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Ten New Zealanders who downloaded an app on Facebook could have exposed up to 63,714 of their compatriots to the data mining tactics of Cambridge Analytica.

VS Code can do that

All the best things about Visual Studio Code that you didn't know

Why Does Sweden Have so Many Start-Ups?

Stockholm produces the second-highest number of billion-dollar tech companies per capita, after Silicon Valley

The Shorter Your Sleep, the Shorter Your Life: The New Sleep Science

...once people know of the powerful links between sleep loss and, among other things, Alzheimer’s disease, cancer, diabetes, obesity and poor mental health, they will try harder to get the recommended eight hours a night...

The Coming Software Apocalypse

It’s been said that software is “eating the world.” More and more, critical systems that were once controlled mechanically, or by people, are coming to depend on code.

Cross Platform development with VS Code

A quick tip for when using Visual Studio Code in a cross platform team.

Clipy a replacement for Clipmenu

Was really happy to find a replacement for the now unsupported clipboard manager Clipmenu today. It's called Clipy and acts just the same as Clipmenu but has a new snippet manager.

How the Wealth Gap Affects New Zealand More Than Anywhere Else

New Zealand was colonised under the premise of beating the class system. Our image of ourselves as a laid-back egalitarian utopia is ingrained in our vernacular: 'Kiwi ingenuity,' or 'She'll be right.' But this reputation appears to be misleading.

You Are the Product

In the final three months of the US presidential campaign, the top-performing fake election news stories on Facebook generated more engagement than the top stories from major news outlets such as the New York Times, Washington Post, Huffington Post, NBC News and others.

Social Media Is The New Smoking

Will social media become the new smoking? Will browsing your phone anticipating the next notification become a dirty habit that others will shun you for?

Recreate React from the ground up

In this five part series, we will “recreate” React from the ground up, learning how it works along the way. Once we’ve finished, you should have a good grasp of how React works, and when and why it calls the various lifecycle methods of a component.

Design Your Personal Growth

In recent conversation, I discovered many of my friends are trying to grow, but struggling to make progress. I dug deeper and realized, growth frameworks are not widely known or practiced.

High Performance React: 3 New Tools to Speed Up Your Apps

React is usually pretty fast, but it’s easy to make small mistakes that lead to performance issues. Slow component mounts, deep component trees, and unnecessary render cycles can quickly add up to an app that feels slow.

I Got Hacked and All I Got Was This New SIM Card

Even when you do the right things to increase your security, social engineering can bypass it all.

Stealing Your Way to Original Designs

Dan Mall on how to steal your way to original designs.

Facebook, for the First Time, Acknowledges Election Manipulation

Facebook has acknowledged for the first time that malicious actors used the platform during the 2016 presidential election as part of a campaign with the intent of harming the reputation of specific political targets.

TVNZ to Live Stream Free-to-Air Channels

TVNZ has started live streaming its free-to-air channels along with its Duke on-demand service via a revamped tvnz.co.nz web site, and has promised to make the service available on Apple TV and on Google’s Chromecast.

Announcing TypeScript 2.4 - Dynamic Import Expressions

Dynamic import expressions are a new feature in ECMAScript that allows you to asynchronously request a module at any arbitrary point in your program.

How AI Will Affect UX (and Vice Versa)

Stephen Moyers on how AI and UX are inextricably linked and how UX professionals must learn to use AI as a design and development tool.

Sega Forever Brings Sonic and Other Classics to iOS

Sega has released classic Sega games under the banner Sega Forever. The first titles released are Sonic the Hedgehog, Comix Zone, Altered Beast, Kid Chameleon, and Phantasy Star II.

Community Update: Unsplash Branded License and ToS Changes

Unsplash has launched their own branded license and updated their terms to add new restrictions and remove CC0 from their platform.

What to Expect From JavaScript ES2017 - the Async Edition

Some interesting new features in JavaScript to look forward to using.

