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… :-)

My Big News

I teased about this over the weekend and it seems most of my friends think that my wife and I are pregnant.

The big news IS about a life-changing event, but not about bringing a new life into this world. Today marks my first full-time day working on my own. I'm phasing out of my day-job and into my own business as an Independent App Developer.

I've been incredibly fortunate to be in this situation and want to thank my wife who has endured the late-night coding sessions and my steering our conversations back to apps and app ideas.

I'm humbled and delighted to know that there are literally millions of people using Flashlight, and I intend to continue to improve Flashlight and release new apps VERY SOON. My plan is to release two new apps this year, with many more apps and updates coming soon too.

I will work from my cloffice (closet office) in my house. My daughter plans to come greet me whenever she wakes up in the morning, and I'll have lunch with my family. I'm thrilled about this new flexibility and freedom and very excited about being able to actually create more of my list of 60+ app ideas!

I'll be blogging a bit more, tweeting a bit more, and coding a LOT more. :-)

Halloween and Flashlight

I have not mentioned yet, but I really really love Apple's iAd web portal. It's really great to be able to see hourly charts and it's fun to be able to see when people begin using Flashlight more during the evenings:

Top iAd countries so far

With the recent addition of iAds internationally, I took a look at my stats and thought it might be interesting to share with you what countries are getting the most impressions right now. All of my iAd impressions right now are from Flashlight

United States
UK/GB
Unknown
Korea, Republic of
France
Saudi Arabia
(Empty)
Israel
China
Mexico
Australia
Japan
Norway
Canada
Malaysia

The UK/GB was about 3% of the US in terms of numbers of impressions, with the other countries trailing off quickly after… Still, this list of the top 15 adds up to around 5.4% of the US impressions

Here are the next 15 countries:

Brazil
Malaysia
Reunion
South Africa
Singapore
Taiwan
Argentina
Finland
Greece
Kuwait
Netherlands
Hong Kong
India
Brunei Darussalam
Serbia

Flashlight top countries

Now that Flashlight is using iAds, I have access to a lot more interesting data, including overall countries of where users are using Flashlight. Flashlight appears to be used far more in the evenings (obviously), and also far more on the weekends.

Top Flashlight countries from last weekend (July 17 and July 18) are:

United States
UK/GB
Australia
Canada
France
Unknown
Germany
Sweden
Korea, Republic of
Brazil
Spain
Denmark
Switzerland
New Zealand
Italy
Chile
Russian Federation
Japan

By the way, I have to say that I continue to be humbled that my app is used by so many people around the world.