Brandon Ballentine

Apr 25, 2014 ∞

I knew the ducks at work were strange, but apparently they are now cannibals. I caught these two sharing a delicious egg in the parking lot!

Apr 19, 2014 ∞

Discovered a new way of opening paint cans

Mar 22, 2014 ∞

Cleaning up the old house and found one of Miu Mius’s trophies

Mar 20, 2014 ∞

The park near our new house.

Feb 24, 2014 ∞

Building a Better Tour App Using iBeacons

Since Apple introduced iBeacons at WWDC in June last year, we’ve seen plenty of announcements from retailers who plan on using the technology to enhance the shopping experience. While there’s no doubt that iBeacons can be valuable in commerce and provide an innovative way for businesses to interact with their consumers, iBeacons have the potential to impact a wide range of industries and become more than just the next great marketing tool.

The technology is powerful and easy to implement, and as an educational technologist, I believe it can make training more efficient, adaptable, and collaborative. I wanted to see for myself how I could take advantage of iBeacons to develop an educational app, so I ordered a set of Estimote beacons, fired up Xcode, and created a versatile audio tour app.

Retiring the D2L Reference App

I first released the D2L Quick Reference iOS application in February 2011. Over a three-year time period, the app has been downloaded thousands of times and maintained a 4+ rating in the app store. It has allowed me to meet a lot of awesome people I might not have otherwise had a reason to talk.

If you’re a user of the app, you’ve probably noticed that it hasn’t been updated in quite some time. Although I haven’t pushed any updates iTunes, I’ve actually been working on a major revision off and on for several months now. The reason they haven’t been released is that many of the features I want to add to the app, such as the ability to search a large database of tutorials and an option to customize the app based on your school’s version of D2L, require some sort of interaction with a web server. Since I don’t charge for the app, I just can’t rationalize spending money on a server backend.

For that reason, and because I want to focus on some new app ideas (more details soon), I’ve decided to stop development of the app and remove it from iTunes. Thanks to everyone who downloaded the app and made it a success!

As a side note, I’d be happy to talk with anyone interested in creating a similar app for their organization. Feel free to get in touch and request a quote!

Jan 25, 2014 ∞

Organic oatmeal at the Krispy Kreme counter.