James Andrews

Last night I was browsing twitter when one of my tweeps mentioned an article about iPhone and Flash. The article basically stated that before the release of the iPhone there were discussions of using flash on the iPhone for application development. That talks went south and since then there was no turning back. Now whether there is any truth to that I don’t know. What made the article interesting was the mention of an SDK called Corona by a company called Ansca Mobile. Essentially it’s a scripting language similar to actionscript/javascript that allows you to build iPhone apps as if you were building a Flash application.

I’ve wanted to write Cocoa apps for a while, but with work, and life I haven’t been able to get enough time to wrap my head around Cocoa and bindings and all the fun that goes with it. I know Javascript very well. Since I am a web developer so I thought I would give Corona a shot.

Corona cost $99 but there’s a 30 day trial version. I downloaded the trial version, and started reading through the docs (ok skimming through the docs) and sample applications. I found the APIDocs to be poor. No real explanation on how to capture events, which on the iPhone is important. Touch events are everything when it comes to the phone. Also, the company seems to be indecisive about some of the touch event naming, like “drag”. They thought it didn’t make sense, but I easily knew what they were talking about. Though I probably would have called it “swipe”. The sample code however was full of useful snippets, and from that I was able to build a 45 line application. That’s right in 45 lines I had the application I have been wanting to write for 5 months. Now I haven’t been able to test it on an iPhone or within Apple’s iPhone simulator. I have tested it in Corona’s iPhone simulator, in order to test it elsewhere I need to pay the $99, so for all I know it could totally break. I will give them the benefit of the doubt that it will work fine on the iPhone, and could revolutionize iPhone development for those who want to quickly get something out without the time consumption of learning Cocoa Touch, or paying an iPhone developer up to $150/hr

I am looking forward to them having a version that supports the iPad, I am sure they are working diligently on it.

Photography is one of my hobbies. Sometimes I’ll do a wedding for a little extra money, sometimes I’ll shoot models. Trying to keep track of everything is a pain. Last night I was organizing apps on my iPhone and decided to look for some new ones while I was at it. I came across one called “Photographer’s Workflow”. From the images in iTunes App Store it looked like it did pretty much everything, and it was $3.99. Cheap enough for me to want to give it a try.

I downloaded and synced the app to my first generation iPhone. The first thing I noticed was that it requires use of Google Calendar. I give it my gmail account and password and it connected. Fulfilling that requirement, I attempted to add a project.

I add my project and the app crashes. I go back to the app, and enter the project. None of the information is there, and there’s no way I can see to delete the project and start again. I add another project, and wouldn’t you know it happens again. App == FAIL.

This app looked so very promising. I was really upset about the requirement for Google Calendar. I don’t want all my business information on the cloud, I’d rather have it sync to iCal through iTunes, or at least have the option for it not to use Google, and just keep it on my Phone. I couldn’t get a project to work at all which means that the application was totally useless to me.

I have contacted Apple for a refund.

Don’t waste your time, the app needs a lot of work.

While its fresh in my mind I think I am going to write about the DragonCon iPhone application. Thursday evening I was browsing either Twitter, or Facebook or Livejournal. I don’t remember which when I saw a link advertised for a Dragon*Con iPhone. It was basically advertised as a replacement for the little panel list booklet that I can’t read because the text is so fraking small. I was pretty psyched.

The application is pretty simple in design. There is a main page that has update information. There is an “Events” button, a “My Schedule” button, and a “Speakers” button. For DragonCon the “Events” button gave you a list of all the panels on all the different tracks and concerts from various acts at the convention. This was really handy. Not having to dig out a little booklet that was hard to read was a real PITA. You clicked on an event and the there was a way to add the event to your “schedule” page that had a day calendar look. You could plan your entire weekend and then all you would have to do is go to your “Schedule” page and see what you had chosen and life was nice and easy, not marking the little book and trying to find an event you read about but were unsure about, simply add it, and then go through the schedule and cull out the things that overlapped or were too far away for you to make it from the previous track. The idea at it’s simplest form is great. No wasted paper, and much easier to find panels.

It’s got problems thought, and to be fair the Application is called “Follow Me” and is created by “Core-apps LLC”. It is an event organization app that allows you to have information on panels exhibitors and updated information on. DragonCon is simply their client.

