Shared Thoughts » Tools

Video Tutorials in a Snap

Phillip Flores — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 04:40:55 +0000

A couple of weeks ago I came across one blog entry that mentioned a site that enabled you to create short (max 5 minutes) screencasts. I decided to visit the site (http://www.screenr.com) and see for myself how great this thing is. I have to say it is good for what it is. It is no Camtasia but I think it is good enough for what it is.

It allows you to select an area of your screen that you wish recorded and then all you have to do is to press the record button. The great thing with it too is that you can include sound/voice with it which really makes it very handy for making short tutorials. After you stop you can preview the video and then when you are happy with it publish. You can also download the video to your machine or copy the link just in case you want someone to have a look at the video.

A week or so ago I finished a WordPress site for a client and in order to help them add new entries in their website I created a short video using screenr explaining how to add a new entry. The video tutorial was about 3:30 minutes long and I was able to show exactly what steps they needed to do.

One good thing screenr is that instead of trying to explain a solution to a proble over the telephone or via email to my clients I can simply create a short video and send it to them.

Free SVN Repository

Phillip Flores — Sat, 06 Nov 2010 02:13:30 +0000

My development environment is replicated across three (3) machines, two desktops and a laptop. I’ve learnt via the hard way that one needs to have a backup as well as source code repository. I have been using the server version of VisualSVN for sometime which I installed in one of the desktop machines together with the TortoiseSVN client. I did not have any problem with this setup except that I started to do more of my development work using the laptop outside the house and issues of trying to make sure that the source code is consistent between the two machines arose. That is when I decided to look for ways to be able to access the source code regardless of which machine I was using. I considered using Google Docs or any of the other file sharing sites e.g. DropBox, ADrive, etc.

I then did a search on online svn repositories and discovered that there many sites that provide such a service. Being a single person developer with not enough disposable funds for monthly subscription I naturally looked for sites that offered the service free. I did not mind if I was not getting all the features that paid subscribers get. All I was after was being able to save my source code and access them anywhere.

After some looking around I came across Assembla. They offer hosting for three different kinds of source code repositories e.g. subversion, GIT, and mercurial. Their free subversion hosting consists of 2GB space, unlimited repositories, and unlimited users. I think this is a good deal from whatever angle you look at it.

I have been using it for a couple of months now and I have to say it has been serving me well and my source development machines are working on the same code base all the time. Here is a link to their site:

Bug & Issue Tracking, GIT & SVN / Subversion Hosting | Assembla.

iPhone Simulator and Development Environment

Phillip Flores — Fri, 05 Nov 2010 13:10:45 +0000

If you are interested in getting into iPhone development take a look at this product. I downloaded their trial version a couple of weeks ago and it has a lot of promise. Now they have started selling it and it costs US$99.95 (perpetual license).

iPhone Emulator for Windows | Create Mobile Applications | Test iPhone Apps | iPhone Simulator | MobiOne.