The school district in Van Meter, Iowa has ditched their workbooks and replaced them with MacBooks in a four-year digital learning experiment.

John Carver, Superintendent of the Van Meter school district in Iowa, has taken a bold move into the realm of digital learning. In the 2009-2010 school year, the district handed out laptops to all its seventh to twelfth grade students. The school district signed a four-year lease agreement with Apple to provide the students with MacBook laptops. The program costs about US$149,000 per year and is funded by the district’s Physical Plant and Equipment Levy (PPEL) and School Infrastructure Local Option (SILO) tax. It hopes to have the funds to extend this program to K-12 students by the 2012-2013 school year.

Unlike other schools that plop computers on a student’s desk and walk away, Carver did away with traditional paper-based learning and actively used the laptops in a new digital curriculum. The response towards the program has been enthusiastic. School board member John Seefeld was “amazed at students’ attentiveness, how engaged they were and how they seemed to be learning better under the new format.” Iowa Department of Education Director Jason Glass took a tour of the program and remarked that “after two years of exploring the capacity of the devices, the kids and teachers are learning and evolving in their own knowledge of how powerful new technology can be.”

Well done, Van Meter School District! May the program bring continued success.

Iowa school replaces workbooks with MacBooks originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 15 Jun 2011 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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When I heard that Reeder for Mac was being developed, I was thrilled. Ever since I had moved to Google Reader, I had been looking for a Mac app which was more compelling to use than the web interface. Reeder for iPad (US$5) was so good that I used it almost exclusively. Could Reeder make the jump from iOS to Mac?

I purposefully waited until the first few public beta versions of Reeder for Mac were released, to let the early bugs get sorted out. When I started to hear good reports about it on Twitter, I downloaded it and tried it for myself. Initially, it felt awkward. I couldn’t stop noticing that this was an iOS app ported to Mac OS X. It just didn’t feel right. So I deleted it. A few beta releases later, I tried again, but the result was the same: I used it briefly, then gave up.

When the final version arrived, I went to the official website hoping to find a demo version that I could try before buying. (I will pause briefly to repeat my firm belief that the biggest shortcoming of the iOS and Mac App Stores is the lack of full-featured demos.) At US$10, Reeder was above my “just buy it to try it” threshold. I found screenshots, but those are hardly enough to give a good feel for the app.

For a few days I continued my routine of using a Fluid.app browser for Google Reader on the Mac and Reeder on my iPad, but eventually curiosity got the better of me and I dropped my Alexander Hamilton on it. Despite my first rule for purchasing software, I decided that even if it didn’t meet my needs now, it was likely to be popular enough that it would continue to be developed and improved.

Five minutes later I knew I had made the right choice.

Make no mistake, Reeder still feels like an iOS app which jumped to the Mac, but it has pushed through the awkward teenage years into a promising young-adulthood. That may be due to the fact that Lion has already started to push acceptance of iOS ideas and concepts coming “back to the Mac,” or maybe the app itself has changed enough to make the jump seem less dramatic.

But enough with the vagaries of opinion, let’s take a closer look at what’s there.

Keyboard Shortcuts and 3rd Party Services

The first thing I loved was the keyboard shortcuts. Clearly that’s not something you’re going to find in an iOS app, so this is one place where it really stands out on the Mac. There are built-in, easily configurable keyboard commands for just about anything you could imagine. Not just the obvious ones like J/K for previous and next, but also shortcuts to send the current article to other services such as Pinboard, Instapaper, ReadItLater, Delicious, or Zootool. You can also send articles to Twitter, Instapaper or Google’s mobilizer, email, or your web browser.

If you have used Reeder on the iPad, you are used to being able to easily send articles from it to those services, and on the Mac it is even easier. Just like the iPad version, you can disable services you do not use. For example, I use Pinboard but not Delicious, so I left Pinboard enabled and dropped Delicious.