The biggest problem is the load speed. DragonCon has a LOT of events, and since the application talks to the internet to update those events you’re talking a connection EVERY time the application is loaded. It seems to load the XML (assuming it’s XML) EVERY time instead of doing something simple like checking the last modified date against a db to see if the schedule has changed. With 30000 people at the convention and most of them connected to cell towers trying to make connections for tweeting, surfing or using FollowMe. That lead to a VERY slow user experience. The app should only ever update when the data has changed, and then, only modify new data since that change. There are also a lot of things that they could have added to make the experience of using the application a lot better. “Speakers” for example gives list of all the speakers, there’s no cross talk to the events telling allowing me to see what events that speaker was in. There was no way to search only different tracks. All 3 days of events were listed in one list. Separating out Friday, Saturday, and Sunday would have made it easier for those of us trying to get to the sunday list late friday night to plan things. Instead you have to scroll through hundreds of panels that happen Friday and Saturday. Little things that with a little more thought could make this application rock the convention world.

Basically the idea is great, the execution needs some work. Yay DragonCon for doing this, They may want to consider a web version as well for those non-iphone users. Any web developer with half a brain could write something similar in a couple weeks, and then you’d make everyone’s life easier.

FollowMe gets 2 of 5 stars. DragonCon for using the tech to make my con experience better gets 5 for 5!

Today I was reading twitter when @mongey91 mentioned his father being impressed with an application called Airmouse on the iPhone.  I had not heard of Airmouse, so I poked around the Apple Application store, and found the application.  First off it’s not a free application.  It’s US$5.99.  What Airmouse does, is it allows your iPhone to act as a remote mouse and keyboard for your Mac or PC.   At first glance I can see a lot of uses for the application.  First would be presentation at conferences.  According to the video on the website it can be used just like a mouse pointer move up it moves up, down and it moves down.  Multimedia PCs need keyboards and mice so you can access your files.  Why not just sit down, turn on Airmouse turn the tuner to the PC and let it go.  Of even as an alternative to a TV in the bedroom.  Control your computer to watch a movie from your bed, no extra remote needed.

I downloaded the server and installed it on my 1st gen Macbook.  Server installs easily, and did not require administrative privileges which was nice surprise.  Next I went to iTMS and payed my $5.99 downloaded, and synchronized it onto 1st gen iPhone.  I am all set and ready to go.

First of is the ability to type which i am doing right now from the iPhone. It is neat if you need to rename a video file on your media PC.  The iPhone application has 2 interfaces.

The default is pointer style, with the ability turn it into trackpad style.  I’m going to talk about trackpad style first.  When you start the application you will be in pointer style mode.  Clicking on the icon in the upper right hand corner put you into trackpad mode.  The trackpad on top and they keyboard on the bottom of the iPhone screen.  As you might expect it is designed to act like the trackpad on your computer.   If you click anywhere on the trackpad part of the screen and hold your mouse moves, and the application is designed so that if you track over the keyboard it will stay in mouse mode until you release.  Which is pretty handy.   It has 3 mouse buttons between the keyboard and trackpad.  One for left one for center, and one for right.  They will act just like if you were using the same buttons on your computer.   The center also has up and down arrows, so you can use it like a scroll wheel.  Don’t want to use the button as a scroll wheel?  That’s fine, you don’t have too, 2 finger drags on the track pad also work.  Airmouse definitely has the trackpad working well, and would be hard to improve on.

Pointer mode has 4 buttons.  left, right center bottom and center top.  The left and right act just like the left and right buttons of a normal mouse.  The center bottom is like the center on your normal mouse.  The difference is because there is no “tracking” with your fingers on the track pad, holding the buttons and waving the iPhone up and down and left and right acts as you moving the mouse.  The top center button is what you use when you just want to move the mouse without the effects of clicking on a mouse button.  Overall with my 1st gen iPhone the tracking doesn’t seem to work well, but maybe I just need to fidget with the settings some more.

Airmouse also has 3 unique displays.  Media, Web, and “hot keys”.  The media page gives you access to iTunes.   Web connects me to Safari, but it may as well work with your default browser.  The “hot keys” allows you access to your “function keys” and also some missing keys.  All very well implemented and useful.

Still I think it’s a great little application, and once I get my Mac mini for my living room next year I’ll be using it quite often.  I give it 4 out of 5 mice.  If you would like to learn more visit their website.