Sunday, January 24, 2010 at 8:35AM UPDATE: MathTime 1.1 is now available on the iTunes Store. Check out the video below and if you like what you see, head on over to the iTunes App Store via the link below to buy for just $0.99.
Coming soon to the iTunes App Store: MathTime v1.1. Here's a look of what you can expect from MathTime v1.1, an easy-to-use math flash card application from Squibner Software:
Thursday, January 21, 2010 at 9:54PM 
Two days ago I submitted MathTime version 1.1 to Apple for review. I'm really excited to get users' reaction to the enhancements that I've made to the UI. The update also includes links to Squibner's follow-up MathTime EX app and ways to follow the apps that we have planned for 2010 in a new "About" tab.
Thursday, January 21, 2010 at 10:11AM 
If you aren't reading Mike Rundle's blog on Flyosity.com, you should. Once again, Mike delivers with a great piece about user interface design. Mike's advice? Think in 3D:
If you're trying to design a realistic-looking user interface element then you have to think about what that object would look like in the real world. What's the easiest way to do that?Look at it from the side. What would a button look like if you viewed it from the side of your monitor?
Check out the rest of the article, including great examples of rendering 3D UIs on a 2D screen, here.
Wednesday, January 20, 2010 at 6:16AM It feels good to have finished a bunch of UI upgrades to our MathTime app last night. But as good as it feels to finish the coding of a project, it tends to leave me with a sense of dread as I recall past encounters with the App Store. It's still too hard to execute the final step -- or should I say final series of what seem like an unending number of steps -- to get your app onto the iTunes App Store. The precision and detail required and the lack of any margin for detail brings the likelihood that you will make a mistake much higher than it ought to be. And once you make that mistake you better hunker down and walk through the steps one by one comparing them side by side with Apples sometimes ambiguous documentation. Its a slow laborious process that's harder than it should be, but in the end, it sure does feel good to have your app up there on the Store.
Friday, January 15, 2010 at 2:14PM 
I'm really excited about some great UI enhancements coming to MathTime that should make it an even more enjoyable way to learn basic math facts. The current version of MathTime (v1.01), a simple math flash card iPhone app is available now in the iTunes App store here. Stay tuned for the update, which adds several user interface enhancements. It's about 90% complete and will be submitted to Apple for approval before the end of the month.
Thursday, January 14, 2010 at 2:29PM 
Stanford's iPhone Application Programming course is back! Newly updated to address iPhone SDK 3.1, the first two installments of the 10 week course are up on iTunes U and can be downloaded here.
Thursday, January 14, 2010 at 8:37AM 
I've been using Dropbox with my XCode projects for some time now. Until yesterday, the main advantage was that it allowed me to access those projects seamlessly from my iMac at home or on the road with my MacBook.
Last night I was bouncing along the rails on my commute home trying to edit an XCode project I've been working on all week. While trying to balance my MacBook on my lap and to copy and paste some code, I managed - I'm not quite sure how - to delete the entire Classes folder in my XCode project.
Because I was on the train, I had no backup going so no way to recover all the work I had done on my MacBook. But, thanks to my Dropbox, I was saved. You see, all day long as I worked on the project and saved, the changes to the project were automatically uploaded to Dropbox and then synced to my iMac at home. The Time Machine drive connected to my iMac then dutifully backed up those files each hour. All I had to do when I got home was to enter Time Machine and restore the folder for my XCode project to just before my mishap and I was back in business. Thanks Dropbox!
Monday, January 4, 2010 at 9:26PM 10 great tips from How to Make iPhone Apps on marketing mistakes to avoid, including one of my favorite:
#5 Having No or a Last Minute Marketing Plan
For more, head on over to How to Make iPhone Apps.
Tuesday, December 29, 2009 at 2:56PM 
Tap tap tap recently posted a great piece about it's Voices app that sold over 300,000 copies in about one month. Phill Ryu offers some great advice about building anticipation for your app and strapping on the biggest rocket possible to debut as high up the iTunes Store charts as possible. Here's a taste of Ryu's advice:
If you’re launching your app to a very targeted audience of several thousand with an email announcement in one concentrated blast, it will almost assuredly result in a strong launch for your app that will snowball for some time to a degree of sustained success, and decent chances at cracking the overall charts. The best part about it? It’s in your control… Instead of praying on launch day for a fortuitous string of high-profile media coverage, App Store featuring, epic word of mouth spread and dumb luck, you can take your time planning for your scheduled release, growing your list of fans to contact on release. And if your app is the super rare app that’ll float on its own once enough people see it, it’ll go on floating quickly right up to the top where it belongs.
For more, head on over to tap tap tap's blog: link
Wednesday, December 9, 2009 at 6:10AM 
Matt Gallagher at Cocoa with Love recently posted The design of an iPhone application, a great walk-through of an Australian postal code locator app that he uses to demonstrate how Model-View-Controller works in an iPhone app. As Matt puts it:
The design includes: how to manage data coming from different sources, how to manage multiple views of that data and how to design your program so it remains simple and manageable as it grows. In short, I'll be discussing how Model-View-Controller (MVC) applies to an iPhone application but I'll also discuss how even simple programs are considerably more hierarchic through their controllers and branched through their models and views than the basic description "Model-View-Controller" might imply.