Among other things lately, when I have some time, I am still chipping away at new and interesting things for TigerPay, with an update coming soon, sometime within a month (that’s what I’m aiming for).  The next update brings two extremely major feature introductions into the product:

• History of transactions, and refunding of past transactions.
• Integrated customer communications, starting with assisted receipt e-mailing.

This morning, I am pleased to present PREVIEW screenshots of the receipt sending feature, specifically the new setup tab created for it.  Internally, this feature does already function as intended, and (naturally) this tab and its controls are being developed with accessibility in mind…

Screenshot on the iPad:  (also tested on the new iPad!)

Screenshots on the iPhone:

These screenshots, for the visually impaired among us, show the tab that is used to set up the user’s information.  This information is used to set up a form letter e-mail you can send (choice on a transaction-by-transaction basis) and edit per-transaction to send information (including receipt-type details) to your customers.

Again, look for more news on this update in the coming days and weeks, my target time to release the new version is within a month of this update.

Thanks!
–Quinn

Up front warning: this is a very geek-oriented guide, and is specifically meant for iOS app developers with more than one Mac, if you don’t fall within those requirements you’re probably not gonna get much out of this write-up.  Sorry, if that’s the case, best to just pass this one over for your reading list.

So, you’re working on this massive iOS app, and it takes forever to compile on your main work machine.  Maybe you’re like me and your main work machine is a lowly Intel Core 2 Duo 2.4gHz Mac Mini, or, maybe you’re not even that fortunate.  Maybe your main work machine’s a MacBook Air, those aren’t fast either, but that’s actually kind of the point.  But, if you’re like me, you’ve got more than one Mac.  Imagine how cool it would be to be able to use all of your Macs to distribute (and incredibly increase the performance) of compiling your apps for iOS?

If you’re already familiar with Xcode’s “Distributed Builds” feature in Xcode 4.2, you may or may not know, those settings aren’t actually going to work for your non-Mac app build processes.  However, not to fear either way, this snazzy little guide will quickly walk you through setting up Distributed Builds to work with both Mac and iOS app build operations via Xcode’s interface.

DISCLAIMER:

This How-To guide involves Terminal commands.  It is assumed you know how to read the commands I’m giving you to some degree, and that you’re willing to accept the risks of performing these steps, always be sure to make a backup and test that the backup works if you have any concerns about following this guide!

PREREQUISITES:

This stuff is only tested with Xcode 4.2.1 (Build 4D502) on Mac OS X Lion 10.7.3 (Build 11D50), and just for sake of completeness, my machine was booted (as forcefully as required) into the 64-bit Mach kernel.  You can probably get away with any Xcode 4.2 and any Mac OS X Lion 10.7 versions, but, I can only attest to this working in my particular setup.

When you see code in monospace that should be your indication that it’s either text in a text file you should enter, a reference to a filename you should be working with, or a command you will need to run.  Additionally, commands you need to run will be prefixed with my shell prompt, which is:

[quinn@Rashtaka ~]$

Let’s get started.  Don’t worry, this won’t take too long, and it’s worth your 5 or 10 minutes (especially if you’re building an app with a large number of code files)…

INSTRUCTIONS:

NOTE: Steps 1 through 7 are only absolutely required to be done on your main development machine, that is, they’re only needed on machines that start the compile via Xcode, other machines that receive the compile tasks from Xcode and don’t run Xcode directly to start the compiles don’t need those steps done, and as an added bonus you don’t need Xcode open for the other build farm members to receive and process your build tasks.  (You can do the other steps on multiple machines safely if you work or have others do Xcode work on other machines as well!)

