The list of brands out there with an app has a lot of girth to it, and is growing faster than a snotty little girl who just ate the 3 course dinner piece of gum. Unfortunately, not all of them are doing something unique, usable, or even all that interesting, and ends up being another case of “just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.” The most successful apps serve a purpose, fill a void, are radically different than anything else (Flipboard), or are successfully aimed at the community (Alien Blue)in which it was meant to serve. It’s a simple formula to imagine, but it’s incredibly difficult to hit center-mass, and most miss even the most carefully placed dog-targets.

It’s easy to look at huge numbers and say these are the brands that uncorked a whopper, I mean just take a gander at some of these numbers (which are likely out of date):

• Barclaycard - Waterslide - 9,800,000
• Zippo – Virtual Lighter - 6,000,000
• eBay - Marketplace - 4,600,000
• Audi - A4 Driving Challenge  - 3,500,000
• Bank of America - Mobile Banking - 3,000,000
• Coca Cola - Spin the Bottle - 870,000
• IBM/Amex - U.S. Open - 450,000
• Stanley Works - Level - 400,000
• North Face - Snow Report - 300,000
• vitaminwater - Sound Lab - 250,000
• Zipcar - Zipcar App - 170,000

At first glance you would say these guys all got it right, but you have to look a little deeper, and relate those numbers to the size of the user base, and the size of that Brands community. Naturally those companies with huge communities and ubiquitous brand recognition are going to have massive downloads. How else can you explain all of the downloads Coke, Spin the Bottle has received? That app is only slightly better than the iGlow stick app.

Now look at the Kmart and Sears apps, which are nothing more than another way to shop on your iPhone. What value does an app that all but replicates the shopping experience in Safari add to that brands community? Not much, and their 2.5 star rating reflects that.

So who has gotten it right? Zippo is an easy target for a brand that hit the mark. They have more than 6 million downloads on an app that basically does nothing, and provides no real value other than entertainment novelty. I know that sounds like a slam, but it doesn’t really have to be. It was something that fit perfectly into their community, and what a lot of people were looking for as a fun way to show their attachment to the iconic pocket lighter. Gap is another example with their 1969 Stream iPad app. It’s a well designed, well functioning advertising piece that is just fun to look at and flip through, and has a companion website; or the app is the companion to the website – either way, good jaeerb guys!

There are tons more, too many to list in fact, and a lot of them are really well designed and developed, and a lot of them are junk; but that’s okay. Even the failures are doing their job, and hopefully the brands are learning from them and working on doing a better job for the next rev. See, that’s the key here.

Everyone wants to be the next Angry Birds, or Victoria Secret Pink, but what they lose sight of is that they really need to just be themselves, and be true to the personality of their brand. Getting caught up in being the next “big thing” is only going to get you so far. Failure is always an option.

So what am I saying here? I’m saying do your homework, and eat your veggies. Do the research. Spend some money, and build something your kids would want to use. Find a void and fill it with your app. Do something ridiculous and borderline crazy just to see what happens. But know why you’re doing it, and it can’t be because your competitors are. If that’s the only reason, then you might as well just follow the rest of the Lemmings……

So I got my hands on iPad today, it’s not mine really, but I get to play with it for a couple of days while I get it setup for a work project. My first reaction is that it’s pretty freakin’ cool, just like a proper Apple fanboy. I’m amazed at how nice the majority of the apps that I have look on it even when they are zoomed in to twice normal size. Both of my apps, FIB-U-LATOR and Karate Chapp scale remarkably well, and hold together visually at two times their designed size.

I also downloaded iBooks and started poking around to see how many of the books I have recently bought are in the store…. Yeah, that would be none. I know it just came out, would be a big use for me if it turns out to be something I can really get into reading on. I would rather have ebooks than have a huge library of books I may not read more than once.

