It was available and I think I managed to get one. I have yet to receive an email confirmation, but it shows up in my list of past purchases from Play. I bought it around 8:40 PST.
I tried it on iPhone 4 as well and it does speak some answers. Touch the "i" button on the left of the red microphone button and make sure "Speak answers back" at the bottom is turned on.
For some reason I had English (Australian) active in the Google language settings even though I don't live there. It started reading the answers when I switched that to English (US).
Not quite as important, but it seems that Caps Lock isn't being registered either (did the Rails demo and some of the constants would be rather tedious with only the shift key).
I think this post touches on an interesting point about web development (might apply to other areas too, but the web seems particularly bad). A lot of things appear to be easy (Rails, Django, Heroku, AWS, JQuery etc.), but the number of different components you need to manage is still overwhelming. Furthermore, you often end up having to develop a low-level understanding of problems that someone else claimed to have solved for you. While this low-level knowledge is useful, it does add significant amounts of complexity for beginners and people who might not be committed as the hardcore full timers out there.
As we seem to push more and more for the "everybody should learn how to code" mindset, I think there is a big opportunity for someone out there to combined managed and protected environments with the ability to write your own code. I don't know if the solution is unifying languages across front and back end or a better set of abstractions, but I see way too many obstacles for 'simple' coding (although the situation today is without a doubt better than ever), and I imagine this is some of what the author of this post ran into.
I wish that the learn-to-code movement had a greater emphasis on code as a utility belt, rather than "here's how to make a social website!"
Web dev is exceedingly complex and involves a lot more memorization of arcane things than does general purpose programming. Whereas for a non-technical founder, the important thing to learn is how aspects of business and content can be handled in modular, abstract ways (something that is apparent after learning loops and methods).
Learn enough code to understand implications of such things as granularity of data, taxonomy, and automation...if a novice can generate a static webpage chart from mashing up multiple data sources, that is hugely useful
It would be great if everybody saw code as a utility belt, but I imagine that it would be unrealistic to expect people to develop those skills. When I think about what kinds of tools I use in, say, home DIY projects, I tend to have a decent understanding of a narrow part of the field but not a lot of knowledge about the area in general. I know how to change a light bulb or a fuse or fix a power strip, for instance, but I don't claim to know much about circuits in general.
Parent is referencing the Twitter blog post about changes in Version 1.1 of the API which stirred some controversy because of the new rules and limitations for 3rd party developers. See the link below:
It's a joke? I totally missed that! My perception for these things is rather obtuse, so thanks for pointing it out. I thought that perhaps the Twitter devs themselves had jumped the shark.
I'm a current student, and I believe that a major reason behind the skyrocketing enrollments in CS is that the introductory classes are immensely popular and well-organized (disclosure: I TA a couple of those classes). There seems to be an idea in a lot of the other engineering departments that you have to suffer through the introductory classes in order to get to the interesting topics. The Stanford CS classes give people interesting challenges while covering a lot of the basics of CS. Of course there's still a long way to go after that, but it's a start. The second half of the introductory series is pretty rigorous, too, and I've seen at least a handful of interview questions I've been asked pop up in that class.
I don't know how many people were inspired by the iOS class, but it doesn't seem to be super popular on campus. I do know a fair amount of people (myself included) who had never programmed before Stanford and were simply motivated to keep going after the introductory sequence. There's definitely a snowball effect, but it wouldn't happen without a great curriculum.
Marco Arment said he's in touch with several developers and will choose one to be the official developer.
He noted that while several Android Instapaper clients exist, they use his iOS private API in addition to his public API, and he will only endorse one using his public API only (Can someone explain why that would be?).
i thought it was, but now that i look again i don't think it is. there was a story about papermill on theverge [1] the other day that heavily referenced marco's post, and i assumed that the point of all the marco references was that it was the endorsed app, but reading the article again they don't actually make that claim.
Be sure to click through the slides. The blog post may not be overwhelmingly useful, but the presentation has plenty of helpful examples of interface copywriting done right (and wrong, too).
I think the main difference between the two is that entrepreneurs have a viable alternative in working for an established company (if we can forget about the lack of jobs for a minute). Yes, musicians can work day jobs too, but there are hardly as many openings for professional musicians as there are for professional programmers. The startup analogy is valid, but for recording artists, taking the leap is often in direct conflict with whatever pays the bills.
"For now, Snapcash is available to Snapchatters in the United States who have a debit card and are 18 or older."