1. Figure out how many CPU cores you have available between all the machines you want to use for building with Xcode over the network, then take that number, and add 1 to it for every computer you’ll be sending build tasks to over the network.  In my case, I have two machines I’m using for Distributed Builds, each of which has two CPU cores, so, I come up with 6 total (4 cores plus 2 machines).  Now, we need to set a system-wide default setting, to set the maximum number of build processes Xcode will run at a time.  For my 6-task limit, in my Terminal, I run the following:

[quinn@Rashtaka ~]$ defaults write com.apple.dt.Xcode IDEBuildOperationMaxNumberOfConcurrentCompileTasks 6

2. We need to wrap Xcode’s standard Distributed Build utility in a script file that takes care of the little bit that Apple forgot to get Distributed Builds working for iOS apps.  Run the following command in Terminal to move the distcc program from Xcode into a place where we can refer to it in the script we’ll create in the next step:

[quinn@Rashtaka ~]$ mv /Developer/usr/bin/distcc /Developer/usr/bin/distcc.orig

3. Now, you need to make sure you know the hostnames and/or IP addresses, for each of your machines that you’ll use for these Distributed Builds.  In my case, I get to use hostnames, since I’ve got both static IP’s for each machine, plus, I’ve also got proper (internal-only) forward and reverse DNS for each machine.  I’m only going to compile using two machines, including my Mac Mini (Rashtaka), and my MacBook Pro (Bashrata).  We want to create our distcc wrapper script in the file where we moved the actual distcc utility away from, so, run the following to open up a new file in the nano text editor in the Terminal:

[quinn@Rashtaka ~]$ nano -w /Developer/usr/bin/distcc

4. Now you’ll have a text editor open.  For my case, I used the following script file, paste it into the terminal, and in the next step, I’ll tell you in-brief what you need to edit:

#!/bin/sh
export DISTCC_HOSTS="--randomize localhost bashrata,cpp,lzo"
/Developer/usr/bin/distcc.orig "$@"
exit $?

5. This is a lot simpler than it looks.  The only line you have to edit to change/add more hosts is the line beginning in “export” which sets the list of hosts distcc will attempt to use to compile your projects.  The “localhost” entry indicates that you want to (most definitely) compile using the local machine as part of the Distributed Builds.  The “bashrata,cpp,lzo” portion tells Distributed Builds to use my MacBook Pro as my one network-based compiling machine.  Note that you must put “,cpp,lzo” after each hostname or IP/address to get these entries to work properly as of the time of this writing.

Just to give you an example of adding another host, let’s pretend the day has come when I decide it’s time to get a new Mac, and I want to continue to use Rashtaka (who was localhost in that previous example) as a network-based compiler.  To accomplish that, very simply, we’d change the script to look like so:

#!/bin/sh
export DISTCC_HOSTS="--randomize localhost rashtaka,cpp,lzo bashrata,cpp,lzo"
/Developer/usr/bin/distcc.orig "$@"
exit $?

6. When you’re happy with your host list you’ll need to save the host list by pressing Control+O, Return, and then Control+X.

7. We need to make sure that Xcode can run the script like it’s a program.  Run the following command to make it executable:

chmod +x /Developer/usr/bin/distcc

8. Now, fire up Xcode, open up Preferences from the Xcode menu at the top, then click on Distributed Builds, then click the padlock to unlock it.  Enter your password for your account (if you have one–you should–it’s the right thing to do!)

9. Almost done–now, check all three checkboxes, and that includes the checkbox next to “Bonjour!”  Quit Xcode, restart Xcode, and this machine should be good to go for distributed iOS app builds over the network.

10. Finally–Run steps 8 and 9 on each machine you’ll be using for Distributed Builds.  Once all that repetition is done, you’re all set, try building your big project (clean it first in Xcode if you want to see the full effect) and be amazed by how much quicker the job gets done!

Enjoy your vastly speedier code compiles!

Happy developing!
–Quinn

SOURCE: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6151434/is-it-possible-to-use-distcc-for-building-iphone-device-builds

UPDATE #1: Forgot to reference the original article.

UPDATE #2: Forgot to tell you guys to make the new wrapper script executable and made one minor grammatical correction.

UPDATE #3: Forgot to point out that the Xcode Preferences steps must be done on each machine in the build farm, also, make sure it’s known that the only machines that need the “special treatment” for distcc are the ones you run Xcode on.

