Bill Draper:

Andy Bailey, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service office in Pleasant Hill, Mo., said it might look something like this: “THIS IS AN EXTREMELY DANGEROUS TORNADO WITH COMPLETE DEVASTATION LIKELY. … SEEK SHELTER NOW! … MOBILE HOMES AND OUTBUILDINGS WILL OFFER NO SHELTER FROM THIS TORNADO — ABANDON THEM IMMEDIATELY.”

This looks to me to be a lot like the whole Tornado Emergency debate (best explained by Patrick Marsh). Something like this could work well in theory, but there would still be false alarms and it would lose its significance over time. That is the same argument that they have against using a regular tornado warning. It is the same problem that we currently have with Tornado Emergencies.

I would be interested to hear what other people (and meteorologists) think about this.

(via Amanda Granroth)

SiriSports is the first thing to come along in awhile that has made me want to jailbreak my iPhone. Hope Apple adds this functionality soon. And while they are at it, Siri could use integration with MovieTickets.com and OpenTable as well.

Chuck Salter:

The first week of January 2010, Apple called Bob Bowman with an invitation shrouded in even more mystery than usual: If you want in on our next project, send us your two best people. That’s all Bowman, president and CEO of Major League Baseball Advanced Media, or BAM, had to go on. Losing two tech leads during the hectic months before Opening Day was risky. Worse, Apple wouldn’t be able to tell him what the techies were building, when its project would come out, or how long they’d be gone. But making the decision took Bowman “under 10 seconds.” Two years earlier, Apple had made a similar offer and MLB had struck gold with AtBat, its iPhone app. Bowman sent mobile developer Chad Evans and another engineer to Cupertino, California, the next day.

Even though I am not a baseball fan, it is nice to see a major sports organization embracing technology like the MLB is. As a fan, I wish that other sports organizations were as forward-thinking as BAM is. They are doing some incredible stuff. Things like this would probably make me start following baseball more if the Astros were not so terrible. Guess there are always the Tigers and Rangers.

Chuck Doswell:

In several different contexts of late, the continuing myth of the local water table being too high (or too variable) for certain types of construction, my colleague Dr. Matt Biddle has brought to my attention that this is essentially balderdash! His father was in the concrete business, and Matt’s opinion certainly seems well-founded. Concrete can be poured and will set up just fine completely underwater! The home construction industry has been selling the idea that a high water table somehow precludes having basements across a great deal of the southern US. It seems that the reality is that no such problem exists! In the past, homes used to be constructed with basements here (in OK, and elsewhere in the south) all the time. But it’s cheaper and faster to build homes on a slab than it is to dig out the homesite and prepare a foundation before commencing home construction. This added cost would have to be passed on to customers. But if people can’t afford that cost, then perhaps building on a concrete slab is a viable economic alternative.

I had heard and believed this myth about basements in Oklahoma my entire life. If I ever have a house built here, it will have a basement for sure (partly because I just want one).

Trip Lee’s fourth studio album The Good Life is coming out on April 10th. If the three singles that he has release so far are any indication, it is going to be good.

On his blog, Trip went through and explained a little about the thinking behind the lyrics to the song I’m Good. It is cool to see the theology that inspired specific lines for the song.

Also check out his newest single Fallin’.

I love it when a major company is willing to make fun of itself a little bit. Microsoft recently launched The Browser You Loved To Hate, a website dedicated to showing how far Internet Explorer 9 is from previous versions.

Since I don’t have Windows installed on any of my computers anymore, I have not used it since it was in beta last year. However, I do remember being impressed when I did use it. It beat Safari to an integrated address/search bar and I loved the way that it put tabs to the right of address bar instead of above or below like Chrome and Safari.

Be sure to check out the second video on the page. Seriously funny. Microsoft seems to be doing good things lately. I hope they keep it up. Better competition is better for everyone.

(via Daring Fireball)

I love hoodies. They are extremely warm and comfortable. In fact, I am wearing one today. It’s overcast outside, with a high temperature in the mid–50s – perfect hoodie weather.

Will you indulge me in a simple thought exercise? Imagine that the young man in the above photo – the one wearing the hoodie – left from his father’s girlfriend’s house during halftime of the NBA All-Star game. He walked from that house, located in a gated community, to a local 7–11 convenience store. There he purchased an iced tea and a bag of Skittles.

Good write up by Jeremy Gibbs about the young man killed in Sanford, Florida while wearing a hoodie. Well worth the read.

Imagine a world where you pay your carrier for a single shared data plan that covers all the devices you use, whether they’ve got a physical SIM card, are tethered with a cable, or wirelessly connect to a mobile hotspot. Your home’s water bill works like this: no matter which faucet you turn on, you only pay what your meter reads. Not only would you no longer have to worry about which device is able to use or share a data plan, but you could also switch from device to device should one run out of battery, or extend your connectivity to a friend if you’re willing to foot the bill — pour them a glass of water while you’re at it.

The iPad on LTE is the fastest Internet connection that I have available to me, but I could not use it to watch a video at Starbucks today because doing so would have killed my data plan. The carriers need to fix this somehow.

