Android.AppStorm: Reviews, Roundups, How-Tos & News!

After announcing the site a couple of months ago with our huge roundup of 100+ Absolutely Essential Android Apps & Tips, I’m incredibly excited to let you know that we’re officially launching Android.AppStorm today! If you’re an Android user or developer, we think you’ll find the latest AppStorm site to be a fantastic resource. Every […]

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Wanted: Awesome Staff & Guest Writers

In the past several months, we’ve had a lot of demand for more Titanium Mobile, Web App (jQuery Mobile, SenchaTouch, etc.), and Cross-Platform tutorials. In order to provide our readers with the content they want, we need more authors capable of publishing high-quality tutorials on these topics! In addition to the consistent “staff” positions, we’re […]

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Baby, It’s Cold Inside: One Man’s Search for the Perfect Ice Cube

Photo: Jonathan Snyder/Wired

Some say the world will end in fire. Some say it will end in ice. I hope it’s the latter. Finding a good ice cube to chill your cocktail is hell enough as it is.

Being serious about drinking means being serious about ice. And at a good bar, this is rarely a problem, as top bartenders have an easy shortcut: Kold-Draft icemakers. Kold-Draft’s perfect 1¼-inch cubes are legendary in the mixology scene, but the equipment isn’t remotely approachable for the home user: The company’s smallest unit ($2,500 street) produces 321 pounds of ice a day and weighs 174 pounds — and that’s without a bin to collect all the ice.

And so the real ice nuts have turned to hacking. My friend and fellow drinks-writer Camper English is so obsessed with ice that he freezes it at home in cooler-sized blocks in an attempt to create cubes of the perfect clarity for the sophisticate. It took him dozens of experiments, but he finally hit on the right formula, and Wired published it.

I don’t have the patience, time or physical space to generate ice by the cubic foot, so Wired.com asked me to find out how to get the very best cubes at home without resorting to getting rid of my frozen corn and IKEA meatballs.

I started that journey where most of us do: The freezer. I’ve got a modern fridge with an automatic icemaker, and I’ve long enjoyed the ice it creates.

Well, “enjoyed” is a strong word. I’ve tolerated it. The ice it spits out — when that damn metal shut-off bar doesn’t get kicked up by accident — is workerlike and unexceptional. It’s ugly ice. It’s cloudy and shaped like obese crescent moons, and it bobs around in your drink, all sharp edges and ugly aesthetics.

It’s like drinking a beverage made with frozen french fries. To compare this eyesore to a cocktail made with nice, cube-shaped ice is to immediately understand the importance of presentation.

My next stop was another all-too-familiar one: A bag of ice procured from my local Safeway. At $2.39 for a 10-pound bag, retail ice is not a bad deal. It’s cheaper than a lot of bottled water, even.

Your typical store ice does the trick when you’re trying to cool down a keg, but in a cocktail it’s a bad call. The shape works well enough, but it melts awfully fast.

Another big problem is that this ice tends to stick together, requiring an ice pick to free a handful of cubes from the conglomeration inside. And never mind that when I was shopping for the ice, half the bags in the case had been slashed open and were spilling their cubes out.

And that was the good bagged ice. How do I know that? Because my bag of ReddyIce carried the seal of the International Packaged Ice Association, the mark of quality to which all bags of ice aspire. (Suggested motto: “Yes, there is an International Packaged Ice Association.”)

I spoke to Jane McEwen, the IPIA’s executive director, who urged me not to settle for cheap, non-IPIA ice during my quest. She told me that ice is basically a wild no man’s land where few regulations exist, and those that do are not enforced.

“Ice is a food, and I don’t think every consumer understands that,” says McEwen. “Ice can harbor a variety of microorganisms, and some can even populate in the frozen state.” The IPIA is self-regulating, particularly with regard to food safety. But its 350 members represent only a tiny fraction of thousands of commercial ice producers, much of the product being made at the retail level.

McEwen insists that IPIA ice is not just better — colder, better shape, better clarity — it’s also safer. And she says that freezer ice smells bad.

But bagged ice wasn’t working for me the way I wanted it to, and storing 10 pounds of ice in my freezer was problematic.

