How to make iPhone Apps and Influence People

Delhi Metro is enjoying #1 in Navigation in India

Jesse — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 14:16:34 +0000

I'm very proud to announce that my fourth iPhone application and third city in the City Metro Apps Delhi City Metro has had a successful first week in the app store; it is now ranked as the #1 paid navigation app in the Indian App Store. Although the raw sales data show the Indian marketplace is incredibly small compared to the US, Australia or even Korea the statistic alone is quite exciting!

It was hard work gathering accurate GPS coordinates, route length and timetables for the Delhi Metro - but the most complete version of the data available is included with the app and I have developed a high resolution custom map too.

The Delhi metro is moving at an incredible pace, so I expect to be updating it quite often.

There's a temporary webpage with some screenshots over at delhi.citymetroapps.com and I'm updating the @delhimetroapp twitter feed with minor bits and pieces.

Delhi City Metro is available on the App Store .

Adding the ‘pull down to refresh’ effect to UITableView

Jesse — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 12:59:25 +0000

Today I was tooling around with some interface concepts and playing with apps like foursquare and Twitter (previously Tweetie) and I wondered if I could implement something similar to the now famous 'pull down to refresh' method of initialising a refresh of the content within a UITableView.

As it turns out it wasn't as difficult as I thought; There were already a couple of elegant solutions out and about. The first example I found was by Oliver Dropnik, which talked about altering an existing solution posted on git hub by user devindoty called EGOTablePullViewRefresh.

Oliver's code looked like it was a good addition to devindoty's because he had decided to subclass UITableViewController which leads to a much more complete solution that's easier to move between projects. My only issue with Oliver's code was (apart from not supplying a some working source doe) that it refactored a lot of the underlying implementation, where I didn't see too much wrong with it.

I decided to come up with a half way measure; I moved the majority of the grunt work into a subclass of UITableViewController, cleaned up the XCode Demo project included with the source code and pushed it all back up to git hub. If you're at at all interested in this, I'd suggest checking out my fork of the EGOTablePullViewRefresh project on Git Hub.

Get a pull-to-refresh effect like Tweetie 2 and foursuare

New host, new iPhone, new iPad, New Delhi

Jesse — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 13:41:34 +0000

So much to update! Watch this space, as soon as I sort out the server issues there will be pretty pictures and graphics from all the work I've been up to the last 8 weeks.

My Favorite TED Videos

Jesse — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 23:32:09 +0000

TED is awesome

Prior to November 2008 I'd never heard of TED, TED.com or anything like it. It was only while reading Chang-Won Kim's Web 2.0 Asia Weblog and noticing a technology event called TEDxSeoul (that Chang was talking at) that I worked it all out. If you don't know, or haven't heard about TED then read the Wikipedia entry on it.

Any spare time I've had since leaving TEDxSeoul in November I've been watching TED talks. I'm also keen to get to the next TEDxMelbourne (I watched the one recently live online), and I'm dead keen hearing about what goes on at on TEDxSydney.

As well as watching TED videos, I've also been telling everyone I know about them and sending them links on facebook. In the future I will direct them to this post.

Here's a list of my favorite TED videos in no real order, I've never watched a bad one...

Hans Rosling

Hans Rosling is fascinating with his statistics, and desire to get the world's publicly funded data accessable and searchable for everyone.

More on Hans Rosling and his gapminder data and software at gapminder.org

App Sale!

Jesse — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 00:26:07 +0000

Now that everything is up to date and Seoul City Metro has been up on the App Store for a few months I think it's time for a sale! I've orchestrated some facebook advertising, updated the Seoul City Metro Website and given the App Store time to propagate both the 1.1.2 update and the new price.

Seoul City Metro and Busan City Metro are now on sale until March 22nd!

I've decided to finally attack the $1 price point, as well as give away a premium app for free. I'm hoping this sale can raise the rankings of Seoul City Metro on the Korean App Store over and above the competition apps by being the best looking app at $1. I'm also hoping some good reviews and happy users will lead to some increased exposure and eventually sales for Seoul City Metro. I'll post results of the sale (good or bad!) next week when all the numbers are in.

Checkout the Seoul City Metro website front page for more info!

Seoul City Metro, and Seoul City Metro Lite are up to date again!

Jesse — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 00:12:02 +0000

It had been grating on me over the last couple of weeks knowing that Seoul City Metro and Seoul City Metro Lite were not up to date with the new train stations opened on Line 1 (Dangjeong Station and Seodongtan Station) and Line 3 ( Garak Market, National Police Hospital and Ogeum). I held off an immediate update when the stations opened because I wanted to wait for the SMRT.co.kr maps to be updated properly and I wanted to include a few tweaks to the route detail interface.

