Introducing the iAnnoyance Challenge: Easy cash for helpful fixes

[Swad]

Just because OS X is (arguably) the greatest operating system on the planet doesn’t mean it isn’t fairly annoying on occasion. And while we can’t fix everything, we can certainly fix some things.

 

That’s why we're introducing the iAnnoyance Challenge this Friday. Every month or so we’ll launch an iAnnoyance Challenge in which we give Mac coders around the globe 3 days (the weekend) to come up with a small application to fix OS X’s little annoyances. If no one submits a solution in 3 days, the contest continues and the donation pot grows larger until a solution is found.

 

To make it worth your time, we’ll give $100 to the first person that submits a workable app... and we'll take donations from others to make that number even higher (we expect several apps to be worth USD $200-300!). Prize money can also be donated to the charity of your choice.

 

(Note: This is easy money, folks. Even if it takes you a solid 5 hours (unlikely) to create this app, you’re earning 20 bucks an hour for simple and fun work. When people donate more, your time is worth even more. That means that even if you’re unsure, it’s worth your time to try.)

 

InsanelyMac will take the application (while giving you full credit) and make it open source as a free gift to the Mac community. Pretty neat, huh?

 

We’ll launch our first iAnnoyance Challenge this Friday, so get your coding fingers warmed up. As with all of the Challenges we have planned, we think you’ll really like it.

 

In the meantime, let us know what annoys you about OS X in our Great Debate. Your thoughts might make their way into an iAnnoyance app!

 

[if you're excited about this idea, please digg it to share it with the world.]

[bronxbomber92]

I only wish I am good enough to program something like yet... Unfortunetly I am still learning

[rogabean]

This is a really great initiative!

[SaberSHO]

I cannot wait for friday! this sounds like its gonna be a lot of fun! Unfortuntly, im moving back to school this weekend, so I might not be able to participate in this first challange, but i love the idea! Bring on the annoyances hehe

[domino]

Wow, this idea blind sided me. Other than clearly stating the type of free licensing ( i believe there are more than 2 types of them), and more information on legal distribution restrictions (existing apps too easy to rip), it's a great idea. I can't wait to see devs in full battle gear.

[Swad]

Domino, the apps will be released under the GPL. I'm not too clear on your "legal distribution restrictions" question, although the app itself will be fully distributable.

 

Also, the more publicity it gets, the better the challenge will work. So digg with all your might!

 

http://digg.com/apple/The_iAnnoyance_Chall...mall_OS_X_fixes

[enb14]

Excellent idea Mash, I hope to see speed ups on projects like sigmatel, EFI, MacVidia and others.

[domino]

+1 Digg

 

but i refuse to go to that site and register.

'm not too clear on your "legal distribution restrictions" question, although the app itself will be fully distributable.

other than EFI, MacVidia, and others, just about every applications needed to get productivity done is available. I have not yet gotten stuck with a problem that I didn't find a solution for at VT and MU.

 

What worries me is that an application is already posted over at the distribution sites. then someone comes out and rips the application and decides to submit it here.

 

Another is someone submits and application, gets the reward, then decided to market the application to make profit. Of course he would change around the gui. All source codes should be included with the distributions. Will the developers agree?

 

 

Maybe i'm looking too far into the future?

[br0adband]

Well I can't code for anything so, the chances of me creating a unified "Dock/Taskbar" are between null and void, I guess.

 

Still, a great idea to spur creativity.

 

bb

[Swad]

domino-

 

Good questions. First, we're going to try and make sure that any iAnnoyance challenge doesn't overlap with current tweaks/apps or, if it does, we've got a good reason for it. Also, one of the conditions of winning is that the developer allows us to package the code up for anyone to use. Since it'll be GPL'd, that dev would be free to do with it what they'd like, but they'd still have to share changes, etc.

[dtm3dd]

Mash - once again another GREAT idea.

I like the "dream app" idea and this is a nice little use for it.

[teehee]

I am new to my MacBook Pro and I'm new to scripts. One thing I've noticed when i open Microsoft products is that they open ports. Opening ports without the users knowledge is a bad (security) practice. I did some reading online and found that you can enter some commands in terminal to stop the office programs from opening up ports.

