Category: iphone dev

  • Don’t Call It An App

    Tell me what you think- wrote an article on “appiness” — no, it’s not a Cockney pronunciation of happiness, but the trend towards ever increasing complexity in online interfaces, that makes them ineffective and “appy”.

  • Xcode 4 and Assigning Tab Bar Item View Controllers

    I ran into this last night- I used the sample from Xcode 4, “tab bar application.” I wanted to solve this problem I was having- I was assigning a UITableViewController to one of my Tab Bar Items, but I got a crash each time, with “retavalue” and “numberOfSections.” No matter how I set it up,…

  • Adding Facebook SDK to iOS Xcode 4 – Simply and Easily

    I was surprised at how easy it was to implement a “share story” in my iPhone app. I’ve used ShareKit before, and I actually found the Facebook SDK created by FB to be easier! Note- I’m doing something very simple, publishing a share story. (Yes, that’s the new timline view.) 1. First, download it. In…

  • In App Purchases – for Upgrading Free App

    Just finished implementing in-app purchases for Russian Bingo. I implemented a button in the last version, to determine how many of our users actually wanted more vocabulary levels. Well, it is hovering around 10% for Russian and 30% for Mandarin. Note though that Russian has a much larger sample set- at 2K – than Mandarin…

  • On Playing Chinese Bingo

    I’ve been thinking of making the best bingo online app ever since we started the Bingo franchise. I have seen lots of bingo games at bingobuddha with different kinds. And that made me think of creating something new. This is perhaps the hardest language I’ve learned next to Russian, and was super excited to have…

  • A Year in the Trenches- Notes From a Developer on Her App’s 1 Year Anniversary

    I have been working in the same code base for a year now- the latest app is El Bingo if you want to check it out. In review, currently, I have Chinese Bingo and an upgrade to our first app, Le Bingueau (free until 9/16!). I’ve learned some very interesting things working and focusing on…

  • iPhone Dev: Accessing a Selector in Another ViewController

    This had me up for a few nights, so here is my solution. I think someone at #iosDevCamp asked me this same question, too – I think it was Sophia. Problem: You have an iPhone app with a UIRootViewController, tab navigation, with a UIButton that launches a UITableViewController (a second view). When a user selects…

  • There’s No I in Team, and Other Cliches

    I occasionally spend an entire weekend, almost 24 hours in the day, hunkered over my computer in a fluorescent room, amongst others also lit by the back glow of their MacBooks. I can’t really explain this to non-technical friends and family. It’s San Jose, it’s July, it’s sunny … what exactly is the desire to…

  • So you want to make an iPhone app…

    This response really goes for almost anybody looking for a technical co-founder, CTO, start-up developer or prototype developer, and whether the compensation is split in equity, cash, or future shares. You are a person with an idea. An idea that you think is pretty nifty. It’s for [insert audience here] and it does [insert features…

  • Getting Started with Cedar: iPhone Testing Framework

    Just came back from a great class taught by Adam Milligan of Pivotal Labs on Cedar. Download Cedar here: http://www.github.com/pivotal/cedar The Readme should be able to lead you through the setup fine, but I wanted to add my notes. – You’re essentially compiling Cedar, then taking the framework and associating it with your iPhone project.…