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Time for a non-programming hobby
By the time 2018 ended, I was feeling really tired and demotivated. I spent a lot of my time slaving away at a computer from start to end on most days. I do believe that I achieved a lot during this period. However, this seemed to have come at the expense of personal relationships and…
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Do “basics” well
High performing teams are about interperson chemistry that is built on a foundation of the “basics”. Take sports for example. Learning to play a sport require you to learn the rules and develop basic skills to play. For soccer, it would be passing, tackling, lobbing and shooting. When you join a team, there’s drills, runs…
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Japan is amazing
It has been a long 1 ½ years as you can tell from the lack of my writing here. I poured all my effort into some very exciting work at Expedia. I needed a break. So my wife and I took 3 weeks off to visit Japan for the first time. It turned out to…
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This year, everything should go “Touch-first”
Happy 2017! I’ve been considering buying an iPad Pro. I’ve always felt that the iPad is an “in-between” device that can’t fit my life well. But there is proof that the desktop is getting… deprecated. Here’s a good article from The Verge that talks about it. Is it time to transition over? By the end…
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Can diversity help your company?
ReplyAll is an awesome podcast from Gimlet. For those who listened to “Startup”, this is Gimlet’s second podcast. Couple of weeks back, they put out a show about diversity. There were some interesting insights shared during the show. (start at 11:50 for the diversity story) ReplyAll – #52 Raising the bar (more notes on the website)…
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Thought provoking remarks from Jony Ive
Found this great video on YouTube where Jonny Ive is talking about a modern design problem: It is quite interesting to think about how a fan looks like a fan, because it has to be, to fulfil its functionality. Or a chair, a bench, a cup etc. Devices that has an embedded microchips often doesn’t…
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My 21st century wedding proposal with Paper for iPad
Proposals. Oh man. So much pressure to get this right and it is filled with social expectations! Having dated Dinusha for 6 years, it was my turn to pop the question. I honestly just didn’t want it to be lame. After months of back and forth with a jeweller, I got the ring. I wanted to…
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Time for a reset
I have been writing my Squarespace blog for about two years now. Yet, I can never achieve a consistent writing routine. Months go by without any posts. Over the Christmas break, I thought about why this was the case. While the blog represents my thoughts, they do not belong to a topic or theme. I…
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Mobile First Design
If you are designing for many screen sizes, where should you begin? Traditionally, most designers will start the design process at desktop size. This is where most content is going to fit in well. Then you figure out how to squeeze it down to a tablet, then a phone. I believe this is the wrong…
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Why techies make crap early adopters
Recently, I’ve been working on apps and business ideas like AlwaysHungry, 60Hz and Secret Hotels (for lastminute.com.au). Finding early adopters to test these products are not easy. Things are even more complicated because my friends and colleagues tend to be very tech savvy. It seems like people associate early adopters with being able to use…
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How to create a great pitch video for your idea
Creating a professional video is expensive and extremely time consuming. When done right, a video can be very effective in getting users and spreading your idea to a large audience. For a small startup, videos might end up taking their entire marketing budget! I’ve been exploring ways to pitch an idea effectively while keeping time and…
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Image cache compatible with iOS7 in Swift
We recently released AlwaysHungry Brisbane app which was completely written in Swift! We used a few awesome libraries out there to pick up pace on the development. One of these libraries was HanekeSwift, which at the time of development, the only Swift Image Downloading & Caching library around! Despite the lack of competition, it is…
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How to make an Android App (video tutorial)
I did a brownbag session at Wotif office about how to make an Android app. It covers a lot of the basics of making an app with Android Studio. This is an introduction session for Android. It covers the following: Resources: Email me or leave a comment if you’d like to see more videos like…
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2 things your app can focus on to be successful
Apps that do really well on the App Store focus on PASSIONS & PRODUCTIVITY. The higher you rank in the scale on these two categories, the better chances you have of making a kick-arse app concept that resonate with its users. People are passionate about all kinds of crazy things. What’s important is that passions…
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Back from Holidays!
I had a wonderful break away from screens, for most part. Now it’s back to business. Decided to capture my view from the couch before we took the Christmas tree down :).
by Dineth Mendis