Category: I-phone

There are lots of solid therapeutic approaches to treating hypertension (high blood pressure), and they range in cost and complexity all the way from free and easy up to expensive and elaborate. While it might cost tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars to treat a heart attack, it’s much simpler and cheaper to focus on prevention through diet or medication — plus monitoring blood pressure every day to make sure the plan is working as expected.

Cheap and easy sounds good, but getting it done is another matter. “When dealing with patients and asking them to make a lifestyle change, one of the biggest problems is compliance,” says Dr. Andrew Brandeis, a San Francisco physician. “I can either give you a pill for your blood pressure or tell you to eat less salt, and one of them is going to be easier than the other — one of them is better than the other. But getting people to exercise more, to eat less salt; it’s not always easy to get them to do what they need to do.”

That’s why Brandeis is excited about the new iHealth blood pressure monitoring system, introduced today in the runup to CES; competitor Withings has also announced a similar product. Both cuffs provide a new level of convenience to the digital blood pressure monitor market, enabling far more granular intraday measurements that let you know exactly how various daily activities (a meal, a cup of coffee) affect your inner equilibrium.

Continue reading iHealth, Withings both launch iPhone-connected blood pressure monitors

iHealth, Withings both launch iPhone-connected blood pressure monitors originally appeared on TUAW on Tue, 04 Jan 2011 12:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The Eye-Fi card, that miniscule mashup of Wi-Fi and memory card, will soon be able to send photos directly from your digital camera to your smartphone. TUAW has reported on these SD cards before, most recently when the company announced the Geo-X2 card’s availability at Apple retail stores.

In the past, using an Eye-Fi provided a fast way to share high-resolution photos once you were near a Wi-Fi hotspot, but if you were out of range of Wi-Fi, you were stuck with the lower-resolution photos from your smartphone camera. Eye-Fi has announced Direct Mode, which uses new technology in the cards and a free Eye-Fi mobile app that will let users send photos directly to their smartphones for sharing. Think of this as tethering a digital camera directly to the Eye-Fi View service through an iPhone — it’s a great way to back up photos immediately to the user’s Eye-Fi View account.

The app and the Direct Mode firmware update will be available later this year for free.

Eye-Fi announces Direct Mode link between digital cameras, smartphones originally appeared on TUAW on Tue, 04 Jan 2011 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The Fling tactile game controller is a real joystick that attaches to your iPad so you can instinctively feel what you’re doing with your thumb and increase your accuracy.

Xbox and PlayStation controllers taught console gamers to use a left thumb joystick for movement or aiming. Action games on the iPad simulate that with a virtual joystick controlled with your thumb on the touch screen. Problem is, there’s no touch feedback from the iPad’s flat glass screen. It’s hard to keep track of exactly where your thumb is, making games like GWars:Touch or Rage HD harder than they need to be.

Fling is a physical joystick giving you real feedback. Use the suction cups to position it properly centered for the game, then use your thumb on the thumbstick to control the game. The joystick is made by Ten One Design who came up with the Pogo Sketch stylus for iPad, so they’re experienced in making touch input devices with great accuracy.

The Fling FAQ confirms you can use two of these for “dual joystick” games, but points out that most first person shooters and role playing games only use the left joystick, while the right side of the screen has virtual buttons instead.

Watch the Fling iPad joystick in action on YouTube and visit Ten One Design on January 6 to pre-order.

[via CrunchGear]

Fling adds a joystick to your iPad originally appeared on TUAW on Tue, 04 Jan 2011 11:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We forget how important our photos are until we lose them. The 5 megapixel camera in the iPhone 4 encourages a lot of picture taking, but most of us put our phones on a charger over night instead of docking with our computers, so our photos aren’t getting backed up.

The Iomega(R) SuperHero[TM] Backup and Charger for iPhone aims to solve that problem with a dock that backs up your camera roll photos and contacts while recharging your iPhone. Keep it by your bed, and you won’t forget.

The charger and accompanying backup app will be available later this month. To make photo backup part of your daily routine, you’ll need to download the free SuperHero iPhone Backup app from the Apple app store, and run the app when you dock your phone. The dock and app support iPhone 3G, 3GS, and 4.