Writing this post is a challenge too since the WordPress interface is really not working. The visual editor doesn’t work at all, I can’t scroll any of the in page elements like my categories or the editor. But then again, I’m sure there’s an app for that.

It seems that simple web browsing is faster on the iPad too that it is on my iPhone or iPod. It could be that it just seems that way because it’s a new toy and I’m still geeking out over it, or the newer device actually performs faster since it has newer chip. Probably a little of both.

Anyway, it’s really fun to play with, and I can totally see getting one when version two comes out, especially instead of a Kindle, which is a single use item.

I recently updated the FIB-U-LATOR app to have more excuses, and I’ve decided to add another update, only this time I am going to add support for expanded features that require the use of the SQLite Database available to the app in the SDK. Getting data out of the database is pretty easy actually, and it really doesn’t take much code to connect to, then retrieve data. Here’s a quick tutorial over at dBlog, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

Since I work with MSSQL all the time at the day job, I’m really accustomed to having a nice GUI to do all the work of creating and managing my databases, and I really have no inclination whatsoever to do any of those tasks at the command line. None at all, no thanks. It didn’t take me long to find this simple, easy to use GUI called MikeT’s SQLite Database Management Application. It is very basic, and simple, but you really don’t need anything more than that. It’s fast, simple to figure out, and jammed with a bunch of options. You can add encryption when you create the database, and has a dropdown to select the column data type while adding new rows to the table, you can even import data from a tab delimited file to create a new database.

I have some work ahead of me to get my current data into the new database yet, and ideally what I would like to be able to do is convert the plist file to a tab delimited file and just import it. Right now, I’m not sure how to do that. EditiX seems like it’s a good option, but I haven’t tried it. There’s also a big list of XML editors for OS X at XMacL. Oxygen XML Editor seems like a really powerful option, but it’s a bit pricey at $350.00 for a single license. I’d rather hand-jam all of the entries than spend that kind of scratch for an app to do it, I only have a few hundred entries anyway, so it wouldn’t be a horrible march of death to get it done the hard way.

More to come as I get further into this.

It’s no secret that I have another iPhone app in the works, and that it will be available soon. Although, I have been reluctant to give out a lot of detail simply because, well, I’m a bit paranoid. I will say that it involves Brent and I recording audio for playback in the app, and that it has been interesting working with audio on the iPhone.

The first thing I noticed straight away is that it’s easy to use files that are far too large for the iPhone to playback properly while working with .wav files. I started working with .wav files for two reasons. The first being that I have a ton of them, and that made it easy to drop files in to test with. Second, compressed audio files cannot be overlapped on the iPhone, so if you want them to play simultaneously, .wav files are your Huckleberry.

First, I needed a microphone that wasn’t going to sound like an AM Radio, so I went out (dispatched the wife actually – thanks dear) and picked up a Blue Snowball. As it turns out, the Snowball is every bit as good as the reviews says it is, and I would highly recommend it. With the Snowball plugged in, SoundBooth open, we were all set and the recording commenced. Recording the audio was easy the most enjoyable part of the project so far, once the app comes out, you’ll see why.

When we were finished, I ended up with about two dozen CD quality .wav files, which still needed to be trimmed down. The files ranged in file size from 300k up to about 1.2mb. I trimmed the up, but left them as dual-channel files and tried to get them to run in my app. Needless to say the files choked both my iPod and iPhone and needed to be optimized for them to work. I tried a few things, and didn’t get very far in SoundBooth, so I opened them up in Audacity and removed one of the channels and converted them to mono. I also took the time to trim the ends so there wasn’t a lot of unneeded dead-space. The files are all now between 20k and 120k in size, and still sound as well as they play.

I have two different players in action on a couple of views in the app, and one has a single track playing at a time using AVAudioPlayer. Through digging around in some of Apple’s sample code, and online info (particularly from iPhone Dev SDK) I was able to get it work.

