Some new apps…

We’ve been hard at work this week on a few new apps.  These are currently under review for sale on the app store, and, with any luck, should be available in a couple weeks.

First up is a sister app to the popular Friend of Bill sobriety counter.  It’s called Friend of Jimmy, as in Jimmy K, usually attributed as one of the co-founders of Narcotics Anonymous.  You guessed it, this app is a recovery counter for people in NA.  It comes with a bunch of NA slogans and your own customized, virtual NA medallion:

The other app we’ve been busy with here is a mobile version of the little menulet we wrote called Scythe.  ScytheMobile lets you take this simple but useful app with you on your iPhone or iPod touch:

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Links to the apps will be posted as soon as they are approved for sale!  Stay tuned…

Busy Week Ahead

It’s only 9AM on Monday morning, but it’s shaping up to be a very busy week:

• A new release of the GPX Gem needs to be made, thanks to multiple patches from Kang-min Liu and Tom Verbeure.
• A new release of Scythe will be released.
• The Florida – It’s a Keeper app is being updated in light of changes to the regulations from the Florida Wildlife Commission.
• I have a new photo management script to release, which hopefully will be accompanied by a blog article describing my newest perspective on managing the 50,000+ digital photos that are reproducing mysteriously on my nas drive.
• Take down zipcodesearch or mark it as deprecated (long overdue!).
• See if Apple will replace an exploded battery or if I need to shell out $130 for a new one.

Stay tuned…

The coolest summer job ever.

If you know anyone who loves dogs and the outdoors and needs a place to live this summer in exchange for some work, send them here.   If I were a student I would kill for this setup!

Dave’s app on WSJ!

Dave told me a while ago that he had been interview by the Wall Street Journal about his “Aggravate” family of iPhone applications.  Now you can see his Aggravate Nails on Chalkboard app in a WSJ tech blog video.

Nice work Dave!

Awesome Public Domain Imagery

It turns out, our government has a ton of public domain images available these days.

There is tons of cool stuff like this over at the NOAA Photo Library and the Fish and Widlife Service’s Digital Library System.

Dr Nic’s ChocTop is a huge help for making Cocoa application DMGs

I released my first Cocoa application, a tiny little “menulet” that flips a bit to affect trackpad behavior on Mac laptops, a couple of months ago.  In buildng the DMG, I had to go through a bunch of trial and error to get the background image right.  I downloaded a couple of different DMG tools before I got what I wanted, and still I cannot remember how I did it.

This time around, I tried something new:  Dr Nic’s ChocTop.  I was skeptical at first because of my prior experience with creating DMGs, but this really is an excellent tool for packaging your Cocoa app.

ChocTop doesn’t try to hide hidden files below the fold or anything, so if you have your Finder set to show hidden files, you may want to change that:

defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles FALSE

killall Finder

Here’s my first DMG produced with ChocTop:

System Configuration Framework Reachability

While googling today, I couldn’t find a succinct explanation of this for a very common case: being notified of losing/gaining your network connection.  So I’m going to summarize a simple approach here.

If you’re not familiar with all of the SCReachability jargon, there are three important terms:

• Reachability Target: The host you will test against to see if you can send data.
• Reachability Callback: The function which will be invoked when your Reachability Target’s reachability changes.
• Reachability Flags: A collection of bits that describe the reachability of a target.

Prior to 10.4, apparently the only way to check reachability was by polling a Reachability function.  That’s no longer “how we do, yo.”  Instead, the pattern is:

1. Write a Reachability Callback.
2. Create your Reachability Target.
3. Register your Callback for your Target (SCNetworkReachabilitySetCallback).
4. Schedule your Callback in your run loop (SCNetworkReachabilityScheduleWithRunLoop).
5. Sit back and watch as your Reachability Callback is invoked when you unplug your network cable (or turn off your AirPort).

In your Callback, you’ll want to check the flags which are passed in.  Be sure you understand how these flags work.  It is not always intuitive (checking kSCNetworkFlagsReachable may not be sufficient for determing whether a host is reachable or not).

To get started, try running the SimpleReach sample app while plugging/un-plugging your network cable.

Finally, don’t forget to clean up your reachability target via SCNetworkReachabilityUnscheduleFromRunLoop and CFRelease.

It’s a Keeper Northeast v1.1 Now Available!

Lots of updates for the 2009 season in this version:

• CT: Fluke regulations for ’09 are finally available!
• RI: Public hearing scheduled for 4/22/09 on recreational limits for Striped Bass, Fluke, Scup, and Black Sea Bass.
• ME: Numerous updates for ’09.
• NY: Fluke regulations for ’09 are now available. Please note that the State of NY has a filed a federal lawsuit against NMFS which could potentially change the 2009 fluke season in NY, depending on the ruling in that case.
• MA: Numerous updates for ’09, including Fluke, Cod, Sea Bass, Weakfish and Flounder.

Omniscience…

…means always knowing your friends’ latest status updates:

Noah’s Ark!

Totally arksome!