So, I sat down and started looking at my iPad and realized, I programed alot of application over the years. Here are a few of the ones that I enjoyed working on…

My new company Simporos, still in beta has some heavy hitters working with us. This is extremely exciting as we are finally able to connect the dots between the manufacturer, retailer and consumer.  Our clients are able to view real time data and Google Analytics showing product, retailer & consumer information that was only a dream a few years ago.  The web portal allows our clients to make instant changes to images, descriptions, & pricing on their own without having to go through the Apple submission process.  All future updates to the infrastructure of the app, platform and web portal will be handled directly by the Simporos team and are included in the subscription costs.  Gone are the days of testflight and its associated costs.  You will be able to preview your changes and publish instantly once the desired look is achieved.   This platform has a multitude of new features available for both B2B and B2C alike.

We have completed the iPad offering and are busy working on the iPhone and the Kindle.

As we prepared for our launch, we prepared a quick commercial for the world. This is not the final version, but an idea we played with.. stay tuned for the final version.

For me, a good list app needs to be both fast and available. Clear is both of those while also managing to be unique and quite unconventional.

As any reader of this website knows, I am an avid user of OmniFocus. Any list I may jot down will eventually work its way into OmniFocus. But the biggest caveat with OmniFocus is its speed. It takes more than a few seconds to launch the iPhone app and enter something in. New OmniFocus items beg to be given contexts, projects, start dates, and due dates. While this is OmniFocus’s greatest strength, but there are moments when this is also OmniFocus’s greatest weakness.

And so there are two things I like about Clear:

• As a list app it is fast to use and to navigate. It launches up very quickly, you can enter in a slew of items in no time, and you can get to a particular list very quickly as well.
• As a man who simply has an affinity for fine software, Clear stands apart as a very unique and clever app. I dive into this a bit more in my review below, but even if you are not in the market for a new list app, Clear is worth checking out if only to experience its unique design and user interface.

Clear

Clear is a list app for the iPhone like no other. When you’re in the app you only see your color-based lists. Clear is an app without chrome or buttons or menu bars or metadata. Each item holds just 30 characters of text, and there are no due dates or notes or projects.

It has the underlying simplicity and ease of use that an app with just a white background and an unordered list of items would have. And yet, through the use of color and actions and gestures, clear has a surprising amount of life to it.

Clear is literally just pixels and gestures. But combined in just the right way to make an app that is a unique and clever blend of simplicity and spunk.

ACTION-CENTRIC

Clear relies heavily on the use of color and gestures to navigate. It is very action-centric. Nearly all the gestures that you normally do on the iPhone — swiping up and down, left and right, pinching open and closed — are the ways that you navigate the app. The way Clear works is quite unconventional compared to other list apps, and yet all the actions feel natural because they are common gestures for anyone that’s used an iPhone for longer than their lunch break.

When you’re in a list, you pull the whole list down to create a new item at the top of the list. Or, if you want the new item inserted somewhere other than at the top you can pinch open the list and insert a new item anywhere you like.

Swiping left-to-right completes a task, swiping the opposite deletes it. Swiping left-to-right again on that task un-completes it. Pulling up on your list clears out all the crossed off items, and pinching the list closed takes you up a level to see the menu of all your currently active lists.

In addition to pulling down or pinching open, you can also add a new item to the list by tapping in the blank space underneath your list. A new list item “drops down” and you can then fill in its contents. If you want to quickly add a series of new items, then pull down from within the item creation pane. This is actually an extremely quick way to add new items to your list as fast as your thumbs can tap them out.

Even though Clear relies heavily on the iOS pinching gestures to navigate within lists and for adding new items, the app was still designed so that it can be used one-handed. For example, when pulling a list to add a new item, if you continue to pull down you will get an option to switch lists:

You can navigate through the whole app this way.

Despite its extreme reliance on gestures and actions, I found Clear to be surprisingly discoverable. And if that’s not enough, a brief pre-launch tutorial guides you through the first time you launch the app, and you’re even presented with a list of pre-populated to-do items which inform you how to use the app.