Here’s the .h code:

#define kAccelerationThreshold	1.8
#define kUpdateInterval			(1.0/10.f)

#import <UIKit/UIKit.h>
#import <AVFoundation/AVFoundation.h>
#include <AudioToolbox/AudioToolbox.h>

@interface TauntViewController : UIViewController <UIAccelerometerDelegate, AVAudioPlayerDelegate> {

AVAudioPlayer		*_player;

NSArray				*soundArray;

BOOL				soundEnded;

}

@property (nonatomic, assign) AVAudioPlayer*	_player;
@property (nonatomic, retain) NSArray *soundArray;

@property (nonatomic, assign) BOOL soundEnded;

- (IBAction)playTheSound;
- (IBAction)resetSound;

@end

And the .m file code:

#import "SoundViewController.h"

#import <AudioToolbox/AudioToolbox.h>

@implementation SoundViewController

@synthesize _player;

@synthesize soundArray;

@synthesize soundEnded;

- (void)viewWillAppear:(BOOL)animated{

UIAccelerometer *appAccel = [UIAccelerometer sharedAccelerometer];

appAccel.delegate = self;

appAccel.updateInterval = kUpdateInterval;

soundEnded = YES;

// Load the array with the sample file

soundArray = [[NSArray alloc] initWithObjects:@"sound1", @"sound2", @"sound3", @"sound4", @"sound5", @"sound6", nil];

}

- (void)viewDidLoad {

[super viewDidLoad];

}

- (void)startPlayback{

if ([self._player play]){

self._player.delegate = self;

}

else

NSLog(@"Could not play %@\n", self._player.url);

}

- (void)didReceiveMemoryWarning {

[super didReceiveMemoryWarning];

}

- (void)viewDidUnload {

[_player release];

}

- (void)dealloc {

[super dealloc];

}

#pragma mark -

- (void)accelerometer:(UIAccelerometer *)accelerometer didAccelerate:(UIAcceleration *)acceleration{

if (sqrt(acceleration.x * acceleration.x) > kAccelerationThreshold || sqrt(acceleration.y * acceleration.y) > kAccelerationThreshold || sqrt(acceleration.z * acceleration.z) > kAccelerationThreshold) {

[self playTheSound];

}

}

- (void)playTheSound{

// play the sound file

if (soundEnded) {

soundEnded = NO;

int soundId = random() % soundArray.count;

NSString *newSound = [soundArray objectAtIndex:soundId];

NSURL *sound1URL = [[NSURL alloc] initFileURLWithPath: [[NSBundle mainBundle] pathForResource:newSound ofType:@"wav"]];

self._player = [[AVAudioPlayer alloc] initWithContentsOfURL:sound1URL error:nil];

[self startPlayback];

}

}

- (void)resetSound{

soundEnded = YES;

}

#pragma mark AVAudioPlayer delegate methods

- (void)audioPlayerDidFinishPlaying:(AVAudioPlayer *)player successfully:(BOOL)flag{

[self resetSound];

[player setCurrentTime:0.];

}

@end

This selects a random sound from the soundArray into the player every time you shake the device, so long as there is not a sound currently playing. A couple of things I had to do which I am not sure if it’s the best way to handle it or not is adding the initialization of AppAccel for the Accelerometer in the ViewWillAppear function so that it loads the correct sounds for the view being currently used.

With the optimized sounds, the code works great. I thought about trying the sounds at a higher quality, in stereo, and using MP3s, but I haven’t tried it yet. Honestly I’m not sure I will since the files are so small, they sound quite good, and I’m not sure if there would be anything to gain by using MP3s over the .wav files.

Like I said the app will be out soon, so I hope everyone will like it as much as I do.

After what seemed to be an eternity of waiting, developing, waiting, mucking around with settings, more developing, and yet more waiting – my iPhone app FIB-U-LATOR has been listed as Ready for Sale, and is awaiting propagation into the App Store.

w00t! w00t!