For $69.99, the Iomega SuperHero dock comes with a 4 GB SD memory card, but if you shoot a lot, or keep a year’s worth of photos and videos on your camera roll like some friends I know, you can swap that out for a 16 GB or 32 GB SD card.

If your phone is lost, damaged, or stolen, you should first restore your latest backup from iTunes (you are backing up at least occasionally, aren’t you?), then restore last night’s backup of contacts and photos from the dock. The dock doesn’t back up email or apps, but your email is on your email server and you can re-download apps from the app store, so those aren’t as critical as your once-in-a-lifetime photo ops.

To get notified when the dock is available, sign up at the Iomega SuperHero product page, and while you’re waiting, head on over to Engadget to watch Iomega’s video ad reminding you just how many moments can lead to needing this dock.

[via Engadget]

Iomega SuperHero iPhone dock backs up photos to SD memory card originally appeared on TUAW on Tue, 04 Jan 2011 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Garmin International has been the leader in automobile GPS navigation for many years, but has been a no-show in the iPhone navigation app arena. Both TomTom and Magellan, also big players in the GPS nav field, have had iPhone apps for years.

In a “better late than never” move, Garmin today announced the availability of the Street Pilot ($39.99) app for iPhone. The app takes advantage of many of the features of the Garmin nüvi navigators. Maps are always up to date, since they’re downloaded directly from Garmin’s servers, and the software includes real-time traffic updates, speed limit information for major roads, an integrated local search for points of interest, integration with the iPhone contact list, and the ability to place calls directly from a search listing.

Street Pilot takes advantage of iOS multi-tasking and also includes controls for the iPod app. One nice feature is the ability to get current weather conditions and forecasts from the app. Maps are displayed in either 2-D or 3-D views, and the app switches easily between portrait and landscape orientations.

Having been the owner of a Garmin nüvi for several years, I’ve been waiting for the company to come out with a product to compete with the many other iPhone navigation apps on the market. It looks like the wait is over.

[via BGR]

Garmin announces StreetPilot, its first iPhone navigation app originally appeared on TUAW on Tue, 04 Jan 2011 10:40:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Seriously? This is the question of the day? When people are still voicing serious and legitimate concerns about the rest of the economy? We’re talking about a company with enough money in the bank to make a Goldman Sachs-sized investment in Facebook if it wanted to, more than triple the amount Dell had in the bank at the end of the last quarter, plus more than five times the amount HP had too, while we’re at it.

Let’s look at a number for a minute: Apple has 51 billion dollars in cash. That’s 51,000,000,000 bucks. Or, approximately the amount of money it takes to fill a vault-slash-swimming-pool. Who has that kind of money these days and didn’t get it via government bailout? Apple, that’s who. What is its secret? It made that money the old-fashioned way, by selling new-fashioned things.

In a time when few companies are profitable and everyone’s excited about a flat line since it isn’t a downward curve, Apple is making money iHand over iFist. One could presume from this that analysts and others who watch CNBC professionally would be excited about a company with growth and profitability in the current climate. However, that’s not the case.

Remember when Apple wasn’t doing well? Those bygone days when people may have actually believed the name of the company was “Beleaguered Apple Computer?” Well, once Uncle Steve made his return in 1996, that started to turn around. Apple Computer started making things that start with “i,” and in 2001 with the launch of the iPod, Apple was officially cool again. You know, unless you were an analyst on Wall Street, in which case Apple wasn’t cool, it was just less lame than before. But seriously, have you seen what sort of stock prices Dell and HP have these days? Now those are tech companies.

I call shenanigans! Now, instead of being impressed with profitability, the question is “Oh sure, you’re all profitable, but can you stay that way?” Apple hasn’t proven that yet? Explain to me how making ANY money in a time of unprecedented financial volatility is something that gets played down. What will it take before Apple gets a fair shake? A brand new device that sells a million units in three months? Try two and a half. A new version of the same thing released a year later, how long did that take to sell a million? Three days.

Find and replace “Apple” with a non-tech company in some of these articles and see if it still makes as much sense. Just the iPhone product line by itself is bigger than Coca-Cola, but Apple still gets dismissed like this?

Someone needs to have a little heart-to-heart talk with some of these guys. Apparently they’ve all had their heads down in their BlackBerrys for so long that they don’t realize it’s cool these days to carry around something Designed In Cupertino. Clearly a lot of other people have figured it out — what’s stopping Wall Street from seeing the light?