New stations on line 3

As weeks moved on I was feeling increasingly like my apps were out of date, and the SMRT maps still hadn't been updated to reflect the new stations. So yesterday I just had had enough and pushed new stations, updated timetables and a manually modified map to both Seoul City Metro, and Seoul City Metro Lite. I was reluctant to manually update the maps because I don't have them in vector format but I was quite happy with the end result. Both updates were approved for sale in under 11 hours - and are available for download das you read this. (iTunes link)

I also managed to include one minor tweak to the route interface, allowing easier access to the timetables for a particular route. Although the timetables are far from where I want them, this is a step in the right direction. Also, the door side is now shown for the destination station the same as it is with transfers. (See screen shot below)

You can click the blue disclosure button on route start and transfers to see the next trains departing.

In other news:

Custom Map to scale in early stages

I've been building my own custom subway map for Seoul that will appear in upcoming versions of Seoul City Metro that will release me from the constraints of the SMRT map. It's well on it's way, you can see images of it's progress via @seoulmetroapp and here.

Busan City Metro is on sale this week too, I've reduced it to $0 as more of a test of the waters. (iTunes Link)

Oh, and I'm back in Melbourne for the time being.

Apple doubles maximum App size download over 3G or EDGE to 20MB

Jesse — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 00:05:30 +0000

Apple has increased the limit for downloads over 3G or EDGE from the App Store and iTunes Store on the iPhone. Previously the limit was 10MB and anything additional needed to be downloaded via Wi-Fi.

From iLounge:

This limit now appears to have been increased to 20MB in both the App Store and iTunes Store on the device, allowing users to download larger applications and video content.

The reason why might be timed to get users used to downloading bigger apps before before the iPad arrives, or it could be a quiet response to an increasing demand for apps on the run over 10MB.

Whatever the reason it's good to see some relaxing on an arbitrary restriction. Seoul City Metro weighs in at 9.6 MB so I approve of this relaxing in restrictions.

Approved in less than 48 hours!

Jesse — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 00:40:35 +0000

I just got emailed this morning that my quick point release for Seoul City Metro has been approved. That was less than 48 hours from submission. Call me impressed!

It's a total change of pace when a new binary can be pushed to customers that quickly. My "What's new in this update" stated that it was just two small bug fixes, I wonder if that had any influence on the review team that saw the initial 1.1 release only 5 days ago.

Anyway, a win! Seoul City Metro Lite is also now in review.

SeoulMetroApp announces it on twitter

Seoul City Metro V 1.1 is live, V1.1.1 in review and SCM Lite is coming soon!

Jesse — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 15:02:24 +0000

It's been a long slog, I have to say. It took a solid six weeks of development and many hours of dead ends and frustration but I finally managed to pull together a complete, stable release that made it through the approval process.

There's still lots to do, and since Saturday morning I have already sent for approval Seoul City Metro Lite, and Seoul City Metro V1.1.1 wich contains a few small bug fixes.

Busan City Metro is also in the works, I expect that to be running on the Seoul City Metro V1.1.1 code in the coming days and up for sale soon.

There's lots more to write on the extended development period of SCM 1.1, but for now I'll let everyone get the update and I'll take a deep breath!

Current iTunes Connect status

Apple unveils iPad

Jesse — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 05:43:29 +0000

What a night! Dragging myself up out of bed at 2:45 am (Seoul time) to check in to the MacTalk Australia live coverage; idle in ustream the IRC chat room; and refresh the live Gdgt.com text feed was totally worth it! Not only were the rumours true; but the price is reasonable and the versions arriving with 3G connectivity (using the strange Micro-Sim card ) will come unlocked. iPad runs on a new version of the iPhone OS; on custom Apple silicone; and touts an all glass 9.7 inch multi touch display. 60 and 90 day arrival times for the Wifi and 3G versions respectively.

My opinion: I want one.

Apple iPad hands on from Wired.com Gadget Lab

Demonstations of the device appearing all over the web show the iPad with a multi column layout, orientating to however you hold the device. I can't wait to see what developers make of the new UI elements and SDK APIs.

As far as my development goes - all my current work on Seoul City Metro 1.1 appears to be compatible and runs just fine in the iPad's simulator in it's 1x and 2x zoom mode. Anyway, just a few screenshots that I've already posted on twitter - time to get back to work.

iPad Simulator with Seoul City Metro 1.1 Installed

Seoul City Metro V1.1 running in the iPad Simulator