I then turned my attention to a relatively new concept: Standalone home icemakers. My theory was that my freezer was not really designed to make ice. It was designed to freeze food. Perhaps a device dedicated to one thing and one thing only — icemaking — would prove more effective.

I found the NewAir AI-100SS, which is about the size and heft of a microwave oven, and which promises to turn water into ice in a span of just 15 minutes. My freezer can’t do that!

The excitement was soon dashed, and disappointment set in as I experimented with the NewAir. I loved that I could dial in what size ice cubes the unit would make, but the ice just wasn’t up to snuff.

Even on the largest settings, the cubes were cloudy, merely thimble-sized, and just didn’t get cold enough. In fact, they broke apart so quickly that they could have passed for that newfangled “chewable” ice the kids like so much. This gadget would be fine to keep out in your cabana by the pool, but in a snazzy cocktail, NewAir ice was a bust.

Not ready to call it quits and invest in a deep freeze I could use for ice by the block, I found one more source I thought might be worthwhile. On the Rocks: Bagged ice, but with a twist. On the Rocks is “premium” bagged ice in every sense of the word. The ice is made from spring water, ozonated, and frozen using a “slow freeze” method that eliminates air bubbles.

The resulting 1-3/8-inch-diameter oblique tubes are hard, dense, and exceptionally clear. They are flavorless, fit in any glass, and look pretty good. Even the bag is high-quality, a thick plastic shell with a built-in zip-style closure. And the smaller, 5-pound package is easy to fit into the freezer.

On the Rocks is, to be sure, the best ice I’ve come across for home use. But it’s expensive: $4 for 5 pounds, nearly four times as much as supermarket ice, and it’s impossible to find. In fact, the closest store to San Francisco where it’s sold is in (gulp) Connecticut. The company actually had to ship a sample bag to me … packed in a Styrofoam cooler filled with dry ice.

Until I can pick up On the Rocks at any Cali grocery store, it looks like I’m stuck with what my freezer decides to spit out, and the occasional bag of cheap ice when it’s time to party. Now that’s cold.

Full-time Job: Php And WordPress Coder

Dear programmers,

I need a VERY experienced programmer with DEEP knowledge in:

– PHP scripts
– MySQL
– WordPress themes and plugins
– Javascript
– Proficient English (writing skills)

My company sells custom PHP and WordPress scripts through our online store and we need someone to take care of customer support and to fix any bug reported by customers. This is a full-time job (8 hours a day), but obviously you get to work from your house with a flexible schedule.

If interested, send PM with the following info:

– Your area of expertise.
– Previous PHP and WordPress projects you’ve done recently.
– Your desired monthly salary.

IMPORTANT: I will NOT reply to copy/paste answers that do not address these three points.

Thank you.

E-store T-shirt Application

Main features:
-customer pick size and colour for a t-shirt, colour will instantly be applied to t-shirt image / preview.
-customer can upload an image, image will be applied to t-shirt image, uploaded image can be dragged – resized.
-customer has the possibility to add text to the t-shirt (also instantly applied to t-shirt image / preview).

The application must be compatible with one of following open source platforms:
-osCommerce
-Prestashop
-openCart

Preferable you have developed a similar application for one of the mentioned platforms before and you are able to provide us with links to (live) stores that use this application.

Joomla And Rstickets Pro

I have a Joomla site that uses the module RSTicketPro! and I want to improve:
allow the visitor to private parties
Retrieve the ticket number for display on a page after submission ticket.
Make a filter on the tickets posted for show only tickets non-confidential (A custom field (Confidential/No confidential) exists at the time of submission of the ticket)
If you speak French, it’s better for me

WordPress Expert Needed

WordPress Expert needed

I have a project that needs to be done in WordPress, there are a few plug-ins needed for the site, BUT I don’t want you to custom code them, all the modules can be found in the WordPress Extend section on their website (http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/).

VERY IMPORTANT:
I need the work done by Monday the 31st of January; you need to have Skype to talk to me as well if needed. PM me if you have any questions before you place a bid – Sample WP work will also be good.

