Hawaiʻi's Technology Community

Featured Blog Posts (422)

It’s Back-to-Business for Hawaii Tech Companies!

Well, it’s official. The Governor did not veto the Legislature’s Bill 199, so Hawaii’s Investor Tax Credit for high technology companies has now been scaled back from a maximum of 200% to “only” 100% return of high tech investment through tax credits, and the credits will now be claimable at no more than 80% of State income tax liability per year. Actually, the scaling back of benefits was not so bad. Rather, it was the way the whole tax credit program has been conducted over the past 10 years,… Continue

Added by Leighton K. Chong on July 17, 2009 at 2:26pm — 29 Comments

Swearing to Cope with Pain

Man, it has been a while since I last posted. I wanted to write about all sorts of things. Like successfully installing R for OpenSolaris using packages. Maybe about the uncertain future for OpenSolaris, now that Oracle pwns that. Maybe about coffee (see… Continue

Added by Brooke Fujita on July 14, 2009 at 9:00pm — 2 Comments

Tech Industry Awaits Lingle's Final Decision on SB 199

Posted on behalf of Jay Fidell from ThinkTech and the July 12, 2009 Honolulu Advertiser

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In her veto list of June 30, Gov. Linda Lingle said she would veto SB 199, the bill that pulled the wings off Act 221, the high-tech tax credit.

This unleashed an endless chain of e-mail within the tech industry. Some were… Continue

Added by Daniel Leuck on July 13, 2009 at 11:00am — 9 Comments

Google Chrome OS and the 'Web of Tomorrow'

IT ALL STARTED WITH A SEARCH ENGINE. Back in the days, Google Search has taken over the web by its simplicity, light-weight, and precision of returned results.

Then Google slowly expanded into GMail, Calendar, Google Docs, etc.. in an attempt to replace desktop office with web-based alternatives. More features were being added constantly,… Continue

Added by Konstantin A Lukin on July 9, 2009 at 4:00pm — 5 Comments

Fireworks Fun reviewed by SlideToPlay.com!

I was extremely ecstatic last night when I saw that some staff members at SlideToPlay.com were playing our game last night, and ranked second on the high score server! You can see the high score list at: http://www.cocoslive.net/game-scores?gamename=Fireworks%20Fun

Then when I checked it later today, not only did they score #1 with a score of 61,100 (with a total playing time of 8 minutes),… Continue

Added by Sherwin Gao on July 8, 2009 at 8:01pm — No Comments

How has the State's moves on ACT 221/ SB199 already affected your company?

A small group of folks were invited by the Governor's office to discuss the potential veto of SB199. I would be very interested in knowing if any tech companies have already been negatively or positively affected by the potential passing of this bill.

For example, were you looking for funding but SB199's threat has killed your chances due to uncertainty?

Or is there a positive story you would like to share?

I don't want a pro/con debate on SB199 here. I would… Continue

Added by Peter Kay on July 8, 2009 at 10:30am — 31 Comments

GWT + Flex = GXT?

For all RIA fans out there who are deciding whether to go with GWT or Flex for your next project, I highly recommend to consider the following initiative. It is called

Ext GWT. It packages a well known

Ext JS Javascript library into GWT… Continue

Added by Konstantin A Lukin on July 7, 2009 at 11:30am — 2 Comments

An introduction and a request.

Thereʻs a very good chance that you have no idea who I am. My name is Nathaniel Kinney.

I am interested in finding out what concerns Hawaiʻiʻs tech industry might have at the City & County level. In addition, I am also interested in finding out from members of Hawaiʻiʻs tech industry, how the City government can do things differently to become more efficient.

At this point, you may be wondering, why the heck does this Nathaniel Kinney guy want to know and who the heck… Continue

Added by Nathaniel Kinney on July 7, 2009 at 12:23am — 9 Comments

Developing and Publishing an iPhone App

As some of you may know, my friend and I have published our first iPhone game

Fireworks Fun a few days ago. Although that wasn't my first iPhone app, I still learned a great deal from it. The iPhone SDK is extremely large and there just doesn't seem to be enough time to learn everything and develop at the same time! The bad (or good) thing is, developing for the iPhone is much more than just mastering the SDK; there are so many other aspects to iPhone development. I… Continue

Added by Sherwin Gao on July 6, 2009 at 4:09pm — 1 Comment

HOWTO: Turn Google Calendar into a useful Time Keeping Tool

Average software developer often juggles multiple projects at a time. One of common challenges is keeping track of time properly, especially when 'context switching' from one project to another. A quite useful tool for time tracking is

Google Calendar. Here is a list of most notable features: - Free and available with GMail acount - Syncs with CalDAV enabled clients (Apple iCal or Mozilla Sunbird) - Syncs with Windows… Continue

Added by Konstantin A Lukin on July 4, 2009 at 2:00pm — 1 Comment

My New iPhone App, Fireworks Fun, finally released!