‘Can Apple maintain profitability?’ Yes. originally appeared on TUAW on Tue, 04 Jan 2011 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Sony is quietly adding bonus feature content to select iTunes releases including the Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg action comedy The Other Guys, Salt and Resident Evil: Afterlife. If you buy one of these three films, you will be able to use a new search feature lets you input a word and pinpoint scenes within the movie that use the search term. You can also take advantage of a clip & share function that lets you post select scenes to social networks as well as browse a playlist populated with songs from the film. Each song is available as a preview and linked to a purchase page on iTunes. These extras are iTunes-specific and not available on DVD editions or other digital content providers like Amazon Unbox.

This ability of movie studios to add bonus content was added when Apple introduced iTunes 9. Though available for over a year, this iTunes Extras feature is widely underused by content producers. A reason for this limited adoption is the poor support of this feature by Apple. When you buy a film with bonus content, you can only view these extras on the first generation Apple TV and the desktop version of iTunes (Windows or Mac). All iOS devices, including the media-friendly iPad, the iPod touch and the iPhone, are not compatible with this feature. Embarrassingly, the second generation Apple TV, designed for media consumption such as this, will not playback iTunes Extras content.

If Apple wants this feature to take off, then it must roll out iTunes Extras support to its latest generation hardware. Though Sony may be exploring this value-added content as way to differentiate its offerings from those of its competition, it may not continue this experiment if its adoption rate is poor. In the future, Sony may turn away from iTunes and bring this extra content to its PS3 network or other digital storefronts instead. Such a move would be a lose-lose situation for Apple and its iTunes customers.

[Via MacRumors]

Sony taking advantage of iTunes extras originally appeared on TUAW on Tue, 04 Jan 2011 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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I already use David Barnard’s great Gas Cubby app to track all of my gas purchases on my little 2005 Matrix, but since I’m getting ready to drive up to Las Vegas today for the big CES show this week (stay tuned for lots of Apple-related coverage right here on TUAW), now seems like a good time to take a look at Trip Cubby, another solid tracking app from the developer.

Trip Cubby allows you to monitor and track any driving trips you happen to make. While the app is made to track them for business purposes (if you need to get reimbursed or paid for your time on the road), you can track your mileage, travel time and expenses for any reason at all. Before a trip, you just enter some basic information about where you’re going and why into the app (and you can tag it with whatever else you want). As you travel, you simply track your odometer, any costs and timing, and Trip Cubby will take care of the rest, giving you all the reports you need. For hardcore users, Trip Cubby can even support multiple drivers and vehicles, and you can create custom deduction categories or sort and search all of your trips.

Just like Gas Cubby, always having an app like this on your phone can be super helpful, as long as you’re diligent (and when you’re traveling for business to get reimbursed, you should be anyway). I’ll appreciate having it along at CES this week. The free version of the app is full-featured, but it has ads in it, as you can see in the pic. The full version of the app is US$4.99, but it removes the ads and allows for online syncing as well.

TUAW’s Daily App: Trip Cubby Free originally appeared on TUAW on Tue, 04 Jan 2011 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Today we have an interview with Chad Podoski iPad developer and founder of Shacked. Their first app is called Flickpad, a very nice Flickr app. Enjoy the interview.

Mobile Orchard: Tells us about yourself and your company.

Chad Podoski: Shacked is a two person iOS focused dev shop I founded after leaving a local tech startup here in Honolulu, HI.  Shacked is going through a transition at the moment, with my initial co-founder moving on to take a position at Microsoft on the new Windows Phone platform team.  My new partner, Jason Skicewicz, is a server side expert, specializing in Python/Django development, which nicely complements my skill set on the mobile side.  I am really excited about the opportunities it opens up for Shacked to make some stellar products that leverage server side computing and cloud storage.  This also gives us the ability to develop apps for all the major mobile app platforms, iOS, Android, and Windows Phone tied together with a common server side component.