COLORFUL

Like I said, Clear is just pixels and gestures. The lists are color-based with the darker colors at the top to signify greater importance.

You can re-order items by tapping and holding to move them. And as you navigate through the different hierarchies of the app the colors change as well. The default color scheme has “red hot items” as the individual list pane, cool blue items as the pane showing all your lists, and then a cooler slate grey for the menu.

You can change your color scheme in the menu. There are red, green, pink, grey, and black themes. Also there may or may not be some easter eggs to be found in the app related to themes. But that’s all they’ll let me say.

HIERARCHY

One of the things that instantly struck me was the spatial stacking that Clear uses to convey hierarchy.

A typical iOS app has a hierarchy that goes left to right. Meaning, the left-most pane is the highest level and the right-most pane is the furthest drilled down into the app. For example, in Mail if you hit the back button enough times your left-most pane will be the list of your mailboxes; as you move deeper into Mail it takes you to the panes that exist on the right until you get all the way into an individual message.

For Clear, the hierarchy goes top to bottom as you can see in the image above. Also worth noting is that Clear’s bottom-most pane is an individual list — you can not drill down to an individual item. Further emphasizing the forced simplicity of Clear.

This spatial stacking is different than the way most apps work, but because of Clear’s gesture-based navigation it really works well. When you are pulling down to add a new item, the bar for that item “folds up” as if coming from underneath. Likewise, when you pinch open for a new item in a list, the item folds open. The animations are quite clever and fit in well with the unique hierarchy structure of the app.

CLEARCLUSION

For the connoisseurs of fine iOS app or list apps alike, Clear is definitely worth checking out. And it’s just a buck in the iTunes App Store.

Again (like most of my instructions) these instructions are for Ubuntu – currently Edgy Eft.

sudo apt-get install mysql-server

Ubuntu installs Mysql at /etc/mysql/ by default. Now we need to set a root password.

mysql -u root
mysql> SET PASSWORD FOR 'ROOT'@'LOCALHOST"
> = PASSWORD('new_password');

Now while we’re still here, we’ll create a new HOST for root and allow root to login from anywhere.

mysql> GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON *.* TO 'root'@'%'
> IDENTIFIED BY 'password' WITH GRANT OPTION;
mysql> FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
mysql> exit

Thanks to Thom for the Flush Privileges comment.  I think it depends on other settings in your MySQL setup, since I didn’t have to, but just in case, I’ve added it here.  We’re almost done now. We just have to tell Mysql to allow remote logins.

sudo vi /etc/mysql/my.cnf

Out-of-the-box, MySQL only allows connections from the localhost identified by the IP Address of 127.0.0.1.  We need to remove that restriction, so find the line that says

bind-address = 127.0.0.1

and comment it out. That’s all there is to it! Now get your favorite MySql client and start developing.

Amazon Web Services

First things first: Amazon Web Services has a ton of different products, but the one you want is Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2). Go there, and click “Sign Up for Amazon EC2″.

Once you’ve gotten that set up, go to the AWS Management Console, and click on “Instances” in the Navigation panel. AnInstance is just a virtual server – so let’s create one! Click “Launch Instance” under “My Instances”, and select “Basic 64-bit Amazon Linux AMI”. On the Instance Details phase, select “Micro” (which is Free tier eligible). Continue until you need to enter the “Name” – if you don’t know what else to call it, just use “Web/DB server”.

Next you create a Key Pair – this will be the credentials you’ll use to SSH into the box. The instructions here should be fairly straightforward. Next is the Security Group, which will be used to specify the firewall used for your instance. Feel free to use the default Group for now. Continue to the Review phase and launch it!

You should now be able to SSH into your instance using your .pem file with ssh -i [FILE NAME].pem ec2-user@ec2-[IP ADDRESS].compute-1.amazonaws.com. Alright, we’ve got a server up and running! However, you may notice that this server has very little installed on it. which php? Nothing.which mysql? The same. Let’s install some software.

Configuring the Linux Server

Below I’ll show you how to set up PHP and MySQL on the server. I’ve separated PHP and MySQL so that it’s easier to adapt this to having two instances.

