vinnycoyne.com

ASBlockTimer - Block-based NSTimer

Fri, 20 Jan 2012 15:00:39 +0000

A note on Objective-C singletons

Fri, 13 Jan 2012 17:11:16 +0000

iOS App Marketing - Quick Tips

Thu, 12 Jan 2012 15:15:00 +0000

Display ads - waste of money. The return on banner/text ads is very disappointing. Google has the best CTR. Facebook are well-targeted, but are expensive (if your app sells at less than €3, then it might not be worth your while). BuySellAds allow you to purchase ad-space on some popular blogs - the service itself is great, but sites I’ve advertised on didn’t give a good CTR.

Journalists - big blogs (Techcrunch, etc) are worth contacting but don’t expect to get featured, unless you’re VC backed and have raised a bunch of money. Focus on smaller, niche blogs - for example, a Russian iOS blog caught wind of a Muud.io sale and subsequently sales spiked 400% for couple of days. Local journos are usually eager to help out too.

App review sites - a handful of the bigger ones are worth contacting. A personal email works best if possible - press releases are usually ignored. Most are a waste of a promo code however.

Apple - extremely difficult to get noticed. Build a great app and you’ve a better chance, but don’t count on getting featured. If you have any contacts in Apple, it’s worth getting in touch - you might at least get your app in front of the iTunes editorial team for review (even so, you’re still not guaranteed placement).

Twitter, Facebook, Google+ - Worth maintaining a presence. The more active you are the better. Twitter is #1 referral stream for visitors to the Muud.io website.

Stuff 'n Junk, 2011

Mon, 19 Dec 2011 14:15:00 +0000

Some cool things I discovered this year…

MacBook Air (Mid 2011)

For the past three years or so, I’d been working off a 15” MacBook Pro, and it was an absolute work-horse of a machine. With the introduction of Lion, and Xcode 4.x, the MBP started to become a little sluggish and couldn’t keep up with the demands of my daily development duties (alliteration FTW).

I’d spent a lot of time researching which Mac to buy next and had originally planned to pick up an iMac for the extra horsepower and use my iPad as a travel “computer”. However, once Apple released the i7 MacBook Air, a lot of other developers made the switch and were singing its praises. The allure of an ultra-portable Mac, with SSD, and an extremely powerful CPU were just too much to resist. I picked up the maxed out 13” i7 model and can confidently say that it is the best machine I have ever owned.

Ruby on Rails

A simple-yet-powerful framework that makes it easy for web-luddites like myself to build web services. I learned the basics using this ebook and some online video tutorials. Thanks to RoR, I no longer have to pay licensing fees for Windows Server (it can run on Linux, Mac, or Windows), and I can quickly prototype and test services directly on my Mac. (I actually started with RoR last year, but built my first full-scale service this year - Muud.io).

Linode

Cloud-based VPS provider with a large number of Linux images to choose from. Pricing is good, uptime is great, and the community/documentation is fantastic. Linode also provide load-balancing services, called NodeBalancers, as well as an iPhone app to manage your servers and DNS entries.

iTunes Match

I’ve only had this for a few days, but it’s a service that I’ve been wanting Apple to provide for years. I no longer have to carry around an external USB drive containing my music library - it’s all in the cloud, saving over 50GB on my MacBook Air’s SSD. I can stream music to my MBP, and download on-the-fly to all of my iOS 5 devices.

5by5 Podcasts

I may have actually discovered 5by5 last year, but it became an integral part of my daily routine over the past year. The shows are great, Dan Benjamin is an excellent host - some of my favourite shows are: The Talk Show, Back to Work, Build and Analyze, The Critical Path, Founders Talk.

The Verge, The Vergecast, On The Verge

Everything I loved about Engadget - in-depth reviews and editorials, quirky sense of humour, and an hilarious podcast - combined with a new sense of style and some excellent video segments.

Sparrow

I use Gmail a lot and had previously plugged my accounts into Apple’s Mail app. Sparrow brings some of Gmail’s best features to a native client. The UI is somewhat of an acquired taste, but it works well for me.

Fantastical

A much simpler way to enter data into iCal. Just type plain text and Fantastical will parse it into a meaningful iCal event.

1Password

Use a single password to manage random passwords for every site that you sign up for. Very clever, if a little awkward sometimes. Still, much easier than resetting forgotten passwords…

FreeAgent

Online accounting software that allows me to input transaction data and forget about the rest. If you’re running a small business, definitely give it a try.

Film & TV

Disclaimer: I missed a lot of big movies this year!

The Guard - Comical caricature of Irish mentality.

Super 8 - Nostalgic, creature movie.

Attack the Block - Like Shaun of the Dead, but with aliens.

The Walking Dead - Zombies! Horror! Intense!

Boardwalk Empire - The Sopranos, set in Atlantic City during the prohibition era.

Community - Hilarious, geeky comedy, set in a community college.

Various new music

Another disclaimer: I didn’t get to try out a lot of new music this year either.

