DevieTech

Hi there,

Well about this time last year, I posted my tech predictions for 2010. I was about 70% right- See for yourself.

So here you go!

1)iPhone 5 – This will sport a refined design to correct the reception issues.

2)iPad 2 – I think this will support a front facing camera, and maybe one on the back – As for a retina display, I don’t think so.

3) 3D TV will get cheaper, and far more 3D movies.

4)HD/Blu-Ray will become more affordable.

5)Debut of USB 3.0 – might even make it into some Macs.

6) iPhone leaving AT&T in the states.

7) One from last year – Google will have a major security breach, lowering company confidence.

Cloud will continue to take off

9) Faster broadband in New Zeland

10) 10.7 will be wildly successful, especially with the Mac App Store.

So there’s mine – what are yours? Let me know in the comments.

Cheers

Be safe, click away, have fun!

Sam

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Hi there,

The other day I released iChristmas Cracker, but what is it?

From iTunes: “This digital christmas cracker uses two devices and is fun for the whole family! 

Simply connect the two half crackers via bluetooth – and then give it a good pull! Bang! Read your joke and try on the hat! 

Then pull again!

Use it over and over again, each time getting a new joke, that can be shared to Twitter, Facebook and more! Also – try on a silly Santa hat and send the pictures to your family, friends and followers!

Get into the 21st century with this fun, digital Christmas cracker! Our gift to you this Christmas. 

Merry Christmas from Samstrix Apps!”

So far, it has been mentioned in a few respected blogs

-iPhonewzealand

-HowToMakeiPhoneApps

-iFreeware

-AppShop

-AppSpy

The app is free – so go get it now!

To use: Simply open the app on two devices, follow the onscreen instructions to connect the two halves, and then pull hard!

NB: You need two iOS devices for this app to work. (So ask a mate to download it too – its free!)

Merry Christmas!

Sam

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Hi All,

Well where do I start? I’ve just had one of the best weekends of my year. Apart from my high school leavers function, the main reason was NZiDev.

NZiDev is “NZ’s first conference … solely devoted to unite the country’s iOS developers”, and that it did. The likes of David Frampton and many others attended. The conference was run in ‘unconference’ style – where no formal lectures/breakouts were planned, instead people were grouped for an hour at a time with a topic they wanted to talk about. These breakouts ranged from ‘NSNotifications vs Delegates’ to ‘Cheap and effective marketing’. All were very interesting, and so I’ll share with you what I took from each.

So to start off the Saturday, we passed the microphone around and introduced ourselves with 3 ‘tags’, our company and then our names. It was at this moment that I realised just how awesome this conference was going to be. Names like “Dave Frampton”, “Reuben Bijl” and “Layton Duncan” amazed me – these people are the roll models of the NZ iOS industry.

We then were invited to write on post-it notes what we wanted to do, after 10 minutes of organising, we had a plan for the day. I chose to do auth and data storage first. It was pretty full on, but very interesting to hear Matthew Hey talk about his saga of getting a CCAT for shipping his banking apps that use encryption. I chipped in with my use of ShareKit with simple posting to Twitter and Facebook, without having to learn OAuth. The thing to take out of this session is that connections to servers is hard work, but having control of both is easy.

The next session was on Unity games – this was hosted by some kids from Unlimited, a School in the centre of Christchurch. These kids were doing some great work with Unity, and showed just how easy it was to make a simple terrain and move around in it. The discussion lead to using other compilers such as Flash. I was interested in Unity for a while, and now I have a good place and contacts to start. Also mentioned was Cocos2D and the Nehe game tutorials. Also – Epic Citidel came up. The main idea that came out of this session was that it is OK to use a 3D/2D engine, and that 3rd parties can do it better than you can (in most cases).  A nice lunch on the grass followed.

After lunch I headed to a session on Memory Management/ Delegates vs NSNotifications. This was lead by Layton Duncan and Karl von Randow. I found Karl probably one of the most interesting developers at the conference. I already knew about the theory of memory management, but the delegate stuff was interesting. The main idea that came out here were some objective-c design patterns, and how they are used in code.

Next up  I headed to a databases session, very interesting learning the concepts of core data and sql. Turns out Marcus Radich knows his way around SQL – and I’ll likely be hitting him up later for some help. The idea here that using large amounts of data in a mobile app is not out of reach.