DESIGN:
I have attached what I need the website layout to look like; the width will be 1000px, 3 column website. The most important thing here is the main and submenu system. I don’t want normal dropdowns, must be like the design, a sample is also available here: http://users.tpg.com.au/j_birch/plugins/superfish/#sample4 – I will provide the logo in high quality. Please read all notes on the design as well.

PROGRAMMING:
The following modules will be needed:
1. Events Calendar:
I must be able to post events in admin and have them show in the main page with a month view(grid view) of all the days and the upcoming events. A calendar with iCal where users can load the events to their calendar would be good. When ou click on an event, it needs to open a new page and show all the info for that event. It must have a similar look to Google Calendar with the grid layout.

2. Testimonials:
I downloaded a plug-in where admin can post testimonials (http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/flexi-quote-rotator/), this just need to be added to the website template. I also need a custom form to be created where people can post testimonials that the admin can manually add if approved. If you have a module that works similar we can look at it as well.

3. Newsletter Manager:
Need a newsletter manager that can have multiple categories where users can subscribe to and also unsubscribe from newsletter from their members area. Admin must be able to set a template for different newsletters and then be able to bulk mail them out when needed. Database is not more than 500 users.

4. Weekly Random Quote:
I want a module where the website will mail out on a weekly basis a quote that the admin has set up. This will just go out 1 x per week. Admin must be able to create the mini “newsletter”.

5. Online Shop
I want to use http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/eshop/ – You can just install and integrate to the site/template.

6. Amazon book widget: Not sure if this is available from WordPress or the Amazon website, but this little widget shows the books that I have selected and shows the cover, name and short description – This is not the most important thing right now, 1-5 above is the main focus.

Fix Penny Auction Price Bugs

NEEDS TO BE DONE IMMEDIATELY…. IF YOU BID, THEN STAY LOGGED IN AND KEEP CHECKING YOUR MESSAGES!!!

we have penny auction script on the cake php framework. that is not functioning correctly.

The problem is that sometimes the timer counts down and puts out a ‘paused’ message, and then resets back to 20 seconds …. sometimes it works fine.
…

Also sometimes the ‘highest bidder’ does not change…. sometimes it is fine.

Also the ‘you save’ value counts up instead of down when the price rises.

We actually have a complete working function in a different template… so you should be able to take it and plant the code into the faulty template.

we have many templates with similar faults and css layout issues.. but firstly we want this main template sorted out, then we can work thru all the other issues…. so lots of ongoing work, also we are building a portfolio of scripts and need bug fixes for a lot of them.

So all in all, we need a coder in php and mysql who has lots of time on their hands.

The budget is very small, but we have lots of small cute jobs and will pay for each one separately.

Prestashop / Jquery

Hello
Need disponible and ready to work people for a prestashop debug work
Need somebody skilled with jquery and prestashop that can do quick work

– Need to correct autentification process with adding billing adress on registration page (so update form + system)
– Need to correct png fix system with ie, got some strange effect so need to debug it for running well on ie
– Need to add a preload systeme on a jquery application

Please response only if you know well prestashop and are skilled in jquery

for more information contact me

Putty Into Xls File 2

Hi All

need you to create a script that uses putty and/or plink to log into devices, retrieve info, and put that info in an XLS file.

Full details are in the attached pdf.

I think this is pretty easy – Putty and Plink are well documented, and retrieving the info is not hard.

Ah, only use 1 plink.exe at a time. So even if 3 devices just use 1 plink.exe to get info from #1, then close, then go to #2 etc.

Cheers

Simple Php And Mysql Changes And Smarty

PHP coder needed to make 5 modifications to existing PHP script and change the front end UI with the new 2 page CSS theme (smarty template) I provide. Easy work for good coder. Need to start within 24 hours and deliver by this Friday!

Tasks include:
– Add 13 new fields to database and pages
– display number of page views
– resize image on upload
– modify .htacess for seo friendly urls
– new page for submissions (it’s on every page now) and for logged in users only

The script is a f my li fe . com script clone (it is an almost exact copy of that site).

You MUST provide daily status updates and daily progress. Need to start within 24 hours! I can NOT extend this project.

Looking forward to finding a good PHP / mySQL coder for future work on other upcoming projects.