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Erica Sadun

Biography

Erica Sadun holds a PhD in Computer Science from the Georgia Institute of Technology. She has written, co-written, and contributed to almost two dozen books about technology, particularly in the areas of programming, digital video, and digital photography. An unrepentant geek, Sadun has never met a gadget she didn't need. Her checkered past includes run-ins with NeXT, Newton, and a vast myriad of both successful and unsuccessful technologies. When not writing, she and her geek husband parent three adorable geeks-in-training, who regard their parents with restrained bemusement.

Books

Articles

Blog

Thoughts on 1.1.4 programming

May 02 2008

Quite a few readers have asked me whether I intend to continue programming for 1.1.4 firmware. In a nutshell, the answer is "no". And here are my reasons why. read more

iPhone SDK4 debuts, Panda/P2 protocol goes MIA

April 25 2008

As the new iPhone SDK hit the streets, I decided to take another look at those iPhone Panda protocols I wrote about just a month ago. To my slight surprise, the protocols disappeared from Apple's public iTunes listings. read more

Seven hours

April 24 2008

Seven hours. Go on and ask. I know you're dying to. What could possibly waste seven hours of time in a developer's life? Why downloading an SDK and installing new firmware! Needless to say, I'm in a particularly grumpy mood this morning. read more

Open iPhone: unsandboxing apps on pwned development iPhones

April 18 2008

So you pwned your 2.0 dev phone. Now what? You can use the open source toolchain to build a limited set of tools, primarily command-line ones or you can use your SDK to build real apps that you can run outside the sandbox. Here's how. read more

Just Enough Computing: Part 1

April 11 2008

When it comes to portable computing, the iPhone works in that it gets the job done. Its screen is barely big enough to read comfortably. Its onscreen keyboard will never match up fully to the needs of a trained typist accustomed to physical data entry. It's a gadget made from… read more

Open iPhone SDK: Adding Application Badges

April 04 2008

If you’ve used the iPhone or iPod touch for any time, you’ve likely seen the small red badges that appear over applications on the home screen. These might indicate the number of missed phone calls or unread emails that accumulated since the user last opened Phone or Mail. read more

Open iPhone SDK: Building a UIProgressBar

April 01 2008

Progress bars allow end-users to anticipate wait times. They present bars that fill from left to right. These bars indicate the degree to which a task has finished. Progress bars work best for long waits where providing state feedback allows your users to retain the feel of control. read more

TMI: Apple's AppStore Protocol Goes Live

March 24 2008

At this time, Apple provides 5 AppStore calls to its new p2-panda service plus a call to legal terms and conditions. I'm swayed by Ryan Block's excellent insight that p2 probably stands for Purple 2, the iPhone's code name read more

iPhone: Open SDK vs Closed SDK

March 21 2008

Hackers have been hard at work updating the open source iPhone SDK to work with Apple's newest unreleased firmware and here is what they have found: nearly everything that worked with earlier firmware continues to compile and work with the newer firmware. read more

iPhone developer program rejection notes

March 14 2008

What happens when you offer free technical support and application distribution for only $99? An oversupply of iPhone developer wannabees and an undersupply of Apple developer support resources. read more

Fixing Terminal TTY errors

March 14 2008

Say you were working in an unspecified but extremely buggy beta SDK. Say you suddenly started encountering "could not open a new pseudo tty" errors whenever you tried opening a new terminal windows. There's not much help out there on the net for this extremely hypothetical situation. read more

Things you *really* need to know about the SDK

March 07 2008

I was up way way late and woke up way way early. I didn't sleep so you could--here are important things you need to know about the SDK. read more

Accessing all your onboard photos from your iPhone database

March 07 2008

Last weekend, I decided to expand Coverflow to work with my entire photo album. This involved exploring the MusicLibrary and PhotoLibrary frameworks to find out how I could extract a complete set of albums and their pictures. The PLPhotoLibrary class proved to hold the key. With it, I could request… read more

Downloading the SDK

March 06 2008

If you have even the slightest interest in the iPhone SDK be aware that Apple's servers are getting slammed from every direction. read more

Two New LayerKit Animations

March 02 2008

After dumping strings from LayerKit, I'm pleased to have found two new previously unknown animations: mapCurl and mapUnCurl. These are the animations used in Google Maps to reveal the settings pane. read more
Erica Sadun