Null Agenda

For many people this time of year means saying goodbye to summer, finding the old sweaters and hoodies from last year, and preparing for that familiar back-to-school ritual. With Apple once again offering their back-to-school deal of giving an iPod Touch away with the purchase of a Mac, there will be plenty of college students looking for apps to go along with their new computer that will help them during the hectic school year. With an ever-growing number of applications available on the Mac platform it could become quite a task finding the right thing, so a few apps that stand out in their category that aid students will be spotlighted.

Studying and Management

Cram – One of the newest to the bunch is Cram, which offers students the ability to study and prepare for tests in either flash card or multiple choice testing mode. Cram also grades and keeps track of testing attempts and tweets out test results to Twitter. The application also features a user-generated test library to download existing tests. http://www.simpleleap.com/cram/mac.htm

Timeline 3D – An application that will help students add pizzaz to timeline presentations is Timeline 3D. This app allows users to present full screen interactive timelines with a 3D perspective. If you have to display any chronological events Timeline 3D is perfect for adding a unique splash to your presentation featuring the ability to add images, video, use your Apple Remote and more. http://www.beedocs.com

Schoolhouse – Trying to keep up with your assignments and notes for each class can be a pain. Schoolhouse offers a remedy to that problem by providing the ability to manage and keep track of assignments, notes, and tasks. Schoolhouse’s clean and easy to use interface also features the ability to manage your grades over a term, add an attachment, and email an instructor about an assignment among other features. http://www.loganscollins.com/schoolhouse

1Password – So you’re trying to remember all the new passwords this semester without using the same easy to hack password for every site but finding it hard to manage. Well remember no more with 1Password. 1Password is an application that manages all of your usernames and passwords and quickly restores them when it’s time to log in. Use a single password to access and manage all of your accounts. 1Password also integrates perfectly into Safari, Firefox, and other browsers for seamless one-click account log in. http://agilewebsolutions.com/products/1Password

Lifestyle

SousChef – You can only eat pizza and soda so many nights in a row. That’s where SousChef comes in. SousChef is a digital cooking assistant that among other features allows you to store and organize your recipes. The application also provides access to over 110,000 recipes to download when you’re in the mood to try something new. Sharing recipes with friends and family is also a simple task in SousChef. http://www.acaciatreesoftware.com

Tweetie – Everyone has a Twitter account so why not have a slick way of using it? Introducing Tweetie, a beautiful Twitter client for Mac. Tweetie adds a layer of simplicity and style while at the same time including all of the same functions you’re used to on Twitter. Manage multiple accounts, easily view conversions, chose your favorite URL and image service and more. http://www.atebits.com/tweetie-mac

The Hit List – Keeping up with college life is hard enough. Adding family, friends, work, and other outside obligations make it nearly impossible. In comes The Hit List, a simple yet sophisticated application to manage the daily chaos of your modern life. One of the strong points of the application is its ‘Today List’ which shows all of the tasks for that day in one view. The Hit List is a feature-full application with seamless integration with system applications such as iCal to access tasks with other applications and devices. http://www.potionfactory.com/thehitlist

Times – Who says newspapers are dead? Well, technically they are, but an app called Times puts a classic newspaper look to your favorite blogs. Unlike most RSS readers, Times presents headlines, categories, and images in once place letting you more easily discover the news you want to read. The detail put into the presentation and animated transitions in Times is top notch. http://www.acrylicapps.com/times

Entertainment

World of Goo – Two words that explain this game can only be “fun” and “addictive”. World of Goo is a physics based puzzle/construction game that features little globs of goo that can be connected together to achieve the goal at hand. Play this game and you probably won’t get any studying done, but you’ll have fun time doing so. http://2dboy.com/games.php

Hulu Desktop – With all the studying and late night projects you might have this semester, chances are some of your favorite shows will be missed. Hulu Desktop puts many of your favorite TV shows on your Mac so you can watch them on your time. Browse by channel, category, movies, and more. http://www.hulu.com/labs/hulu-desktop

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So it’s been a while since I’ve posted anything here, and I apologize for that… I’ll have part II of my last post here very soon. If you’ve attempted to develop any apps that utilize Twitter’s API, you’re probably familiar with the whole OAuth stuff. If you’re developing your app for the Mac platform and have used the OAuthConsumer you might have noticed that your app broke (at least sending status updates) a couple days ago because of an unannounced security patch Twitter pushed out.

