My Dream App

Just in case you missed Steve’s posting in the Ground Control forum here as well as the on the Ground Control site, I thought I would post the links to it here so that those that are still subscribed to the RSS feed for this forum will hear the news. They’re both the same thing–but I thought I would post both anyways.

MDA Post:
The end of the beginning. Almost.

GC Post:
The end of the beginning. Almost.

In it, Steve lays out the basic milestones and goals of developing Ground Control as well as announcing that the site has been moved to a new home:

groundcontrolapp.com
groundcontrolapp.com/blog
groundcontrolapp.com/forum

Would enjoy hearing from some of the old faithful who might have given Ground Control up for dead.

Well, this is just a teaser post to let everyone that has been waiting for the earth to move regarding Ground Control to know that, it is indeed about to move. And, in more ways than one! Not only are we about to see some serious movement, but we will also be seeing the whole Ground Control site move to a new home. We’ll be announcing that soon. The site will redirect when the move is made so you don’t need to worry that everything will be going away if you have it bookmarked.

Steve Streza is currently working on a blog update that will basically get everyone up to speed about where GC is at and where it is going as well as some new information about developers that are on board to develop GC modules for their apps. Some seriously exciting stuff. He is looking to post that in the next few days and we want to keep the MDA crowd informed too, so keep an eye out.

So, finally, get ready for some real movement on Ground Control.

I just wanted to write a quick post to let everyone know that while Ground Control has been slumbering (or smouldering) it has not been forgotten. In the meantime I trust many of you were being sufficiently distracted solving various heists and watching MacHeist raise a hefty amount of money for charity (oh, and offer a pretty nice bundle of apps to boot). Way to go Phil and the whole MacHeist team. You guys really outdo yourselves.

For me personally, this has been a pretty crazy, busy time since MDA finished up and I was only able to keep a cursory glance on MacHeist and pretty much the same thing for GC. But judging by the web logs, it seems that many of you keep visiting on a regular basis hoping for some new news and I wanted to give you a little something to hope for over the holidays.

Steve Streza is finishing up Tubular (the last “5% is 95% of the work” part). He is looking at a 1.0 release before Christmas and then he’ll need to work on at least a couple of point upgrades right after that to get everything running swimmingly. If you’re not already, you can keep track of Tubular at http://www.tubularapp.com/blog/.

As for Ground Control, Steve will be starting on a paper for the plugin architecture for GC hopefully over the Christmas break (I have a hard time calling it winter break). Steve’s obvious priorities right now are school and finishing up Tubular so we’re looking at late January – early February before things start really moving forward with GC.

It seems we have some pretty good support still from the MDA team and look forward to seeing some modules developed for some of the upcoming MDA apps as well a commitment from John Casasanta to develop an iClip module. I have tentatively approached some other app developers regarding module development but it is still too early to confirm other third party interest. I’m hoping once Steve has the plugin architecture articulated, we’ll be able to more agressively shop other possible development.

Look for more action in the GC Forum soon (and feel free to put in your .02¢ too). In the meantime I hope everyone has a happy holiday season and I wish everyone a Merry Christmas and look forward to touching base after the New Year.

I’ve already posted this on the Ground Control Blog and am reposting it here for all who are subscribed to this blog.
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Well, so much for staying “low-key” with a Ground Control Forum. John Casasanta, the Development Manager at My Dream App and of iClip fame, has let the proverbial “cat out of the bag” by submitting the forum to digg (digg it here). I have “punished” John for this “oversight” (I said in my original email that it was “low-key” for now!) by asking him to contribute to the forums which he has most penitently done. Thanks John!

Now the invitation is open to all to come and check out what’s going on in the Ground Control Forums. It seems that there is still definite interest to keep GC alive by some of the Mac programming community with some pretty impressive coding chops. What becomes of all this is still up in the air, but the GC Forum is the best place to stay on top of all things GC and help contribute to the ongoing development of Ground Control.

I was originally planning on inviting only a select few, so that we could bat around the issues of continuing development of GC apart from MDA and then after getting enough feedback, gauge the interest and decide whether to make a public announcement or not. Well, that process has been “slightly” accelerated thanks to John. In light of that, please go easy on the design of the site as I was also planning on using this period to tweak and fine-tune little things here and there. I am open to feedback, so feel free to come in and post any suggestions for improvement on the forums, and I’ll try to keep tweaking it as we go.

I will be posting major GC news updates to this blog for the RSS blast, so definitely keep the RSS feed bookmarked. Also, I will still be contributing to the MDA forums as development on the three winners proceeds. So I look forward to seeing what all comes together over the course of the next several months.

Long live Ground Control!

I just wanted to shoot off one last parting shot at the close of this year’s MDA 1.0 voting rounds and thank everyone on the MDA staff for putting together such a cool contest. I know that it is impossible to make everyone happy with the final results and I feel genuinely bad for Hijack. I’ll look forward to following what Kevin does to keep Hijack alive.

I also want to sincerely thank all of those that have been so supportive of Ground Control. It was amazing to see it take on a life of it’s own beyond just me. I would also like to honor the wishes of those who want to see if there are any future plans for GC beyond MDA. I have created a new blog where I will post any news related to Ground Control and it will give anyone a place to leave comments.

Visit the Ground Control Blog here.

I’ll also be gauging interest in posting an ongoing forum just for Ground Control that will allow more interaction than the just the blog. So, feel free to let me know what your thoughts are.