Yankee Swap...a fun bonding experience

This year my cousins are holding a Yankee Swap for all our relatives.

For those who are unsure what Yankee Swap is -- everyone brings in one gift. Depending on various factors, a limit is placed on the maximum price of the gift. This year it's $105. There is an algorithm our family uses to determine this number:
[((20 * household income of richest family members)/(The household income of the poorest family members)) - ((The cost per hour of the venue where event is held + The number of drinks the heaviest drinker put on the tab last year) * The Jewish calendar year)] * 1 = Maximum price of the gift

OK, so -- you each draw a number. The person with the lowest number picks a gift first. Then the next person can either take that person's gift or pick a gift from the unopened gifts. If your gift gets picked you must pick from the unopened gifts.

What do I bring as a gift you ask? Simple. I get a really big box and place one pack of cigarettes inside and fill the dead space with shipping Styrofoam blocks.
(Reminder, $105 is the maximum. $5.75 is below that max.)
Why do I do this? Because my uncle pays me $20 to do it. When its his turn, he lets his daughter pick his gift and knows she'll always pick the biggest box, but he wants something he'll enjoy.

One year we held a Secret Santa, but that didn't go over well, you know, because of the whole being Jewish thing.

Esquire -- man at his best?

Esquire is a magazine for men, I think. I never read it before, but this month they released the first ever Augmented Reality magazine. And if you know me, I'm all about AR...with all the holding up images to your webcam to start a video. I really liked what it added to the magazine. What I did not like was the magazine itself.

This magazine made me feel incredibly unmanlike to say the least. At one point calling a 5'8" guy vertically challenged. I'm 5'6" and I do not consider myself vertically challenged. Maybe I am to most people, but I never really thought about it like that until now.

As I turned the pages, I noticed a noxious smell wafting up my nose. A scented ad? IN A MEN'S MAGAZINE? What planet is this?!

They did have a good gift guide, even better than the guide in this year's Wired in my opinion, but that didn't make up for how awfully pretentious the magazine was. And honestly, what made the gift guide good was that it was very pretentious.

Perhaps this is well-known; Esquire is for pricks. Now all the people on the subway totally think I'm a prick for reading it. This makes me feel worse than that time I pretended to read the Wall Street Journal in public.

I should have known better from the tagline, "Man at his best," but like a trout in a fishing video game, I bit the AR bait.

Whiteboard of Black Friday netbook fury

My friend and I are obsessed with getting the best deal possible on a netbook this Black Friday. Check out his whiteboard:
Here is what we decided to do.
Buy this Gateway netbook from Best Buy for $280 via in-store pickup now.
Then, on Black Friday, go to Best Buy to try to get this Compaq netbook for $230.

If I get the Compaq netbook, then I don't pickup the Gateway. The order will be canceled in eight days, according to my friend.

If I don't get the Compaq netbook because it's sold out, then I pickup my Gateway.

Two other tempting deals are Target's $199 Acer, which expires today, and Radio Shack's $250 Acer Black Friday deal.

Whatever you do, don't go shopping without a game plan!

UPDATE: I got this one.

Steve Martin music video: Another contest I entered

Despite losing the last music video contest I entered, I've decided to enter another one. This time I had to create a music video for Steve Martin's song "Wally on the Run" featuring a dog.
Voting 5 stars would be awful nice of you.

Wally on the Run - Darren's contest entry
by gurudarren

Comparison: Submitting an app to iTunes App Store vs. BlackBerry's App World

It's a very different process between developing for and submitting to the iTunes App Store and BlackBerry's App World.

Here are the basic steps to get an app into iTunes:
1. Go to the iPhone Dev Center.
2. Register for free.
3. Login and download the iPhone Software Development Kit (SDK). This is free and includes everything you need to start writing iPhone apps on your Mac.
4. Join the iPhone Developer Program. The Standard Program is $99. The Enterprise Program, meant for companies designing in-house apps, is $299. It took me less than 24 hours to get approved for the Standard Program.
5. Develop, debug and test your app.
6. Submit your app through iTunes Connect found in the iPhone Dev Center.
7. Wait for approval.
8. Promote your app.

Now the process for App World:
1. Go to the BlackBerry Developer Zone.
2. Register for free.
3. Figure out what you need to download. If you're starting from scratch, you can download the BlackBerry Java Development Environment. To make the JDE work, you'll need the Java SE Development Kit (JDK). Then download the Mobile Data System (MDS) simulator. You'll need this to make the BlackBerry simulator connect to the internet. Next, download the BlackBerry simulator. All of this is free to download and requires Windows.
4. Develop, debug and test your app.
5. Request signing keys from RIM. This process took me several days. First, their web form wasn't working, so I had to fax in my application form. The good news is that it only costs $20 and allows you to distribute your apps on your own site. But, if you want to get a spot in App World...
6. Apply to be an App World Vendor. This costs $200 upfront, paid through PayPal only. From there, you'll have ten application submissions. After those ten run out, you'll have to pay another $200 to submit ten more times. Rejected submissions count against your ten.
7. Wait for approval.
8. Promote your app.

Eight magical steps for both, by my count, but you be the judge if they are equally developer-friendly. True, there are a lot of resources out there for BlackBerry developers, but they are much more scattered than for iPhone devs. Apple gives you pretty much everything you need once you sign in. Try navigating BlackBerry's dev site, and you'll probably get overwhelmed. Apple did everything it could to make developing as easy as possible, bummer RIM couldn't do the same. If you want to check out the selection of apps for BlackBerry you can visit App World. The site Uquery.com lets you search iPhone apps without iTunes.

I would be remiss if I didn't mention Apple gets very poor marks when it comes to having a clear app acceptance policy, since many developers complain their app was rejected for no good reason...including Google.