I also attended a Open GL session headed up by Dave Frampton, and in his experience, he suggests starting Open GL on the mac first. It was inspirational to hear him speak about his work.

Finally for the day, I heard to a WP7 vs Android vs iOS session. This was led by Ben Gracewood,  Nigel Parker and Nick the Romanian. Nick had some Android experience with Ben and Nigel rooting for Windows Phone 7. The discussion slowly turned into Apps vs Mobile websites, and then to cross compilers. We agreed that Appcelerator Titanium suggested by Tim Ross seemed like the cross compiler for us. The main idea that came our of this session is that Android and WP7 have some catching up to do, but have potential. Also – when targeting multiple devices, you have to think about ‘More customers vs overall app compromise and loss of native support’. We were also treated to a nice 3.8 aftershock (Welcome to Christchurch)!

The lads then went to The Twisted Hop for a drink and to enjoy the town, and I headed to the Christ’s College Leavers Ball at AMI stadium.

Sunday

The next day we arrived about 9am to see Peter Watling flying his AR Drone. This was a great thing to see, and a brilliant use of technology, another key example of why I am in this field.

We then had a “I need, I have” session, where I asked for work experience for the summer holidays, I was lucky to have some people approach me after that, my wingman for the weekend, Michael van de Water, also got some help with core data. We then came up with our sessions for the day.

The first session of the day for me was one led my Marcus Radich and Nick the Romanian who were showing how to use instruments. It was great to see something being used productively that I have barely used before. This session was great, and lots of questions and comments from people were given. The main idea out of this session was performance optimisation can be done last but should be kept in mind through development.

The next session was on dealing with corporate clients and contracts, so you can do iOS development full time. The best like that came out of the session was “Only do work for people who have iPhones.They GET it.” We had several contract iOS devs in the session and they shared their experience. Also – it wouldn’t hurt to get an Intellectual property lawyer.

Next up, one of the best sessions in the weekend, “Start up Myths”, a presentation given by one of the very first TradeMe employees, pictures of key slides are in the slide show below. The ideas discussed in the session can be summarised easily, working hard with a great idea will make you prosper.

Next up (after another nice lunch) was a session on cheap and effective marketing. This explained that sending your apps to blogs, review sites and crafting a good press release will get your apps the downloads it deserves. This was also covered by iPhonewzealand. The idea that came out of this session is that cheap and effective marketing can improve the sales of you app.

Lastly for the day (after some seriously good Mr Whippy), we had a show and tell session, with some hilarious apps, including “The app can play your music from iTunes, visualising it in the form of a dancing cow.” There was a great air combat game and some other ‘wow’ apps.

The organiser, Nathan “Sheldon” Torkington then asked for feedback from the weekend – with top suggestions being more code time, forward organised sessions and a longer and more frequent conference.

Overall  loved the conference. I went there to make contacts, find work and to learn. I came out with that and much, much more. I would like to thank Andrea Hastie and Nat Torkington, Jade, Print Monday and Snap for making the day possible. It was a truly awesome and expiring experience, and I shall be attending next time anything like this is run.

Be safe, Click away, Have fun.

Sam

Photos.  - These are of the second day only, first day photos can be found on iPhonewzealand.

Created with flickr slideshow from softsea.

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Hi all.

As you all know, I recently finished my NCEA exams. What does this mean? It means jumping right back into programming.

So this morning as a warm up I had some maths problems to solve.

Firstly, we all know 2+2 = 2 x 2 but is this true for any other numbers?

In the viewDidLoad method of a blank app, I wrote this.

NSLog(@"Welcome to the best maths problems of all time");

NSLog(@"We know 2 times 2 and 2 plus 2 both equal the same thing (4) but do any other two numbers do this?");

NSLog(@"Lets find out");

for (int a=1; a <=1000000000; a++){

for (int b=1; b <= 1000000000; b++){

if ((a*b) == (a+b)){

So it turns out for Real Whole numbers up to 1000 only 2 and 2 fulfil the criteria of sum = product.

So I decided to turn it up a little bit, and do some work on Pythagoras, eg x^2 + y^2 = z^2 and tried to find the three numbers which fitted that formula.

int solutionCounter;

for (int x = 1; x <= 1000; x++) {
for (int y = 1; y <= 1000; y++) {
for (int z = 1; z <= 1000; z++) {

if ((pow(x, 2) + pow(y, 2)) == pow(z,2)) {
NSLog(@"We have a solution, and x is: %d y is: %d and the hypotenuse is: %d", x,y,z );
solutionCounter ++;
}

}

}
}

If you’re curious, there were 975 possible triangles. However this does include double ups.