Google & Facebook, the real spy networks

John Naughton: What bugged him (pardon the pun) was the unfairness of having state agencies pilloried, while firms such as Google and Facebook, which, in his opinion, conducted much more intensive surveillance than the NSA or GCHQ, got off scot free. His argument was that he and his colleagues were at least subject to some degree of democratic oversight, but the companies, whose business model is essentially “surveillance capitalism”, were entirely unregulated.

How to Set Up Two-Factor Authentication on All Your Online Accounts

Just about any account you own on the internet is prone to being hacked — and one of the easiest ways to add an extra layer of security is to enable two-factor authentication.

Winter of Xamarin 17

I was lucky enough to attend the Microsoft Winter of Xamarin 2017 event in Auckland on Saturday the 17th of June. It was held in Beca House Auditorium, a very nice venue located in Pitt Street, Auckland.

Google Hires Veteran Chip Designer Away From Apple to Build Custom Chips for Pixel Smartphones

Google has hired veteran chip architect Manu Gulati, who worked at Apple for the past eight years, according to Variety.

6 UX Design Mistakes Costing Companies Millions

Caroline White: In a recent UserTesting study, 36% of companies reported that their UX budget had increased since last year, and 27% said that the increase was due to a change in attitude towards user research.

A Complete Guide to Switching From HTTP to HTTPS

Vladislav Denishev: HTTPS is a must for every website nowadays: Users are looking for the padlock when providing their details; Chrome and Firefox explicitly mark websites that provide forms on pages without HTTPS as being non-secure; it is an SEO ranking factor; and it has a serious impact on privacy in general. Additionally, there is now more than one option to get an HTTPS certificate for free, so switching to HTTPS is only a matter of will.

The Company Behind WordPress Is Closing Its Gorgeous San Francisco Office Because Its Employees Never Show Up

Matt Mullenweg: We got an office there about six or seven years ago, pretty good lease, but nobody goes in it. Five people go in it and it’s 15,000 square feet. They get like 3,000 square feet each. … There are as many gaming tables as there are people.

An Introduction to the `fr` CSS Unit

The fr unit (a 'fraction') can be used when defining grids like any other CSS length such as %, px or em.

With New Browser Tech, Apple Preserves Privacy and Google Preserves Trackers

Google and the CBA want to address the visibly annoying aspects of ads while ignoring the deeper privacy issues. Instead, they should take their lead from Apple on this one.

Facebook is Broken

The problem is this: Facebook has become a feedback loop which can and does, despite its best intentions, become a vicious spiral. At Facebook’s scale, behavioral targeting doesn’t just reflect our behavior, it actually influences it. Over time, a service which was supposed to connect humanity is actually partitioning us into fractal disconnected bubbles.

React-Sketchapp - Painting with Code

React-Sketchapp is a new open source library from AirBnB that can render your React components to a Sketch design file.

Best of Build 2016 Conference

I've been slowly working my way through some of the videos from Microsoft's Build Conference for 2016. There are too many to watch almost, but here are some of my favourites.

Extended lease of life for old Macs

I have a 2010 Mac Book Pro (MBP) that I'd upgraded for every new release of OSX. Never had I done a fresh install until late last year. While it did help it's performance it didn't make a huge improvement. The PC was still sluggish.

The iPad whats it good for?

Recently I had to ask the question, what is an iPad good for? Can I get serious work done on it? While it's easy to use can it do all the things I need to do as a designer, developer and blogger?

Letterboxd app for iOS

Letterboxd has released their iOS app. A great addition to the service.

Replacement "Duck Heads"

Apple has determined that, in very rare cases, the two prong Apple AC wall plug adapters designed for use in Continental Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Korea, Argentina and Brazil may break and create a risk of electrical shock if touched.

Movies 2016 to February

A list of movies I've watched so far in 2016.

Electron Wrapper

It's now never been easier to make a desktop version of your favourite website/web app thanks to the Electron project.

React.js Conf 2016 Highlights - Day 2

Highlights from day 2 of React.js Conf 2016 including Exponentjs, gl-react, Falcor, Graphene, React-Native tools, obfuscating your React app, and Enzyme testing utilities.