UPDATE #4: Hopefully my final update, since I obviously need to learn to fully proofread, this update adds clarity to the note regarding the steps that only need the “special treatment” from steps 1 to 7.

Since a mixture of Apple dragging their heels and myself needing to stop the heel-dragging in the middle to upload a new copy of the app update is leading to yet more heel-dragging on the release of the update to TigerPay, I figured I’d whet my audience’s appetite for more information, and let loose with the (fairly short but still quite noteworthy) list of changes to be seen in the upcoming update…

NOW RUNS OPTIMIZED ON THE IPAD!!!

+ Fixes an issue where charging an amount without a cents amount wasn’t charged correctly (was charged as cents instead of dollars).
+ Fixes issues with improper bottom tab bar icons and titles.
+ Fixes a minor problem that could result in certain improper dollar amounts with cents being passed onto Stripe for processing when we really should’ve caught them locally.

Again, I’m basically just waiting for Apple’s approval on the update to release it to the public, I hope this will happen within a week’s time. But we’ll just have to wait and see.

Enjoy!
–Quinn

UPDATE #1: I flubbed on the auto-Tweet.  Let’s try this again.

UPDATE #2: Remove the pre formatting tags from the change log.  It didn’t render properly in my site design.

TigerPay is on App Store now at http://onj.me/29m

After much waiting and futzing around with Apple’s app approval process, I am pleased to announce, TigerPay is now available!  You can now use everybody’s favorite mobile phone as a mobile credit card processing terminal with a credit card processing service that genuinely has its users’ best interests at heart!

Again, for direct link to the App on the App store, see http://onj.me/29m

The app’s App Store description speaks for itself:

“TigerPay: Charge your Customers’ Credit Cards with Stripe”

TigerPay is the incredibly simple and cost-effective credit card processing terminal that runs right on your iPhone!

Using the independently-owned and extremely competitively-priced Stripe.com credit card processing service, you simply sign up for a free Stripe.com account and provide them with your payout information, then enter your Stripe.com API key into TigerPay. That’s all there is to it, after that, you’re ready to accept credit card payments.

If you’re an individual or small business owner who’s fed up with the lack of affordable ways to accept credit card payments, or if you’re looking for a better option for processing your customers’ credit card charges, TigerPay may be the option you’ve been looking for. Stripe’s free-to-use service only takes a very small (30 cents + 2.9 percent) per-transaction charge out of the transaction to cover their expenses, and within 7 days average, the proceeds are deposited to your bank account.

UPCOMING FEATURES:
+ Transaction history
+ Options to refund (partial or whole) card charges
+ Native version for iPad

Please note that I originally submitted a different description to the App Store.  This is the version which should (hopefully) become active very shortly.

Once more, this app won’t appear in search for a few more hours probably, so the direct link you can use until it does show up is http://onj.me/29m

Happy selling!
–Quinn

I am pleased to announce that I am waiting for Apple to approve my first iPhone/iPod OS app for inclusion into the iTunes App Store.  This app, called TigerPay, will allow you to leverage the Stripe payment processing service, to charge your customers’ credit cards, wherever your iPhone or iPod Touch has Internet access.

This app will be a welcome option to you, if you are a business owner.  The two following situations come to mind as great examples:

• Independent on-site technical support and/or consultation provider (like myself) wishing to immediately collect customers’ payments.
• Situations such as being a seller at a flea market, farmer’s market, or festival-type atmosphere where your business could benefit from immediately taking a customer’s credit card payment without your traditional desk and/or point-of-sale setup.

This is also a fantastic option if you were considering a traditional mobile credit card processor appliance.  Simply sign up for Stripe, fill out all their required account details, load the app on your iPhone or iPod (which I’m sure you already love) and take their payment.  Within about a week of each payment processing request on your part, Stripe sends the money to your bank account.  Furthermore, Stripe’s rates are incredibly competitive, and by supporting their service you fund a team of developers who make a payment processor that is easy to implement, user-friendly, and their team is always open and willing to listen to any feedback you may have.

As I’ve previously stated, this app is still pending approval by Apple.  Once the app is approved, I will, of course update my blog with an official release notice.

