Nirav Mehta on life, technology and future

Are you building an iPhone app? Or have an idea? Do you want to mock it up quickly? The iPhone UI PicKit can help you!

This is a kit of widget images that you can use in your image editing software. This way you can easily create prototypes of different screens and share them with others. There is also a layered PSD available.

iPhone UI PicKit

No need for the iPhone SDK! No need to learn Interface Builder! Just grab the screens and mock your iPhone idea! Thanks Daniel!

(BTW, if you are through with the idea, let us know if you want to develop it. We do iPhone development!)

We have been struggling with zooming TextArea in Flex for 2 months now. Tried lots of combination but nothing worked. Can someone help?

Essentially, we scaleX and scaleY the TextArea as the zoom level changes. The component zooms in fine, but the text in it keeps wrapping as we keep zooming. We expect the text to stay as it is and just zoom. Not re-wrap.

Here is the text at 100%. Notice the last words on the lines.

TextArea zoom at 100%

Here is the TextArea at 150% zoom. Notice how the wrapping disrupts.

TextArea zoom at 150%

I have a live example if you want to try this out.

We have tried using zoom effect, adding line breaks at the end of each line before zooming and removing them, trying different fonts, embedding them - everything we could think of! But this looks like a bug! TextArea keeps wrapping the text as we zoom.

What could be a solution?

I was in search of a good project management system 16 months ago. And I am searching for one again!

I reviewed more than two dozen task / time tracking / project scheduling / collaboration systems this time too. The requirements are the same as last year. Something simple, usable and effective. Something that ties the different processes together. This time, we want it to support partners/contractors as well. This time, we would like to integrate the communications too.

As of now, I have three solutions in my shortlist:

• activeCollab - has good set of features, and will allow any customizations I want
• devShop - handles the main problems in software development - estimation errors, distractions and confidence score
• Intervals - superb tracking of time, and good features overall

And then, I want to hook it up with Openfire / Spark / Red5 for communications / conferencing.

Am I looking for too much? Not sure why I can’t find a system that solves my problems!

What do you use?

Congratulations Kartik for becoming a Debian Developer! You make me proud! It’s been a long journey. You have stayed on course despite all the odds. Congratulations!

Thanks for the graphic Kunal

I took a 3 hour session on How to Make the Most of your Internship Projects at Viva College in Virar yesterday. The session went great. Out of 95 attendees, 80%+ said they got great new ideas for their internship projects. 80%+ said they also got powerful insights in managing & implementing their projects. Here are some more reactions:

• Mind Blowing - Rajesh Gaikwad (professor in charge)
• Awesome - Brijesh Joshi (professor)
• I have attended other seminars, but this was the best ever!
• Where were you two months ago? (internship project planning started two months ago for the college, and many people repented the session did not happen two months ago)
• Superb - as usual - from you!
• I created some great project ideas by the end of the session.
• Excellent. Thank you!
• Truly motivating. This will help us a long way in our projects.

I am thrilled by the results! And am looking forward to see what projects the students do!

Here are the slides from the presentation.

World’s Best Presentation Contest

Would you like me to speak at your organization? Contact me at nirav at mehtanirav dot com.