React.js Conf 2016 Highlights - Day 1

Highlights from day 1 of React.js Conf 2016 including Draft.js, React Native Tools for VS Code, Continuous Integration and Code Push for React Native, Oy - email template tools for React, Nuclide React Native Tools, and Realm for React-Native.

Sideloading Apple TV apps

I've been playing around with app ideas for the new Apple TV after purchasing a USB Type C cable from Ali Express. One thing I've found is it's very easy to load 'other' apps onto the device such as Provenance - a Nintendo and Sega emulator.

FLUXless architecture?

Tomas Trajan walks through how to understand and implement Flux without libraries. Furthermore he has put together an example on Github using TypeScript, React & Webpack.

DVD authoring adventures

Dan Moren on Six Colors walks through his use of ffmpegX to convert a video to MPEG2 format for DVD.

TW64 fitness tracker review

The TW64 is a very cheap fitness tracker. I purchased mine during the 'Singles Day' AliExpress sale for US $9.65. Which when compared with Many other fitness trackers on the market it's very very cheap in comparison. But the old adage of you get what you pay for applies heavily with the TW64.

Prototyping tools compared

Tes Mat has done a great series on the current landscape of prototyping tools available starting off with proto.io, Pixate, Origami, Framer & Form replicating the on boarding of the IFTT app.

Getting started with ReactJS

ReactJS is all the rage in the JavaScript community. It allows you to build an apps UI as discrete components that pass the data in

Setting up a NAS

Setting up a NAS on your home network is easy with a Vodafone Station and Infuse.

Update iOS Sketch 3 Templates

A great productivity tip for iOS 9 design is to take advantage of a GUI template in Sketch 3.

Mobile Couch tips for iOS development

The guys at Mobile Couch have a great collection of tips for mobile development including keyboard shortcuts and tools for deployment.

Prepare for iOS 9

With the coming of iOS 9 tomorrow it will pay for you to get your iOS devices in a ready state for update day.

Getting experience with Swift

The best way I’ve found to learn new programming languages is simply to start using them. So when I had an app idea I wanted to itch I decided to use Swift 2 and jump straight in.

Siri Remote Only Available in Eight Launch Countries

The new Siri Remote will only be available in eight countries at launch.

Twitter, weighing up the noise vs good

I weight up the noise vs the good on Twitter

Android hardware makers stare into profitless abyss

Bill Bennett paints a bleak outlook for Android phone manufacturers.

Moving Swiftly Too

Allen Pike talks about his great and enjoyable transition to Swift since October last year.

Angular developers sigh with relief

The AngularJS community have felt a little nervous since the announcement of Angular 2 and the intention for it not to be backwards compatible. But can now breathe easy.

What is a senior developer?

Matt Briggs gives some broad descriptions of the levels of developers.

The Auckland Fibre situation

The Auckland fibre situation is an interesting one. Auckland is situated around a harbour. Over this harbour is a bridge which most of the fiber in the city runs across, with a small amount running via a much longer path around the harbour (think 30km longer fiber runs). Purchasing fiber between the areas of the city separated by the harbour costs more than a Kim Dotcom political party (i.e. a lot of money).

Kiwis winners in phone plan price war

With all the recent plans announced from 2 Degrees, Spark and Skinny New Zealander's are finally getting some value for money with the now available smartphone plans.

Life After Cancer: How the iPhone Helped Me Achieve a Healthier Lifestyle

Federico Vitticci outlines the apps that he currently uses to record his steps, calories, sleep patterns and even his coffee consumption.

Charles proxy is your friend

Charles Proxy is a great tool for inspecting mobile traffic and finding out what parameters are being passed.

Working remotely from home for 6 months

I’ve been working remotely now for over 6 months with Monitor from home. Its been a tough but overall enjoyable time. Here are some points about my experience and some advice.

The Year Without Pants: WordPress.com and the Future of Work by Scott Berkun review

Scott Berkun's book about working at Automattic, the company behind Wordpress.

Hardkour - a great runner puzzle game

My friend James has recently released his new game for mobile iOS (both iPhone & iPad), Android and Windows Mobile. It's a great endless runner with a simple puzzle mechanic and parkour influence.