PHP

First, the basics for PHP:

sudo yum install php-mysql php php-xml php-mcrypt php-mbstring php-cli mysql httpd

Press ‘y’ for each of the prompts that shows up. Note that you’re logged in as ec2-user, so you need to sudo all of these commands.

You should now be able to create and run a PHP test file. Next, let’s get MySQL up and running.

MySQL server

First, install and begin running the server:

sudo yum install mysql-server
sudo /etc/init.d/mysqld start

Next, set the root password. I’ve found this password generatorto be just dandy.

mysqladmin -u root password '[PASSWORD]'

Now we set up two users for MySQL: the administrator, which you’ll use to create and modify tables; and the app user, which the app will use to query the DB (with more limited privileges). Log into MySQL as root (mysql -u root -p) and enter each of the following lines:

CREATE DATABASE [DB NAME];
CREATE USER '[DB NAME]_admin'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY '[ADMIN PASSWORD]';
GRANT SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE, CREATE, DROP, ALTER ON [DB NAME].* TO '[DB NAME]_admin'@'localhost';
CREATE USER '[DB NAME]_user'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY '[USER PASSWORD]';
GRANT SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE ON [DB NAME].* TO '[DB NAME]_user'@'localhost';

You may want to fine-tune your database settings further than this, but this is a good start.

Make it web-accessible

We now have PHP and MySQL running on the box, but cannot access it through a browser. We need to configure the web server and set up an Elastic IP.

Web Server

First, let’s create a test PHP file that will be accessed by the browser. Create directories so that you can put your file in/opt/app/current¹. Make an index.php file that contains whatever you want.

If you want to FTP transfer files to your server, you’ll want to give the ec2-user permissions to modify files in your web directory:

sudo chown ec2-user /opt/app/current

To set up the web server, httpd, we need to first modify its configuration file, located at /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf. Open it up with vim, emacs, or your favorite text editor, and go to the bottom of the file. Here you’ll see a small section on theVirtualHost (between <VirtualHost *:80> and</VirtualHost>). Uncomment it out and set DocumentRoot to/opt/app/current. Restart (or start) httpd:

sudo /etc/init.d/httpd restart

Elastic IP and Security Groups

In the AWS Management Console, click on “Elastic IPs”, then “Allocate New Address” under “Addresses”. Once the address is created, click on it, then “Associate Address”. Select the instance and associate it.

Now click on “Security Groups” in the Navigation panel. Select the Security Group that you used for the instance (probably the default one). Under the “Inbound” tab, add an HTTP rule (port 80). Click “Apply Rule Changes”, and you should now be able to access your website! In your browser, go to http://ec2-[IP ADDRESS].compute-1.amazonaws.com/, where the IP address is the Elastic IP you made with periods replaced with hyphens.

Hello World! or Putting it all together

We now have all the pieces we need to access MySQL from PHP and serve that to the browser-accessible website. So let’s log into mysql and create a sample table:

mysql -u [DB NAME]_admin -p
[type password]
mysql> use [DB NAME];
mysql> CREATE TABLE test (message VARCHAR(255));
mysql> INSERT INTO test (message) VALUES ('Hello world!');

Now modify your index.php file (/opt/app/current/index.php) to be the following:

<?php
$conn =  new mysqli('localhost', '[DB NAME]_user', '[USER PASSWORD]', '[DB NAME]', '');
$result = $conn->query("SELECT message FROM test;");
$row = $result->fetch_assoc();
echo $row['message'];
?>

We now have a fully functioning PHP and MySQL server!

Taking it further

That’s it for the basics, but there’s so much more that you can do now.

PHPUnit

sudo pear upgrade
sudo yum install php-pear
sudo pear channel-discover pear.phpunit.de
sudo pear channel-discover pear.symfony-project.com
sudo pear channel-discover components.ez.no
sudo pear install phpunit/PHPUnit

phpMyAdmin

I’ve found it handy to set up an administration area for my sites using a different port on the same URL. Note that port 80 is the default for web traffic, but 8080 is also commonly used.