Thanks Kindly!
–Quinn

I would like to express my thanks to one of my customers who pointed out to me that the QuinnEbert.NET contact form has been broken for some time. I have replaced the existing WordPress module with one that should be seeing much better support going forward. Furthermore, I have tested the new form. It appears contacting me should now work again as originally intended. My apologies to anybody who had issues with the previous system.

Thanks Kindly!
–Quinn

So, recently, I have realized that the Spotlight (file searching and indexing system) on my Mac running OS X 10.7 (Lion) is totally killing my Mac Mini’s performance when I’m doing high-demand tasks like compiling MacPorts packages in a Terminal session.  I have a sneaking suspicion, though I have not verified, that this is due to some fairly severe Spotlight bugs that still remain in Lion.  Desperate to try and reclaim what I estimate to be the 60%-70% loss of system performance caused by Spotlight’s indexing facilities constantly hounding any disk activity it sees and constantly grinding away at my hard disk, I did some online research, and found some fairly simple steps you can take if you’re like me and you want to see a 50% or more gain in system performance.  That being said, these steps won’t be for everybody, especially since they keep Spotlight from updating your file search results.  Again, if you regularly rely on the upper-right-hand or Finder window search features, these steps are NOT for you, and sadly, you will just have to wait and see if Apple fixes Spotlight indexing bugs in future Lion updates.

DISCLAIMER — VERY IMPORTANT WARNING — READ OR LOSE DATA: Well, not exactly, but you could lose data if you aren’t careful with the way you follow these instructions.  If you do not have experience in working with the Mac terminal or Linux/BSD shells, you really should just forget about doing this, you could quite easily do more harm than good, including possibly even losing data, or putting yourself in a position where you could lose several hours of productivity having to restore a Time Machine backup to get your machine working again.

BEFORE YOU DO THIS: If you have Time Machine set up, or if you have a drive or drive space you can use to set it up, you really should take a full backup before doing this.  While I write these instructions as carefully as I can, nobody is perfect and you could make a mistake here even if you know exactly what you’re doing, do us both a favor and ensure you have a full backup on-hand from right before you try this so that you can restore to a working system if something breaks or you happen to break something.

ONE LAST (LITTLE) THING: These steps are designed for Lion, so, you’re on your own doing this for any other OS X release, in fact, you probably have no need to do this on any other OS X release.  Other OS X releases don’t seem to have these performance-killing bugs with Spotlight, or at least, they’re nowhere near this severe.

1. Make sure you are logged into an OS X account that has Administrator privileges, that your account has a password set, and that you know your account’s password.  If you’re the only user of your computer, you should already be good as far as this goes, otherwise a bit of searching online may prove helpful.
2. Open the Applications folder by clicking Finder in the Dock and pressing Shift+Command+A or if that doesn’t work, look in the “Applications” folder at the top of your Mac’s hard drive.  Under the Applications folder you’ll find the “Utilities” folder, and under the “Utilities” folder you’ll find “Terminal.app” (it might also just be called “Terminal” depending on your Finder settings).
3. Copy and paste the following command into the terminal, then press Enter:
   sudo nano -w /etc/hostconfig
   Enter your password followed by pressing Enter if you’re asked for it.  If this doesn’t work, you either have the wrong password, or you don’t have Administrator privileges.
4. Use the down arrow key to get the cursor to the end of the text of this file.  The cursor should hopefully be on a line by itself when it can’t go any further, but if it’s not, hold down the right arrow until the cursor stops, then if you had to do the right cursor hold, press Enter to create a new line.  In some strange cases, if you had a large file here, you might see some text scroll past the top of the screen, that is fine, just keep on working through these instructions.  Now, add this line to the bottom of the file by copying and pasting it:
   SPOTLIGHT=-NO-
   Press the Enter key once when you’re done with that.
5. Press Control-O (O as in “Oh” NOT as in zero), press Enter, then press Control+X.  This saves and closes the file we need to edit.
6. We’re almost done already!  Now, we need to move the file that causes Spotlight to start at boot-up into a safe place.  Copy and paste this into the Terminal:
   sudo mkdir -p /System/Library/LaunchDaemonsDISABLED/
sudo mv /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.metadata.mds.plist /System/Library/LaunchDaemonsDISABLED/
   Press the Enter key once after the second line.
7. You can quit out of Terminal now.  Press Command+Q if you want to do that.
8. Reboot your machine, it should come back to life properly, and if so you should now be Spotlight-free.

