It pains me greatly to post this, but I just learned that Dave Matthews Band saxophonist Leroi Moore passed away today. The news came via the band's official site:
We are deeply saddened that LeRoi Moore, saxophonist and founding member of Dave Matthews Band, died unexpectedly Tuesday afternoon, August 19, 2008, at Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center in Los Angeles from sudden complications stemming from his June ATV accident on his farm near Charlottesville, Virginia. LeRoi had recently returned to his Los Angeles home to begin an intensive physical rehabilitation program.
Leroi had been with the band since its inception in 1991. I will miss him tremendously and there is no doubt that he will be missed greatly by the band, the crew and the entire DMB community.
Jeff Coffin has been filling in for Leroi since his accident in late June. Leroi's final show was at the Nissan Pavilion at Stone Ridge in Bristow, Virginia on June 28, 2008. If anyone would like a copy of the show, let me know and I will provide you with a copy or tell you where you can get one (DMB explicitly allows taping of their shows, so it is completely legal).
Technorati Tags: Dave Matthews Band, DMB, Leroi Moore, death
Merlin Mann on iPhone development (from the SF iPhone Dev Camp):
Think about having the courageousness to make an app that is crazy easy. Instead of making a circus that’s really fun to play in, just make something that’s easy to get in and out of quickly without hassle.
Yes! This is exactly what I'm going for with Flickup. I wanted it to be dead simple to post photos to Flickr and I think I've gotten pretty close. While I don't want to add frivolous features, there are some that are reasonable to consider - uploading to a set, security settings, etc. I struggled to fit the metadata view onto one screen and now I'm faced with the challenge of adding these new features without undermining the simplicity that I was going for in 1.0.
Technorati Tags: Apple, iPhone, App Store, Flickup, Flickr, Merlin Mann, iPhone Dev Camp
A few hours after my post about being rejected from the App Store, Flickup was approved. If that was all there was to the story then I would have posted about it immediately. Sadly, however, it took nine days from the time Flickup was approved until the time it was actually available for sale on the App Store.
In preparing the now-defunct demo version of Flickup, I stumbled across the contracts page on iTunes Connect and realized that my Paid Applications Contract wasn't complete. I completed it on July 17th and incessantly refreshed the contracts page to see if it had been approved yet. When Flickup was finally approved hours after my last blog post, I was met with the status of "Pending Contract" and frustration returned. I would have thought that three days would have been enough time for someone to review the contract, but apparently that wasn't the case. Having given Apple some breathing room, I finally sent them an email on the 24th asking how long the process would take. Their response? Nothing.
I didn't hear anything from Apple until the contract was approval last Monday, July 28th and the status changed to "Ready For Sale." When I finally got tired of searching the App Store every few minutes to see if Flickup was listed, I sent Apple another email. Again I received no response. It wasn't until I saw a tweet from Jon that I learned that Flickup had finally been posted and that the three week ordeal was finally over.
When I first started working on Flickup I set a lifetime sales goal ("If only X number of people ever buy the app, I would be satisfied"). I'm happy to say that I reached 10% of that target in the first full day alone. Since the app went live, I've been answering support emails (already!), pushed out (well, submitted to Apple anyway) a new version with some bug fixes, and already started working on some new features.
Now go out and buy it!
Technorati Tags: Apple, iPhone, iTunes, App Store, Flickr, Flickup