But that’s not all your fingers can do

Drawing from the app’s iOS roots, Reeder also supports gestures for swiping up, down, left, and right, as well as pinch open or close, letting you choose what action each gesture triggers.

I am still getting used to these sorts of gestures on Mac OS X, but I think it is clear that they are part of its future. You are not required to use them; they are simply another way of controlling the app instead of clicking on menus or toolbar icons (also highly configurable) or keyboard shortcuts.

Readability: an RSS lover’s best friend

Reeder’s built-in “Readability” feature pulls full articles from sites which only offer truncated RSS feeds. To try it out by clicking a button that’s available at the bottom of the article pane, or with a keyboard shortcut (G), which toggles it on or off.

If you want to go beyond the Readability format and integrate Reeder with your Readability account, you will find support for that is also built-in to the app, with the sign-in preference right below your Google account information.

Nice Extras

You can determine exactly when articles may be marked as read, pre-load articles (either in a web-browser or with Readability) and more. You can also change numerous appearance settings to make it look more or less like an iOS app with room for tweaking.

I was also glad to see that Reeder let me set the “Unread Count” to either “badge” (which looks like iOS) or “icon” (which looks nicely Mac-ish), or disable it altogether. It also gives granularity of control over syncing unread, starred, and shared items, as well as notes.

What’s different and what’s “missing”

Unlike most Mac apps, Reeder uses many keyboard shortcuts without a modifier key (Command, Option, Shift). As I mentioned before, some of these will be familiar to you if you have used the Google Reader website, and I would not say that they were a bad idea, just a different one. I do know that many years ago Opera dropped one-key shortcuts because they found it led to user confusion when keys were accidentally pressed either by the users themselves, or (and I am not making this up) their cats. Fortunately the most potentially “damaging” keystroke (Mark All As Read) requires confirmation before it is executed (unless your cat manages to press Shift and A simultaneously, or you turn off the confirmation option in preferences).

So far my only feature request (other than a demo version) is the ability to easily switch between Google accounts (a la Gmail accounts in Mailplane), but I suspect that is not a feature many users will use. At the very least, its absence in 1.0 release is understandable, and it may be enough of an “edge case” that it might never be added.

Others have mentioned the lack of “tabs” as a drawback. While I understand the complaint, I find that I much prefer to read one article at a time. Still, I would not be surprised to see that added in a later version if demand continues. After all, this is only 1.0.

Finally, I was surprised to see that there was no “full screen mode” available. Perhaps that feature will be added when Lion is released.

Summary

Reeder succeeds in crossing over from iOS by bringing the best features that users have come to expect and adding in a sprinkling of Mac-specific features. While it may seem even more at home once Lion arrives, I am glad to have it today on my Mac. If you already know and love Reeder on the iPad, chances are good you will love it on the Mac too. If you are not an iPad user and are looking for a clean, feature-rich Google Reader client for Mac, Reeder should definitely be on your list to check out.

Gallery

Check out Reeder’s menus in the gallery below. Screenshots of the UI are available on the official Reeder website.

Reeder makes a successful leap from iOS to Mac originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 15 Jun 2011 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Leaked information provided to TechCrunch suggests Facebook is prepping a photo-sharing app for the iPhone. From the description, the app is a mixture of Instagram with some of the location information and social sharing of Path and Color. A few surprises are also supposedly thrown into the mix.

The app, of course, is integrated into Facebook and ties into your Facebook account. Right now, it is a standalone app, but these features could eventually make its way into the official Facebook iPhone app. The amount of information available now is just a tease and TechCrunch promises more information will be released soon. Stay tuned.

Facebook prepping a photo-sharing app for the iPhone originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 15 Jun 2011 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Titus is a game that calls itself a “political simulator,” featuring an agoraphobic watchmaker who decides to run for president in the crazy world of Wealland. If that description and the game’s Tim Burton-esque aesthetic haven’t won you over already, then you and I have very different tastes in gaming.