Create /opt/app/admin. Then, in httpd.conf, add the lineListen 8080 after Listen 80 and add another VirtualHostentry, using <VirtualHost *:8080> and pointing to the/opt/app/admin directory. Update your Security Group to allow traffic over port 8080. Make sure to restart Apache and you should now be able to access your admin folder through your browser at yourdomain.com:8080.

You can then download phpMyAdmin into/opt/app/admin/pma and unzip it. Using the [DB NAME]_admin user, you can now manage your databases there through your browser.

Using two Instances

It can be very beneficial to performance to separate the web server and the DB server. To do this, you’ll need to set up twoInstances, one of which has the web server httpd running and an Elastic IP, and the other of which has the MySQL servermysqld running.

They can use the same Security Group, but you’ll have to add the MySQL rule (port 3066) for Inbound traffic to allow the servers to talk to each other.

On the web box, instead of using “localhost” as the MySQL host, use the Internal IP address of the MySQL box. On the DB box, set up your grant permissions to allow from anywhere in'%.ec2.internal' (or just from your IPs).

Notes

1. /opt/app/current is a Rails convention that I enjoy. What you should do is put your releases in/opt/app/releases/[release #], then have/opt/app/current be a symlink to the current release.

   Another (much more) common standard is to put web-accessible code in /var/www/html. Feel free to put your HTML code wherever you want; just make sure to updatehttpd.conf appropriately (and restart Apache).

Retailers know just how charmed consumers are with the iPad, the tablet computer from Apple Inc. Now it appears that retailers similarly are ready to embrace the mobile device. Within the next 24 months, 56.2% of 130 retailers surveyed by Aruba Networks Inc. plan to put iPads in the hands of store employees.

Store associates can use the mobile devices to search web sites, enroll customers in loyalty programs and accept payments, among other things.

While the survey did not ask what retailers would use the tablets for, some retailers already have deployed the devices. For example, Moosejaw Mountaineering, No. 252 in the Internet Retailer Mobile Commerce Top 300, beginning in March will use iPads in its aisles to help shoppers locate items that may not be in stock but can be ordered from its warehouse and shipped to their homes.

The survey, which included retailers from the Americas, Asia-Pacific and Europe, also found that 38.5% planned to issue iPhones to employees. Mobile devices using Android, the operating system from Google Inc., trailed. 29.2% of respondents plan to use Android tablets and 23.1% plan to use Android smartphones.

Retailers are adopting the same devices as consumers in an effort to keep up with changing shopper behavior, says Manish Rai, Aruba Networks head of industry solutions.

“Today every other shopper walks into a store carrying a smartphone and increasingly using them for price comparison,” Rai says. “With an e-retailer with cheaper prices just a click away, bricks-and-mortar retailers are looking to differentiate in-store service to retain customers. A sales rep in the shoe department, for instance, can show available patterns and colors in the buyer’s size without leaving the customer’s side. A sales rep can bring up additional dress designs in the fitting room. The belief is that if a buyer engages with the sales rep, she is more likely to pay a price premium for the service.”

IPads in particular stand out for retailers, says Nikki Baird, managing partner with research and advisory firm Retail Systems Research LLC. “It’s the perfect form factor for an associate,” Baird says. “It allows retailers to take advantage of rich media and larger images for both the customer experience as well as employee training.”

Which raises the question: will he ever pay taxes again?

Zuckerberg’s salary cut is being compared to similar moves by other tech titans. Google’s Eric Schmidt and Larry Page are paid just $1 annual salaries. Steve Jobs took just $1 in salary from 1997 until his death last year. Other members of the one-percent/one-dollar club include Oracle’s Larry Ellison and Hewlett-Packard’s Meg Whitman.

Zuckerberg was paid a base salary of $500,000 in 2011 and is set to be paid a base of $600,000 this year. He got a cash bonus of $250,000 for the first half of 2011 and will likely receive a similar bonus for the second half.

Interestingly, he was alone among the top executives at Facebook who got no stock awards for 2011. The board—which is controlled by Zuckerberg himself—decided that he had enough stock to align his interests with the other shareholders. With 28.2 percent of the company, you would hope so.