My new iPhone app, named Fireworks Fun, is finally in the app store today! It was almost going to be too late, since as you can see from the title we were trying to target audiences on July 4th :)

The dev time was intense for this since we started developing this in early June, after my graduation. I thought of the idea of making an iPhone app for July 4th before May since that would be one of the best ways to get exposure for an app. However, there just wasn't enough free time to… Continue

Added by Sherwin Gao on July 3, 2009 at 8:25pm — 6 Comments

Featured Techie: Labels That Talk President Ken Berkun

I first met Ken on TechHui. He was an early member and a frequent participant in our groups and forums. I was intrigued by his company's product, Soundpaper, which encodes audio in high density barcodes. In Japan I frequently see bar codes used to encode URLs that can be read by mobile phone cameras. You find them everywhere from vending machines to magazines. The user points their mobile camera at the barcode to access media (sound, image or video) over the network. Soundpaper is… Continue

Added by Daniel Leuck on July 1, 2009 at 3:00pm — 4 Comments

Silverlight 3.0 - The First Real Threat to Flex

I just finished reviewing the API docs for Silverlight 3. I'm really impressed with the 3.0 framework. Silverlight has always had good underpinnings including an elegant and clean API, a declarative UI, a solid VM and an excellent programming language (C#). The problem has been a lack of polish in the UI, missing high level components and missing key features already found in… Continue

Added by Daniel Leuck on June 28, 2009 at 8:00pm — 7 Comments

User Experience - Interrupted

Apple recently announced the much anticipated

iPhone3G S, along with the new 3.0 platform. As usual, Apple has done a stellar job of hyping the release, providing the 3.0 SDK (Software Development Kit) to their huge following of app developers in advance, encouraging them to take advantage of the new capabilities such as copy/paste, voice dialing, compass positioning, video support with editing, and, of course,… Continue

Added by Mimi Knowles on June 23, 2009 at 6:05am — 1 Comment

The U.S. Government contacted Twitter about Iranian usage of the service during political protests

One of my interests, as stated on my profile page, is "the intersection of technology/new media with social and political activism."

Reuters India has an article titled, "U.S. State Department speaks to Twitter over Iran.

It is no surprise that Iranians are Tweeting. I think what was a surprise was the reported interaction between the State… Continue

Added by Derek on June 16, 2009 at 11:00am — 2 Comments

HOWTO: Consume a Groovy Web Service with Flex

Recently, I've been faced with the fact that Flex is quite popular as a web presentation layer. Given my Java background, at first I was quite reluctant to recognize this, until new projects paved the way to learn more about this RIA technology. Since I already have a considerable amount of server-side code in Java, I was wondering if it is possible to connect Java and Flex to get the best of both worlds. Hence this article gives a walk through on how to consume a Groovy Web Service… Continue

Added by Konstantin A Lukin on June 15, 2009 at 9:30pm — No Comments

Reminder: Two Weeks to Go for Invention Contest

The closing date for submissions to my INVENTION CONTEST on Renewable Energy is July 4th. The winner in each category of challenge idea will receive my coveted “GOLDEN BAGEL AWARD” for best Hawaii intellectual property achievement of the year. For the 3 winners chosen in the Invention Contest, I will also perform a FREE patent search on each invention and provide my written opinion on its patentability (a $1500 value). Please check my blog: http://hawaiitechnology.blogspot.com.

Added by Leighton K. Chong on June 13, 2009 at 3:30pm — No Comments

Urgent! Help Stop HB1405 - The Bill That Will Devastate Hawaii's Online Media Industry

I hate to be dramatic but the future of Hawaii's online media industry is in jeopardy and your immediate action is needed. Bill HB1405 is a bill that could cause a huge blow to Hawaii's Online Media Industry. It will handicap Hawaii's Online Media by not allowing them to fully monetize their websites giving an advantage to international and mainland companies and professionals.

Frankly, I am very surprised that there has not been more support against this bill from Hawaii's tech… Continue

Added by Dean Takamine on June 12, 2009 at 5:00pm — 72 Comments

Star Trek Tech Today: 3D Printing

I recently had the chance to spend some time at RAPID Technology's offices in the Executive Center. Prior to my visit I knew very little about the world of 3D printing. I'd heard of it, but assumed 3D printers were still in laboratories at MIT. I was amazed to learn 3D printing is being used today by businesses for everything from product prototypes and prosthetics to costume armor for movies. It can even be used to print working mechanical devices with moving parts. The… Continue

Added by Daniel Leuck on June 5, 2009 at 2:00pm — 13 Comments

Hawaiʻi Tourism Authority exploring new media & measuring the success of online marketing.

Two weeks after it printed a rather lengthy article on Twitter, Pacific Business News today has an article on bloggers, social media, and the Hawaiʻi Tourism Authority. CLICK HERE or go to http://tr.im/PBNHTANewMedia for todayʻs article. The article also mentions Lezley P. "Neenz" Faleafine of… Continue

Added by Derek on June 5, 2009 at 7:00am — 8 Comments