So that was my maths work for today. Hope you enjoyed reading this, if you have an idea how to remove double ups from the second example, let me know in the comments.

I hope to be putting up more posts over the next few months, so if you like what your reading, you can subscribe via RSS or email.

Be safe, click away, have fun.

Sam

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Hi there,

Quick post to round up possible things happening tomorrow. Remember this is not an event – just an announcement. This plays a part in what the news could be.

1. Beatles on iTunes. This is likely as The Beatles has never sold their music on iTunes and is worthy enough of a mention, but not for an event.
2. Cloud stored music. This is unlikely as Apple would want to demo it – however credible due to new data centers.
3. iTunes Music streaming. This is overdue after Apples acquisition of “Lala”, however, would need an event.
4. Something completely awesome that no-one was expecting and that was worthy of the words “Tomorrow is just another day. That you’ll never forget.”
5. Browser based iTunes?

Overall, I’m leaning towards either (1) or (4) of the above list. Apple just released iTunes 10, so don’t expect MUCH new. I’d say it would be content based (Beatles) or something else that comes out. Cloud or streaming services would justify and event and a new release of iTunes – which just isn’t going to happen.

I’d love to hear your thoughts. Theres a handy comment section below – Or join the discussion I’ve been having today on twitter – I’m @samjarman.

And we’ll find out tomorrow morning – 4am NZ time.

Be safe, Click away, Have fun.

Sam

UPDATE – It was number 1.

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Hello! My 70th post follows. I’ve decided to treat you all on something I’ve been pondering for a while, privacy.

Today we live in a world, and in this world we have instant access to our friends and family. Like communication, I think our grip on privacy is outdated. The world is changing, and so should our attitudes. We are becoming more open and the older generation, as scared as they are, need to be reeducated. As technology advances, our habits and attitudes must and will change.

Firstly, the world is instant. For those who live under rocks, I’ll bring you up to speed. We have thing called “social networks”. These are online websites like Facebook, Bebo, MySpace and Twitter that let you create profiles and share information about yourself. You can share such things as ‘updates’(“What are you doing now?”), birthday, siblings, relationships, likes, hates, photos, videos, and even location.

These social networks allows instant communication between friends and family. With a single glance down your Facebook or Twitter ‘feed’ you can catch up with all your friends and family, see what they’re doing, what they’ve done, and what they’re going to do. Becoming social has become so, for search of a better word, efficient.

Long gone are they days where a man might tell a woman her last name, and after weeks of courtship, reveal her first. Nowadays log onto Facebook, search a first name, and you can be taken to a persons profile, and depending on their privacy settings, you can see a minimum of their full name, ranging to their whole profile, which includes what they look like, birthdate, school/workplace, location. You can learn more about a person in 20 seconds of glancing, than 20 minutes of talking. The information is there, on a platter. The information is instant and out in the open.

Our view of privacy is getting outdated, and online users these days see no harm in having this much information available to anyone with an internet connection. The younger generation’s view of privacy is changing, and in the new information age, we share and learn so much more, and this is enabled by modern technology.

Now I’m not trying to convince you that there is no risk in sharing so much information. I always encourage having a strict eye on children to at least the age of 16 on the web, and parents should talk about online safety with their children. If you have any questions about how to teach online safety, you can email me, I’m happy to help. There are many ‘perverts’ online, who exploit peoples ignorance when it comes to privacy settings, and often virtually ‘stalk’ people. Always share and browse carefully. I personally avoid sharing my location from home or my school.

However, I do believe the older generation do need to be less scared of the internet. The possible disadvantages are far outweighed by the advantages. Privacy is getting looser – and as it gets looser, people will learn more, form tighter connections, and ultimately be more happy.

Humans are social beings, it is what separates us from the rest of the animal kingdom. We started socialising millions of years ago as apes, and today we do it online. The second thing is that this is the information and digital age, we have a craving for information, and sharing is the only way to get it. Communication is becoming more efficient, and so is learning. Long gone are the days where you take out the ink-well and quill, and pen a letter with perfect calligraphy, sealed with a wax stamp. Our communication has turned into quick fire 160 character snippets of our lives, expressed without a second thought.