 

sudo ipfw add deny udp from any to any 2222

 

I do this before opening Office products, but it gets to be a hassle after a while, and now I just accept the security risk and don't do it. I hear that maybe you can write scripts that will do this automatically? I am new to Apple Scripts and have no clue how to do this. Also, is there any streamlined/automated way to have this done so when I click on the Word icon, it automatically does this in a background? I thought it might be a nifty thing to fix, though I doubt its big enough to win the prize. Any help would be much appreciated!

[rogabean]

So ummm announcement?

[SaberSHO]

hehe...itchy coding fingers here....

<must.....be........patient!!!!.............>

[Swad]

5 minutes... :-)

[catawalks]

so what happened with this? Digg wasn't getting a very positive feedback from the members there. Anyways...just wondering how many people sent you stuff and if any of them actually won something?

[Swad]

Catawalks, check the other thread in this forum - it's already been announced!

 

As for digg, I guess they don't think OS X has anything annoying, or at least aren't willing to support efforts to fix those things.

[Muriac]

Any chance I could suggest an annoyance for a future contest? It's really been bugging me lately that hitting F11 (Exposé: show desktop) doesn't make the desktop active. That is, hitting F11, Command-Shift-N sends the Command-Shift-N to the window that was active before Exposé was invoked. This is really unintuitive and annoying behaviour.

[phoopee3]

I have another suggestion for an iAnnoyance... if this isn't where to do it, sorry!

 

I'd love an app that can hide the apps that are in the menu bar. Or maybe display them as a menu going down that you click on. Cause you know when an app is open, its menus take precidence over the menu bar apps. On Windows XP they do this with a little blue ball that you click that hides the less used icons. I imagine something like that that can hide all, all but the clock - or maybe even configured via a preference of what apps are ok to hide. I'd love to hide the airport when i don't need it, you know?

 

If there's already an app like this please let me know! haha.

[pmike]

Change the default pref, in the Finder, so that the stupid sidebar doesn't display on newly viewed folders.

[pmike]

I am new to my MacBook Pro and I'm new to scripts. One thing I've noticed when i open Microsoft products is that they open ports. Opening ports without the users knowledge is a bad (security) practice. I did some reading online and found that you can enter some commands in terminal to stop the office programs from opening up ports.

 

sudo ipfw add deny udp from any to any 2222

 

I do this before opening Office products, but it gets to be a hassle after a while, and now I just accept the security risk and don't do it. I hear that maybe you can write scripts that will do this automatically? I am new to Apple Scripts and have no clue how to do this. Also, is there any streamlined/automated way to have this done so when I click on the Word icon, it automatically does this in a background? I thought it might be a nifty thing to fix, though I doubt its big enough to win the prize. Any help would be much appreciated!

(Sorry for the long post here, moderators feel free to relocate it and put a pointer in-place.)

 

That's fairly easy; and you are already comfortable with the command line. I have the following (which could stand some cleanup):

/Library/StartupScripts/FirewallCustom/FirewallCustom

#!/bin/sh

######################

# Add Firewall Rules

######################

 

. /etc/rc.common

 

StartService ()

{

if [ "${FIREWALL:=-NO-}" = "-YES-" ]; then

ConsoleMessage "FirewallCustom: StartService";

/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/NetworkConfig.framework/Resources/firewalltool;

/usr/bin/perl /Library/StartupItems/FirewallCustom/fw-config.pl;

ipfw list > /tmp/ipfw.results.txt;

chmod a+rw /tmp/ipfw.results.txt;

fi

}

 

StopService ()

{

ConsoleMessage "FirewallCustom: StopService";

/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/NetworkConfig.framework/Resources/firewalltool;

ipfw list;

}

 

RunService "$1"

 

/Library/StartupScripts/FirewallCustom/StartupParameters.plist

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple Computer//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">

