Category Archives: Tech

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Or the beard.

Or the suit he borrowed from ‘Uncle’ Dave.

Or the thing he does with his hands.

Broadsheet keyboard code warrior Karl is giving a talk on the latest version of the app next Tuesday evening in the Science Gallery, Pearse Street, Dublin as part of the Xcake labs series.

It should be noted that this the presentation is aimed at a technical audience (but there’s plenty for the non-techies as well).

Kick off is at 6:15 with a presentation on app localisation by Alexey Rashevskiy.

Sign up for Tickets

Alternatively, Karl will politely address any of your app-ian issues below.

Serial entrepreneur Elon Musk is a bit of a real life Tony Stark – founding PaPal, SpaceX and Tesla Motors.

He’s having having a rather public spat at the moment with New York Times reporter John Broder over a review of the Tesla Model S in cold weather conditions.

Since the car was returned to the Tesla dealership, the data logs could be pulled and Musk responded with a break down of the data that seemed to show Broder wasn’t entirely truthful about his trip. (As an aside in the unlikely instance you ever do get a Model S there’s an API you can access to get at the data)

Of course, things haven’t stopped there. Broder has since hit back with a response to the response in turn refuting the data and clarifying his drive.

Which explains the comic strip.

pennyarcade

Last year we told you about Storymap by Tom Rowley and Andrew Flaherty, a site which ties stories to locations around Dublin. The natural progression is to provide it all wrapped up in an app so you can find out about where you’re standing.

Enter Jamie Osler and Eoin Rogers, two final year DIT students who developed the Storymap iPhone and Android apps under the supervision of Bryan Duggan.

The app has all the current stories (with more promised) from the site grouped into various categories (but you have to guess at what the colours mean as there doesn’t seem to be an explanation for them).

It also strings them into a variety of themed walking tours across the city, but the killer feature of the app is to create a custom tour for you between where you are and where you’re going.

An annoyance though is that watching a video takes you out of the app and into Safari (obviously this is on the iPhone).

Storymap.ie

Available on the Apple App Store (€2.69) and Google Play (€2.69).

Do you have an Irish app? Broadsheet@broadsheet.ie

No favours, cuddles, or pints were given for this post.

Facebook announced its latest data mining feature Graph Search last week to much fan fare.

Throughout the presentation, Mark Zuckerberg emphasised that user’s privacy was at the forefront of the developers’ minds when creating the feature.

The problem is Facebook’s byzantine privacy settings which could mean your data gets leaked.

Enter Tom Scott and his Tumblr of actual searches focusing on the juxtapositions between the things you’ve probably absentmindedly liked over the years.

There’s the creeptastic:

There’s the potentially life-threatening:

And, of course, the simply amusing:
Actual Facebook Graph Searches

chriswaring


The weakest part of iOS are Apple’s own apps bundled in with it.

When so much effort is put into pretty much every other aspect of iOS the apps only seem to get a cursory look. This has resulted in a host of apps that aim to replace the default apps.

My Artists by Oisin Prendiville is one such app, being his interpretation of the music player.  On top of playing the music stored on your device, it will also pull information about the bands from the net giving you detailed bios as well as letting you buy their back-catalogue in app.

But playing your existing music just doesn’t cut it in today’s world of online music discovery.  By leveraging last.fm, the app can suggest and play music you may like as well as create a customised iTunes Store based on your tastes.

It was €2.69 but the latest version is free so there’s no excuse for not trying it out.

My Artists is available now on the Apple App Store.

Do you have an Irish app? Broadsheet@broadsheet.ie

No favours, cuddles, or pints were given for this post.

 

So Instagram has updated its Terms of Service so your photos can be used in advertising without permission.

So how do you get your food diary photos off Instagram?

Openphoto is actually taking aim at Flickr and Facebook as well as Instagram and allows you to import your photos from all those services.

You can host the photos on Openphoto’s service or if you’re more technically minded/not lazy set it up yourself on a server of your own.

Instaport will let you download to your local drive or into another service like Flickr. It’s a little under pressure at the moment so you might need to try it again later in the week.

And finally, there’s Broadsheet’s favourite stakeboarding dev, James Wheltons‘ GrabGram, although it’s more of a manual process than the other two.

If you know of another service that can grab the photos please leave a link in the comments

Previously: We Liked It Before Facebook Bought It

It’s OK.

He’s not underage.

James Whelton (above) has helped you save your photos from Instagram, high-fived Enda Kenny and now he’s been listed in Forbes’ 30 Under 30 Social Entrepreneurs for his work in founding Coder Dojo.

They call him coder nerd but we prefer former teen sensation.

We’re not bitter.

Damn his beautiful eyes, those midnight dark pools in which we dreamily bathe

Previously: Meanwhile On A Vacant Floor of The Google Dublin Offices (Broadsheet, August 18, 2011).
Update:

How could we have missed the Collison brothers Patrick and John(above) from Limerick who are in the 30 Under 30: Technology for their wonderful Stripe payment portal.

We’ve documented the graffiti around Dublin to the delight of some and the foam-flecked loathing of others.

To the latter: behold our first dual platform app, Fix My Area.

It encapsulates what I love about having a small networked camera in my pocket at all times. You take a picture of something the council needs to deal with, tag it with some details and off it flies to the relevant authority.

It’s a shame you can’t track what you’ve reported in app instead of having to go to the website.

And being picky little shit, it’s letterboxed on iPhone 5. An absolute bugbear of mine.

On Google Play for Android

On the App Store for iPhone

Do you have an Irish app? Broadsheet@broadsheet.ie

No favours, cuddles, or pints were given for this post. Review based on iOS version.




As some of the commenters pointed out in our post about My Dublin Bus, it’s only available for iPhone.

Up steps Dublin based mobile developer Stephen McBride (he happens to do both iOS and Android apps) to fill the gap for Android.

While not as cutesy as My Dublin Bus, it does provide a clean interface to getting at the bus timetables. All the expected functionality is there – searching, favourites and maps. But the killer feature is the ability to add shortcuts to your home screen to a bus route so you don’t have to fiddle with menus to get at your bus home.

It’s available as an ad supported free version as well as a paid download (you do realise developers can’t just survive on crumbs from their keyboards right?).

Next Bus Dublin (free)
Next Bus Dublin (€1.99)

Do you have an Irish app? Broadsheet@broadsheet.ie

No favours, cuddles, or pints were given for this post. (Full disclosure, Karl used to work with Stephen)


Timetable apps have been a staple of the app store since it opened its doors. They’re often as dull as their subject matter.

But the people in Tapadoo have managed to both make a useful, functional app with a humorous twist

The app follows founder Dermot Daly‘s mantra to perfection – do one thing well.

A couple of taps and your daily commute buses can be set up so there’s no fiddling about every time you want to use it.

In fact, it works far better than Dublin Bus’s own effort or even the signs at the bus stops.



When something does go wrong (more often than not the fault of the Real Time Information rather than the app) it will show a southside/northside appropriate error (above) based on your current location.

And how much for a beautifully crafted app like this?

Not a brass farthing.

My Dublin Bus

Do you have an Irish app? Broadsheet@broadsheet.ie

No favours, cuddles, or pints were given for this post.