I spent many hours trying to figure out what was going on, and finally was able to fix the issue. Assuming you added a ‘verifier’ property to OAToken, a simple check for this property and excluding the oauth_verifier parameter from the oauthToken string in the prepare method in OAMutableURLRequest is all that is necessary. OAuthConsumer passed the oauth_verifier parameter when a token key existed (which is when status updates are sent among other requests). Even though this parameter was an empty string, accessing a user’s protected resources with it present caused Twitter to complain.

so here is what I did…



oauthToken = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"oauth_token=\"%@\", oauth_verifier=\"%@\", ", [token.key URLEncodedString], [token.verifier URLEncodedString]];

Basically I added an else-if that set the oauthToken string without adding the oauth_verifier parameter. Hope this helps others!

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I know, I know, it has been a while since my last post, but I promise I wasn’t just sitting around at a beach or something. I’ve just been swamped. Anyway, so it’s been over a month since we released Cram for Mac and it has been a great and new experience for me. I’ll talk about some of the points during development that stood out the most.

User Interface

Having developed an iPhone application(Cram for iPhone) before made the dive into Mac development a little smoother, however I still had a few challenges here and there, the first being the user-interface of the application. With the almost limitless number of ways to present your application to a user on a Mac combined with having to understand the smartest and most efficient ways of handling the application’s functionality makes for a pretty tough and thorough first step.

My goal for Cram was to have an interface that easily displayed the user’s tests, the categories they are in, and the functions that can be performed on the tests. Like many applications that have similar type data, an interface with a side-panel of categories, a main section containing the data within the selected category, and a toolbar along the top served to be the best choice for Cram.

One word of advice that I would probably give to anyone out there starting out, is to try A LOT of applications from other developers, the good ones and the bad ones. Understand how they present data and the application’s functionality. Read their reviews and find out what people like and don’t like about them. Find out about methods that are common among many applications. I feel that doing this allowed me to understand what is common among popular and successful software and also helped me include the best aspects of these apps and combine some of these ideas with my own. Some of my favorite apps out there among others are Timeline 3D by Bee Docs, The Hit List by Potion Factory, and Things by Cultured Code. Also another good tip is to pay great attention to the latest and greatest software from Apple. Many times the direction that Apple takes within their applications usually drives the direction of many apps in the third party world usually because it’s something cool but a more important reason is that your users are more than likely going to try an Apple product before they try yours, so when the time comes that they do try your software the user experience will likely be more positive because that particular  functionality in your application is something they feel comfortable operating.

Icon

As many know, the icon for a Mac application is kind of big thing in a lot of people’s minds. It definitely was for me too. I’m not the type of person who will not use an application because the icon sucks, but I do appreciate a great icon that appears to have effort and time behind it. After contacting a few designers about having an icon designed for us, we realized that we are cheap and would rather design the icon in-house first before going the outsourcing route. I cannot say if I recommend this to everyone, but since we had a concept in our heads already, we felt that it would not hurt giving it a shot and I think the end result that Ashli was able to whip-up turned out excellent:

The final icon concept for Cram

Coding Time

You’ll probably spend most of your time (until Marketing gets into full gear) in your life on your project doing development. Having spent most of my life coding in Java, I spent the first couple of weeks getting my brain fully adjusted to Cocoa and Objective C, which quickly turned into a language that is complete joy for me to code in. Getting over the uncomfortable feeling of a new language, framework, platform etc is a big hurdle for a lot of developers. When I approach this I’m usually in a mental state of not knowing if I know enough to jump into a project or if I should look at more examples that seem to make enough sense in my head. Time and time again, I have proven to myself that working on the actual project is the best way to learn. You’ll run into enough roadblocks during development that prompt you to research best practices, fixes, and workarounds to issues that sooner or later will build confidence in you to complete your new endeavour.

Development of Cram took me about a month, but that includes many 12-14 hour days so in reality it took almost two months to complete based on the traditional 40-hour work week. Even though many indie developers don’t like to mention it, sleep is probably the best tool you have when coding. There have been many nights when I was up until around 5 am and had little to show for the last 2-3 hours of work because my eyes, brain, and fingers fail to work together when they are sleep deprived. Sometimes I even feel just plain weird, if I’m not coding something every hour of the day. If you don’t take anything from this blog post… please understand the value of sleep! After a good night’s rest, I always feel able to willing to tackle any issue and complete any task…and usually did.