<plist version="1.0">

<dict>

<key>Description</key>

<string>Custom Firewall Rules</string>

<key>OrderPreference</key>

<string>Last</string>

<key>Provides</key>

<array>

<string>Firewall</string>

</array>

<key>Uses</key>

<array>

<string>Network</string>

</array>

</dict>

</plist>

 

/Library/StartupScripts/FirewallCustom/fw-config.pl:

#!/usr/bin/perl

 

$c_del = 'ipfw delete';

$c_add = 'ipfw add';

 

$addCount = 3000;

 

$defCount = 40000;

 

$apply = '';

 

$fwrules = `ipfw list`;

@fwrulesarr = split /\n/, $fwrules;

 

if( $#fwrulesarr > 2 ) {

 

print "Modifying standard rules:\n";

 

foreach $fwrule ( @fwrulesarr ) {

if( ( $pos = index( $fwrule, ' 80 in' )) > 3 ) {

$apply = "$c_del $fwrule";

print "Removing HTTP: $apply\n";

`$apply`;

}

if( ( $pos = index( $fwrule, ' 427 in' )) > 3 ) {

$apply = "$c_del $fwrule";

print "Removing HTTP: $apply\n";

`$apply`;

}

if( ( $pos = index( $fwrule, ' 443 in' )) > 3 ) {

$apply = "$c_del $fwrule";

print "Removing HTTPS: $apply\n";

`$apply`;

}

if( ( $pos = index( $fwrule, ' 497 in' )) > 3 ) {

$apply = "$c_del $fwrule";

print "Restricting Retrospect: $apply\n";

`$apply`;

$addCount = $addCount +10;

$apply = "$c_add $addCount allow tcp from 10.0.0.0/24 to any 497 in";

print "Restricting Retrospect: $apply\n";

`$apply`;

$addCount = $addCount +10;

$apply = "$c_add $addCount allow udp from 10.0.0.0/24 to any 497 in";

print "Restricting Retrospect: $apply\n";

`$apply`;

}

if( ( $pos = index( $fwrule, ' 3689 in' )) > 3 ) {

$apply = "$c_del $fwrule";

print "Restricting iTunes sharing: $apply\n";

`$apply`;

$addCount = $addCount +10;

$apply = "$c_add $addCount allow tcp from 10.0.0.0/24 to any 3689 in";

print "Restricting iTunes sharing: $apply\n";

`$apply`;

}

if( ( $pos = index( $fwrule, ' deny tcp from any to any' )) > 3 ) {

$apply = "$c_del $fwrule";

print "Moving default tcp deny rule: $apply\n";

`$apply`;

$apply = "$c_add $defCount deny tcp from any to any in";

print "Moving default deny rule: $apply\n";

`$apply`;

}

}

 

print "Adding extra rules:\n";

 

$defCount = $defCount +10;

$apply = "$c_add $defCount deny udp from any to any in";

print "Default UDP deny: $apply\n";

`$apply`;

 

$addCount = 10000;

$apply = "$c_add $addCount allow udp from any to any out";

print "Allow UDP out: $apply\n";

`$apply`;

 

$addCount = $addCount +10;

$apply = "$c_add $addCount allow udp from any 53 to any in recv any";

print "Allow DNS in: $apply\n";

`$apply`;

 

$addCount = $addCount +10;

$apply = "$c_add $addCount allow udp from any to any 68 in";

print "Allow DHCP in: $apply\n";

`$apply`;

 

print "Adding trusted computers:\n";

 

$addCount = $addCount +10;

$apply = "$c_add $addCount allow udp from 10.0.0.222 to any in";

print "Allow some machine (UDP) in: $apply\n";

`$apply`;

 

print "\nResults:\n", `ipfw list`, "\n";

}

[stellaf]

Hi,

 

I am Stella Fernandis and I am learning programming languages. I must say that you have done a good job and we all should take such kind of initiative. Thank you so much for sharing.

 

Stella

 

 

 

 

[Guest undefined]

nice timing.

[adamsweeting]

What a great idea.

 

Has there been an "iAnnoyance Friday" yet?

[booger_sniffer5000]

This thread is 3 years old! Why revive it?