Technical Challenge of the Day: Destiny Character Download

Bungie has a cool 3D viewer for Destiny characters. E.g. here's mine: chrisjshull.
Here's your challenge: download your character as an image (with a transparent background!).

Here's mine:

(After a bit of cropping.)

Scrolling for iPhone Web Apps

I have created a new iPhone Scroll Demo page. This webpage is a proof-of-concept for scrolling with:

• "low-friction",
• "pseudo-fixed-position toolbars", and
• "rubber-band 'bounce' scrolling" (even when you "you pull down all the way off the bottom [or top] of the display").

I don't know if this is the "best" way, just a way (if I had to start from scratch I'd probably try a few things differently).

This all began because I was reading John Gruber's (of Daring Fireball) discussions about iPhone web apps and PastryKit (here, here). It struck me that what he wanted really wouldn't be that hard to do (for the most part). So I put together this little page. As he noted, I doubt it will scroll as nicely on a non-3GS iPhone (although I was only able to test on my own 3GS). Even on a 3GS, I get occasional hiccups when background processes kick off.

To save time and effort, the page will only really work in portrait orientation when saved to the home screen. I also could have spent a lot more time using HTML5 and CSS3 to make this more web-app-y, but that was not the point of this project. You may also note a few HTML errors when you load - this is my host, not me.

My next task will be trying to get a scroll bar to show (I will likely have to code up a new one). I also had a lot of trouble embedding Google ads (so much so that I removed them on the iPhone), because they live in their own iframes, which handle events differently (and I cannot access them via JS because it comes from a different domain).

Disclaimer: While it just so happens that I do work part-time for Apple Inc., I have not used here, nor do I have, any proprietary information on this immediate subject matter. In fact, I haven't even looked at PastryKit itself (as dug up by John Gruber). I am also a student at Carnegie Mellon University, and this prototype was just a mental exercise; I simply tried create something based on John Gruber's notes and thoughts.

Check out the iPhone Scroll Demo.

Get Lyrical - Italian & Spanish + Legal

The Good news:
Since the last news posting versions 3.4 and 3.5 of Get Lyrical have added Italian and Spanish localizations respectively (and thanks to Vincenzo Boiano and Israel López Fernández respectively!). That brings the total language count up to four. (And I hear through the grapevine that French may be coming soon - we'll see!)

The Bad news:
I've received word from the lawyers of TuneUp Media (makers of TuneUp) that SP is infringing on their trademark for "AUTOMAGICALLY" (SP's 2nd ever C&D – woohoo!). You may note from Get Lyrical's description page that it:

"Auto-magically adds lyrics to songs in iTunes from lyrics.wikia.com."

If you take a look at the letter, you'll see that TuneUp claims to have begun using the term in December 2008. A quick search of the USTPO shows that they filed for the term in January 2009 ... oh, and the trademark was published for opposition at the beginning of the month*.
TuneUp can – forgive me, I don't know the legal term – suck it; not only have I been using "Auto-magically" since at least 2005, I know that a number of my actual competitors use the term as well. Oddly enough, I was recently thinking of changing this description. But now that I've gotten this ridiculous claim, I think GL may just have to be auto-magic for the indefinite future. (We'll see though, the TuneUp lawyers have given me until the 22nd to respond.)

*For those of you not keeping track, it is December 2009.

Get Lyrical v3.3 - Now in German!

Get Lyrical 3.3 is out, and it's been localized to German (much thanks to Kay van Haagen!). There are also bug fixes that should clear up any problems with international, or just plain garbled lyrics. And of course, a new icon:

Get Lyrical in MACup's iPhone & Co

Get Lyrical was recently included on the cover mount CD of a special iPhone & Co issue of MACup magazine; "Europas erstes Magazin für Apple-Anwender" (yeah, it's German).

Get Lyrical is a perfect companion to lyric-lovers on the iPhone or iPod touch. It's actually easier to see lyrics in these devices than in iTunes itself. Once you let Get Lyrical tag your songs in iTunes, the lyrics will be sync to your device; just tap the cover art (between the top and bottom controls) to see the them:

You can also see lyrics on other iPods by clicking the center Select button (while in the music playback view) until you see the lyrics.

The latest version of Get Lyrical actually provides better support for non-English characters within lyrics. Some of my apps are even in multiple languages. (Eventually, I even hope to have a German version of Get Lyrical.)

They were nice enough to send me a copy: MACup