricultural equipment, the Rev. Canon David Parrott allowed iPhones, BlackBerrys and laptops to be place on the altar for a special blessing.
This was Church 2.0. Behind him, the altar resembled a counter at PC World. Upon it, laid out like holy relics, were four smart phones, one Apple laptop and one Dell…
…Then, after another hymn, came the blessing of the smart phones. The Lord Mayor of London offered his BlackBerry to Canon Parrott, which was received with due reverence and placed upon the altar.
Then the congregation held their phones in the air, and Canon Parrott addressed the Almighty. “By your blessing, may these phones and computers, symbols of all the technology and communication in our daily lives, be a reminder to us that you are a God who communicates with us and who speaks by your Word. Amen.”
Despite my affinity for both Church and tech, I find all of this a bit bizarre.
For those who think AT&T had no blood on their hands regarding the Google Voice iPhone app, you might be right. That doesn’t mean they like the service though. Phonescoop is reporting that they have filed a complaint against Google for blocking certain numbers.
AT&T alleges that Google Voice blocks customers from calling certain numbers, thereby violating FCC regulations. AT&T likens the call-blocking to the call for net neutrality, and says that if phone companies need to all play by the same rules, then so do internet companies such as Google. Google Voice is a call-forwarding system that lets users give out one central phone number and have it ring other phone lines when called. It allows users to maintain some degree of privacy, as well as consolidate services. Google does block Voice customers from calling adult chat lines and some conference call systems due to the high fees levied by those services.
I’m an aspiring amateur photographer. I just recently put down my 35mm SLR and invested in my first digital SLR. I’m not all that good yet, but I love taking pictures and capturing unique moments. I am quite inspired by people who see things in everyday life and envision them as intriguing images. With that in mind, I found my way to a set of photos by Chase Jarvis (h/t Daring Fireball). These are pretty amazing pictures on their own. What is even more amazing is that they were all taken using his iPhone. Jarvis’s opinion is that “the best camera is the one that’s with you,” and that in almost all cases even a camera phone can result in amazing images.
Jarvis announced Tuesday that he has released a book of his iPhone photos, appropriately named The Best Camera Is The One That’s With You. He has taken it a bit further by releasing “The Best Camera” iPhone app ($2.99, iTunes link) that allows for photo processing and sharing all within the same app. Along with the app is an online community for sharing photos at www.thebestcamera.com. This is a really interesting project, and I can’t wait to see how it develops.
For more info, watch the introduction by Jarvis in the video below.
UPDATE: Reviews in the app store for the iPhone app are generally good, but the biggest complaint is a watermark on images uploaded to Facebook with the text “Uploaded from Chase Jarvis’ Best Camera.” Users are rightfully upset that their images from an app they paid for were being tagged this way. Apparently it was a mistake. TheBestCamera.com acknowledges it on their support page:
We have discovered a bug in the app that affects Facebook captions in two ways.
First, if you do not write a Facebook when uploading your image via the sharing page on Best Camera, your caption says “Uploaded from Chase Jarvis’ Best Camera”. This text was created as dummy text in the development of the app and and was not intended to act as your default caption.
Second, if you do enter a caption for Facebook and then share your image to BOTH Facebook and thebestcamera.com, your Facebook caption is being replaced by the default caption. The current work around is to upload your image to thebestcamera.com and Facebook separately, thus retaining the Facebook caption you’ve entered.We have built a 1.01 release which will correct both of these problems and is currently in the approval process at the App Store. We’ll announce as soon as the new version is available.