I am an University of Florida alumni (Go Gators!) with a couple degrees in computer engineering.  After college, I moved to Oregon and worked at Nike world headquarters (can you say rock climbing for your lunch break) as a Java/Oracle developer for a few years, before moving on to Hawaii to work for a Mac photo management app startup, Blue Lava Technologies, founded by the creator of Tetris.  Their main product, the Mac desktop app iLovePhotos , was a great idea that unfortunately suffered from really bad timing.  iLovePhotos was an iPhoto alternative whos primary purpose was organizing and sharing photos based on the people in the photos.  We launched in August of ’08. iPhoto ’09 with Faces came out the following January.  Despite the failure, the startup experience I gained was invaluable.  It really opened my eyes to entrepeneurship, startups in general, startup financing, taking a product from concept to deliverable, not to mention causing me to transition over to Mac and Objective-C from the Windows based world and Java development.

MO: How did you get into iPad app development?

CP: iOS development was an easy transition from the Mac app development I was doing previously.  The iPad was announced a couple months after I started doing Shacked full-time.  Being an avid photographer myself, the moment I saw the iPad, the concept for Flickpad came to mind.  As we have seen, the iPad has opened up amazing new ways to interact with digital media.  Flickpad was my solution for keeping up with the massive amount of photos that are shared with each of us on any given day.

MO: Do you also create apps for the iPhone?

CP: Shacked’s first app was an iPhone app called The Now.  I have always been interested in the concept of mindfulness, and living more fully in the present.  The Now was my attempt to create an iPhone app to help me achieve that personally.  It is a pretty simple idea really, make use of the push notification system on the iPhone to periodically snap people back to the present moment, via some poignant quote or relevant exercise.  While it has seen limited commercial success compared to Flickpad, it still holds a special place for me as my first app in the app store.

MO: How does iPhone and iPad development differ?

CP: On the coding side, there are not really a ton of differences that come to mind.  It is on the design side that you really have to change the way you think.  The iPad definitely opens up more possibilities for creative interfaces, but it is also a pitfall that can easily result in overly complex design, and as a result, a poorly received app.

MO: What are some of your favorite development tools?

CP: Most of the tools I use are pretty standard, Xcode, Interface Builder, and Photoshop primarily.  I am a huge fan of utilities and plug-ins though.  Cocoa Browser Air is an alterative to the Xcode documentation browser (which I find horrid) that I have used for a long time. Visor, a quake style drop down terminal is super handy.  Completion Dictionary is an XCode code sense alternative that I have been using since XCode 2.*.  TotalFinder is a Finder hack that gives you a tabbed Finder. It is amazing and totally worth the money.  Finally, I have really enjoyed using the ALT fork of Notational Velocity by Brett Terpstra, as a great alternative to TextEdit, as well as heavy todo management apps.

MO: Best thing about developing for iOS?

CP: Apple sometimes gets a bad rap for being closed, versus say Google and the Android platform.  While I feel the difference in openness of the two platforms is smaller than it is made out to be in the press, Apple’s control of the entire iOS development ecosystem does make for an really enjoyable platform to develop on.  You can just tell that extensive thought has been put into every tool (XCode, Interface Builder, Instruments), not only how they are designed but also how well they all fit together.  I think that attention to detail can’t help but bleed through in the apps independent developers like myself produce for the platform.  Also, Objective-C is a great language to develop in.

MO: Worst thing about developing for iOS?

CP: Inconsistencies in the API, extensibility limitation in some of the UI controls, and ‘standards’ that are set in terms of UI controls in core Apple products that can’t be replicated without rolling your own or using private classes.  To Apple’s credit, I don’t think these are intentional, I just don’t think they have the bandwidth to do it in as timely a manner as independent developer’s would like.  In almost all cases, future SDKs and OSs have added the functionality and UI flexibility, but by that time, new UI ‘standards’ have been set.  Frustrating, but at the same time it is also part of the fun of the platform, the evolution of UI design.  While still valuable as an indicator of solid baseline design, I tend to think the HIG became pretty irrelevant with the Delicious Monster generation.

MO: What are the challenges of developing for the iPad?

CP: I think the challenges are the same as for any software product.  Ideas are cheap, it is execution and persistence that count.  Additionally, in making apps for Mac, or iOS in particular, stellar design is key.  Finally, there are so many apps in the app store, marketing is huge.  In an upcoming guest post for Mobile Orchard, I plan on documenting my marketing efforts with Flickpad, what worked and what didn’t.  Hopefully it will help other devs navigate the app marketing gauntlet.

