A Talk about ViewControllers

This July, I gave a short talk about some best practices with ViewControllers on iOS for the West St. Louis CocoaHeads group.

This includes my tips on where/when to do certain actions to balance resource usage and keep your UI snappy.

Here is the PDF of the presentation: CocoaHeads ViewController Talk

CryptoQuote Daily Challenge Update

Greetings,

I'm happy to report that the new Daily Challenge Server is up and running, and my initial testing is going very well. Soon (within the next week or two), CryptoQuote for iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad will be updated to version 2.4. This version is designed to use the new server.

Once I'm happy with the iOS update running "in the wild," Android apps will be next.

So, in a few weeks, CryptoQuote for Android will be updated to version 2.0, adding the Daily Challenge feature for Android users, including Kindle Fire, NOOKcolor, and NOOKtablet.

CryptoQuote for Android 1.0

UPDATED: Reflects that the Amazon App Store page has been updated.

Greetings,

I'm very excited to share with you that CryptoQuote is now available for some Android devices (tablets with access to the Amazon App Store, including Kindle Fire). You can download CryptoQuote for Android 1.0 here.

This version is launching with many of the great features of CryptoQuote you see on OS X and iOS as well, with a few to be added in the not-so-distant future.

At this moment, CryptoQuote is available solely via the Amazon App Store. My hope is to have the app available for NOOK devices within the next few weeks (depending upon the pace of Barnes & Noble approval processes).

An Apology
The initial description on the Amazon App Store product page for CryptoQuote 1.0 includes the following line:

Features:
* 3199 carefully selected quotes, plus a new Daily Challenge Puzzle each day

This should NOT contain the second part about the daily challenge puzzle. I am very sorry for this error, and the descriptions have been corrected on the store.

About the Daily Challenge
The Daily Challenge feature is currently only available for iOS devices. Please do know that I am committed to bringing the daily challenge to Android devices and Mac OS X. Please also know that this is not without some significant steps before this can happen. I'd like to elaborate a bit on this…

The current daily challenge server needs some improvements:
1) It is currently on an older host system, which shares resources and power with other websites.
2) It does not respond quickly enough to requests.
3) It does not handle lots (and lots) of iPhone users well.
4) It gets slower as more people play the daily challenge each day.

My plan is to address these problems first for iPhone users, by doing the following:
1) Rewrite the server-side code to handle requests quickly and efficiently.
2) Restructure the database to handle requests quickly even for lots (and lots) of users.
3) Setup this new server code on my new host machine, and migrate the daily challenge users over to the new server.
4) Update CryptoQuote for iOS to add the Daily Challenge.
5) Update CryptoQuote for Android to add the Daily Challenge.

Questions or comments?

Contact me via: http://appsfromouterspace.com/contact/
or on Twitter: http://twitter.com/johnhaney

The Next Chapter

Today, I'm launching Apps from Outer Space, LLC. My new company is taking over all of the apps my old company (John Haney Software).

I'm calling this my online moving day. Here's what's happening:
Twitter:
@JohnHaneySW -> @Apps_OuterSpace

Facebook:
facebook.com/JohnHaneySW -> facebook.com/AppsFromOuterSpace

Website:
johnhaney.com -> appsfromouterspace.com

App Store:
Coming Soon. I'm awaiting a few finalizing details. For the moment, apps will be listed under the "John Haney Software" name.

So please update your contacts, likes, follows. 2012 is going to be a great year, starting with my next app, Puppet Stage. But I'll talk more about that very soon…