Zuckerberg’s pay cut could reduce his income tax burden to nothing.

It’s possible that he might even be eligible for certain types of government aid for those with low-income—although it’s unlikely that he would collect them.

In order to reduce his tax burden to zero, Zuckerberg would have to forego any future cash bonuses or additional stock awards. He would also have to stop employing certain Facebook services for personal use. Last year, for example, he had imputed income from the use of aircraft for personal use of about $692,679. He also received $90,850 in estate and financial planning from Facebook.

Can Zuckerberg really live without income?

He almost certainly can. There’s no evidence that he has an exceptionally expensive lifestyle. His biggest annual expense is probably all that flying around. The income he has already received and been paid will go a long way.

Of course, his past income will not really be enough to see him through all of his expenses for his entire life. For those he will need a line of credit, preferably one with a tax advantage, and income that can be earned tax free.

People sometimes talk about the rich “living off the interest” of their wealth. But that’s not really a tax efficient way to live if you are really, really wealthy. It’s better to live off of debt and muni bonds.

The best thing for Zuckerberg would be a home equity line of credit—perhaps multiple home equity lines. He would borrow against the value of real estate he owns. The money he receives from the HELOC is debt rather than income, which means it isn’t taxed. Even better, the interest he pays on the HELOC can be used to offset other income he may earn.

Zuckerberg will also be able to access credit secured by his Facebook holdings—which will amount to billions of dollars. These lines of credit will not be tax advantaged—no deduction for interest payments—but they will supply him with spending money that will not be taxed.

When you have the net worth of Zuckerberg, you can live for a very, very long time on tax-free debt that you can use as income. Let’s say that Zuckerberg needs $2 million of spending power per year and lives another 60 years. That’s $120 million of spending. If he gets an interest rate of 4 percent and just rolls it over as new debt, he’ll eventually accumulate around $520,919,997. Some of that interest, of course, may be deductible against other income.

The might seem like a lot of debt. But for Zuckerberg—who will likely be worth around $25 billion when Facebook goes public—it’s a drop in the bucket. What’s more, if Facebook continues to grow, Zuckerberg’s worth will grow along with his debt. His debt burden will be negligible compared to his net worth. The unimaginably rich really are different from the rest of us.

Zuckerberg could also use the money he has earned, some from his HELOC and some from other loans to purchase income-producing, tax-exempt municipal bonds. The interest on the HELOC would be tax deductible—producing a double-tax advantage. The interest on the other loans would not be—but the income from coupon payments from the muni debt would be. He could even use the income from the munis to pay some of his interest expense, which would substantially reduce the lifetime accumulation of debt.

The best way for Zuckerberg to meet large expenses—like, for instance, if he wants to buy an island in the Caribbean—would be to cash out some of his Facebook shares. He would only pay the 15 percent capital gains taxes on these.

Perhaps most bizarrely, Zuckerberg might be eligible for an Earned Income Tax Credit if he keeps his personal income under $13,000. To be honest, that might be hard to do since a guy like Zuckerberg can produce that income by taking a company car home at night. And, in any case, it’s unlikely that Zuckerberg would find it worth the time to even file for an EITC that maxes out at just a few hundred dollars.

To be clear, I have no idea what kind of plans Zuckerberg has for his future income and taxes. He may not want to accumulate debt for his entire life. Perhaps he has plans to become a big spender and will need to derive income beyond what he can get from muni bonds. But it’s very likely that at least some of the $90,850 worth of financial advice Zuckerberg received went to minimizing tax exposure.

Corning released two versions of “A Day Made of Glass 2″ — one with a narrator and another, abbreviated version without commentary — the video follows the life of young Amy and her family as they go through their day using various products made of glass. Amy does classwork on a glass tablet, controls the temperature of the car from the backseat and even attends a field trip at the Redwood Forrest with an interactive signage that brings learning to life. Her teacher also works with students on interactive touchscreen activity tables. Corning expects these activity tables to be rolled out in the near future.

