http://www.scottkleper.com/wordpress The #1 Blog for Klepopotami Wed, 14 Jan 2009 02:10:01 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Today Scott is trying to think of a time he's seen his parents as happy as they were when they were playing with Fletch. 11:36am Yesterday 10:42pm Scott is noticing that changing your profile picture to an adorable baby makes your price go up in Friends For Sale (and then makes you uninstall it). 12:32pm Jan 9 4:10pm Jan ... http://www.scottkleper.com/wordpress/2009/01/facebook-status-updates-407-present/ I was looking for a really quick keyboard-driven way to get items onto iCal and decided to write something instead. 1 hour later, I introduce KlepCal. Just launch it using a keyboard shortcut or Spotlight, and type in a natural language time, an event description, and a calendar name. It ... http://www.scottkleper.com/wordpress/2008/12/klepcal-the-fastest-way-to-enter-items-into-ical/ You know it's going to be a good one when a Facebook developer blog post starts with "At Facebook, our passion for serving users...", so I wasn't particularly surprised by this declaration that Facebook's new policy aims to regulate the emotion of "surprise": Users must not be surprised by the outcome ... http://www.scottkleper.com/wordpress/2008/06/facebook-regulates-your-apps-emotional-effects/ I hate to be pedantic, but I find something lacking in the Mac OS X Dictionary's definition of pedantic: pedantic |pəˈdantik| adjective of or like a pedant : many of the essays are long, dense, and too pedantic to hold great appeal. http://www.scottkleper.com/wordpress/2008/02/pedantic/ Marni: Brett Hilton recommended Baby Depot. Scott: Is that a web site? Marni: No, it's someone I work with. http://www.scottkleper.com/wordpress/2008/02/crossed-wires/ Especially early on, starting a company is about addressing one overarching concern that, if solved, will totally make everything so much easier. When I first started thinking about SpotDJ, I had a job. Being a loyal employee not looking to get sued, I only worked on the project during nights and ... http://www.scottkleper.com/wordpress/2007/12/startup-tip-2-you-will-always-be-one-step-away/ table.sample { border-width: 1px 1px 1px 1px; border-spacing: 0px; vertical-align: top; border-style: solid solid solid solid; border-color: black black black black; border-collapse: collapse; background-color: white; } table.sample th { border-width: 1px 1px 1px 1px; padding: 3px 3px 3px 3px; vertical-align: top; border-style: inset inset inset inset; border-color: gray ... http://www.scottkleper.com/wordpress/2007/12/a-facebook-glossary/ I'm putting this first because I know you're busy starting a company and I can save you a lot of time by telling you to skip all the other tips and listen to this one. Or don't. That's the whole point. When I, and later we, were first starting out, we ... http://www.scottkleper.com/wordpress/2007/12/startup-tip-1-dont-listen-to-me-or-anybody-else/ When I started a company a year and a half ago, I also started a list of things that would've been useful to have known ahead of time. My plan was to publish the list several years later in hindsight, but now that I've reached a nice round number (37) ... http://www.scottkleper.com/wordpress/2007/11/37-things-i-wish-i-had-known-before-starting-a-company/ Many of the prominent blog posts and press pieces about OpenSocial have touted its use of open standards a key benefit for developers. Focusing on HTML and JavaScript is not only inaccurate, but it actually makes the platform less attractive for developers. We Like FBML As a developer, I am far more ... http://www.scottkleper.com/wordpress/2007/11/opensocials-rhetoric-about-open-standards-is-disingenuous-and-misses-the-point/ Working creatively with APIs is one of the things that makes software development fun. APIs exist mainly to allow third parties to add functionality to software that the original authors don't have the time, interest, or creativity to do on their own. Most APIs are built to limit functionality, or ... http://www.scottkleper.com/wordpress/2007/11/the-inspirational-story-of-the-facebook-api/ In the UN's list of oppressed peoples, Condominium Developers are somewhere below adorable kittens. Yet I recently found my politically inactive self speaking in favor of San Francisco's 7 Hills Developers at a recent Board of Supervisors meeting. About three blocks from our house is an abandoned paint store. The parking ... http://www.scottkleper.com/wordpress/2007/09/wont-someone-please-think-of-the-condo-developers/ According to appaholic, SpotDJ is currently the fastest growing app on Facebook! We've been so busy building the new SpotDJ that we haven't even blogged about