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The Azure License: meaningful attribution

kenneth — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 20:59:01 +0000

Open-source licensing can be a real nightmare. Some licenses are nearly impossible to decipher, while some (namely – the GNU GPL) are just pure evil.

I have been trying to find a software license which, like the Creative Commons Attribution license, would let the licensee do pretty much anything with the software, except it would require attribution in a meaningful way. That is to say, documentation and/or credits of any derivative work.

The MIT license came closest to this, and it is the base on which the Azure License was written.

A good way to give attribution, as required by the license, would be a friendly “Contains code by Copyright Holder [linked]” or “Special thanks to Copyright Holder [linked]” in the about box.

Without further ado, the Azure License:

The Azure License

Copyright (c) {year} {copyright holders}

Attribute to {individual or group name} - {link}

You (the licensee) are hereby granted permission, free of charge, to deal in this software or source code (this “Software”) without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, and/or sublicense this Software, subject to the following conditions:

You must give attribution to the party mentioned above, by name and by hyperlink, in the about box, credits document and/or documentation of any derivative work using a substantial portion of this Software.

You may not use the name of the copyright holder(s) to endorse or promote products derived from this Software without specific prior written permission.

THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED “AS IS”, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THIS SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THIS SOFTWARE.

http://seoxys.com/azure-license/

Plain text Azure License

ATTemplate: Simple Templating System in PHP

kenneth — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 10:13:42 +0000

Let me say this first: I do not believe in big bloated MVC PHP frameworks. I believe in having custom code that runs as fast as possible. For recurring useful functionality, such as templates, I believe in using simple, efficient and flexible dedicated standalone modules.

For the past several years, I have been using a home-grown templating system that functioned by parsing template files which would have a dedicated / invented syntax. It would replace, for example, %TAG%, with a value. It had several more advanced features too, such as conditionals, recursion, embedded PHP, and more.

And while it functioned just fine, it implemented a custom parser, and required templates to be written using a non-standard syntax. But, after having used Ruby on Rails, I was inspired to design something better.

ATTemplate is the result of this. The main idea behind ATTemplate is that PHP in itself is already a parser, so why reinvent the wheel?

ATTemplate is very lightweight and relatively simple, but it’s very powerful without being bulky. It allows for everything the other templating systems can do, including loops, nested templates, recursion, conditionals, etc.

How to use

Here’s how you’d use ATTemplate:



// Include the ATTemplate class
require_once 'attemplate.inc.php';

$template = new ATTemplate();

// Optionally, you can give it properties, like so:
// $template = new ATTemplate($property_array);

$unread_messages = rand(0, 20);

// Sets property 'unread_messages' to 10.
$template->set('unread_messages', $unread_messages);

$template->set('title', 'ATTemplate Test');

$property_array = array(
    'first_name' => 'John',
    'time' => date('H:i:s'),
    'friend_requests' => array(
        array('name'=>'James', 'followers'=>rand(0, 200)),
        array('name'=>'Josh', 'followers'=>rand(0, 200)),
        array('name'=>'Aaron', 'followers'=>rand(0, 200)),
        array('name'=>'Eric', 'followers'=>rand(0, 200)),
        array('name'=>'Mike', 'followers'=>rand(0, 200))
    )
);

// This pushes the content of $property_array into the properties
$template->push($property_array);

// Prints the parsed template
echo $template->parse('index.phtml')

?>

And here’s what your template could look like:

DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
    "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">

<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en">
<head>
    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"/>

    <title> echo $title; ?>title>

head>

<body>

<h1>Welcome,  echo $first_name; ?>h1>

 if($unread_messages>0): ?>
<h2>You have  echo $unread_messages; ?> unread messages!h2>
 endif; ?>

<p>You have received friend requests from the following people:p>
<ol>
 foreach($friend_requests as $friend_request): ?>
    <li> echo $friend_request['name']; ?> (has  echo $friend_request['followers']; ?> followers)li>
 endforeach; ?>
ol>

<p>The time is  echo $time; ?>…p>

body>
html>

License

You’re free to use the code in whatever you want, commercial or not. Modify it, redistribute it, do whatever you want with it.