Last year’s video, which followed the same family, brought in over 17 million hits on YouTube and left many in awe of Corning’s interpretation of what’s possible with photovoltaic glass, LCD TV glass, architectural display and surface glass, among others.

However, many left comments on YouTube asking which technology is actually possible with today’s resources and pricing. This time around, though, new technologies and applications are highlighted, such as glass tablets, multitouch-enabled desks, solar panels, augmented reality, electronic medical records and anti-microbial medical equipment.

Corning may be making headlines these days for its Gorilla Glass product — a super-strong, lightweight glass which can withstand drops and mistreatment — but it’s hardly a new company and no stranger to innovation. In fact, the 160-year-old business even worked with Thomas Edison to create inexpensive glass for his lightbulbs.

However, Corning noted at the press screening that there are several challenges the company is facing this year, largely due to lower LCD glass prices, higher corporate tax rates and declining equity earnings, which have combined to lower Corning’s profitability.

Although LCD glass sales are likely to be flat through 2014, the company said it will remain profitable and continue to generate large amounts of cash. Last week, Corning announced that it raked in record 2011 sales of $7.9 billion and plans to grow sales to $10 billion by 2014.

The company also recently announced that it is joining forces with Samsung Mobile to manufacture Lotus Glass for Galaxy-branded smartphones and Super OLED TVs. Corning’s ultra-slim, eco-friendly Lotus Glass is known for strong performance and withstanding higher-processing temperatures.

Although Corning’s first “A Day Made of Glass” video was unveiled a week ago this year, Corning’s vice chairman and CFO James Flaws told Mashable that he couldn’t comment on whether or not the clips will become an annual tradition.

A complete library, that grew from WordPress, which offers the most common tasks for creating web applications like user management, HTTP transactions, logging, formatting and more.

PHP User Class

The class aims to ease the handling of user management tasks like registration, login, logout, etc. for PHP-MySQL applications.

phpSEO

Do you want to automate the process of generating keywords or meta tags from the content? This is what  phpSEO does.

It can create any desired number of keywords from a given string or URL, generate a description and does all with not using any banned words you define.

PHP Typography

A PHP class for improving web typography with features like hyphenation, spacing control, wrapping of long text, character replacement for items like ordinal suffixes, trademark or math symbols and more.

Tag Cloud

The class creates tag clouds from a given array of items where each tag can have its own color, URL and style.

Handling Documents

PHPExcel

A set of PHP classes for writing to and reading from different file formats, like Excel, PDF and HTML.

It supports many MS Excel features like adding worksheets to a spreadsheet, inserting data and formulas to cells, calculating formulas and much more.

PHPPowerpoint

Set of classes for reading and writing to Powerpoint documents and supports adding slides, rotating images and more.

TCPDF

A complete PHP PDF class with features like custom page formats or margins, support for images and automatic page header/footer management.

It can also handle document encryption, PDF annotations, bookmarks and table of content.

FPDF

A PDF generator class with flexible page format and margins support. It can automatically arrange page breaks and can insert images into documents.

ZipStream

Compared to many PHP zipping libraries, this class does not require  “writable temp directory” and can generate + start the download after the client timeouts (good for huge files).

File Uploads, Images & Colors

EasyUp

A clean and simple PHP file upload class which can also delete the file uploaded and get the size + filename of it

class.upload.php

A PHP class for manipulating and uploading image files on-the-fly.

It can convert, resize and work on uploaded images in many ways: add labels, watermarks and reflections.

Image Resizing Made Easy with PHP

A PHP class which can open, resize (smart resizing with no distortion) and save a number of images in multiple formats.

It is explained very well with a detailed tutorial.

WideImage

A feature-rich PHP library for image manipulations by providing a simple way to loading and saving images from/to files, strings, database, uploads and URL addresses.

You can apply filters, get channels, merge, resize, crop or rotate images using the library.

Asido

A powerful PHP image processor with features like resize, rotate, watermak, frame, convert, rotate, crop and much more.

xColor

An impressive class to make various calculations on colors like converting between formats (HEX,RGB,HSL/HSV), getting the end color when a color is added to or removed from a pallette and more.