September 2010
3 posts
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August 2010
15 posts
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WatchIn pebble we have been busy developing a product called ideapi. Ideapi is a brief and idea collaboration tool that helps groups of people work together better. You can collaborate on and agree a clear brief, as well as manage the process of submitting and approving ideas.
Ideapi is currently in beta, but you can still check it out for yourself by signing up for an account at ideapi.com....
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WatchSupport video: Configuring iPad for pebble.mail
How to setup your iPad to work with pebble.mail, our hosted mail/contacts/calendar service.
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WatchSupport video: Configuring iPhone for pebble.mail
How to setup your iPhone to work with pebble.mail, our hosted mail/contacts/calendar service.
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Apple TV Evolution
Way back in September 2006 Apple announced their innovative Apple TV device, which brought the iTunes-powered media experience to your HDTV. Since then, it’s seen a small amount of success, and a couple of spec bumps, but was never really the game-changer it could have been.
Recent speculation suggests that the device is getting a rethink and relaunch - perhaps even as soon as this...
snowman=☃
We’ve got a neat little Ruby on Rails project going in the office - early stages, but coming along nicely. Whilst idly browsing the site I notice this in my address bar:
Do you see the little snowman image there? My first thought was that this was some little developer easter egg, so I ran over to Shapeshed’s desk to let him know I’d found it. Turns out, he was as surprised as...
Apple Consultants Network
For some time, our US cousins have had the opportunity to be part of the ‘Apple Consultants Network’ - a program run by Apple that recognises the 3rd party support and consultancy services (like pebble.it) and provides them with greater access to sales tools, hardware purchasing, training and materials. As a UK-based company, this program had not been available to us, yet we soldiered...
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The keyboard computer
People used to look at iMacs and say “oh, so the computer is in screen?”
Well now, a very clever modder has mashed together MacBook Air parts, a Wireless Keyboard and a Magic Trackpad to create a keyboard computer!
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pebble.it-based team won EcoMo09 →
Last year, a number of the pebble.it dev team entered (and won!) a 24-hour hackathon, EcoMo09.
That was before this version of the blog existed, so I’m linking to another post on it for prosperity. Please check it out.
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The end-to-end experience
How we do things at pebble.it is always up for reevaluation. It’s important to ask questions like “where can we improve?”, “why did this happen?” and “how can we stop that happening again?”
Answers to these questions are often things that we can address. Learn, correct, evolve. But equally, sometimes we discover the answer is something we can’t fix...
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PC vs Mac: Microsoft's Perspective
Apple have been taking pot shots at Microsoft for years, and they’ve wasted no time on subtlety. Now it seems Microsoft have stepped up to the plate and fired some shots back with their new site ‘PC vs Mac’. The site compares the two platforms across 6 categories, and makes some bold statements in each. Now what sort of fan-boy Mac loving blog would this be if we didn’t rip...
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Unlikely Business Lessons
A very interesting audio podcast from The Economist on a few things that for profits can learn from not for profits.
In particular:
What is the company vision - make sure all are aligned
Feel what you do matters
Find what it is that separates you from the rest (the best, the only, the X)
Treat people as an asset
Align with a cause (if there is a choice between you and another, customers...
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Changing Times & Opportunities
Great article from Neil Perkin’s blog, Only Dead Fish, about the opportunities that the huge changes in media we are living through are bringing.
Example statistic: 2 billion video views per day on YouTube.
The opportunity is in the exploitation of data that is, or soon will be, available to us all.
July 2010
8 posts
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Getting a startup off the ground
Following the yellow brick road
Photo by Chris Devers
Recently at pebble we’ve had a lot of discussion about the best way to get a startup off the ground. We have the ideas and the skills but need a coherent way to make it happen. We’ve got a mixed team of designers, developers and business level people all of whom have different skills and different ideas on the right way...
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Our New Dashboard
There’s a great deal of admiration and a hint of jealousy when we look at Panic Software. They have a stunning office in Portland, a suite of brilliant Mac products such as Transmit and Coda, and manage to find the time to build a custom status board for their office.
Metrics are important for any business, but are so often presented badly or spread across multiple systems and processes -...
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pebble.it's Top 6 Business Apps
As used by pebble.it.
Basecamp.
Simple and easy to use web-based project management software. A great interface to manage tasks, milestones and communications with colleagues and/or clients. pebble uses Basecamp to manage installations, migrations and development projects. Great for collaboration. Try it at basecamphq.com.
Highrise.
Another one of 37signals’ signature products and a...
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iPhone 4 vs Nexus One Showdown
If you’re reading this then you’ve no doubt already read our iPhone 4 vs Nokia 1200 showdown and can’t decide between the two. It’s a tough call and it’s about to get a whole lot tougher. Roll on the Google Nexus One. Being an office full of Mac fan boys we’ve enlisted the help of Googler @crafty to bring you an unbiased overview of these two mobile behemoths....
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iCal Timezone Support Problem
Context. I do a lot of travel between timezones, specifically between London and Hong Kong. Since the iPad, I now very rarely take my laptop out of the office and would rarely use it to see calendar appointments on the move anyway. We use pebble.mail which is based on a Kerio mail server which has never been anything but fantastic with dealing with our mail, calendars and contacts.
Problem. When...
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Safari 5 Geolocation
I went to Google Maps today and saw something shiny and new (well, it was the first time I’ve noticed it). Safari 5 was released 3 weeks ago at WWDC 2010. Amongst other things, the new version has support for a number of HTML5 features, including Geolocation. To see it in action, head to Google Maps, click the button above the little person and you’ll be located on the map.
Scary?...