The younger generations (under 30’s) are embracing the new technology well, and as this generation gets older, the way we communicate and share our lives will change, both sociologically and technologically.

Privacy ultimately comes down to how much we share. We share by way of communication, and as communication changes, so does the idea of privacy. We are ignorant to think otherwise – I cannot express that enough. However, to keep control of your privacy, here are some quick fire tips.

1. On Facebook, only let your friends see your information – this way you keep what is yours to your own circle.
2. On Twitter – consider making your tweets private, this way people must request to follow you.
3. Only post your location if you need to. Avoid posting it from home or work, as you never know who is watching
4. Never post inappropriate images or video on the internet – this will attract unwanted attention
5. If you’re unsure about what your kids are doing online – be sure to sit with them when they are on the computer – although they might not like it, if they have nothing to hide, then there is nothing to worry about.
6. Lastly – If you are at all in doubt what you have posted online, delete it all, and delete your account. This will remove it from the internet, so no-one can see it from now on.

More information about online safety can be found here - http://www.netsafe.org.nz/

You can email me on sam@samjarman.co.nz for more information online safety.  I’d love to hear what you have to say about privacy in the comments section below.

As always, thanks for reading.

Be safe, click away, have fun!

Sam

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Hi All,

On Tuesday October 5th, I presented a Pre-Conference Workshop at Ulearn, at Christ’s College, Christchurch, NZ. I was assisted by Paul Rodley, Michael van de Water, and Rob Shaw.

What is Ulearn? Ulearn is a collaboration conference for Teachers from Australia and New Zealand (and some other places). Teachers get together, discuss learning strategies, teaching tools, and ideas.

The conference ran for three days, (Wed to Friday), however on the Tuesday, there were workshops. As afore mentioned, I took one of them.

My workshop focused on teaching iOS development,  both native and web application. The workshop was sold out!

However, for those asking who missed it, below are links and slides from the day.

___________

Slides and Plan

Glad to hear you’re interested in developing applications for iOS.

I’m not going to lie, the road is long, and at places rather hard, but take it from me, it is so rewarding at the other end.

Here are some sites that will help you get into it more… as said, googling your problem eg, “iPhone SDK load txt file” or using Youtube are also great.

http://stackoverflow.com/ – Make an account and post questions about iPhone coding. People are happy to help with simple stuff.

http://www.iphonedevsdk.com/- Same idea, different site.

Developer Sites

http://mobileorchard.com/

http://www.xprogress.com/

http://mattgemmell.com/

http://www.everycoder.com/

http://www.iphoneexamples.com/

http://icodeblog.com/

http://www.samjarman.co.nz/devietech/

YouTube Channels

http://www.youtube.com/user/SimpleSDK

http://www.youtube.com/user/maniacdev

http://www.youtube.com/user/HDiPhone

http://www.youtube.com/user/NWorksDev

Tab Bar icons.

http://glyphish.com/

I strongly recommend, if you have the time and internet bandwidth, watching the Stanford University Lectures.. the newer ones are better, but watching both seasons is recommended (keep in mind, these are slightly out of date, but not enough for beginners purposes).

http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewiTunesUCollection?id=384233222

http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewiTunesUCollection?id=384233225

http://ax.search.itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZSearch.woa/wa/search?entity=allITunesUPlaylist&media=iTunesU&page=1&restrict=true&startIndex=0&term=iPhone+Programming

The recommeded path I’d suggest is watching the lectures first, you can’t do the mentioned course work, but the lectures themselves are well worth it. (you might have to re-watch a few to fully understand them.. they are pretty thick on.)

Next, download some sample code or go through the tutorials (Apple sample code is horrible for beginners – avoid it)

_____________

Photos from the day

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

The Video of the first hour and a half. (most of the coding). Warning – This file is large 400MBs +  - watch your data cap.

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Hi There…

I recently just passed 2000 followers on twitter – and people are asking “how?”

Firstly  - A Disclaimer. Twitter does not like people following or unfollowing in bulk. They see this as “spammers” and usually people caught doing this get their accounts disables. Hence, the following tools I show you are not to be used for aggressive following or unfollowing – they will just ruin the service for others and ruin your twitter account.

Now for some twitter principles and hints.

