Development — 23 Comments
15
Feb 10

Running Chrome OS Flow on an Intel Core 2 Duo based MacBook that uses the Intel GMA 950 Chipset

Edit: I just discovered a problem in the grub.cfg included in efi.zip that broke the Chrome application menu. I uploaded a new version of efi.zip that fixes this issue.

Note: This tutorial assumes that you have followed the directions at (http://chromeos.hexxeh.net/) and already have Chrome OS Flow loaded onto a 2GB or larger usb flash drive. This drive will be further known as the ChromeOS Drive.

Note++: It may be possible to get Chrome OS Flow working on other Intel-based MacBooks/MacBook Pros, but for all intents and purposes, this tutorial is for getting Chrome OS Flow to run on a Intel Core 2 Duo based MacBook that uses the Intel GMA 950 chipset. Feel free to use my work as a starting point if you would like to try to get it working with other models.


What Hardware You Will Need

An additional usb flash drive. (Any size or model should work.). This drive will be further known as the Bootloader Drive.


Hardware You Might Need

A usb hub or usb extender cable. (These may be necessary because having two usb flash drives plugged into your MacBook’s two usb ports may either be a little cramped or not physically possible w/o using a hub or extender cable.)


Preparing the Bootloader Drive

Open Disk Utility, select your Bootloader Drive, click the Erase tab and format your drive as “MS-DOS (FAT)”.

Download and extract the contents of this file, efi.zip.

Copy the “efi” folder to the root of  the Bootloader Drive.


Plugging Drives Into Correct USB Port

The Bootloader Drive must be plugged into the first usb port (the first port from the left) and the ChromeOS Drive must be plugged into the second usb port.


Booting Chrome OS Flow

Restart OSX and immediately hold down the Option key.

Choose “EFI Boot”.

The GRUB bootloader should appear, automatically load Chrome OS Flow, display the splash screen and then stop at the Chrome OS login screen.


Logging into Chrome OS Flow

You can either log in using your gmail account username and password or by using “facepunch” as both the username and password. Enjoy. :)

Development — No Comments
11
Feb 10

Notable Extension Update: 50% Less Fat

Due to popular demand I shrunk the text size of the image and website capturing links to 14 pt size which also allowed me to shrink the width of the extension’s popup window.

So now I welcome a more compact sleek version of the extension:

Notable Extension for Google Chrome, 50% less fat.Note: I don’t have the autoupdating feature setup for this extension yet, so to install the latest version you will have to uninstall the current version and then click the install link below.

Click here to install the Notable extension for Chrome.



Development — 5 Comments
11
Feb 10

Notable Extension for Google Chrome

I started playing around with Notable a couple days ago and discovered that they had a Firefox plugin, but not a Google Chrome extension.  Well, for a few weeks I had been itching to create an extension for Chrome but hadn’t come up with any worthy ideas.

I got the go-ahead from Matt Kelly and the creative juices started to flow.  A few design iterations later, the Notable extension was born:

Notable Extension for Google Chrome

The extension is fairly simple and just links to parts of the Notable website, but in the future I hope to leverage Notable’s REST API.

Click here to install the Notable extension for Chrome.

Development — No Comments
3
Aug 09

iPhone Development Update

It’s been awhile since i’ve posted about iPhone development but things are going quite well. My first project is on the back burner for now due to some technical issues but my second project is looking great. I have most of the basic functionality in place for a 1.0 release. I may add a few more features, but I still need to clean up the UI a bit before it’s ready for primetime. I may add a teaser image of my second project’s app icon later…

Development — 3 Comments
30
Apr 09

iPhone Development Rambling

A couple of weeks ago I took the plunge and signed up for the iPhone Developer program. At the time I signed up I didn’t actually own an iPhone or iPod Touch and the plan was that I would to do all development using the iPhone Simulator that comes with the iPhone SDK. This idea was going well until last weekend when I decided I wanted to play around with one of the fancy features of the iPhone/Touch, the accelerometer. I discovered that the simulator unfortunately does not implement the functionality of the accelerometer.

So that was depressing until I found this, it appeared like it was exactly what I needed, a way to simulate the accelerometer. But after spending a day trying to get the setup to work and output meaningful data, I gave up on that route. That was when I bit the bullet, I ordered a refurbished iPod Touch from Apple’s website.

Slight tangent, I have to say that I recommend Apple’s refurbished products to anyone looking to save money on an Apple purchase. Refurbished products come with the same warranty as non-refurbished products and in most cases are indistinguishable from what you get when you buy new.

Development has been going well on my first iPhone project which is actually a rehash of my first cocoa app, an app that was unfortunately never released because of some functionality issues. I also have some plans to create an iPhone version of decline. The challenge will be trying to figure how to refactor the UI to work in an iPhone/Touch environment.

Stay tuned for more iPhone Development Rambling as I figure out all the ins and outs and differences between Cocoa and Cocoa Touch.

And now your moment of zen: