When we started MatchFuel, we laid down some ground rules that spawned from the experiences we had with AndSpot.

1. It must not look like a traditional Android app.

2. It must follow (if possible) all of the Android design patterns, and change a pattern only where absolutely needed.

3. It must be easy to use; fast, stable and lastly, an immersive experience.

As you can tell, 2 of the 3 main rules we followed were design-based. Users expect a great UX today, gone are the times where you can have a “crap” ui and yet leave a good impression (there are however exceptions such as news readers and other apps which are very content focused rather then being app focused).

With that in mind, we gave birth to MatchFuel, which in my opinion (putting aside my biases for developing the entire thing single handedly) is Androids most slickest application to date. The app is available as a beta on the Android Market ( http://market.android.com/details/id?=com.matchfuel.platform ) and is a very easy way to find the best games on the Android Market.

One thing that I feel that we have proven, is that Android Apps can look as good or even better than their iPhone competitor.

At this point we are working on some really cool technology that we are going to launch shortly and so we are looking to expand the team.

The following positions are available :

1) Android developer
2) PHP developer (or equivalent – Ruby/ColdFusion)

If you are interested then email team@andspot.com with your information!

• Faisal

Here is the download link for the source code to all the android goodness we did : http://uploadrobots.com/Yxw3CC

Youll start off knowing nothing about Android and end up with an app possibly on the marketplace!

http://beginningandroid.eventbrite.com/

I will be talking about Advanced Android Development so be sure to catch that talk.

FITC Mobile 2010 Discount Code: thiswillbegood SAVE $50

I have always thought, that’s similar to the following scenario:

“One man get’s shot.

He, hold his breath and has strength enough as to take a bus.

10 miles later the man gets out of the bus and walks a couple of blocks and die.”

When police get to the body, they don’t have a clue of what just happened. They may have eventually but it is much harder.

Better is:

“One man gets shot, and the dies instantaneously and the body lays exactly where the murder had just happened”

When the police arrives, all the evidence is in place.

If a system is to fail, better is to fail fast

Addressing the question:

1. Ignorance.
   +
2. Sloth

EDIT:

Of course, the catch section is useful.

If something can be done with the exception, that’s where it should be done.

Probably that is NOT an exception for the given code, probably it is something that is expected ( and in my analogy is like a bulletproof jacket, and the man was waiting for the shot in first place ). And yes, the catch could be used to Throw exceptions appropriate to the abstraction

Full question and answer here : http://stackoverflow.com/questions/921471/why-java-people-frequently-consume-exception-silently

http://www.fitc.ca/events/presentations/presentation.cfm?event=109&presentation_id=1315

Facebook's Old Password page

A couple of hours ago, my roommate was trying to get into my friend’s Facebook account when he surprisingly guessed the “pseudo”-right password and it took him to a screen I had never seen before.

The screen basically said something like , “You are using an old password, did you know this” (Screenshot attached). My roommate clicked yes, and guessed a password similar to the one he just tried and eventually after another try or so he got in.

My issue with this feature is how a potential hacker would respond in this scenario. Now I don’t know the password changing habits of the general population, but among a couple of my friends (whos passwords I happen to know) I do know that their old and new passwords are related in some way. So this really comes down to the hacker being clever enough or the hacker being someone the victim knows.. Keep in mind that while it is great to tell the average user to use a mixed case and numbers and letters, the fact is that many users will use a password that is “easy” to remember and relevant to them.

However, while I do understand what Facebook is trying to do with this feature, but I think that its put in the wrong place at the wrong time. Instead this should be an automated email that is sent to the user’s email address saying either “Someone has tried to login to your account multiple times” or “Someone has tried to login to your account using an old password” depending on what the situation is.

All in all, while this is not a severe risk to all facebook user’s who have good password habits, there is still a possibility that someone may gain entry to your account through this knowledge of an old password.

On the server side , Deacon needs the wicked fast Meteor web server to do its realtime processing. This web server is truly phenomenal, i think its the smallest web server in the world and its just amazing. (http://meteorserver.org/).

What are you waiting for? Go try out Deacon and Meteor and let me know what you thought!