Austin Hanson

Hey, lots of people have been asking for this, so here you go. I make no promises to it’s current state, if it still works, etc. To be honest, I don’t think it will but I might take some time tonight to look into it and fix it if I can find the time.

If I remember right, you’ll install and then want to do an update (which might be broken too :S).

Growlbook Beta v1.1

Wow, what a year.

It’s been a while since my last post and I apologize for that. When school gets a rolling things just keep piling on my to-do list and posting on my blog gets moved to the back burner. For those of you who’ve been using Growlbook, that was another thing that got pushed to the side and I don’t think I’ll be working on it any more. I only made it because I wanted facebook notifications without having the page open but my purchase of the Motorola Droid solved that problem. If you’re interested in picking up development let me know, I’ll ship you the source.

I think that covers “old business”, on to the new stuff.

I got a Droid a while ago and wow – what a great investment. So far, that little investment has netted me around $2500 – who’d have known mobile applications were so…flourishing. If you don’t know, I developed Droidbox, ERS (Event Ringtone Syncer), Texts From Last Night (TFLN) and a few others. I’ve a few other ideas I’m throwing around, including a facebook applications since I’ve yet to find something that does it well. I’ve also gotten involved with a company as the sole developer of something that might very well be huge – I hope it is anyway. That project will most likely steal much if not all of my free time this summer but will be well worth it.

With Droidbox has come a slew of unexpected fortunes, including a number of tech sector contacts in some really large companies that might prove really useful later on in life. I’m a bit disappointed that I was unable to stir interest in Dropbox themselves, either as a buyer of Droidbox or as a possible employer. In fact, I think a lot less of them with their complete lack of response of which I speculate is a result of my degree coming from South Dakota State University and not an “upper tier” university as they request on their website. Good for them I guess, they appear to have done just fine in getting an android developer who has made a subpar duplicate of my Dropbox client. Yeah, I’m bitter but I’ll survive – I’m in a great position with Sencore and don’t think anything with Dropbox would have changed.

My android escapades also gave me the opportunity to learn a ton about advertising. I made a Redbox application that listed promotional codes for free movies and added ad’s (served by AdMob) and saw instant revenue. Things have quieted down now, since Redbox caught on and changed how their codes worked (sorry ) and now the application is useless (despite still netting me ~$70 a month), but the experience has given me a new look on applications and how to monetize them.

I think I’ve done enough rambling. I’m pumped for this summer because I’m at a completely difference place then I was at last year. I feel like I’ve learned so much and have made so much progress in “life” in the past 9 months and am excited to see where things will go.

Brief post before I go to sleep. I just pushed out 1.1.2.1, a quick update for 1.1.2 which was also just pushed. Chance are you didn’t see 1.1.2, which is fine, 1.1.2.1 is what you want anyway. Changelog to come tomorrow after I’ve slept – or check the Facebook page.

Why am I releasing an alpha release? Because it supports auto-updating and includes support for messages – two options that I want to have open to me tomorrow when I get to work heh.

Enjoy.

Download Growlbook v1.1.1.0 (Installer) or Growlbook v1.1.1.0 (zipped)

1. If you don’t have Growl For Windows, download and install it.
2. Download the latest release, currently found here: Growlbook Beta v1.1.
   1. Extract the files contained in Growlbook-Beta-v1.1.zip to a directory of your choice.
      1. If using Windows XP or greater, you should be able to just double click on the file.
      2. If not, download and install an extraction program such as 7-Zip, Power Archiver, WinZip, etc.
3. Double click on Growlbook.exe in the directory you extracted the files.

Notes:
The only issue you might have is if you don’t have the latest .NET Framework (3.5) which you can download from here: .NET Framework 3.5 or via Windows Updates.

Screenshots:

I’ll throw some screenshots up tomorrow, for now, here is the link. It’s quite nice.

Current known issues:

• Logging out will sometimes disallow logging back in. Fix: Close Growlbook and open it back up.
• Enter doesn’t initiate the login process.
• Font issues.

Dependencies:

• Growl (Mac) or Growl For Windows (PC)
• .NET Framework 3.5

Growlbook Beta v1.1

Here’s a quick sneak peak of v1.1 – which is destined to be more stable, more jampacked with features and much more refined.

Ok. I got rid of the Any CPU flag and added a bit of error checking. I’ve also upgraded the version to (Beta) heh and for the time being removed stream post support.

I plan on re-writing most of the C# facebook api tonight. The api that’s out there is…quite honestly crap. Look for a new beta build of Growlbook tomorrow evening sometime. Give this test build a whirl though, let me know if you find any problems or have any suggestions.

Growlbook (Beta Build)

Growlbook notifies you whenever anything happens on Facebook via “Growl For Windows”.

Growlbook v1.0

These notifications are presently supported:

• Friend Requests
• Pokes
• Messages
• Event Invites
• Group Invites
• New stream posts

What’s still in the works:

• Comments on relatable posts
• More depending upon requests from users or if I find something that is missing…

Security:

There are two methods to login:

• Enter your credentials in and Growlbook will auto login for you when ran (your credentials are saved and encrypted)
• Use Facebooks login form (your credentials are not saved)

Note: Even though your credentials are saved using the first method, I have taken some steps to encrypt them. It’s not perfect though, so if you’re worried, just don’t enter them in.

Download: Growlbook v1.0 (zip)

I started the weekend off by sleeping in until around 1pm and then making my way across town to test drive a Cobalt. I drove it around a bit and determined it wasn’t all that bad; the acceleration seemed fine and I wasn’t cramped for my height (6′3″). I’ll admit, things were looking good for the Cobalt right up until a few hours ago when I started totaling up my school loans.

As they say, “ignorance is bliss,” and it was definitely nice while it lasted. It would seem FAFSA can really add up and I’m in a position where I can no longer convince myself that a car is worth digging further down into the steep hole I’m already in. Needless to say, I’ve lived well in my loan-fueled, fantasy world for a good four years now and it’s time I worked a little (lot) to clear things up.

Goodbye new car fantasy and hello to working during the school year.