I’ve been working on this app for several months in my spare time, learning Objective C along the way, and working in a completely new development platform and process than what I’m used to. The entire process has been quite daunting, frustrating, tiresome and rewarding all in the same breath. For a while it seemed as if I would never get it off the ground, and in all honesty, I was ready to give up and move on. There always seemed to be another hurtle in my path. Be it lack of experience with Objective C, Cocoa, and the iPhone platform, trying to get a bank account set up, or trying to figure out how to deploy my application for distribution.

With all of those behind me I am only waiting for FIB-U-LATOR to appear within the App Store itself after being approved by Apple. This last step, from what I have read can take from a few hours, to a couple of days as long as your certificates and account is all set up properly. As with anything else, I would imagine it also falls prey to how busy they are, and luckily I think it has been ample time since the OS 3 was released that it shouldn’t be a huge issue.

So what is FIB-U-LATOR? It’s a pretty simple excuse generator that had it’s life start almost 5 years ago as a Flash app I built figure out the SQL Components that came in one of the FLash Developer Resource kits back when they were still Macromedia. It sort of took on a life of its own after that, and the database grew quite quickly from just a few of us adding stuff at work. The just a few months ago I decided it needed to be an app. Since then, I’ve learned a great deal about development on the Mac and for the iPhone and I have another app in progress, and another lined up after that.

I’ve also set up a Facebook page, and added the apps section to my portfolio site, Perubique.com. My goal here is to have some fun, makes some good apps and make a little cash on the side. One thing I have yet to complete is a place for folks to submit, and then rate excuses so I can then take the top rated submission and add them to future updates. I’ve kicked around a couple of contest ideas too, to help generate buzz as well as stimulate sales – but hopefully in a fun way, not a money grubbing way.

When FIB-U-LATOR is completed its journey and is fully available in the App Store, I will distribute the links across all my sites.

Thanks for everyone’s help, friends, family, and Apple/iPhone dev board people.

The last week has been the ultimate test of my development patience and intestinal fortitude (yyeeaaahhhh!!!). I’ve have spent probably around 12 to 15 hours creating, deleting, downloading, and veraciously swearing at certificates, provisioning profiles, and xcode trying to work the Apple Voodoo to get my app to be able to be signed, then accepted as a valid binary via iTunes Connect.

Rather than rehash everything, there were three things to be the issue.

1. I didn’t use my name as the Common Name when requesting the Distribution cert in keychain access
2. I did not know that there was a need to set the distribution profile in the target (right click on the app under target, select get info)
3. I removed the reference to Icon.png in the info.plist file

Now that that’s all said and done – I want some more for the app to get approved. In the meantime, here are some links to threads and posts that made my morning. Hope they help.

• http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1590980&start=30&tstart=0
• http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=659607
• http://www.bigspaceship.com/blog/labs/iphone-101-understanding-distribution-pt-ii-of-ii/

There’s a lot more in my Delicious links as well….

I am going to preface all of this by saying I love my iPhone. I do, it’s awesome. That being said, there are few things that really make me wonder just WTF they were thinking.

On top of my WTF list is the process involved in retrieving images sent to my phone from other mobile devices. I would really like to meet the brain child who thought it was super user friendly to have to make me go to a website, and enter in, not one… but TWO alphanumeric strings to view the image that was sent to me. All from a device that is incapable (for now) of copy and paste. This has to be one of the most retarded things i have ever come across, and the rocket scientist who dreamt that nightmare should go back school and learn about usability. Given the fact that the images are not stored permanently there, why they just wouldn’t create a linking system like twitpic is beyond me. Just tack a freakin’ GUID on the end of the URL for Pete’s sake! Gah.

Another thing that plagued me this afternoon was setting multiple devices to enable my iPhone to accept my almost completed app. I went through the setup process of adding the device only to get a code signing error. The same error that hundreds of other developers have gotten. Luckily for me all I had to do was go under Project > edit project settings and then change the Code Signing Identity to the right profile, and viola! I was in business. This seems really clunky to me, and left me wondering if there was abetter way Apple could handle this. If this happens to you, and the Xcode UI options doesn’t fix it, there is a manual process described here, and other places.

