[coneybeare code]

UPDATE: 7/12/10 10:16PM

All functionality seems to have been restored. Whether this was a hiccup in the system (probable) or a reversal of the blocking we will never know.  I am just glad that it has been resolved with minimal emails/posts on my part.

--------------------------------------------------

I have an iPhone app called Obama Speeches. It is an app that publishes the weekly addresses of the President, along with other important speeches made by him. All content is in the public domain, and the content is retrieved from public URL's. I have been using the same script for over a year to automatically pull down the content, until today. I started getting 404's.

A quick wget of the feed URL confirmed this to be true:

[ps6736]$ wget http://www.whitehouse.gov/podcast/video/weekly-addresses/rss.xml
--07:03:09--  http://www.whitehouse.gov/podcast/video/weekly-addresses/rss.xml
           => `rss.xml'
Resolving www.whitehouse.gov... 65.200.11.24, 65.200.11.25
Connecting to www.whitehouse.gov|65.200.11.24|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 404 Not Found
07:03:10 ERROR 404: Not Found.

Hmmm. I checked on a few other machines and found that it was going through fine. WTF? I tried using CURL, open-uri and other forms of fetching the RSS feed from whitehouse.gov but they still blocked me or redirected my requests from this machine. Every attempt to connect from other machines worked fine.

coneybeare $ wget http://www.whitehouse.gov/podcast/video/weekly-addresses/rss.xml
--2010-07-12 10:03:45--  http://www.whitehouse.gov/podcast/video/weekly-addresses/rss.xml
Resolving www.whitehouse.gov... 64.81.79.72, 64.81.79.70
Connecting to www.whitehouse.gov|64.81.79.72|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 97387 (95K) [application/rss+xml]
Saving to: `rss.xml'

100%[=====================================>] 97,387       239K/s   in 0.4s    

2010-07-12 10:03:46 (239 KB/s) - `rss.xml' saved [97387/97387]

I also checked other URL's to make sure this machine actually was connected an lo and behold, I could get a connection. Don't worry, I have it working again through tunneling into other machines to fetch the feed but I shouldn't have to — Public domain is public domain.

I think that whitehouse.gov is unhappy with my app (and it's success) competing with theirs and tried to take me down. The problem is that I am doing nothing illegal here and they have no right to block access to the public feeds and content. Of course, saying this makes me a conspiracy theorist but what else can I deduce from the situation?

Hey US Gov: If you have a problem with my frequency or method of fetching the public data, please try to contact me instead of shutting me off completely.

In Ambiance, I use some customized AVAudioPlayers to play the apps audio. When possible, these AVAudioPLayers use hardware decoding of the audio files which speeds up the audio processing considerably and frees the software from having to dedicate resources to the process.

err = AudioQueueStart(audioQueue, NULL);
if (err)
{
    [self failWithErrorCode:AS_AUDIO_QUEUE_START_FAILED];
    return;
}

// set the software codec too on the queue.
UInt32 val = kAudioQueueHardwareCodecPolicy_PreferSoftware;
OSStatus ignorableError;
ignorableError = AudioQueueSetProperty(audioQueue, kAudioQueueProperty_HardwareCodecPolicy, &val, sizeOfUInt32);
if (ignorableError)
{
    return;
}

I use Google Analytics in my iPhone apps to track how my customers are using them. It is very useful for determining the answers to questions such as:

I have modified the
library with an hexadecimal editor, I have used 0xed
(http://www.suavetech.com/0xed/0xed.html), and changed the first
letter of the string, the g, by a dot. The library seem to work and
generates the file. I have changed the first letter because I don't
know if you can add a new character to the string in a binary file
without side effects, and this way the length of the string and
library remains the same.

- Antonio Cabezuelo ( tapsandswipes.com )

The last two days were pretty bad for me.  I fucked up bad.  I mean really bad. really really bad.  As a developer you expect bugs, and even though you do your testing and QA, some always slip through the cracks.

"WHAT HAPPENED TO AMBIANCE I PAID FOR!"

"Was one of my favorite apps"

"FUUUUUUUUCCCCCCCCCCKKKKKKK UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU"

In implementing the new (yet-to-be-released) html Ambiance audio pages, I wanted to take advantage of modern browsers support of the tag. I loaded it up with a flash fallback but for some reason, in Firefox (!!!), mp3's cannot be played with html5 audio. Ambiance uses mp3 files and caf files, neither of which are supported by Firefox and html5.

I was left with 2 choices:

1. Convert the entire Ambiance library to ogg just for firefox users.
2. Fine tune the javascript to properly fall back onto the flash AudioPlayer

I decided that ogg sucks and I would not waste any time doing the conversions, so I went for number 2.

Using code from html5doctor as a guide, and using the Standalone Flash WPAudioPlayer, I came up with the following code snippet that seems to work in all browsers.

It pretty much speaks for itself, but here is quick explanation. First, the html5 audio tag is placed on the page with the id="audioplayer". Next, some javascript runs that checks a few things and if any of them fail, it replaces the id="audioplayer" element with the fallback flash player. Of the things it checks, it checks that the browser can create the audio element (html5 supported), then it check that the browser can play a filetype of audio/mpeg (mp3). If any of these fail, it will go to flash. This works on all the browsers I have tested on, including firefox, but I make no guarantees. Just from code inspection, if the user has javascript disabled, it won't work. But I don't care. Who really wants to provide support for those (L)users anyway ;)

Hope it helps.

In iPhone app design, it is important to find a balance between customization and familiarity.  Many times, subtle differences are all you need to make yourself stand out from the crowd.  While doing the Ambiance 3.0 redesign, I wanted something to make my list of content a little different than all the other cookie cutter table views out there.

Because you found your way here, I am assuming you already know what symbolicatecrash is and when/why you would use it.  If not, take a detour here and come back.  This tool has been great but is very temperamental.  It worked for a while when I first started, then it broke and stopped giving results.  I applied the Alan Quatermain Fix, but things still weren't right.

(via http://appoftheday.com/app/Ambiance )

Its a great honor to be named alongside apps like Tweetie 2 and DropBox. This is great!