The actual gameplay is more about how well you do at minigames than actual strategy, but it’s a fun affair, providing a tweaked parody of politics and that really interesting art style. Titus’ main opponent is a mime, and through minigames that have you catching cash or Doodle Jumping-your way along, it’s your goal to win the hearts (or at least the wallets) of your people.

Titus has achievements, but unfortunately it isn’t directly Game Center enabled. It is a universal app, however, and it’s available right now for US$1.99.

TUAW’s Daily iPhone App: Titus originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 15 Jun 2011 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Gary Katz has a talent for making things out of shoe boxes. We told you about his miniature iPhone movie theater back in February, but now he’s moved onto bigger and better things. Using a shoe box, some concert photographs he found using Google Images, and glue, Katz has created an iPad concert theater. The theater even features moving audience members. I’m going to let the video below speak for itself. If, after watching it, you want to create your own iPad theater but don’t have the craft skills, Katz sells personal theater kits for only US$9.99.

Rock out in the iPad concert theater originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 15 Jun 2011 05:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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An AirPort Utility update released yesterday has been discovered to contain references to forthcoming next-gen AirPort hardware. MacRumors and 9to5 Mac have independently confirmed that the software update contains references to a fourth-generation Time Capsule and a fifth-generation AirPort Extreme.

Two weeks ago, we reported that stocks of Apple’s AirPort products were starting to dwindle at Apple’s brick-and-mortar retail stores, and over last weekend shipping times for the Time Capsule extended to as much as two weeks in several of Apple’s international online stores. Many of us expected to see updated Time Capsules at WWDC, with potential ties to Apple’s new iCloud service; although the hardware updates failed to materialize last week, the data in the latest AirPort Utility update is just one more piece of evidence suggesting that product updates are imminent.

The AirPort Utility update also contains references to software updates being stored on the devices, but MacRumors stresses that this is not a new development: “the same text has been found in older versions of the software dating back to at least 2010.” It’s possible this is a feature Apple has been waiting to implement until iCloud’s launch or a Time Capsule/AirPort Extreme redesign based around an A4 or A5 processor.

At this time, we’d advise that you hold off on purchasing a Time Capsule or AirPort Extreme unless you absolutely, positively must purchase within the next few weeks.

Next-gen Time Capsule, AirPort Extreme referenced in AirPort Utility update originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 15 Jun 2011 03:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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According to a recent Apple patent, users may one day be able to charge their iPhones and iPads wirelessly. The patent, titled “Wireless power utilization in a local computing environment,” describes a way that computers, such as an iMac or MacBook, could charge a device like the iPhone when it is put within three feet of the computer. The technology works using near field magnetic resonance (NFMR) power transmission.

Now that iOS devices can sync wirelessly, wireless charging would be a godsend and enable users to fully cut the cord. However, another advantage of NFMR power charging goes beyond iOS devices. Imagine never having to replace batteries in Apple’s Wireless Keyboard or Magic Mouse. Matter of fact, given the low power requirements for these peripherals, its likely that if Apple does employ NFMR power transmission in future devices, it would likely come to them first. All that would need to be added to a mouse or keyboard is a small coupling antenna.

Apple patent suggests wireless device charging originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 15 Jun 2011 02:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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PhoneIt-iPad is a new iPad jailbreak tweak that lets you make & receive calls, and send & receive SMS from iPad 3G. PhoneItiPad takes full advantage of the network connection on an iPad 3G…

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In a previous last post we saw how to call REST and SOAP web services. The web service reponse can be one of the following:

1. XML.
2. SOAP.
3. JSON.

Parsing XML

Android offers three types of XML parsers:

1. DOM Parser.
2. Pull Parser.
3. SAX Parser.

we’ll demonstrate each using the following xml example:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<person>
    <firstname>Jack</firstname>
    <lastname>smith</lastname>
    <age>28</age>
</person>

which we need to parse to create an object from Person class:

public class Person{
    	public String firstName;
    	public String lastName;
    	public int age;
    }

Parsing the response with DOM Parser:

Android provides org.w3c.dom library that contains classes used to parse xml by constructing a document and
matching each node to parse the info.
to parse our example response with DOM parser, we implement a function like this

void parseByDOM(String response) throws ParserConfigurationException, SAXException, IOException{
    	Person person=new Person();
    	DocumentBuilderFactory dbf = DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance();
    	DocumentBuilder db = dbf.newDocumentBuilder();
    	Document doc = db.parse(new InputSource(new StringReader(response)));
    	// normalize the document
    	doc.getDocumentElement().normalize();
    	// get the root node
    	NodeList nodeList = doc.getElementsByTagName("person");
    	Node node=nodeList.item(0);
    	// the  node has three child nodes
    	for (int i = 0; i < node.getChildNodes().getLength(); i++) {
    	Node temp=node.getChildNodes().item(i);
    	if(temp.getNodeName().equalsIgnoreCase("firstname")){
    		person.firstName=temp.getTextContent();
    	}
    	else if(temp.getNodeName().equalsIgnoreCase("lastname")){
    		person.lastName=temp.getTextContent();
    	}
    	else if(temp.getNodeName().equalsIgnoreCase("age")){
    		person.age=Integer.parseInt(temp.getTextContent());
    	}

    	}

    	Log.e("person", person.firstName+ " "+person.lastName+" "+String.valueOf(person.age));
    }

The previous method is good, it retrieves the info correctly, but it requires that you are familiar with the xml structure so that you know the order of each xml node.
luckily Android provides a better approach of parsing using SAX parser.

Parsing the response with SAX Parser:

Android provides org.xml.sax package that has that provides the event-driven SAX parser.
to parse the previous response with SAX parser, we have to create a class extending DefaultHandler and override the following methods:

1. startDocument(): invoked when the xml document is open, there we can initialize any member variables.
2. startElement(String uri, String localName, String qName, Attributes attributes): invoked when the parser encounters a xml node, here we can initialize specific instances of our person object.
3. endElement(String uri, String localName, String Name): invoked when the parser reaches the closing of a xml tag. here the element value would have been completely read.
4. characters(char[] ch, int start, int length): this method is called when the parser reads characters of a node value.

so our parsing class will be like this:

/*
	 * SAX parser to parse persons response
	 */
	public class PersonParser extends DefaultHandler
	{

		// arraylist to store person objects
		ArrayList persons;
		// temporary person object
		Person tempPerson;
		// string builder acts as a buffer
		StringBuilder builder;

		/**
		 * Initialize the arraylist
		 * @throws SAXException
		 */
		@Override
		public void startDocument() throws SAXException {
			pesons=new ArrayList();

		}

		/**
		 * Initialize the temp person object which will hold the parsed info
		 * and the string builder that will store the read characters
		 * @param uri
		 * @param localName
		 * @param qName
		 * @param attributes
		 * @throws SAXException
		 */
		@Override
		public void startElement(String uri, String localName, String qName,
				Attributes attributes) throws SAXException {

			if(localName.equalsIgnoreCase.equals("person")){
				tempPerson=new Person();
				builder=new StringBuilder();
			}

		}
		/**
		 * Finished reading the person tag, add it to arraylist
		 * @param uri
		 * @param localName
		 * @param qName
		 * @throws SAXException
		 */
		@Override
		public void endElement(String uri, String localName, String qName)
				throws SAXException {
			// finished reading a person, add it to the arraylist
			if(localName.toLowerCase().equals("person"))
			{
				this.persons.add(tempPerson);
			}
			// finished reading "firstname" tag assign it to the temp person
			else if(localName.toLowerCase().equals("firstname")){
				tempPerson.firstName=builder.toString();
			}
			// finished reading "lastname" tag assign it to the temp person
			else if(localName.toLowerCase().equals("lastname")){
				tempPerson.lastName=builder.toString();
			}
			// finished reading "age" tag assign it to the temp person
			else if(localName.toLowerCase().equals("age")){
				tempPerson.age=Integer.parseInt(builder.toString());
			}
		}

