Aral Balkan » Jobs

A little Bash script for speeding up Ad Hoc iPhone distribution builds

Aral — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 11:04:39 +0000

Check out the Ad Hoc Packager script I released that is far better than the old bash script.

When deploying beta builds of your iPhone apps, you make what is known is an Ad Hoc distribution. Apple's instructions tell you that you should zip up the Ad Hoc distribution and send it to your testers along with your .mobileprovision file. As John Hartzog discovered, however, using the Compress option in Finder for Ad Hoc distribution has drawbacks so you should use the command line to package up your Ad Hoc distributions.

John provides a few simple commands that let you do this in his blog post and I've been using this for the beta builds of 'avit but I soon got bored of manually typing these in. So, instead, I wrote up a quick re-usable Bash script, building on John's, that makes packing up an Ad Hoc distribution very easy.

Here's the script:

#!/bin/bash if [ "$1" == "" ] ; then echo "Usage: adhoc " else echo "Deploying $1…" mkdir Payload cp -rp "$1".app Payload/ zip -r "$1".ipa iTunesArtwork Payload fi echo "Done! Send your .mobileprovision and $1.ipa file to your beta testers."

Either save the above code in a file called adhoc (and don't forget to chmod +x adhoc) or

Download the script

adhoc.zip (352 bytes)

Usage instructions

Create a folder for your distribution, e.g., "MyApp Beta X"

Download the mobile provisioning file you created in the iPhone Developer Program Portal and make sure that it includes all the Devices you want this build to run on (i.e., the Device IDs of your beta testers' iPhones, iPods, etc.)

Copy the AdHoc script into the "MyApp Beta X" folder

Create a 512x512 PNG or JPEG of your icon, name it iTunesArtwork (without an extension; this is important) and place that in the "MyApp Beta X" folder also.

In XCode, create a new Distribution build of your app, making sure to select the correct mobile provisioning profile in the Code Signing Identity section of your Project Settings.

Under the Products section of the Groups & Files pane in XCode, right-click the name of your app (e.g., MyApp) and select Reveal in Finder. Copy this executable to your "MyApp Beta X" folder also.

Finally, in Terminal, switch to your "MyApp Beta X" folder (tip: you can drag the folder into the Terminal window to get its path)

Type: ./adhoc MyApp, substituting the name of your application's executable with MyApp.

That's it! When the script is done, you will find MyApp.ipa in the "MyApp Beta X"

When distributing your Ad Hoc build, make sure you send both the MyApp.ipa and your .mobileprovision file to your testers.

~~I hope this little script helps speed up your process.~~

New Flash and Flex jobs

Aral — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 12:37:37 +0000

Here are the new Flash and Flex jobs from the OSFlash job board for this week:

Web Developer, The Magazine Network - Conde Nast Publications, Inc., New York, NY
Flash Developer, CondéNet Creative Service - Condé Nast Publications, New York, NY

New Flash and Flex jobs

Aral — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 21:20:35 +0000

At the end of every week, I plan to make a short entry highlighting the new jobs posted on the OSFlash Job Board. Here's the first one!

Flash / Actionscript 3.0 Game Developer - Confidential, Chicago, IL and Raleigh, NC
Lead Flash Developer - LocaModa, Cambridge, MA
Lead Actionscript developer - NDi Media, Montreal, QC, Canada
ActionScript 3 Engineer - DigiDeal Corporation, Spokane Valley, WA
Flash Developer - Confidential, Santa Monica, CA
Sr Flash AS3 Engineer/Developer - Confidential, Palo Alto, CA (telecommute)

Find these jobs and more at the OSFlash Job Board.

OSFlash Job Board relaunch: Flash, Flex, and ActionScript job listings at half price

Aral — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 11:24:52 +0000

Do you have a Flash, Flex, or ActionScript job to post? Post it on the OSFlash Job Board.

I've just relaunched the OSFlash Job Board and all jobs listings are 50% off this week if you use the coupon code RELAUNCH. This expires on April 1st, 2008 (no joke!) :)

If you want to get notified of new jobs, you can get job alerts by email or subscribe to the RSS feed.

The OSFlash Job Board initially launched last year using the Joard system that my friend and business partner Dave Stone was developing. Dave decided to discontinue Joard at the start of this year so we were left without a job board.

It has taken a little while to get everything set up again but the job board is now back up and running using the excellent JobThread system.

OSFlash gets over 120,000 unique visitors every month. We also have a new job board widget that is featured on the OSFlash.org home page and here on my blog (I get around 70,000 unique visitors a month on this blog). By putting your job listing on the OSFlash Job Board, you'll thus be reaching a very tightly-focussed group of close to 200,000 Flash, Flex, and ActionScript developers, designers, and creatives.

Check out the OSFlash Job Board for Flash jobs, Flex jobs, and ActionScript jobs and don't forget to use the RELAUNCH coupon code to get 50% off your job listing until April 1st, 2008.

If you want to help support OSFlash, tell your friends about the OSFlash Job Board by adding the OSFlash Job Board widget to your site.

OSFlash Job Board Widget (JavaScript)

OSFlash Job Board WordPress widget

I also made a simple WordPress Widget that you can use to add the Job Board to your WordPress blog's sidebar. Download the OSFlash Job Board WordPress widget.

Once you've downloaded it, simply extract it into your wp-content/plugins folder, activate it, and add it to your sidebar from the Widgets section of the WordPress administration tool. (Note: The CSS positioning is set for my site, you may need to modify it to make it display correctly for yours.)