June 2010
16 posts
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pebble.tunes (29/06/10)
We’re music fans in the pebble office, and there’s a fair mix of tastes. Thanks to our Apple Airport Express, Spotify and Airfoil from Rogue Amoeba we can avoid squabbles and pass around control of the office sound system to share our choice of tunes. Here’s what we’ve been listening to this week:
Caravan Palace - Jolie Coquine
There’s a swing revival on the horizon,...
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iPhone 4 vs Nokia 1200 Show Down
For some years my better half has resisted all temptation of moving away from her tried and tested comms solution: a Nokia 1200. The phone may not look particularly jaw dropping, but it does offer some benefits. I’ve tried and failed to impress her with the previous iPhone incarnations, being met each time with unimpressed stares as I reel off the updated feature set after each keynote...
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Aspirations (thoughts from a 37signals podcast)
Just listened to a David Heinemeier Hansson talk on the 37signals podcast about “A Secret to Making Money” and generally, apart from feeling like I was being shouted at for 20 minutes, I thought it was a great listen.
The podcast was taken from the Start Up School in 2008, which is a school for programmers and software engineers to learn about starting up. Along with 37signals there...
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Great service from Moo.com
How many times have your ordered 200-500 business cards only to see about 30 of them used before wanting to change them again?! Well, that has happened to us a few times so we decided to try Moo. We had heard good things about the quality and the fact that you can buy 50 laminated cards for only £12.99 is amazing. That beats the £200 we spent for the last print run! (90% of those cards are now...
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iPhone 4 Tariffs
UPDATE 3: Tesco have now entered the race, the day before launch. They’re offering simplified but very competitive pricing with their 12 month contracts.
UPDATE 2: Vodafone have now revealed their pricing, which differs from what had previously been leaked. Our pricing guide has been updated accordingly.
UPDATE: O2 have just released their handset pricing, which goes against the grain and...
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New Mac Mini
A little later than anticipated, but another of our WWDC predictions has come true. Today Apple updated their store, bringing us pre-orders for the iPhone 4 as well as a brand new Mac Mini.
The most visible update to the device is it’s new unibody enclosure - machined from a single piece of aluminium, much like its Macbook Pro sibling. Looking at the rear of the case we find 4 USB ports,...
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You are the designer
New websites and tools for browsers are showing that users have more control over design than ever.
With the release of Safari 5 Apple added a Reader feature that takes a web page and formats it for easy reading. This type of feature has been around for a while in Chrome and Firefox via the Readability Extension (Chrome & Firefox) and gives users the option to reformat the page in a more...
iPhone 4
WWDC10 kicked off, as usual, with a cracking Keynote. As expected, we saw the launch of the iPhone 4 and the renamed software, iOS4. The phone itself is pretty much the same device that Gizmodo had its hands on a few months previously, leaving many with the guilty feeling of a kid that’s peeked at his Xmas gifts. Still, they pulled some surprises out of the box - here’s a quick...
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Small Business Accounts with FreeAgent
Starting in business is never the easiest thing - there are so many more aspects to making it work than simply plying your trade… accounting and finance being one of them.
Being able to accurately and quickly see where the money is coming from and where it is going is essential.
pebble.it started life using Excel! This very quickly got out of control as the number of transactions...
WWDC10 - pebble's predictions
The pebble.it team has a few predictions on what they expect Apple to be launching today at the opening Keynote to WWDC10:
iPhone HD/4G
Whilst the details are still largely speculative, it’s fairly certain that there will be a new phone announced today. Apple has suffered from some fairly major leaks this time round, so we’re fairly certain we’ll be seeing a new iPhone with...
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A week with the iPad: our Home screens
A week ago, the iPad was officially launched here in the UK. It was a long couple of months that we spent eyeing our American cousins’ tablet experiences with envy. During that period, pebble.it got to spend limited time with a few iPads, we even fixed a few problems, but it would be nothing like having our own…
Well, that time has finally come. Perhaps the most telling statistic is only 2...
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IE9 is still behind the times
Although it has gradually been loosing market share to competitors like Safari, Firefox and Chrome, Internet Explorer is still the dominant browser in many industries. For a long time web creatives have pushed Microsoft to improve support for web standards and to their credit they have been improving things.
A biased report
The Internet Explorer Team recently published a report of tests...
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So long and thanks for all the... iPads?
Life imitates art. Satire site, The Onion, published an article on the iPad by ‘Beepo The Dolphin’ back in March. Now researchers in Mexico are actually using the touch screen device to communicate with our aquatic friends.
Steve Jobs at the D8 Conference
The trademark black polo-neck and jeans appeared last night as Steve Jobs took the stage at the Wall Street Journal’s D8 conference last night. Fielding questions from hosts Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg, as well as the attending audience, he spoke openly about the loss of the prototype iPhone 4G, the ‘war’ with Adobe over Flash and the origins of the iPhone and iPad [spoiler:...
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iPad for Business
Apple’s sleek, silver-backed iPad will be officially hitting European shores sometime towards the end of May. So where does the wonder-pad sit in the workplace, or to ask a more important question: how can you convince your boss that the iPad is a necessary business purchase?
Let’s first consider the OS. Since launch of Apple’s original iPhone, the iPhone OS has been extended to 2 further...
May 2010
2 posts
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Rework, by 37signals.
37signals, creator of online tools such as Basecamp and Highrise (both used by pebble.it), is one of pebble.it’s long term sources of inspiration. Their ethos towards business and obvious success is compelling to say the least. Their new book, Rework, gives a fantastic look at their thoughts on business and why going against convention may be the way to go. It also serves as some great...
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Fetching and caching Google Calendar data in Rails
Recently we had a requirement to show Google Calendar data for a client on a Rails intranet project. The requirements were a bit outside what’s offered by the embedded iFrame option so we needed a better solution to retrieve Google calendar data.
Options for getting data from Google Calendar
The simplest option is just to use the iFrame that Google provide that is accessible from your...