		/**
		 * Read the value of each tag
		 * @param ch
		 * @param start
		 * @param length
		 * @throws SAXException
		 */
		@Override
		public void characters(char[] ch, int start, int length)
				throws SAXException {
			// read the characters and append them to the buffer
			String tempString=new String(ch, start, length);
			 builder.append(tempString);
		}
	}

the code is pretty easy, the parser iterates over each node, you check the current node name and take an action.

then we call the parser like this:

 public ArrayList getPersons(final String response) throws ParserConfigurationException, SAXException, IOException
	{
		BufferedReader br=new BufferedReader(new StringReader(response));
		InputSource is=new InputSource(br);
		PersonParser parser=new PersonParser();
		SAXParserFactory factory=SAXParserFactory.newInstance();
   		SAXParser sp=factory.newSAXParser();
   		XMLReader reader=sp.getXMLReader();
   		reader.setContentHandler(parser);
   		reader.parse(is);
   		ArrayList persons=parser.persons;

		return persons;

	}

Parsing JSON respone:

what if our repspone was JSON instead of xml. it would be something like this:

"persons"
[
{
"person"{
"firstName": "John",
     "lastName": "Smith",
     "age": 25
}
}
{
"person"{
"firstName": "Catherine",
     "lastName": "Jones",
     "age": 35
}
}
]

this response is a JSON Array with the name “persons”, this array consists of “person” JSON Objects.
to parse such a reponse:

public ArrayList<Person> getMessage(String response){
		JSONObject jsonResponse;
		ArrayList<Person> arrPersons=new ArrayList<Person>;
		try {
			// obtain the reponse
			jsonResponse = new JSONObject(response);
			// get the array
			JSONArray persons=jsonResponse.optJSONArray("persons");
			// iterate over the array and retrieve single person instances
			for(int i=0;i<persons.length();i++){
				// get person object
				JSONObject person=persons.getJSONObject(i);
				// get first name
				String firstname=person.optString("firstname");
				// get last name
				String lastname=person.optString("lastname");
				// get the age
				int age=person.optInt("age");

				// construct the object and add it to the arraylist
				Person p=new Person();
				p.firstName=firstname;
				p.lastName=lastname;
				p.age=age;
				arrPersons.add(p);
			}

		} catch (JSONException e) {

			e.printStackTrace();
		}

		return arrPersons;
	}

much easier than the previous methods.
notice that we used the methods optJSONArray,optString,optInt instead of using getString,getInt because the opt methods return empty strings or zero integers if no elements are found. while the get methods throw an exception if the element is not found.

and that was all about parsing web service reponses, stay tuned next week for another tutorial

The lightweight Sparrow Framework, the iOS game engine which I used in the balloon iPhone game programming tutorial has added a particle system.

The particle system can be used to create particle effects like smoke, explosions, and fire easily and can utilize the previously mentioned Particle Designer tool (you can of course code things yourself).  The Sparrow Framework developers were able to do this without bulking up the size of the engine by adding the particle system as an extension rather than including it within the Sparrow Framework code.

You can find out how to download, install, and use the particle system on the wiki page here:
http://wiki.sparrow-framework.org/extensions/sxparticlesystem

Played around with a little, and it is very easy to use looks like a great addition to the framework.

 

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

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There could be a situation where you would like for an app to respond to HTTP requests. Creating a server that appropriately responds to different requests can be a fairly daunting task.

Fortunately, Fabio Rodella has created a wrapper class for the Mongoose server that handles all http requests, arranges the data, and returns appropriate responses along with a tutorial showing a sample servelet in action. Mongoose is a cross platform open source web server that is often embedded within applications.

You can read more at the Crocodella site here:
Java Style Servlets In Obj-C With Mongoose

The wrapper is available with a sample app on Github here:
https://github.com/crocodella/MongooseWrapper

Looks like a simple way to add useful server functionality into an app.

[via Under The Bridge]

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

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