Marketing

This is by far the most important topic when it comes to releasing and updating any product. Since it’s such a vast topic, I’ll save it for a part two of my blog post. I’ll get into what seems to work for us so far, what did not work, and what we plan to do in the future.

Also if there is anything else you wanted to know or had questions on and want to see in the next post…just drop a line in the comments

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Leaves are changing colors and falling, the air is getting crisp, and you’re getting ready for school. Okay maybe not, for most people out there, school has just ended and summer is about to get into full-swing, but the back to school deals have started.

Apple has once again started their back to school deal where college students and faculty can receive an iPod Touch if they purchase a new Mac through September 8 2009. It’s a pretty sweet deal (and excuse to purchase a new Mac) for anyone wanting to go back to school this fall with a brand new computer at their desk.

Complete details can be found on Apple’s website. If you have been procrastinating on buying a new Mac or waiting for some deals in these tough economic times or you just needed a reminder to buy something cool, this is probably something you have been waiting for. And for those lucky people who live in states with tax free holidays during the back to school season (Georgia is one) this is an even better deal! Also I’ll throw in a cheap plug in this post…a perfect back to school companion for your new Mac and iPod Touch is Cram, which lets you study with flash cards and multiple-choice tests.

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So Microsoft is probably going to reveal its new Kumo search at D: All Things Digital event next week. According to leaked screenshots from a couple months ago it seems to focus on a left hand navigation menu that breaks down searches into a number of related queries. (more info at CNET)

This seems like it may be interesting to see if Microsoft can cut into Google’s search market share.  At the same time, I am thinking that Microsoft should probably concentrate more on  brand new and unique products. It probably won’t take much of an effort for Google or even Yahoo to mimic and improve upon what Kumo will offer. With the market share of Internet Explorer slipping (while Firefox and Safari grow), the market share of Windows Mobile slipping (while BlackBerry and iPhone sales grow), the many available popular open source office suites (not to mention Apple’s iWork suite) , and the popularity of the Mac platform among college students, Microsoft seems to be under attack on all fronts.

If Microsoft were to tackle an industry in its infancy (or one not yet dominated), I feel they could solidify their name in at least one more sector while making sure their current market share with their existing products holds steady or grows. Although there are a number of people who would love to see Microsoft fall off the face of the earth, a better result would be a reinvented and more agile Microsoft that we would all love to hate.

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There is no question that Apple has made a push into the gaming world with the iPhone and iPod Touch. The power of the devices coupled with the solid AppStore platform brought the gaming world to iPhone owners everywhere. This got me thinking that an Apple video game console would be an excellent fit into their lineup.

A goldmine is resting in the living rooms of consumers around the world for Apple. An AppleTV like device that not only gives you access to music, movies and streaming video via the iTunes store but also a game-focused AppStore where consumers can purchase, download and play games right on their sofa could be the must have device(if priced right) for any kid, teen, tween, or adult out there.

This could  also open the doors for developers to reach an even wider audience who haven’t yet jumped on the smartphone bandwagon, but enjoy playing games from time to time, as well as the hardcore gamers who live and die by their Xbox, Wii, or PS3 game consoles.

From a business standpoint, Apple would have the opportunity to not only compete with Microsoft on another front(against their Xbox), but also with Amazon and Netflix with their streaming services…all from one device. With big names like EA and Sega already developing iPhone games,  support from game developers already exists  on the Mac platform possibly even attracting more big name developers.

With the economy stabalizing, the current game console generation going flat in about a year or so, and the hype behind everything iPhone, I really think Apple has a golden opportunity to make a giant footprint in yet another industry.

I’m not the type to wait in line for a product, but something like this may have me camped out at a Best Buy.

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Earlier this rather long week, we (SimpleLeap) released our first Mac application, Cram. Cram is a study and testing app that allows you to create, download, and share multiple-choice tests and flash cards. This is the perfect tool for college students who are looking for a solution that helps them study their material on their Mac.

Cram started its life almost a year ago when it was released on the BlackBerry platform, followed shortly by the iPhone version. For complete details on Cram for Mac you can visit http://www.simpleleap.com/cram/mac.htm

Right now Cram is in beta, and we’re offering it at a discounted price of $34.99 and also download the trial. Here are couple screens

Taking a timed test

Graded Test

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