For any of you in Las Vegas this weekend too… drop me a line; would be great to have a drink or play some blackjack.

Validating Apple App Store receipts for In App Purchase can be a pain, so I wanted an easy way to throw a receipt in and figure out if it was a valid or not.

So, I threw together a quick PHP script to figure this out quickly and easily; it takes a base64 encoded receipt as the input and will tell you if it is valid or not.

Give it a try:

The script is hosted at http://www.chrismaddern.com/validate-itunes-receipt/ and you’re free to use it – it will also take the url arguments receipt and sandbox to run without requiring input. If you would like to script it automatically as part of a deployment etc… I would ask that you host your own version, the code is available to download below:

Get the code

I hope it helps!

How often do you get an opportunity to support both children’s education, and the upper lip of a man, all in one fell swoop…!?

I know what you’re thinking… it’s not that!

The past 20 days, I have been growing a mustache to raise money for kid’s schools… I’ve raised $448 so far and was hoping that any of you reading this may like to donate to a good cause!

I’m raising money using Donor’s Choice – an online tool to help people choose which projects their charity money goes to. Check out my page and support the cause at Chris Maddern’s Mustache in a Fancy Border.

Cheers!

Do your bit for a secure, reliable and free internet. Contact your representative online!

From fightforthefuture.org

PROTECT-IP is a bill that has been introduced in the Senate and the House and is moving quickly through Congress. It gives the government and corporations the ability to censor the net, in the name of protecting “creativity”. The law would let the government or corporations censor entire sites– they just have to convince a judge that the site is “dedicated to copyright infringement.”

The government has already wrongly shut down sites without any recourse to the site owner. Under this bill, sharing a video with anything copyrighted in it, or what sites like Youtube and Twitter do, would be considered illegal behavior according to this bill.

I was creating a promo video for BuyFollowers and I wanted to animate Twitter followers going up.

So.. I figured the easiest way is to use Javascript to manipulate the page and increment the follower count.

The result:

So how does it work?

• We get the element that contains the XXX Followers text and modify it to contain a span with an ID around the number – this makes it easier to modify just the follower count
• Capture this number and the end count (by adding 1000)
• Increment through to the new follower count, updating the value
• Use setTimeout to begin the next iteration after the UI has updated

var followercount = 1000;
var endCount;
var currentCount;
function incrementFollowers() {
  document.getElementById('followerinc').innerHTML = followercount;
  followercount += 1;
  if (followercount < endCount) {
    setTimeout(incrementFollowers, 20);
  }
};
var comma = ",";
currentCount = parseInt(document.getElementsByClassName('user-stats-count user-stats-followers')[0].innerHTML.split("<span")[0].replace(comma,''));
endCount = currentCount + 1000;
followercount = currentCount;
document.getElementsByClassName('user-stats-count user-stats-followers')[0].innerHTML = '<span id="followerinc">' + currentCount + '</span><span class="user-stats-stat">Followers</span>';
setTimeout(incrementFollowers, 1);

javascript:var followercount = 1000; var endCount;var currentCount; function incrementFollowers() { document.getElementById('followerinc').innerHTML = followercount; followercount += 1; if (followercount < endCount) { setTimeout(incrementFollowers, 20); } };var comma = ",";currentCount = parseInt(document.getElementsByClassName('user-stats-count user-stats-followers')[0].innerHTML.split("<span")[0].replace(comma,'')); endCount = currentCount + 1000; followercount = currentCount; document.getElementsByClassName('user-stats-count user-stats-followers')[0].innerHTML = '<span id="followerinc">' + currentCount + '</span><span class="user-stats-stat">Followers</span>'; setTimeout(incrementFollowers, 1);

Another one of our much loved pitch practice events.

The format will be fairly informal as always.

- pitches will limited to 3 minutes, after which there will be 5-10 minutes of feedback and questions

- we’ll have a couple of minutes between every couple pitches to refresh/refill your glasses

- Note that the venue is fairly intimate so places will be limited.

If you would like to pitch, fill out the form at: https://podio.com/web… (preferred)

or you can email us at:

pitch@flagonsden.com

We’re also looking for a sponsor to keep the bar tab flowing – so please let me know if you (or anyone you know) is interested.

The Flagons Team

London – United Kingdom

Wednesday, November 16 at 7:00 PM

Attending: 43

Details: http://london.flagonsden.com/events/39519512/