Monthly Archive for January, 2010

Get your Web Application Developed For Free.

Published on January 29, 2010 in business and technology. 0 Comments Tags: .

What ?
We are offering any Irish company or individual the opportunity to apply for free software development to the value of 5000 euro.

Why ?
We have seen some excellent initiatives from the Irish tech community to help Irish Startups over the last few years starting with App School from Contrast in 2008, last year we had IQ Prize from IQ Content and Outvesting in December - we want to do something similar in 2010. It also gives us a chance to showcase our capabilities and build a profile.

Who can apply?
Any company or individual based in Ireland can apply. Have a look at the conditions below before you apply to make sure you are happy with them. We will choose an interesting project and the person / company who we feel deserves it most.

What kind of project?
We are open to suggestions, the project could be:

  • A new web application.
  • A prototype to flesh out ideas or to help with market research.
  • An Adobe Air application to offer desktop functionality to an existing web application.
  • A flex web application.

How?
We are now accepting applications using the following form: Apply Now.

Dates
Note: Deadlines have been extended. Application process opens on  Wednesday 3rd February 2010. The deadline for submissions is Wednesday 17th March 2010 the chosen project will be announced on Monday 22nd March 2010.

Questions
If you have any questions you can add a comment below or drop us an email to info@rndsolutions.net

Conditions

  • We will choose the technologies.
  • You will need to pay any associated costs i.e. (graphic design, domain names, hosting, etc).
  • You will own the application entirely.
  • Our decision on chosen project is final.

Upgrading OSX Snow Leopard

Published on January 24, 2010 in technology. 0 Comments Tags: , .

Recently I got my hands on a new copy of the OSX for the mac. The new Snow Leopard. I decided to wait for a bit to see if it ironed out some of its early blips before i would migrate. I talked to some of my friends that had MACS and what was the best way to migrate, they suggested use Time Machine. I purchased a new passport hard drive, ran time machine and backed up everything. When it came to installing the new operating system, I completely wiped the hard drive before installing the new OS. As I booted it for the first time it asked me did I want to restore files and applications from a Time Machine backup? I plugged in the hard drive and voila, it copied down all my applications and files.

A couple of questions then came to mind here:

  • How simple is this to migrate to a different OS and there has to be some catch here?
  • There has to be some/tons of applications that just don’t work after doing this?
  • I reckon I have to have lost something here or an entire folder? and why can’t you migrate windows XP this simply?

The results of the findings

To see how well this whole process went I wanted to test the following:

  • ITunes, Skype, Chrome, Parallels, Safari, Mail, Mozy (icon missing but it works) and Ms Office all kept their settings & files and all work.
  • I use Intellij, Flex Builder, MAMP, Photoshop and Grails. I tried most of the Flex applications, all worked perfectly. OSX needed to install Rosetta for Flex but it did that itself and it works.
  • The desktop and all my documents seem to be in place.

This has to be the simplest and most painless migration I have ever done, fair play to the developers who wrote Time Machine.

The only application that doesn’t seem to be working is MenuMeters, there is a new release of this too.

On the new OSX… it seems to be a lot snappier than the last one. I have 4 gigs of ram but generally things like spotlight and safari seem to behave and react a lot quicker than with the previous OS. The new expose is nicer too and easier to pick out the application or window you are trying to get to.

Tips:

Hard drives are cheap these days, buy an external hard drive just for Time Machine, this will do the extra files and applications where Mozy won’t be able to.

If i was doing this again, I would take a couple of backups. Firstly, I would take a backup of everything as it stands, next I would take what I deemed to be a “clean” backup of the OS, removing unwanted applications and files and use that as the basis for your new install. The options in Time Machine are not great in that it is an all or nothing approach to restoring the computer from a backup at installation time.

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