Lack of parameter support in Google Maps

Google Maps on its public Web site has an extensive set of parameters. However, other than adding an optional descriptive label using +(Label), none of these are supported at this time. You cannot, for example, use the t= parameter to specify the Satellite map, the z= parameter to indicate the map zoom level, or even layer=t to turn on the Traffic display.

cUi - Contacts Extension to iUI

In working on my iPhone programming book, I have been trying to emulate the iPhone Contacts UI. Joe Hewitt's iUI provides a great starting point, but unless I missed them, I don't think iUI styles cover all of the control types. So, I created cui.css, which extends iUI to include the top contact info box, hot buttons for phone numbers, read-only boxes for addresses, and action buttons. I had to make a tweak to iui.js to emulate the visual effect of the built-in phone and map buttons. Feedback is definitely welcome.

Download cUi.
View iProspector example. NOTE: Sales Leads > Jack Armitage is the only one coded to get to the Contacts page.

A great step-by-step guide to hacking the iPhone

I needed to get screenshots from the iPhone for my book. But, there is no way to capture the screen with its built-in capabilities. However, Erica at TUAW.com developed a command-line screenshot utility to do just what I needed. However, in order to use her utility, you need to a fair amount of geeky things to your iPhone in order to make it work. Here's a link to a great step-by-step guide if you want to learn how to hack into your iPhone. It took me about 2 hours to make it through it, but now the whole thing works like a charm.

By the way, to automate the screenshot procedure, I recommend using two Expect scripts to capture the screen and then copy back over to your Mac. I then encapsulate those two calls into an AppleScript. Doing this, you can perform a screenshot through a simple mouse click.

Capturing two-finger scrolls

In writing my book, I have been working with the onmousescroll event to capture two-finger scrolling input and put an example together that demonstrates this. In this sample, a textfield becomes a scrollpad that controls the vertical position of a ball image.

View ScrollPad

iPhone Application Developer's Book

I am taking a break from my normal activities and am writing an iPhone application developer's book, focusing on Web 2.0 apps. I am having a ball working with this development platform.