Using VSCO Cam for iPad

Just like Shawn Blanc I too enjoy using VSCO cam for my photo post editing. The filters are truly great and with the iPad app now, I far more enjoy editing my photos on the big screen.

Weekend Wrap-up 9th November 2014

Responsive images, Google's quest for interactive design, the web of the future, Serial listeners, Afghanistan expats, Virgin Galactic pilot, Berlin Wall

Weekend Wrap-up - 2nd November 2014

After surviving Mr 6's tenpin birthday party this weekend, I managed to catch up on some great articles this week. Happy reading.

Long Weekend Wrap-up - 27th October 2014

It's Labour Day Weekend here in New Zealand and I'm having a pretty laid back weekend. It was my annual cleaning of the pool yesterday turning it from emerald green to blue with the help of a lot of chemicals and cleaning. Apart from that I've managed to read some great articles from my Instapaper queue to share with you. So enjoy the long weekend wrap-up.

Manage your server from your iPhone

Prompt 2 is an update to my favourite SSH terminal app for iOS. It allows me to manage, perform maintenance and repair my VPS (which hosts this website) from my phone anywhere I have an internet connection.

Easy iPhone screenshots with OS X Yosemite

A great new feature added to QuickTime player with OS X Yosemite is the ability to record your iPhones screen, simply by plugging it into your Mac with a lightning cable and setting the recording source to your phone.

Copying files from iOS to OS X via FTP

Transmit for iOS is a great way to transfer files to your Mac without using a cloud service.

Scanbot named best document scanning app for iOS

Scanbot my favourite document scanning app has been named the best over at The Sweet Setup.

Greatest Office Perk, No Office

The makers of WordPress learned years ago that the ultimate office perk is not having an office

iOS 8 Release Day Roundup

A roundup of the best articles related to the release of iOS 8 today.

Minecraft sale to Microsoft

Microsoft buying Minecraft for $2.5 billion might seem like a strange deal to some but let’s face it who would have the capital to buy the 3rd biggest game of all time and further build it.

Great Measurement Plugin Dimensions for Chrome

Felix Niklas has made a great plugin for Google Chrome that helps you measure Dimensions on your website or even mockups dragged into the browser.

Should I get a new iPhone 6

Tim Schmitz on his blog Minutes to Midnight walks us through the pros and cons of the new iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus and helps you answer the question: Which iPhone should I buy?

iPhone 6, 6 Plus and Apple Watch initial thoughts

Initial thoughts on the iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus and Apple Watch.

My iPhone Home Screen - August 2014

A look at the apps I use on my iPhone and why.

Self Quantifying

Quantifying ones self is becoming more mainstream. I've been doing it for a number of years now.

Preview CSS on your live site with Charles proxy

What if you could check/preview your CSS changes before you push your changes to your site? You can with Charles proxy.

Redesigning the 2 Degrees Mobile iOS app

I've been a 2 Degrees Customer for over a year and a half now. Their marketing campaigns are funny (with Rhys Darby), I like their fair mobile plans where your data and minutes roll over, you can use your monthly minutes in Aussie and their prices have made the

Create a rapid prototype with Marvel

Wouldn't it be great if you could create prototypes for an iOS app or a website using the design tool(s) your already familiar with (like Photoshop or Sketch)? Well you can with Marvel.

Remote: Office Not Required - The Best Bits

37 Signals new book Remote: Office Not Required is well worth the read if your interested in changing your company to work remote or you work remotely yourself.

SASS extension for Kerning fonts for the web

Enable kerning of your web font's thanks to Typekit's recommendations.

Black Pixels employees remote working tips

Janene Pappas from Black Pixel shares how working remote from Colarado works for her.

Supercharge Responsive Web Design with BrowserSync

A great way to speed up your workflow is to use a tool called BrowserSync. It's platform independent, so will work on Windows, Mac and Linux. Requires Node JS and doesn't require you to do anything special (install an app or setup a proxy) on your mobile devices (tablets & phones). Most importantly your site can be running as PHP, Rails or ASP.Net it doesn't matter.

New look blog design

I've launched a new look for my blog today. Tell me what you think.

