Agile Tortoise

BoxFinder 2 submitted for approval

greg — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 21:19:50 +0000

BoxFinder version 2.0 has been submitted to the App store for approval. BoxFinder 2 is a complete re-write and is now the most fully featured Letterboxing App for the iPhone and iPod Touch. New features include:

Search for Letterboxes Near Me : Use your iPhone/iPod’s GPS or location lookup services to find letterboxes near your current location.
Search by Address : Enter partial or complete addresses and search for letterboxes in that area.
Search by Name : Find specific letterboxes by name.
Easy to read presentation of letterbox status, details and clues.
Offline searches : Save sets of search results with full clues for use later when a network is not available. Especially useful for iPod Touch owners.
In-App Web Browser : The in-app web browser lets you go directly to letterbox pages at Atlas Quest to see further details, open maps, record finds without leaving BoxFinder.

Here’s some preview screenshots:

Tweeku on the ThrilList

greg — Wed, 26 May 2010 22:03:29 +0000

Tweeku go a nice mention on The Thrillist today! Thanks

Tweeku, a better way to tweet

greg — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 03:31:05 +0000

Our new iPhone/iPod Touch App, Tweeku is live at the App Store.

Tweeku is a twitter writing tool, designed to let you concentrate on writing the best status updates. We hope you’ll check it out!

Tweeku beta

greg — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 20:23:43 +0000

Tweeku, our new iPhone Twitter writing tool, is in private testing now and should be hitting the App Store in coming weeks. Keep a look out! We’re really excited about the App.

BoxFinder v1.1

greg — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 18:17:44 +0000

BoxFinder v1.1 is now live on the AppStore. Main addition is contact list integration, for looking up letterboxes near your friends and family!

Dallas Startup Weekend, PickyPlates

greg — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 16:41:01 +0000

I had an incredible experience at the first Dallas Startup Weekend this week. Startup Weekends are taking place around the country, and I encourage you to look into it if one is coming near you.

The concept, in a nutshell, is to get together a group of developers, entrepreneurs, marketing people, etc. for an intense weekend of business building. Friday night anyone and everyone pitches ideas. The attendees vote on ideas and divide into teams, then spend the weekend honing and implementing it…and hopefully coming out of the weekend with a new startup business.

I teamed up with John, Matt, Mike, Jake and Joey on John’s idea for a social recipe website that could learn about your personal tastes.

The result was PickyPlates. From concept to up and running site in about 20 hours working time. Still lots to be done, but the team was awesome and plans to keep moving forward with the project. We also came home with first prize in the weekend competition — which was a really exciting end to a great weekend.

Congrats and best of luck to the other great business started over the weekend, including: OpenWishLists.org, 1FTPClient, MeetupSports, ActivePub, DriveLegal 24/8, and 1-800-LawGuns.

SEO: Spammers, Evildoers and Opportunists

greg — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 17:57:37 +0000

Derek Powazek lays bare the misguided strategies of “SEO” (Search Engine Optimization):

Search Engine Optimization is not a legitimate form of marketing. It should not be undertaken by people with brains or souls. If someone charges you for SEO, you have been conned

BoxFinder live at the iPhone App Store

greg — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 18:36:56 +0000

I’m happy to announce that our first iPhone application, BoxFinder has arrived at the App Store. BoxFinder is a tool for the Atlas Quest letterboxing community, making it easier to use the location awareness of your iPhone to locate letterboxes. Check it out!

Thinking about a new website?

greg — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 16:10:12 +0000

Thinking about a new website for your business? You may well need one. For many types of businesses, your Internet presence is both the entry point to a relationship with new customers and the primary conduit between you and your existing customer base.

But before you decide you need a new website, you should figure out why. Seth Godin has an excellent primer on Things to Ask Before You Redo Your Website.

Maker’s Schedule

greg — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 13:54:57 +0000

Are you a manager or a maker? Nothing wrong with either pursuit, but they can often be at odds with one another. Paul Graham shines a light on the differences in how managers and makers think about time, schedules and meetings. Very insightful read for folks on either side of the fence.

I’m definitely on a maker’s schedule.

Pragmatic Programmer’s Magazine

greg — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 14:20:15 +0000

In their usual quality style, technical publisher The Pragmatic Programmers have launched a magazine for programmers. First issue is great, and I look forward to a lot to thoughtful reads out of future issues.

This is a space that much needs attention, I think, after the failure of some of the prior print magazines for programmers. Great job!

Announcing: blitl.us

greg — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 13:48:04 +0000

Agile Tortoise is happy to announce the launch of blilt.us. blitl.us is primarily a URL shortening service, providing click tracking and easy access to data about your shortened URLs. Also, it currently provided Twitter posting integration.

blilt.us is designed for integration with other applications. We are working on completing and documenting the API and will provide more sample code in the future. Let us know if there’s anything you are looking for in a URL shortening service. We’re eager to hear ideas.

What’s in your website?

greg — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 13:49:21 +0000

Typically ‘nail-on-the-head’ commentary from Seth Godin:

The purpose of the site is to tell a story or to generate some sort of action. And if the user notices the site, not the story, you’ve lost.

If you are looking to improve the impact of your web presence, you should be asking yourself what story you want to tell, not how much flash can I add, or how much lavish detailing I can apply.

Why MacRuby Matters

greg — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 13:27:55 +0000

Great article on what will likely be the future of desktop application development on the Mac, MacRuby.

Ruby on Rails 2.3 released

greg — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 15:01:03 +0000

Ruby on Rails 2.3 has been released. Rails continues to push forward the web application development space. With application templates, engine support and nested forms, the development experience of writing Rails applications just keeps getting better. With Rack and Metal, the deployment and performance options keep improving as well. Congrats to the Rails team!