Mobile Media Queries: Beyond the Breaking Points

It’s been a while since I’ve updated this thing. I’ve just been working so quickly and so much on SO MANY things. I’ll post in more detail about those things later.

Anyway, I’m doing a lot of mobile development and came across some very handy Media Queries that will help your CSS target, not just different pixel widths, but different devices. Primarily the different iPhone screen sizes using aspect ratios:

iPhone < 5:
@media screen and (device-aspect-ratio: 2/3) {}

iPhone 5:
@media screen and (device-aspect-ratio: 40/71) {}

iPad:
@media screen and (device-aspect-ratio: 3/4) {}

Hope this helps someone else! Found it through stackoverflow from 2C-B

venmo: Introducing Venmo Touch: An Easier Way to Pay on Your Mobile DeviceAt Venmo, we have focused for the past three years on building a product that transforms the awkward chore of paying a friend into an experience our users have described as the “Greatest thing to happen to currency since…Currency” and “One of those life-changing apps.”  Very early on, as we grew to love the convenience of using Venmo to pay friends, family, babysitters, piano teachers, and others, we realized we wanted Venmo to be more—we wanted it to be the best way to pay for *anything* on a phone.  To make that vision a reality, six months ago we teamed up with Braintree, the payment infrastructure behind the most popular mobile apps—Uber, Airbnb, HotelTonight, Fab, LevelUp, LivingSocial, TaskRabbit, Wrapp, etc—and today, together, we are announcing a new product that embodies our shared vision:  Venmo Touch.Many apps in the Braintree network already have an awesome payment experience—Uber, for example, makes taking a ride so magically easy that it doesn’t even feel like you have to pay.  So, the real remaining pain point we want to address with Venmo Touch is not the actual purchase, but having to type a credit card number in every time you use a new app, on a tiny touch screen, without a full size keyboard or auto-fill browser plugins that can make this easier on a desktop.Venmo Touch eliminates the need to constantly re-type your card number by providing a connective layer across all the apps on your phone, designed to make every payment in a new app as easy as buying a song in iTunes.  The next time you enter your card details in one of the apps in our network, just tick the “Save card with Venmo” checkbox (you don’t even have to have the Venmo app installed for this to work).  Then, when you use other apps on the same device, you will see the option to use the saved card to pay with just a single touch.  To protect against unauthorized purchases, you simply enter your credit card security code when using your card in a new app. Venmo Touch is currently in private beta on iOS with several merchants (which also happen to be some of our favorite apps) in the Braintree network going live in the coming weeks, including HotelTonight, TaskRabbit, Wrapp, and several others.  We look forward to you trying Venmo Touch as more merchants go live. Let us know what you think by telling us here. p.s. developers, if you would like to include Venmo Touch in your app, contact us at venmotouch@braintreepayments.com Awesome! I love venmo. You should use it if you haven&#8217;t. This makes them even better. Maybe I&#8217;ll integrate them into an iPhone app I have&#8230;
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venmo:

Introducing Venmo Touch: An Easier Way to Pay on Your Mobile Device

At Venmo, we have focused for the past three years on building a product that transforms the awkward chore of paying a friend into an experience our users have described as the “Greatest thing to happen to currency since…Currency” and “One of those life-changing apps.”  Very early on, as we grew to love the convenience of using Venmo to pay friends, family, babysitters, piano teachers, and others, we realized we wanted Venmo to be more—we wanted it to be the best way to pay for *anything* on a phone.  To make that vision a reality, six months ago we teamed up with Braintree, the payment infrastructure behind the most popular mobile apps—Uber, Airbnb, HotelTonight, Fab, LevelUp, LivingSocial, TaskRabbit, Wrapp, etc—and today, together, we are announcing a new product that embodies our shared vision:  Venmo Touch.

Many apps in the Braintree network already have an awesome payment experience—Uber, for example, makes taking a ride so magically easy that it doesn’t even feel like you have to pay.  So, the real remaining pain point we want to address with Venmo Touch is not the actual purchase, but having to type a credit card number in every time you use a new app, on a tiny touch screen, without a full size keyboard or auto-fill browser plugins that can make this easier on a desktop.

Venmo Touch eliminates the need to constantly re-type your card number by providing a connective layer across all the apps on your phone, designed to make every payment in a new app as easy as buying a song in iTunes.  The next time you enter your card details in one of the apps in our network, just tick the “Save card with Venmo” checkbox (you don’t even have to have the Venmo app installed for this to work).  Then, when you use other apps on the same device, you will see the option to use the saved card to pay with just a single touch.  To protect against unauthorized purchases, you simply enter your credit card security code when using your card in a new app.

