I travel a lot and one of the things I do when I visit a city is find a postcard, grab a stamp, and get writing to send Sara a postcard from abroad. All this does take time, effort, sometimes the card doesn’t arrive, etc. I’ve been wondering when I could just take a photo on my iPhone and have that mailed to her instead.

On my iPhone there is a folder called Postcards with apps like: Popcarte, Holiday Card, SnapShot Postcard, postcard by concierge.com (this is a Conde Nast app), postagram. Some of these send physical cards for a buck or so, and some just send them via email. I’ve spent some time studying if this idea is viable and I’ve always thought that local printing makes sense. Stamps might be important too…

Apple just killed them all with Cards. Printed on cotton paper, and will cost USD$2.99 within the USA and USD$4.99 for the rest of the world. All billed to your AppStore/iTunes account. So no mucking with creating a new account, getting your credit card, etc.

The idea is brilliant. The camera in the iPhone is awesome. I take more photos with it now than any other camera. And the phone is always with me.

So there, Apple’s new iOS 5 killed a bunch of apps (cue… RIP October 12 2011). And I’m glad I didn’t hack on this idea. Guess the local stamps go the way of the dodo, and I might embrace spending five bucks the next time I’m somewhere. Now to guarantee the cards actually arrive…

I’ve been a paying Github customer for quite some time. I like having private repositories. I didn’t realise that Bitbucket was purchased by Atlassian, and more interestingly, they’re now offering Git support.

For me, this beats the pants off Github. There might be more community at Github (cue: how Sourceforge is sort of dying), and I’m not ditching Github, but I’m definitely realising I can save money from now on (Github’s cheapest plans start at $7/month for private repos).

So how does Bitbucket compare in terms of pricing? 5 free users for private repositories. Unlimited public/private repositories. If I hit more than 5, the next 5 users cost $2/month each ($10/month for 10 users). Clear win.

Bitbucket also has a migration tool on the Web that allows you to import repositories. It didn’t take much work for me, and I’ve just cancelled my Github subscription. I’m not cancelling my Github account because whatever is public still works… but for private stuff, Bitbucket seems to be the winner.

I tweeted on October 1 about how I thought PhoneGap Build was cool. Its an immensely cool service which I’ve wanted to see MoSync do.

On October 2 I just read that PhoneGap was being submitted to the Apache Software Foundation (article, mailing list post). I absolutely loved the commitment, their current license was already good, and I was very excited for Nitobi.

Just yesterday on October 3, Nitobi announced that they entered into an acquisition agreement with Adobe. PhoneGap Build will be closed-source, commercial, and cost money. DreamWeaver CS 5.5 has PhoneGap. However PhoneGap itself will remain open, and will become Apache Callback.

Kudos to Nitobi. Kudos to Adobe. You’re making the right decision. Just don’t screw it up.

Nitobi is pursuing a contribution of the PhoneGap code to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) to ensure open stewardship of the project over the long term. As part of that process it will be renamed to a new Apache-branded name Callback. Adobe fully supports this contribution and will continue to host the PhoneGap community site with full participation from its contributors, as well as the PhoneGap Build service. — on why PhoneGap code is being donated to the ASF

I’ve been walking around Paris recently and it’s becoming quite common: the iPad is used as a camera. I’ve seen tourists do the same thing in Munich as well, but not as common as in Paris.

Beyond just taking photos with a larger screen, people are doing entire tours, with video and audio. I’m unaware if there are such guides, but people are walking around with the iPad 2 in portrait mode and are recording their experience. There are so many experiences to be had in Paris, so it is not surprising that people want to take it home and their iPad’s have become the device they turn to for it.

I’ve always thought that the large screen on the iPad makes a perfect “back” for a camera. When I first started carrying my Canon G10 (a point&shoot, with zoom, that has controls like an SLR to some extent) I was always trying to use the viewfinder. A trait from shooting with SLRs and dSLRs all the while. Today I’m quite happy to use the larger LCD display to compose my photos (largely out of frustration of not having a viewfinder that covered more of the frame).

I notice LCD composition generally becoming the trend. Many cheaper digital cameras don’t even come with a viewfinder any longer. People are used to using larger LCDs for composition with their touchscreen phones (like iPhone’s, Androids, most of Nokia’s touch devices, etc.)