MO: What advice do you have for someone wanting to start developing for the iPad?

CP: Apps with limited and focused functionality with stellar design are the easiest to sell and market.  Don’t overlook the opportunity for free, ad revenue driven apps with focused functionality, as well as in-app purchase opportunities.  Integrating multiple ad networks via AdWhirl opens up some great opportunities, not only for ad revenue but also cross app promotion.  Network, network, network.  Start early trying to develop relationships with reviewers and influencers in the iOS app space.  It is hard to be noticed with all the noise in the app store, every little bit helps.  Finally, don’t delude yourself that all you have to do it code a great app.  In the end, depending on the idea, all the supporting activities (app website design, marketing, support, maintanence) will probably end up taking more time than the actual development.

MO: New projects in the works?

CP: I have a couple apps that are really close to being ready for release, both photo related.  Additionally, I have two new app ideas that are just starting that I think could turn out to be really big, both have a small Hawaii influence.  Nothing ready to announce though, stay tuned.

MO: Where did your app idea come from?

CP: If you haven’t noticed already, all my apps to date have pretty much been apps that I built for myself.  Flickpad solved a need I had related to keeping up with all the photos people were sharing with me on Facebook and Flickr.  The Now was a tool to help better appreciate the subtleties of life.  My up coming apps are starting to shift more towards solving other peoples problems and targeting app areas that haven’t seem to have been addressed yet in the app store.  Also, as mentioned above, I am starting to explore app ideas that are Hawaii related.

MO: How long did it take to develop your app?

CP: Flickpad v1.0 was developed over 4-6 weeks of intense coding and design.  To date though, i think I have put roughly 4+ solid months of work into Flickpad.  The integration of Flickr in version 2 of Flickpad alone took close to another 6 weeks of work.  The Now was my first iOS app and I released an open source push notification framework for Urban Airship along side it, but I think it took about 6 weeks of work total.  I have since changed it to use Local Push Notifications introduced in iOS 4, which would have greatly simplified the original implemention.  If I were to do it know, I think it would be a 2 week app.

MO: What is your favorite iPad app?

CP: Besides Flickpad of course , my current favorites are VLC, Plex, and Instapaper.  Playing MKV episodes of Yo Gabba Gabba via VLC  on a recent road trip with my 1 year old son saved my sanity.  The whole transcoding thing for getting videos in the default iOS video app is a nightmare.  Guess it is not an issue if you buy everything from iTunes.  Plex for iPad is amazing for navigating my Mac Mini/Drobo/Samsung LED home theather setup.  Instapaper is great to read intersting articles I saved for later.  Great functionality, design, not to mention supporting a great indie developer.

MO: Anything else you would like to add?

CP: Just a mahalo to all the Flickpad users out there, as well as Mobile Orchard for the interview opportunity.  Also, if there are any talented indie iOS designers out there reading this and looking for partnership opportunities, drop me a line.

MO: Thanks for your time.

I hope that you found this interview informative. Please make sure you check out Flickpad as well as upcoming app releases from Shacked. Don’t forget about our Flickpad Giveaway.

Hey everybody,

Been quite awhile since my last update, but I am trying to catch up with everything now — and am getting back to writing posts, and keeping the resources on the site updated.  Expect many more posts in the near future as I get everything back up to speed.

I just received word of a great selling iOS game app being released as open source, which I find particularly interesting.

What makes this interesting is that it is based on the iOS port of a Flash game framework known as Flixel.

The game is Canabalt, and you can read more about the game, and download the source at the publisher’s blog over here:
Canabalt Goes Open Source!

For more other great open source apps check out our Open Source iPhone Apps list where you can find many great apps.

Expect Canabalt and many others to be added to the list soon.

©2011 iPhone, iOS 4, iPad SDK Development Tutorial and Programming Tips. All Rights Reserved.

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I’ve been asked a few times recently for the latest sound manager code, so I’m posting the latest version of the SoundManager class that was used in my game SLQTSOR. This version contains all the fixes that have been discussed in the Sound Manager Tutorials comments and was the version featured in “Learning iOS Game […]

Hi everyone and Happy New year. I don’t honestly know where 2010 went, it seemed to have only just started and then it was over. I know for me that 2010 was a crazy year with the day job and getting the book finished. I got so much done and yet so much didn’t get […]