I’m from Brazil, and I’ve seen many reports of enrollments taking more than 4 weeks to complete, and, after reading all these posts, I was conformed in waiting the four weeks for the process.

Just so you know, we need to send a signed fax with a lot of information, including credit-card details, to Apple.

I was astonished that, 4 hours after I’ve sent the fax, my credit card was charged and I’ve got two e-mails saying that my developer program was activated and it was ready to use. Immediately I’ve logged on the Apple developer site, and it was everything there. Provisioning creation, iPhone SDK 4 and iPhone OS 4 available for download… Everything.

Well, thank you Apple, for another great customer service.

I’m sorry my fellow countrymates took so long, but we do need to report the goods and bads, right? Expect some info on upcoming app store software from us!

It assumes that you already know how to code, and is moving to a new platform (in this case Cocoa). It helped me a lot (and it still does) when I came from my C/C++ background to the MacOS Cocoa + ObjectiveC. It’s a hands-on approach that leaves no gaps in the explanations.  I’ve found myself many times coming from the Apple’s official tutorials to the eBook to get some clarification on some topics. It’s great both for learning and for reference.

If you’re new to programming and is starting in a MacOS platform, you can check out the Beginning Mac Programming: Develop with Objective-C and Cocoa. I haven’t read this one, but it seems to make the same approach from the first one, except it does not assume any programming background.

In the meantime, my wishlist is available with some other options of books (and, if you want to send me a gift, those are great ones).

Searching the web, I’ve found many language functions to convert lines, strings or chunk of bytes from one encoding to the other, but I have in my hand a plain-text file (a rather large one).

I’ve used the Unicode Mapping CodePage 936 available from the unicode page to do the trick. Not all characters are there, but it mostly works. Since I’m quite in a hurry, this one will do for now. I’ll later try to encode it with BestFit 936 to see what I get (note: The current code does not work out-of-the-box with the BestFit file format. Some tweaking is needed).

So, having in hands the codepage, I figured I could make a small python script to convert my file to another encoding (UTF-8, in this case) and I’m sharing it with everyone (GPL License).

If this code is useful for you, you could donate (any amount) to show your appreciation from the link below.

It was coded on a Mac, using Python 3.1, but it also works on Windows (I’ve tested it on a XP). Note that it’s quite crude and you need to alter some settings at the beggining of the file (Source file and Destination file at least).

An simple online currency converter application made for MacOS 10. This simple application lets you choose an target and destination currency from a predefined list and it convert the currencies for you.
It fetches online the current convertion rate, displays it to you and the target value.

It is very simple and plain. No in-depth work. Just saves you the time to go online, search the site and do the math by yourself.

I’ll post a download link later this week.