Here's the source for the OSFlash Job Board WordPress plugin. It's released under the open source MIT license, so please feel free to use and adapt it to make your own WordPress plugins too.


/*
Plugin Name: OSFlash Job Board Badge
Plugin URI: http://aralbalkan.com
Description: Displays the OSFlash Job Board Badge on your WordPress blog. Released under the MIT License. Copyright (c) 2008 Aral Balkan. http://aralbalkan.com.
Author: Aral Balkan
Version: 1.0
Author URI: http://aralbalkan.com
*/
 
function osflash_job_board_widget_init()
{
	if ( !function_exists('register_sidebar_widget') || !function_exists('register_widget_control') )
		return; 
 
	function osflash_job_board_widget($args)
	{
		extract($args); 
 
		echo $before_widget; 
 
		?>
class="osflashJobBoard">
				
				
			
 
		
 
		echo $after_widget;
	}
 
	// Register widget
	register_sidebar_widget('OSFlash Job Board', 'osflash_job_board_widget');
}
 
function osflash_job_board_style()
{
	?>	

 
	
}
 
// Add widget once plugins are loaded.
add_action('plugins_loaded', 'osflash_job_board_widget_init');
 
// Add the badge's CSS to the head.
add_action('wp_head', 'osflash_job_board_style');
 
?>

Update: There was a small hiccup right after the blog announcement. If you couldn't reach OSFlash.org or jobs.osflash.org, please try again. It's back up and running! Thanks!

SWX Jobs

Aral — Mon, 03 Sep 2007 10:39:31 +0000

Intercasting Corporation has a job opening for a Flash/Flash Lite Handset Developer and they list knowledge of SWX as a nice-to-have skill on the job description. Another OSFlash project, Red5, is also listed in the same section.

It's really cool to see development houses adopting SWX for Flash and Flash Lite development. If you have any relevant job openings that you want to advertise, please feel free to contact me via the comments or send an email to the SWX mailing list.

There's also a Flash and Flex job board on OSFlash if you want to reach a more targeted audience of open source Flash developers.

Also, if you're making things with SWX and want to get exposure for them, feel free to leave a link at the SWX Showcase and I will feature them there.

Thanks go to Alex Tur of Sonopia for bringing this to my attention. Thanks, man!

OSFlash Job Board: Now affordable! :)

Aral — Wed, 23 May 2007 22:43:10 +0000

We've reduced the cost of posting a job on the OSFlash job board to a far more affordable $50 per job.

It used to be $200 per job, which I personally thought was really excessive! Thankfully, Dave updated his Joard job board engine so that job board owners can now set their own prices so I've lowered it to the lowest it allows.

Dave, can you believe it, I'm actually blogging the price reduction finally -- will miracles ever cease? (And there's 20 minutes to go to midnight so I theoretically could have put this off for at least another quarter of an hour without breaking my word!) :P

Oh yeah, and $50 US actually means £26.40 or so (depending on the current exchange rate) in the UK. not something ridiculous like £50. See, Adobe, it can be done! (And I live in the UK for goodness sake!)

OK, that's it for the word from our sponsors, now back to late-night SWX hacking in preparation for the Beta. This must be what prolonged childbirth must be like... I really want this beta to pop out now. Come on baby, o-n-e m-o-r-e p-u-s-h !

Free Flash/Flex job postings in April

Aral — Mon, 09 Apr 2007 09:54:49 +0000

For the rest of this month, you can add your Flash, Flex and ActionScript jobs for free to the OSFlash job board using the promo code freeffas.

Enjoy! :)

Flash, Flex and ActionScript jobs at OSFlash

Aral — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 07:45:03 +0000

There's now a new job board on OSFlash for Flash, Flex and ActionScript jobs.

Posting your jobs on there is a great way to reach an audience of over 100,000 Flash and Flex developers and support OSFlash at the same time :) (We had 110,000 unique visitors last month and that number is currently growing by about 10,000 each month.)

I announced the OSFlash Job Board last night on the OSFlash mailing list. Here's an excerpt from that email:

I'm setting up a job board on OSFlash for posting Flash, Flex and ActionScript positions. I've been trying to find a way to make OSFlash self-sustaining for a while so I can devote more time to it and this
seems like a non-intrusive way of doing that. Of course you're all more than welcome to keep sending job announcements to the mailing list but please do mention the job board to your companies, etc., as it would be a great way for them to get more exposure on the web site and support OSFlash at the same time.

You can view the job board at:

http://jobs.osflash.org

To kick things off, please feel free to send me your job announcements (you can reply to this post or email me directly) and I'll put up the first ten myself without charge. (I'd do more but I added a few jobs just a few moments ago and remembered how much I hate data entry -- I don't think I could take any more manual labor!) :) Of course, if you'd like to support the effort, please feel free to put in a job announcement yourself :)

To help me out, please provide the following info:

Company, URL, Title: (of job position), Location, Category (Design, Development, Animation, or Management), Type (Full Time, Part Time, or Contract), Description (a longer textual description of the job, no HTML), Contact Information (who should they contact to apply and how; email, phone, etc.)

The job board itself is powered by Joard -- a "web 2.0" job board application by my good friend Dave, whom you may know better as builtbydave. I'm so happy that OSFlash is the first live Joard job board and I'm sure that Joard is going to be hugely successful -- great stuff, Dave!

Feel free to send me your comments, suggestions, etc. or just reply to this post.