Tuesday, February 3, 2009

App Approval 2

We did an update to the FTP Picture Upload iPhone app, so once again I get to see what the testers at Apple uploaded to our server when reviewing the program.  

These are even more awesome.
    
Wow.  

Thursday, January 29, 2009

Future iPhones

My guess for Future iPhones.

Really the size is about right.  Big enough screen to be useful, but small enough to fit in a pocket.  It could get a fraction bigger by having less border, but that's about it.

The biggest unused space on the whole thing is the back.  My crazy guess is double-sided, with identical screens front and back.  With motion detection (easy to detect a 180 degree flip) and/or the same "it's close to your face" type sensors, it would be able to figure which side is up and active.  My screen after months doesn't have a scratch so is plenty durable.

This would get around the only one program running at a time limit (well, increases it to two.)  Use the program, flip to use a different one, flip back.  Crazier things have happened :)


(Added 2/7/2009)
After reading about the new updated Kindle coming, I thought, maybe put a small bit of the "e-paper" sort of thing it uses on the back as the 2nd screen.  Not sure if that's cheaper than a whole full-size screen--but it probably is.

I don't think the e-paper stuff needs electricity to show stuff the way a regular screen does.  Would be perfect for text messages, showing new emails, etc.

That would be cool too!

Friday, January 23, 2009

First Email Address

I read that our new president is keeping his Blackberry for friends and family.  Assuming it isn't b_obama@blackberry.com, it makes you wonder what (hopefully) ridiculous name he had to choose.

prez44?  treklover61?  bearsfan873?

Saturday, January 17, 2009

App Approval Process Dinner

Pete and I made another "quick" iPhone app, FTP Picture Upload. (Quick only because of the months putting together FTP On The Go and it re-uses big portions of that.)

It lets you take a picture with the iPhone camera and upload it to your website. I provided a test FTP server so the people reviewing it at Apple could upload photos.

Of course I can see what was uploaded to our server. They were apparently working over a dinner of shrimp fried rice at about 8pm on a Friday night...assuming they're in California. Could also be lunch Saturday in some other time zone.

Tuesday, January 6, 2009

Lost Ark

We watched Raiders of the Lost Ark over the holidays.

So at the very beginning, how exactly did the Aztecs make a light-sensitive trap?  Wouldn't it go off every night?  I suppose it's just magic.

Saturday, January 3, 2009

A Stupid Name Idea

I keep waiting for the perfect project to use my silly name idea--to use a bunch of the "hot" name suffixes and prefixes over the years in one big awesome name.

iTwipediadangosterzilla

Been keeping that for a couple years, so likely will never come.  Maybe somebody else has a product that needs a crazy name...

Thursday, December 18, 2008

More iPhone code, opening some URLs in Safari

I answered a question about this in the iPhone developer forums, so thought others might find it useful too.

If you have a UIWebView in your app to show some web page (which I'm using for all the help pages.) You may still want it to open a new Safari window for other things--like links to the AppStore for other programs. This little bit sees what they web view will open, and if it's a URL on apple.com or an email address, opens that in Safari or the Mail app.

An equivalent of the "myEndsWith" is something you'll still have to do :)


- (BOOL)webView:(UIWebView *)webView 
shouldStartLoadWithRequest:(NSURLRequest *)request
navigationType:(UIWebViewNavigationType)navigationType {
//Opens any to apple.com in Safari (so app-store links open right :)
if ([[[request URL] host] myEndsWith:@"apple.com"]) {
[[UIApplication sharedApplication] openURL:[request URL]];
return NO;
}
//Mailto opens in email app...
if ([[[request URL] scheme] myStartsWith:@"mailto"]) {
[[UIApplication sharedApplication] openURL:[request URL]];
return NO;
}
return YES;
}