Venmo Touch is currently in private beta on iOS with several merchants (which also happen to be some of our favorite apps) in the Braintree network going live in the coming weeks, including HotelTonight, TaskRabbit, Wrapp, and several others.  We look forward to you trying Venmo Touch as more merchants go live. Let us know what you think by telling us here.

p.s. developers, if you would like to include Venmo Touch in your app, contact us at venmotouch@braintreepayments.com

Awesome! I love venmo. You should use it if you haven’t. This makes them even better. Maybe I’ll integrate them into an iPhone app I have…

Stout: Social Beer Drinking App

outlawmemoirs:

This is a bit off subject for my usual military, veteran, and book posts but I just had to share it.  Some of you may (or may not) know that I love me some craft beer.  I’m big into stouts but I’ve opened myself up to some IPAs.  Anyway, I’ve been using Beeradvocate for a while but their website is not mobile.  So I resorted to an app called Untappd.  However, recently, a new app has become available and I absolutely love it’s simplicity.  It’s called Stout.  It’s got a fantastic interface, allows me to easily rate beers, add beers to my drink later list, and see what my buddies are drinking.  I can even see what beers are trending.  I really can’t get enough of it.  So, for those of you out there that love craft beer, I highly recommend this app.  Click the link above to download from iTunes.

Some kind words about my newly released app, Stout. Download it now in the Apple App Store!

Quick & Dirty Deployment (NodeJS)

So I gave up on using Forever as a module to keep my Node server running.. well.. forever. Without getting too into it, it’s not well maintained, and I need my Node to be up to date. I plan on using Upstart and Monit on my production server. So in my search for finding a way to keep my node server running while in development I came across a nice article from Felix at http://nodeguide.com/ which talks about a nice little thing called, screen sessions. Keep in mind, in most cases you’ll need to sudo in.

If you have just written your first node.js application, and you want to get it running as fast as possible, this is how to do it:

  1. Copy your program to the server you want to run it on. If you’re using git, this probably just means to clone the repository from another server or service like GitHub.

  2. Assuming your project contains a ‘server.js’ file, navigate to the directory containing it, then type:

    $ screen $ node server.js

This invokes your ‘server.js’ program inside a so called screen session. Screen is a tool that provides you with a shell that remains its state, even when you close the terminal app you used to login to your server.

So you can now safely close your terminal app, and your ‘server.js’ will continue running. If you want to monitor it, you can log into your server again, and type:

$ screen -r

This will reconnect you to the backgrounded shell running your program.

However, this approach is only recommended for experimental deployments. If your node applications crashes at some point, screen will not try to restart it, so don’t use this method for production applications.

A few other useful screen session commands that I’ve been using and find useful are also:

  • Scrolling through your log, enter copy mode: ctrl + a + esc
  • Exiting a session: ctrl + a then ctrl + d
  • Retrieving a previous screen session: screen -r [the long weird name you’re given, unless you’ve renamed it something even longer and weirder]
As I find more useful commands I’ll add them in, but these seem to be just fine for me.

And definitely feel free to check out the full article as he goes into a setting up a simple node server, but for this I’ll just quote the deployment section.

supersonicelectronic:

Victo Ngai Print Give Away!

The always phenomenal Victo Ngai just released new Limited Edition and Open Edition prints on her store.  But Supersonic Electronic is giving one grand prize winner and two runner ups a chance to win some of her beautiful work.  The grand prize winner will receive a signed, limited edition print of “Sweet Dreams.”  Two runner ups will receive a signed, open edition of “Koi Dance.”  

How To Enter:

  1. Reblog this post on Tumblr.  (Be sure and follow Victo on Tumblr)
  2. Follow Supersonic and Victo Ngai on Twitter and Tweet the following (Click to Tweet it):  ”I just entered @supersonicart’s @victongai Print Give Away!  Details on supersonicelectronic.com #victongai”

That’s it!  Enter both ways for a better chance at winning.  Winners will be announced via Twitter on Thursday, December 6th at 12:00pm PST.  Good luck!  And don’t forget to check out Victo Ngai’s amazing portfolio.

betashop: 90 Things I've Learned From Founding 4 Technology Companies

betashop:

On October 27, 2010 I wrote a blog post about the “57 Things I Learned Founding 3 Tech Companies.”

It has been awesome, flattering, and humbling to see that post went viral and has been seen by so many thousands of people — mainly aspiring entrepreneurs — and has been translated into many…

Some great advice here.

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