App Distribution Key File Backup

I have been developing apps using Appcelerator's Titanium Studio for the past year. Unlike some of the other multiple OS distribution methods Appcelerator allows you to generate native controls and widgets across multiple platforms. They have a strong user community and the stability of the apps produced is excellent (contrary to the negative reviews found online).

In my standard backup process I create regular copies of the code base for my apps. However, it has come to my attention that for the sake of security you need to back up more than just your code.

When you distribute apps to the app stores, they need to be signed used using the private keys associated with your development certificates. If these keys are lost then you will be unable to publish updates to your apps.

So if you develop for Android and iOS as I do, here are a couple of links that give you the critical information.

iOS
Read this post on backing up your private key and follow the instructions at the bottom.

Android
For android releases to Google Play, you need to make a back up of the keystore you created with keytool. This is the android guide to application signing. You will have used the keytool command to create a key for your application before distributing, as described in this how-to. You simply make a back-up of the file listed when you run the command
keytool -list -v -keystore /XXXXXXX

How much do you 'Like' me ?

A guy I don't know recently sent me a Facebook friend request. Usually I just ignore these requests. I am liberal with the definition of friend, but I have to have met someone once before I accept a request on Facebook. This time it was a guy who knew several of my friends and was working on an interesting project. So against my usual rules I accepted and sent him a quick message telling him that I liked the project and I had interest in collaborating if the opportunity arose.

A day later, instead of replying to the message, he sent me an invitation to 'Like' his page. A day after that he sent me an invite to be friends with his second FB account. This gets under my skin. It is practically an open admission that he has no interest in social networking other than using people to 'Like' stuff.

These kinds of experiences are not uncommon. On twitter I constantly encounter writers whose only tweets are plugs for their own books. In spite of all the raving going on about the economic miracle of 'Social', all I see is people using it for SPAM.

The best advice I have ever heard about 'Social' is be yourself and talk about something other than what you are selling. Maybe people will find you interesting enough to look into what you do.

Excuse me now, I have someone I need to unfriend.