The only requirement is that you need to give me credit.

Also, please do shoot me an email if you use this in your project.

ATTemplate by Kenneth Ballenegger is licensed under the Azure License.

Download

Download ATTemplate!

Meet iLaugh 2.0 – Social Jokes

kenneth — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 15:02:52 +0000

After months of hard work, controversy and perseverance, iLaugh 2.0 is finally launching.

iLaugh puts a database of over 50,000 jokes in the palm of your hand. Vote on your favorite jokes, compile a list of your favorites, share jokes with your friends via Twitter and Facebook, and most importantly, have a good laugh.

With iLaugh, you have complete control over which jokes you want to read. The Categories feature gives you the ability to only read the jokes that interest you. Additionally, you can filter out adult jokes or jokes voted down by the community.

(click on the image to go to ilaughapp.com)

Warmonger: Warcraft III Autorefresh for Mac OS X

kenneth — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 08:19:42 +0000

One of the most popular articles on this blog has always been my tutorial on how to hack an War3 autorefresh bot for Mac.

However, it’s still quite a clunky hack, and many commenters have been unable to get it work smoothly. Even I gave up on it when I upgraded to Leopard.

Introducing Warmonger

Warmonger is a Mac-like autorefresh bot for Warcraft III. It does that and only that, but it does it well, reliably and most importantly, natively.

Warmonger is completely free, too.

Download Warmonger

Using Warmonger is easy: Create a game on Battle.net, switch to Warmonger and hit Refresh, get back to War3 and enjoy your autorefreshing game.

Warmonger knows to stop automatically when your game starts. Once it’s launched, you don’t even have to worry about it anymore. It really is that simple.

Make Me Laugh – Win Your Free Copy of iLaugh!

kenneth — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 00:26:33 +0000

As iLaugh’s developer, I’ve spent quite a bit of time reading jokes. There comes a point where it feels like you’ve heard them all, and what used to be funny just sounds lame.

Here’s the deal, if you manage to make me laugh out loud with a joke, I’ll reward you with a free iLaugh promo code. While supplies last. (There’s only about 40 codes left for me to give away.)

Show me your best joke in the comments.

At the end of the contest, I’ll compile a list of the very best jokes, and publish them through iLaugh as a new source, as well as on this blog.

Check out the free version!

Update: if you can, rather tweet me your joke @SeoxyS.

Chuck Norris reads iLaugh!

kenneth — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 17:10:31 +0000

There has been quite a bit of activity going on with iLaugh lately:

Chuck Norris reads iLaugh!

Just freshly released merely minutes ago are two brand-new awesome sources, Chuck Norris Facts, both in english and french versions.

Comedy Central back up

The source jokes.com has been down for a while, but everything is back to normal since a few days.

Get iLaugh for FREE!

Yes, the Lite version of iLaugh is finally here. And the best part is that it’s completely free, yet has all the same great sources that the full version offers. The catch? A small portion at the bottom of the screen is taken up by a classy AdMob ad.

Get iLaugh Lite!

TUAW reviews ilaugh

A big thanks to TUAW for reviewing iLaugh today.

Announcing Anigma

kenneth — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 19:53:15 +0000

For the past several months, I have been working with the talented guys at MacMage on a very exciting project that I have the pleasure to announce today.

Anigma is an iPhone and iPod Touch game based on an all-time favorite 80’s classic. It sports amazing eye-candy and music, has a futuristic theme, and adds new gameplay twists.

We are planning on a December or January release, and we will be giving away more information about Anigma as the month progresses.

We will also all be at MacWorld 2009, so look for us there. We will not be exhibiting, but we’ll be wearing MacMage shirts

Also check out the MacMage site, teammate Ernest’s blog, the Azure Talon site, and the official Anigma site.