I am not going to do a full review of the new iPad. There are plenty of better writers who have had it for over a week who are much better qualified than me for that. Instead I will just list a few initial thoughts that I have after using it for a few hours today.

• The screen really is amazing. Text looks great and pictures really stand out. I hated the grid of album covers in the new iOS 5 Music app, but with the new display it actually looks really nice.

• Apps that have not been optimized for retina still look terrible. Luckily, if they are Universal then the app icons are not too bad because they appear to use the retina iPhone icon instead of the normal iPad one.

• LTE is fast. I am using AT&T and was getting download speeds of 16 Mbps with upload speeds of 7 Mbps. Download speeds are comparable to my Wifi, but upload speeds are way faster on LTE.

• Charging takes forever. I may be because apps are still downloading, but the iPad has been plugged in for a couple of hours and the percentage is unchanged.

• The increased thickness is not really noticeable, but the weight is. I was able to tell it was heavier right as I first lifted it out of it’s box. It may make reading slightly more uncomfortable, but I imagine will get used to it just fine since I used to use my original iPad for reading quite a bit with no complaints.

• This is kinda old news, but upgrading by using an iCloud backup is way better than the old method of plugging into iTunes.

• I went with a white one for the same reason I went with a white iPhone 4S: I wanted it to look different on the outside. I ended up liking the white iPhone a lot better than the black. Jury is still out on the iPad, but it is okay so far.

• I don’t think Apple should even offer a 16GB iPad anymore. With app sizes getting bigger because of Retina screens and movies and TV shows from the app store coming in 1080P, a normal user could fill up a 16GB iPad easily.

Overall, I am happy with the update. The screen alone was worth the upgrade and having LTE will be great when working from Starbucks (which I do a lot). Hopefully AT&T will start offering tethering soon so I can run my MacBook Air on LTE when I am out too.

This is a pretty big indication that the iOS 6 will be introducing a new Maps app that uses their own custom built map service. I am really hoping for a new MapKit framework for developers as well.

Ten One Design recently introduced Blue Tiger (1), a stylus for the upcoming iPad 3. The reason that it is being marketed for the iPad 3 instead of the current iPad is because of the assumption that the iPad 3 will have Bluetooth 4 (2).

It will use Bluetooth 4 to provide a low power pressure sensitivity so developers can automatically adjust the line width of the line based on how hard the user presses (just like pen & paper). I have heard people mention this as a nice solution to drawing on the iPad before, but it always seemed clunky before Bluetooth 4 (3).

This is not the first time that Ten One Design has tried to bring pressure sensitive drawing and writing to the iPad. They built a framework in 2010 that did the same things using a private API that determined the size of the touch on the screen. Since Apple never opened up these APIs for App Store use, Ten One Design took it into their own hands. Good for them.

I just wish the tip of the stylus was thinner.

(via MacStories)

TestFlight and Burstly will continue to be independent products. TestFlight remains a free service and optional paid features will be introduced in the future. TestFlight will continue to build the best developer tools and will include Burstly features only to improve product functionality (as in the case of adding revenue to TestFlight Live), and vice versa for Burstly products.

Surprising news that Test Flight was acquired by Burstly this morning. I am excited to see what comes from this.

Most interesting part is a new desktop app to manage everything.

Side note: if you are an iOS developer and are not using Test Flight, you need to be. So go sign up.

I need to get better at doing this. The main reason I don’t do it more is the time it takes to make a sample project demonstrating a problem. Another could be be the horribly ugly interface for Apple’s bug reporter site.

I think that the next time I want to watch the Star Wars series, I will be using Machete Order. If you are not a nerd, feel free to skip this post over.

Take away cash! Take my career! Take all that I have!

It got us to where You can take away money and take away food

But that doesn’t mean much to me, dude, it’s true:

Who do I have but Jesus? That’s right.

He is all I’ll need in tragedies; they have disease

I’ll cast them at the precious feet of Jesus.

Let’s sit at the face and scream, “I am free!”

And put sin in its place; it was nailed to the tree.

Turn to your Savior; don’t be moved for nothing.

In Him find your joy ’cause one day He’ll be coming.

On Christ, the solid Rock, I stand. All other ground is sinking sand!

On Christ, the solid Rock, I stand. All other ground is sinking sand!

Let’s bring it back to where we are now,

With babies aborted and tossed to the ground

Enslavement to sin, addicted to drugs,

Anything for a fix while the kids need a hug

One day the Savior will come as the Judge.

The wicked will be cast away like the flood.

While they are here, don’t hold a grudge.

Go preach the gospel and save whom He loves.

Children will die. Ones will be lost.

Persecution will come. We will all pay the cost.

At the end of the day, we are the conquerors,

reign with the King who redeemed every part of us.

Every tear dry, every failure destroyed:

Nothing to describe what we’ll feel with that joy,

As we’ll sing with the church that He bought with His blood

The chorus forever will sing up above:

This the third verse to Dillon Chase’s remix of the worship song Here In Your Presence. To me, songs do not get much better than this. Heartfelt rap plus unashamed worship is simply amazing.

This song (plus a remix of How He Loves Us by David Crowder Band) is available on the free mix tape Pause. I have not listened to the rest of the songs on it, but it is worth the download for this song alone.