it, but it's a huge leap forward for us. We believe we're the only Facebook app that lets you build a musical cupcake. You ... http://www.scottkleper.com/wordpress/2007/07/spotdj-is-the-fastest-growing-application-on-facebook/ When we wrote the User Profile feature for SpotDJ, we decided we wanted something a little more interesting than just filling in your username and password. We came up with the idea of presenting the user with three questions, randomly selected from a list that we could easily change. I ... http://www.scottkleper.com/wordpress/2007/06/10-second-interview-adventures-on-facebook/ Turns out that the method of integrating online chat and television that I co-invented as a Microsoft intern was approved late last year and nobody told me: http://www.google.com/patents?id=F0R9AAAAEBAJ&dq=kleper&ie=ISO-8859-1 My favorite part of the patent application (which I didn't write) was the sample chat between the WebTV co-founders, which includes this gem: Bruce: This ... http://www.scottkleper.com/wordpress/2007/06/tv-chat-patent-approved-8-years-later/ Ever listen to a song and realize that when you were a kid, you totally misinterpreted the lyrics? In 4th Grade, I was really into the Beastie Boys because my friend Arthur was really into the Beastie Boys. But rap was new to me, so I looked to Arthur to ... http://www.scottkleper.com/wordpress/2007/06/five-lies-arthur-rodgers-told-me-about-the-beastie-boys/ Back in January, when I expressed my frustration over the lack of a Third Party API for the iPhone, everyone seemed certain that Apple had confirmed this as a fact. Now everyone seems certain that the iPhone runs a full version of OS X and will have a developer API. ... http://www.scottkleper.com/wordpress/2007/06/iphone-and-third-party-apps-im-still-skeptical/ Okay, so maybe it's only the second most "Newly Popular" pirated book, but still -- we've got more seeds and leechers than the first episode of "The Tudors." And we're trouncing other books in our category -- Suck it, Professional ASP NET 2 0 Server Control And Component Development! Thanks anonymous ... http://www.scottkleper.com/wordpress/2007/05/professional-c-is-the-second-most-pirated-book/ Some time in late 2001, my then-girlfriend-now-wife offered me a ride home from work and never showed up. As it started to get late, I began walking home, assuming I'd see her on the way. As I came over a hill, I saw some flashing lights and as I began ... http://www.scottkleper.com/wordpress/2007/04/marni-versus-san-mateo-general-hospital-check-your-credit-report/ As an allergy sufferer, I've never had a traditional pet. But I did have something better -- my pet hermit crab, Jessie. Jessie's crabitat was a gift from my wife about two years ago. And while he's been through a few roommates that didn't last very long (Jessie attacks other ... http://www.scottkleper.com/wordpress/2007/04/farewell-jessie-you-were-a-pet-and-a-friend/ My friend Adam challenged me to turn an email thread we had into a blog post, and this is the result. Actually, the real challenge was to post a certain phrase in context, but you'll have to read on to discover what that phrase is. (Unlike Adam, I don't put ... http://www.scottkleper.com/wordpress/2007/03/battlestar-galactica-kinda-sucks/ TUAW reports that Apple has confirmed the iPhone to be a closed system like the iPod -- no developer SDK and no third party applications. If true, this is a major bummer; Apple is setting itself up to be the only smart phone vendor that doesn't allow users to download ... http://www.scottkleper.com/wordpress/2007/01/no-third-party-apps-on-iphone-cancel-my-order/ I was recently offered the opportunity (and a Starbucks gift card) to evaluate Palore, a service that's apparently huge in Israel and is in the process of adding support for the US. At a high level, Palore is a browser extension (currently supports IE and Firefox, but only on Windows) that ... http://www.scottkleper.com/wordpress/2007/01/palore-business-info-on-any-site/ In 1995, when I was a freshman at Stanford, a former co-worker of my mom's invited me to brunch with some of his friends. I was eager to meet some people from the Silicon Valley tech world and happily biked over to Hobee's for some overpriced smoothies. One of the ... http://www.scottkleper.com/wordpress/2007/01/party-at-bills-place-or-phils-place/ I've been working on my first flash app, a simple set of controls to record audio from a microphone through a web page. This is about the most basic thing you can do with Flash Media Server, but I was having this strange problem where things suddenly stopped working. Generally, I'd ... http://www.scottkleper.com/wordpress/2007/01/flash-microphoneget-requires-minimum-stage-size/