I'm a freelancer... want to hire me?

• MacOS, iPhone and iPad App development
• Leading development teams large and small with SCRUM and Agile methods, the way it's meant to happen!
• Thinking through big systems integration problems and making them work beautifully
• Slick and thoughtful user experience design
• I'm pretty good at web stuff too but generally avoid it

Download my CV: PDF | Word (March 2012)

Contact details

• (+44/0) 7957 432004
• Flat 306, 22 Loom Street, Manchester. M4 6AN
• Linkedin Profile
• Also check out Samscam (my personal site)

Available now on the App Store, the first in the line of Festometer applications for legendary Manchester music festival In The City.

More details and screenshots on the blog.

From April to June 2010 I worked as part of a large team on The Times iPad app for News International. Read some of my thoughts about it on Posterous.

for iPhone and iPod touch

Now with added Frenchness, CANCELLED gigs, various minor refinements and completely FREE

for Mac Dashboard

The original last.fm what-gigs-are-on widget. Now works on Lion!

I conform to my own dress policy which I define as “the clean and reasonably respectable items in my wardrobe”. That does include shorts. Shorts are definitely allowed. Count yourself lucky that I’m not dressed like Sean here…...

Most of my work comes through either recruitment agencies or word of mouth. That’s just how the contracting game works. They phone me up and email me on a regular basis which is great and every now and then they have exciting things and I’m...

For the majority of my software contracting life I have had clients who pay me by the day . So if I work, I get paid. If for some reason I only work for half a day I only bill you for half. If I don’t bother to get out of bed, I don’t...

Many of the projects I have found myself involved with in the last few years can be categorised as rescue missions. I define these as follows: You have an existing but incomplete codebase (with or without the original coders)  You have an...

Always brief contractors adequately on mug-politics and dishwasher regime

The project has been carefully considered, thought out, decisions made on the back of many years of experience in the given field that the product is supposed to fit into. Mutually agreed, signed off, pretty much ready to roll. And then someone comes...

Some clients get this, others don’t. It’s very straightforward: A standard working day is 7 working hours. That’s 9-to-5 with a whole hour for lunch. Or 10-6 or whatever. Anything more than this is entirely at the pleasure of the...

[ Flash 10 is required to watch video.] Definitely #FuckYeahMayfair - also rather WTF

I once nearly got in serious trouble for sending a long rambling email to the very top of an organisation I was working for about coffee. They had down-graded the lovely proper espresso machine in the café and replaced it with an automated...

“Today has been fab. They moved us to the Mayfair offices. Splendid lunch, inspiring world outside, feeling right at the heart of things… Still had to ask (for access) to go to the toilet though. #FuckYeahMayfair ”

Pointless subway to nowhere… Quicker just to walk across the road…

I have not had a job where I’ve been able to print reliably for SEVEN YEARS. Printing is actually quite useful.  You will provide contractors with: A decent printer attached to the office LAN. One which is known to work with Mac OS and...

WTFord orphanage, as recommended by the Princess of Teck

Getting adequate IT support from large corporations is a frequent nightmare for IT contractors. Our requirements differ substantially from the needs of your average call-centre drone and we do actually need to use the internet. All of it. Even...

Just like home, only grimmer

You will provide contractors with the following items: A desk of appropriate height and size for a human, with enough legroom and adequate surface area. If we’re expected to bring our own laptops, a nice big screen provided by you is a big...

Brutal brown building…

“Classic corporate network shit in #WTFord SSH:blocked IMAP:blocked Facebook/YouTube:eradicated! Getting 30 megabits to the desktop though!”

Sam’s great tasting chicken

It’s a fucking star. It’s not a moon. Not even vaguely moon-like. However reaching for it is tempting as it looks like it could do some damage if swung with a bit of force.

Another day, another app! This time it's a guide for In The City , Manchester's premier music festival (and industry conference). I'm really really pleased with the v1.1 update which went live just in time for the festival. Download it from the...

I've been working on a contract at News International for the last two months - specifically on the Times iPad application . It launched last Friday and I was rather delighted to see this at Liverpool Lime Street station on the Saturday morning:...

An interview with me at the recent Dev8D conference down in London :) http://dev8d.jiscinvolve.org/2010/02/26/interview-sam-easterby-smith-and-iphone-apps/ Permalink | Leave a comment  »

Some months back - in fact when I first went solo with Spotlight Kid I was asked to produce a prototype Augmented Reality application on the iPhone. The concept was show a number of local landmarks around Manchester atop of the iPhone camera feed,...

The week before last I did a bit of teaching - for the first time in a while... and really enjoyed it. Under the monica of Guerilla Training in collaboration with Stuart Smith , Rob Hayward and the guys and girls from Manchester's nascent...

sam-isone.pdf Download this file Permalink | Leave a comment  »

In partnership with Manchester web agency Cahoona , I created a Google Maps mashup for the Visit Manchester Autumn campaign. The data is taken from a mySQL database held by Cahoona, delivered to client machines over JSONp. It uses custom...

Entrepreneur’s new gig is focusing on iPhone applications Spotlight Kid has just released its first piece of software By  Richard Morris  - first published in Crain's Manchester...