The Black Keys - El Camino

Death Cab for Cutie - Codes and Keys

The Decemberists - The King is Dead

Feist - Metals

Delorentos - Little Sparks EP

Arctic Monkeys - Suck It and See

Pretty much everything Apple did this year

iOS 5, iCloud, Siri - too much awesome for one year! Except for Lion; let’s not open that can of worms right now ;)

Sale!

Sat, 10 Dec 2011 18:04:00 +0000

Both of my apps are on sale today for $0.99:

Muud.io

Muud.io is a music app for iPhone & iPod touch that makes playlists to suit your mood.

EirText

EirText Pro is an app for iPhone, iPod touch, & iPad, which allows you to send free or cheap text messages.

isaiah’s weblog: Cooked Bird

Fri, 09 Dec 2011 18:54:27 +0000

isaiah’s weblog: Cooked Bird:

yourhead:

Path and Instagram have shown that the social app war is far from over. The blind spot of the successful social web platforms like Twitter and Facebook appears their late to the game, lackluster iOS experience. Even with the iPad 3 due out in a few months the iOS Facebook UI has only recently…

Scripting EirText for Mac in Terminal

Fri, 25 Nov 2011 16:42:04 +0000

Using EirText for Mac’s command line / Terminal commands:

All you need to do is launch EirText as usual and make sure that you have an account set up within the app. Make a note of your username and the network you’re using (e.g. O2.ie, VoIPCheap.com, etc). You can quit the app once you have an account ready for use.

Here’s an example of how it works:

/Applications/EirText.app/Contents/MacOS/EirText -u USERNAME -n NETWORK -rRECIPIENT1,RECIPIENT2,RECIPIENT3 -m ‘MESSAGE TEXT’

Now, just a quick explanation of those arguments:

USERNAME is the username that you use to log in to your account

NETWORK is the name of your provider/network, for example O2.ie

RECIPIENT1… is a comma-separated list of recipient phone numbers

MESSAGE TEXT is the body of the message, surrounded by single-quotes

So, for example, let’s say I’m a Vodafone.ie user and my username is 0871234567. I want to text two numbers – 0861111111 and +447547777777.

This is what I’d type into the Terminal:

/Applications/EirText.app/Contents/MacOS/EirText -u 0871234567 -n Vodafone.ie -r 0861111111,+447547777777 -m ‘Hi there. This is a message sent from the EirText app for Mac!’

Hit return and you’ll see something similar to the following output to the Terminal:

2011-06-16 14:10:22.135 EirText[5155:903] 181 messages remaining.

2011-06-16 14:10:22.136 EirText[5155:903] Sending message to 2 recipients…

2011-06-16 14:10:29.182 EirText[5155:903] Message sending successful.

2011-06-16 14:10:29.182 EirText[5155:903] Quitting EirText.

Learning the road of iOS development

Thu, 24 Nov 2011 12:28:00 +0000

Learning the road of iOS development

Format String for the iPhone NSDateFormatter

Tue, 22 Nov 2011 12:39:21 +0000

Format String for the iPhone NSDateFormatter

I want to get started building iOS apps...

Thu, 17 Nov 2011 09:22:11 +0000

If you’ve never coded before, have a look first at Visual Basic, then C++ or C#. You can get Microsoft’s tools online for free. Just do a Google for Visual Studio. There are loads of tutorials online for VB and C# - I’d recommend trying out the latter as it’s probably more relevant (C# can be used for Windows Phone programming). This also lets you try your hand at programming without having to buy a Mac.

Once you have a bit of coding under your belt, you’ll be ready to move on to Objective-C, which is the iOS & Mac programming language. As you can guess, it’s an enhanced version of C, but it looks quite different. You’ll need a Mac for this, but you might as well go ahead and buy one - you’ll thank me later :)

Apple supply a huge amount of sample apps with the iOS SDK. All you need to do is fire up Xcode, click on Help and then on Documentation and API. There should be a link to Sample code somewhere on the main page of the docs. Xcode is available on the Mac App Store for free.

Apple also offer video tutorials on iTunes U. Check out the Stanford iOS course on iTunes U while you’re there. Jeff Lamarche’s blog is a great resource also.

To be honest, you could read and read, but the best way to learn is to download the Apple samples and tinker with them until you get a feel for how they work. Try out code, break your code, and learn how to fix it… Unfortunately it all takes a bit of time, but it’s worth it once you get your first app running on-device.

Some books:

Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X

Cocoa/Mac focused, but a great entry-level book)

http://www.amazon.com/Cocoa-Programming-Mac-OS-3rd/dp/0321503619

Beginning iPhone Development

http://www.amazon.com/Beginning-iPhone-Development-Exploring-SDK/dp/1430216263/

Best Developer at The Appys!

Sun, 06 Nov 2011 22:44:00 +0000

Hello. If you’ve been reading about my win at The Appys (Best Developer, woo!) and Googled my name, you’ve probably been led here.

This is my personal blog.