Today has been quite frustrating as far as my Apple Developer stuff goes. In general I have accomplished very little. I was unable to open a business checking account because the po-dunk chuckleheads in town decided to make up their own rules in regards to what I need to open an account. Rules contrary to what other banks say, and what the legals dudes who set up my LLC say. The gal on the phone actually said to me, “well, here at bumf$%#! bank, we have our own set of rules…”, well you can guess who she was talking to after that morsel of knowledge. That’s not to say there aren’t any folks in town who know what’s what – but this old biddy was playing with a box of rocks as far I could tell.

It seems like this is the longest, most arduous process available to get this all taken care of, and it looks like it will probably another 3 weeks before I will have my app in the App Store. I hope it goes faster, but I’m not holding my breath…..

With the latest app I am working on I am populating a label with text after a button click (ooohh so exciting), and rather than have it just plop in, I wanted the text to fade in and fade out. Well I haven’t gotten it to fade out first, then fade back in after the text has been placed – but it does fade in. When the button is pressed the text is removed, then the label is set to alpha of 0, then the new text fades in.

//set text to transparent
statusText.alpha = 0;
statusText.transform = CGAffineTransformIdentity;

[UIView beginAnimations:nil context:NULL];
[UIView setAnimationDuration:.75];
//makes text fade in 100%
statusText.alpha = 1;
[UIView commitAnimations];

It’s pretty straight-forward too. After connecting the label to the statusText outlet in Interface Builder, I simply use that outlet to perform the fade from within the buttonPressed action in the view controller file. As long as you have the CoreGraphics framework imported into your project you are good to go. The next bit is a bit more complex, but not really by much.

The text I am placing is set randomly from a .plist file. First you need to set up your viewcontroller.h file with something like:

@interface FirstViewController : UIViewController {
    IBOutlet    UILabel     *statusText;
    IBOutlet    UIButton    *changeTextBtn;

    NSDictionary *textList;
    NSArray *categories;
    NSArray *textData;
}

@property (retain, nonatomic) UILabel *statusText;
@property (retain, nonatomic) NSDictionary *textList;
@property (retain, nonatomic) NSArray *categories;
@property (retain, nonatomic) NSArray *textData;
@property (retain, nonatomic) UIButton *changeTextBtn;

- (IBAction)buttonPressed:(id)sender;

@end

Here, setting up the dictionary for the text strings is the most important. In the .m file is where we get the text to be placed randomly. Using the viewDidLoad function, set the following:

NSBundle *bundle = [NSBundle mainBundle];
NSString *plistPath = [bundle pathForResource:@"TextList" ofType:@"plist"];

NSDictionary *dictionary = [[NSDictionary alloc]
                            initWithContentsOfFile:plistPath];
self.textList = dictionary;
[dictionary release];

NSArray *components = [self.textList allKeys];
NSArray *sorted = [components
                         sortedArrayUsingSelector:@selector(compare:)];
self.categories = sorted;

NSString *selectedCategory = [self.categories objectAtIndex:1];
NSArray *array = [textList objectForKey:selectedCategory];
self.excuses = array;

Then place the new random text string using the same buttonPressed function where we set the fade:

int randomNumber = random() % [self.textData count];   
NSString *nextText = [self.excuses objectAtIndex:randomNumber];   
NSString *newText = [[NSString alloc] initWithFormat:@"%@", nextText];
statusText.text = newText;
[newText release];

That’s pretty much it. Some of the stuff in the viewDidLoad function you might not need, but I wanted to sort by categories, then sort by the textListing in each of those categories as well. The next thing on my plate is to get the views to flip right then flip left as the user switches between views using the tabbar.