Azure Talon Software introduces iLaugh 1.0 for iPhone

kenneth — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 17:37:28 +0000

Oct 20, 2008 - Azure Talon Software is proud to introduce iLaugh 1.0, their joke database for iPhone and iPod Touch. For the price of a song, iLaugh is a fun little application that contains an endless database of hilarious jokes. It’s a handy sidekick when entertaining guests, speaking to an audience, killing time or simply to cheer up a friend when they’re feeling down. With sources containing a total of over twenty thousand jokes, users are guaranteed to always find a new joke.

20 October 2008 - Azure Talon Software introduces iLaugh 1.0 for iPhone and iPod Touch

Azure Talon Software is proud to introduce iLaugh 1.0, their joke database for iPhone and iPod Touch. For the price of a song, iLaugh is a fun little application that contains an endless database of hilarious jokes. It’s a handy sidekick when entertaining guests, speaking to an audience, killing time or simply to cheer up a friend when they’re feeling down.

iLaugh is quite easy to use, and a perfect companion for comedians who’re searching for that perfect punch line. With sources containing a total of over twenty thousand jokes (some of which are 100% clean), users are guaranteed to always find a new joke. Azure Talon will be releasing two, completely new and great sources very soon.

Supported Languages:
* US English

System Requirements:
* iPhone or iPod Touch 2.0

Pricing and Availability:
iLaugh 1.0 for iPhone is only $0.99 (USD) and available exclusively through Apple’s App Store.

Azure Talon Software

Download and Purchase

Azure Talon Logo

iLaugh Icon

Main Screenshot

Based in beautiful Gimel, Switzerland, Azure Talon Software is a small privately funded company founded in 2004 by Kenneth Ballenegger. Leveraging their longtime experience developing for the Mac platform, Azure Talon’s aim is developing well-made software, complemented by first-class customer support. Azure Talon Software makes apps that make the user’s life more enjoyable. Copyright 2004-2008 Azure Talon Software. All Rights Reserved. Apple, the Apple logo, iPhone and iPod are registered trademarks of Apple Computer in the U.S. and/or other countries.

###

Kenneth Ballenegger
CEO
info@azuretalon.com

New Site

kenneth — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 12:45:52 +0000

I am not dead.

I haven’t posed here in more than a month, because a month and a half ago I suddenly found myself without a computer. The local power utility company, Eskom, burnt my motherboard down. I have already posted about how much Eskom sucks in the past, so I will not elaborate on that.

So my Mac was broken, just when the 1 year warranty was over. I sent it in for repairs, at a local Apple Certified repairs place. They quoted me for nearly R10’000 (That’s about $1500). After a month of nothing being done, I decided to just buy a new Mac, instead of bothering repairing that one. I bought a new iMac 20” 2.66GHz, and switched the RAM and the Hard Disk from the old one. I am now back online, with a brand-new computer, and I shall be updating this blog more often now.

The real reason for this post, though, is to announce my new site. I have had this idea in mind for a long time, and I really needed a site that could serve as my identity hub. By that, I mean a page that links to my main profiles around the internet: This blog, my company site, my deviantArt profile, my Twitter account, my last.fm profile, and lastly my Facebook profile.

Introducing kenneth.ballenegger.com!

I have to say I’m pretty proud of this design.

Here’s a short video of the main design steps & decision that went into this site:

PhotoMate released!

kenneth — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 11:10:29 +0000

For the past eight months, I have been hard at work on my newest and hottest project, PhotoMate.

Today is a big day for me, as it marks the release of PhotoMate to the public.

OmniDelicious PhotoMate is a new, professional application aimed to replace application such as TextMate, Pixelmator, or Adobe Photoshop. It provides an elegant all-in-one interface that is second to none in ease of use.

Check out brand new PhotoMate at omnidelicious.info.

Update: As I’m sure most of you figured out, this was an April Fool!