1. Open the Terminal again.
2. Again, run this command, copy and paste it:
   sudo nano -w /etc/hostconfig
   Press Enter to run it. Enter your password followed by pressing Enter if you’re asked for it.
3. Use the cursor keys to put the cursor over (blocking/covering) the “S” in this line:
   SPOTLIGHT=-NO-
4. Press Control+K to delete that line.
5. Press Control-O (O as in “Oh” NOT as in zero), press Enter, then press Control+X.  This saves and closes the file we need to edit.
6. Run (copy and paste) this command to move the start-up file for Spotlight back into place:
   sudo mv /System/Library/LaunchDaemonsDISABLED/com.apple.metadata.mds.plist /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/
   Press Enter to run the command.
7. You can quit out of Terminal now.  Press Command+Q if you want to do that.
8. Reboot your machine, it should come back to life properly, and if so you should have Spotlight back.

REFERENCE: OS X Daily, “How to completely disable Spotlight”
http://osxdaily.com/2007/03/22/how-to-completely-disable-spotlight/

Here’s to your happier, faster Lion powered Mac!
–Quinn

Just wanted to make folks aware that I have just posted an updated version of my Stripe payment processor for Mal’s E-commerce integration package.

The following two changes have been made:

• Payment status checking now uses stripe.js for instant and intelligent feedback on the usability of the customer’s credit card information.  This cuts down on occurrences of Mal’s E-commerce presenting your customer with the “did not complete order” type page (whose text, incidentally, is the option you set under “Thank You Message”).
• Variable data sent to and from Mal’s E-commerce is now subjected to a pass of htmlentities() to reduce chances of XSS attacks.

After hearing back from the folks at Stripe (with some valid minor concerns — mainly concerns from Mal’s E-commerce’s perspective) I have made a few minor modifications to the Stripe4Mal package.  While the issues addressed are ones that are likely to not to see any great exploitative use, as a white hat security guy, I can’t help but to take such advisement to heart.

Download the updated Stripe4Mal package (same URL as the previous release)…

Here’s what’s changed:

• Validate length of the CC passed through the script and validate that it is, in fact, a numeric value.
• Validate length and numeric-ness of the expiry year and month passed through the script.
• Validate that the purchase amount the script receives is in the proper format for Stripe to process, including verifying that it is a wholly-integer value, and is a positive number.

There is a possibility that another update will be released soon, I am waiting for a bit more review from the staffers at Stripe, though the need for such another update is yet to be determined.

Happy Selling!
–Quinn

Thanks to a good friend of mine who suggested this, due to ongoing projects between us, we decided that we needed a non-PayPal way to accept credit cards for an e-commerce site we were working on putting together.  We were using Mal’s E-commerce for the cart solution, and we really liked Stripe Payment Processor, but nobody’s apparently found a way to link the two yet, or if they have, it’s not something they’ve made available publicly.

This changes today…  I present to you Stripe4Mal (direct download link to the package’s ZIP file).

Stripe4Mal is a PHP-based script, bundled with a self-written and illustrated (IE: screenshot graphics with generous textual description for my potential blind and visually impaired users), and even comes bundled with a copy of the Stripe API PHP library for your convenience when installing the Stripe4Mal package.

My hope is that this will be found useful by those with a strong desire to open a new online business or who wish to greatly improve the effectiveness of their business’s customer payment options.  I hope also that it will make at least one person successful in their endeavors, as an entrepreneur you have the power to help the world economy on its path to recovery, and for that I thank you and commend you!

Happy Selling!
–Quinn