My app development company, App Sandwich can be found at http://www.appsandwich.com and my latest app, Muud.io, is over at http://muud.io

You can also get in touch directly via email or Twitter.

A little bit of cross-promotion...

Wed, 19 Oct 2011 20:56:00 +0100

If you haven’t yet heard about my new app, Muud.io, here’s a little bit about it:

Muud.io is a music app for iPhone & iPod touch that can recommend playlists, based on a given mood.

Simply pick a mood, and we’ll build a playlist for you, using the music you love.

You can view a demo video (desktop-only for now) and screenshots over at the Muud.io site.

Muud.io is available on the App Store (and is currently on sale at half-price for a limited time).

Wanted: Search and in-app purchase APIs for iTunes media on iOS.

Fri, 14 Oct 2011 11:12:00 +0100

UPDATE: Apple have marked this feature enhancement as a duplicate of 7040203

Filed as Radar # 10286028

Currently, apps have to jump into the iTunes Store app on iOS when prompting the user to purchase songs & video.

The user taps a “Buy in iTunes” button in the third-party app. This jumps into the iTunes app. The user must then tap the Buy button in iTunes and then enter their Apple ID password.

To reduce the number of user-actions and potentially increase on-device music purchases, Apple could create an in-app purchase API for music, similar to standard in-app purchases.

A native search API for iTunes could be created, which would mimic the current JSON API. A standard system UIViewController could be used to display search results and handle the purchasing experience. Songs downloaded would be added to the user’s Music / Video apps.

Muud.io - Embarrassing Baby Photos

Tue, 11 Oct 2011 11:11:36 +0100

I found these Muud.io prototype screenshots while migrating to my new MacBook Air.

The main focus, starting out, was to prove that the back-end tech could work. I’d built a very basic client app, which plugged into a Rails instance running on my Mac.

As you can see, the “Build Playlist” feature was a little more complicated than it is now, and there was no way to save your playlists!

The second prototype was a complete re-working of the app and Rails service. The app now used the tab bar layout that eventually made it into the final build.

Once the general UI layout had been decided on, it was time to start thinking about adding some colour and texture to the app. I used my good friend, Google Image Search, to find some placeholder images and picked a strong orange colour to make the app stand out amongst the sea of blue icons on my iPhone.

I got in touch with Darran Morris of App-Bits to help with the design. Darran has worked on a lot of great-looking apps, but I’d never had the pleasure of working with him before. Needless to say, the final product looks extremely well-polished.

Muud.io is a music app for iPhone & iPod touch that can recommend playlists, based on a given mood.

Thank You

Thu, 06 Oct 2011 09:39:52 +0100

Without Steve’s inventions, my industry would not exist. Without his inspiration, I would not have found a career that I love. I wake up every morning excited by what the day might bring. I am incredibly lucky, and I have Steve to thank for that.

parislemon: It has been almost a month since Steve Jobs...

Mon, 19 Sep 2011 19:48:19 +0100

parislemon:

It has been almost a month since Steve Jobs officially stepped down as CEO of Apple. Today the stock is literally off-the-charts at a new all-time high.

Apple’s market cap is now nearly $25 billion larger than Exxon’s, the second most-valuable public company in the world. Apple’s market cap will soon surpass $400 billion.

The iPhone 5 hasn’t even been announced yet.

Wordpress Phishing Hack

Mon, 12 Sep 2011 14:03:00 +0100

If you’re running a Wordpress install, keep an eye on your themes folder and its subfolders.

There’s a nasty hack going around that allows a hacker to upload phishing-related files to your server. They then use your site as part of a phishing scam to collect bank details from unsuspecting users. Judging by where these files reside, I’m guessing that they’re using an exploit in the theme uploader.

The App Sandwich site was hit by this hack yesterday. Luckily, I was informed of it shortly after it happened, and I’ve since removed the offending files.

I’ve also gone through the extra trouble of removing Wordpress completely from the server. I’d been looking for an excuse to migrate from Wordpress. To date, their security has been sketchy at best (my install and plugins were 100% up-to-date), and I’ve been looking for something more lightweight for the site anyway.

Keychain access as simple as NSUserDefaults

Thu, 18 Aug 2011 16:42:53 +0100

Keychain access as simple as NSUserDefaults:

I can’t remember exactly where I found this link, but it’s a great project.

isaiah’s weblog: I love beach balls and pinwheels

Wed, 17 Aug 2011 21:57:27 +0100

isaiah’s weblog: I love beach balls and pinwheels:

yourhead:

Xcode: Oh hai! How are you doing today?

Me: I just relaunched you because you crashed. Again. So, you know, kind of shitty.

Xcode: Oh well, here are the last 20 windows that you had open about 45 minutes ago.

Me: I don’t really need those open any more. Just do a clean build of the code,…

Using PhoneView during iOS Development

Wed, 10 Aug 2011 15:10:14 +0100

Using PhoneView during iOS Development:

If you’re debugging an iOS app on-device, and need to access data that you’re storing somewhere within the app’s home directory, just fire up PhoneView and click on the Apps section. Easy!