App Store Rejection

My iOS app Mirror 7 was rejected from the App Store.

Icons for iOS 7

A couple of icon sets that you can use to compliment Apple's own pencil line thin icons.

Choosing to ignore email

Shawn Blanc makes the point about how he pre-decides to spend his time.

A life lived outside of technology

Ben Thompson reflects on why he got an internship with Apple.

Post-analysis of a competition

After the disappointing loss of the wedding competition for my fiancé and myself I thought it would be interesting to do some post analysis of the stats.

Help me win a mid-air wedding!

Mid Air Matrimony contest on More FM and would love to win.

Mac App store creating a new platform for UI design tools

Khoi Vinh notes the changes in UI design software now appearing thanks to the Mac App Store.

Find your passion

Ignore fear. Ignore the odds. Ignore the naysayers. Find your passion.

Remove the blog cruft

If you write online, make sure that your blog serves your readers’ needs as well as yours, and lends appropriate weight to your well-chosen words.

Non native apps - yuck!

For the most part I really cannot stand to use non-native applications. If there is a native app — and it is even reasonably decent, yeah I’m using it.

Glass is inevitable

Eric Meyer ponders about Google Glass and how it's inevitable.

Podcasts for developers and designers

Listen, Watch And Share!

The Designer-Developer spectrum

The designer-developer spectrum.

The iPhone Tab Bar

Petter Silfver gives us 5 rules for using the iPhone tab bar

Please Stop Fighting About Your Smartphone

Rapid prototyping tools for front end devs

Some great looking tools for rapid prototyping. With these tools you can quickly get your designs on to multiple devices.

Links for web developers and designers 13th March 2013

Some great links for the 13th of March.

Links for web developers / designers

New Responsive Theme

Today I launched my new theme for my blog. It's a very stripped back theme with a focus on typography and most importantly the content. It's a responsive theme, meaning content adjusts to certain breakpoints. Go ahead resize the browser if your on a desktop and watch it change.

Best Mac and iOS apps of 2012

My list of favourite apps for 2012 in no particular order across a range of devices and OS.

Clipboard history, why isn't this baked in?

Jeff Atwood had it right, why isn't clipboard history baked into the OS?

Create a 301/permanent redirect on Apache

After running my blog for Vote Daily Deals on a sub-domain for some time, some SEO suggestions I've been given is it's better to have your blog as part of the main URL. With the separate sub domain they are treated as two separate URLs in Google's indexing.

Time validation in ASP.Net MVC using a regular expression.

Just a quick tip for Time validation in ASP.Net MVC for your data model using a regular expression.

Using LESS CSS - a programmable stylesheet language

Using LESS for CSS

Bungy jumping, engagement and learning a whole lot of tech

What a full on 6 months I've just had. I got engaged, visited Queenstown and New Castle in Australia, Bungy jumped for the first time. And to top that off I started a new job at SpeEDI software and launched my own web application Vote Daily Deals.

Perfect Pixel and Pixel Perfect browser plugins

Ever had to build a web page for a picky web designer? One that will rake you over the coals for little things not matching their design? I have plenty of times... To save all the frustration and make sure I get it right first time I use one of my favorite tools.

Facebook Page Photo Gallery plugin for WordPress

I recently built a Wordpress site for some friends. Being very busy people they were struggling to use the sites theme for galleries (I was struggling too with it). Being iPhone users they had no problem uploading photos of their clients cars to their business Facebook Page.

Custom share and tweet buttons for Facebook and Twitter

I came across an issue with a design, where the client didn't want the standard Facebook Like and Twitter tweet buttons on their site. Here's how I created my own custom share buttons.

Travel hacking Air New Zealand

I was reading a great blog post on travel hacking from the team at LifeHacker. So I thought I'd give some of my pointers.

Running incompatible/out of date add ons in Firefox

Today I needed to use a plugin that was out of date with the latest version of Firefox (Firefox 6 is now out). The great Pixel Perfect Plugin, an awesome tool for checking your CSS/HTML layouts match your design by overlaying a graphic over top with opacity. Definitely check it out, helps keep me honest to the design.