Thanks 100 million!

Flashlight has now been downloaded more than 100 million times. I'm very excited and humbled to share this with you, and many thanks to you millions of users.

Has Flashlight helped you? We'd like to hear about it at FlashlightStory@johnhaney.com

Daily CryptoQuote problem [UPDATE: Fixed]

The Daily CryptoQuote is not working today (August 3, 2011) due to an issue on the server. Support ticket has been submitted. Hoping server gurus will fix ASAP.

In the meantime, you will see a message that you have already completed the puzzle, and then see results with a date of November 30, 2 (yes, the year is 2). This particular side effect is one I will be fixing in the next update of CryptoQuote. Sorry for any confusion this has caused.

UPDATE (Friday, August 5, 2011)
My ticket was assigned within a few hours of being submitted. Since then (now 2 days), I have not seen any other activity. I continue to update the ticket, but am working on making changes to CryptoQuote to work around this problem entirely. I am very disappointed with my web hosting provider and am expecting that my workaround will have to be the solution.

Bottom line, this means the daily challenge will likely be down until you update to a new version of CryptoQuote. A new version of CryptoQuote will take me at least 1 week to get onto the App Store. I thank you for your patience.

UPDATE (Tuesday, August 9, 2011)
My website provider is not willing to fix this issue. Fortunately, I have submitted CryptoQuote 2.1 to the App Store. Hopefully this update will be reviewed and approved within a week.

Thank you all for your patience and kind emails during this time. I am sorry that you are missing out on this regular part of your day and hope to have this back working great for you ASAP. Please know that this new app version will give me the ability to workaround the issue seen this time, as well as provide for a smooth transition to a new web hosting provider should that become necessary in the future.

Thanks again and happy puzzling!

UPDATE (Wednesday, August 10, 2011)
FIXED!!! Apple accepted my request for an expedited review and CryptoQuote 2.1 was reviewed and approved today. You should see the new update in the App Store on your iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad now or within the next few hours. My great appreciation again for your patience and happy puzzling! :-)

Another great Flashlight email

It always makes my day to hear how Flashlight is working great for people. Here's the latest example:

I arrived at our holiday house last night in pitch black. The house power was out and I needed to bash through the garden to the electrical meter and back into a pitch black house a couple of times. I discovered to my delight that I had downloaded your flashlight app onto my phone. It saved my life, without it on my iPhone 4 I wouldn't have been able to fix the fuse trip switch or avoid falling in the pond.

Thanks. It's a great app.

CryptoQuote 2.0

After several months of work, I've completed a major update to CryptoQuote. With CryptoQuote 2.0, this app has a lot more to offer and I hope to hear from my users what they like the most about it.

Here is the official list of "what's new"…

• Hundreds more quotes, now 3199 in total
  
• Undo/Redo: Shake to undo/redo the last move on a puzzle.
  
• Custom Puzzles/Quotes: Paste a puzzle from elsewhere, or scramble your own phrase to make a puzzle.
  
• Printing: With an AirPrint capable printer, you can print out a puzzle.
  
• NEW TOOL: Word Search - choose a word and see dictionary matches for that letter pattern
  
• NEW TOOL: Letter Frequency - compare the frequency of the scrambled letters to the frequency of letters in English.
  
• Share quotes you solve (copy/email/SMS/Facebook/Twitter)
  
• Improved Daily Challenge with no "sign-up" required, and improved download performance.
  
• Physical keyboard support - works with a bluetooth or USB keyboard for solving puzzles more quickly.
  

Now to catch up on email and continue on my next project… :-)