Firstly – The follow back prinicple. When someone follows you on twitter – it is courteous to follow them back – Even If you don’t find them interesting. #FollowYourFollowers. It’s a good idea to set up  a tool to do this.

Secondly – Following people will get you followers. Because of the above principle, 1/2 to 1/3 of the people you follow will follow you back. Thats why I follow more people than follow me.

Thirdly – To keep Principle 1 active – do a ‘flush’ once a month or so that lets you unfollow people who didn’t follow you back. Celebs etc wont follow you back, so keep them in a public list, which unfollow tools will not touch. This will also stop you from hitting twitters non-pulished limits. (A ration between Following:followers has to be maintained) If the amount of people you follow gets higher, then you will be halted. (This kicks in around following 2000 people)

Forthly – With you trying to follow so many people, you won’t be able to /follow/ 2000 people. This means that you should use lists. You can use lists to follow groups of people. I have one list of people I /follow/ and then the others.

Now, To the tools.

I have used 3 main tools to get this far. I will tell you about two of the better ones.

1) Twiends.com This is an AWESOME site. Not only will it let you follow people by interest, by country, or anyone in about 30 a time, it also works on a credit system. Each memeber starts off with about 100 credits. You can set the amount of credits you give people who follow you. (eg 2 -3). When you follow others, you get their credits, and people who follow you get your credits. If and when you reach 0 credits, the people that follow you get nothing, but you are still able to be followed and be followed. Of course, the offer a service in which you can buy credits – but I recommend just using the free side of the service for now.

2)Refollow.com – This is a bulk follow/unfollow tool – take a look. I use it for flushes (SELDOM) and following back people. There is a series of filters up the top that you can filter by. Remember, and the site will warn you, to be careful when using it.

So thats how I got to 2000 followers. It’s really easy, and its great for getting more hits and views to your sites and blogs.

Well thats about it – i’m @samjarman on twitter by the way.

Be safe, click away, have fun!

Sam

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Hi All,

As we move well into the second half of the year, my school work is getting the better of me. I’m afraid I’ll have to put hobbyist things on the back burner until then.

This means

-No more Apps/Updates (However, MMFree and MM2 updates are in review)

-No more blog posts (Unless something A-MA-Zing happens)

-Not much twittering or facebooking.

I will be keeping an eye on my sales, and suggestions.

Anything urgent, I can be contacted on sam (at) samjarman.co.nz

Cheers all, thanks for reading.

Sam

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Hi there,

I thought I’d do a summary/thoughts piece on the death grip that has been in the media recently.

So firstly, Lets some facts(ish).

• The problem exists on the iPhone 4 ( as well as others ) when holding it on the gap between the two antennae on the lower left corner of the device.
• A case reduces the effect of the ‘Death Grip’.

The iPhone 4 was first discovered as a phone left in a bar. It was found in a case disguising it as a 3GS. It was being field tested by Grey Powell, an ex antennae engineer.

Of course, with the field testing in cases, we can assume Apple didn’t get accurate data in the field, thus didn’t see this problem. (Due to the case)

Next, users officially of the iPhone, and started reporting the death grip. Needless to say there were emails to Jobs, responses ranging from ‘don’t hold it that way’ to ‘non-issue’.

The Apple put out an open letter, claiming it was a software problem (yeah right!). No one took this, yet just yesterday iOS 4.0.1 was released to ‘fix’ the issue.

And then today, Apple held a conference, where finally they admitted it. There is a problem, however, it does happen on other devices. They put out a huge page http://www.apple.com/antenna/ to explain their point of view. It also includes some pretty cool shots of their 100 mil + facility. Lots of spikes!

So, time for my two cents.

I’m pissed off that this issue got so big in the press. It isn’t that bad. It is just big because it is Apple, and everyone likes to put them down. I’m also pissed off that this is a hardware thing. It means that until the next iPhone, there probably wont be a recall or a fix, and it has put serious doubt in my mind as weather or not to get one as a consumer.

In better news, they’ve still manage to sell 3mill in less than 3 weeks, literally as fast as they can make them. And also announced today, the iPhone 4 will be out in NZ July 30th. I’m not lining up quite yet though. See more thoughts on my twitter.

Now, time to test Apple’s claims. Please test phones around you in comments, and i’ll keep a table

Phone / Affected by GD

iPhone 4 – YES

iPhone 3GS – YES

LG “Dumbphone” – YES

Untill then

Be safe, click away, have fun!

Sam

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