So why does the iPad 2 come with an inadequate camera/video camera? The iPad 3 will definitely improve on this, as will future revisions. I think Apple just had no idea that people would take on using such a device as a camera…

FWIW, around conferences, I’ve seen people use Playbook’s and Xoom’s to do the same thing (but that, I’ve always presumed is the alpha geek crowd using their devices).

I stumbled upon Google Native Client today. It looks really interesting and you can see why Google seems to be targeting their technologies for the Chrome browser first (link with regards to Dart, their future of JavaScript; quote: “We will strongly encourage Google developers start off targeting Chrome-only whenever possible as this gives us the best end user experience.” – Mark S. Miller).

The promise of better in-browser games for example, is what excites me about this initiative. There is also the promise of better native/traditional desktop apps, running in the web browser. I was at a show recently where I saw this HRM app that is Windows-only and their proposal to run it on Linux? Use virtualization. This is something they might find useful, for example.

Try out the example apps. Its surprisingly easy to get started. On OSX, you can see that when running the Pi example, the Native Client module is using quite a whole load of CPU time (in Chrome, do Window -> Task Manager).

In all that, I learned about Google Chrome’s about:flags. You need to enable Native Client support and restart Chrome to get this all working. There’s a fairly good about:flags resource; clearly lots more things to play with there (and helps me understand what the idea being the ChromeOS/Chromebook is now).

Here are some interesting upcoming events that I’d like to go to. You might like to as well.

Updated: (15/09/2011) – Added BFM enterprise breakaway as well as Google’s DevFest that I seemed to have missed initially.

MeeGo Network Malaysia September Meetup

• When: Thursday, September 15 2011, 6-10pm
• Where: Wings Musiccafe @ Times Walk KL (details)
• Happening for the first time, I met the very enthusiastic organiser yesterday and I think he’s all about building the MeeGo community in Malaysia. He’s big on opensource and big on pushing MeeGo forward, so I think the meetup should be quite interesting. Sign up via the Facebook event page. And keep up-to-date with the MeeGo Malaysia Region page.
• Cost: RM38 for the buffet

BFM Enterprise Breakaway 2011

• When: Thursday, September 22 2011, 9am-6pm
• Where: Sime Darby Convention Centre
• This is the first of its kind, an event I was supposed to speak at (or be on a panel), but couldn’t due to scheduling conflicts. Looks like a great line-up and its by the popular business radio station in KL. If you’re into startups and entrepreneurship, this is the place to be. Go!
• Cost: RM149 (cheaper for groups or if you have an affiliate code)

WebCamp Neun

• When: Wednesday, September 28 2011, 7-10pm
• Where: MindValley, Menara UOA Bangsar, KL (details)
• Monthly gathering of all people into Web. Probably one of the most active communities of web-heads in Malaysia, the WebCamp KL group is also a must-join. Topics vary monthly, but there is always interesting learning plus great conversations. Food & drink afterwards for quite the few.
• Cost: FREE, BYO cups for drinks

Google SE Asia DevFest KL 2011

• When: Thursday, September 29 2011, 9am-7pm
• Where: TBA, somewhere in KL
• Google is back with an amazing lineup. The Android Market is open in this region so there’s an appropriate talk, and HTML5 is all the rage so you’ll learn a tonne here. This isn’t only for developers — I think people into analytics will enjoy some sessions tremendously.
• Cost: FREE, be sure to register first (while available)

#geekcampmy 2011

• When: Saturday, October 1 2011, 10am-4pm
• Where: iTrain, Megan Avenue 1, Jln Tun Razak, KL (details)
• This has happened before and its fun, highly technical, and all attendees are encouraged to share a topic. 20-25 minute sessions, it should be very interesting.
• Cost: FREE

Nearby

Beercamp Singapore

• When: Thursday, September 15 2011, 7.30pm
• Where: Cable Car, Cuppage Plaza, Singapore (details)
• I’ve been to Beercamp before in Bangkok and it is an amazing event. Its just about people, connections and chatting over a social environment (and beer). There’s a mailing list which you should join for future meetup notifications, plus discussion.
• Cost: FREE, buy your own beverage