iPhone Development

December 1, 2010December 1, 2010

KOA iPhone App is finished

I’ve completed the KOA iPhone app. I will be finishing testing and submit to the App Store by the end of the week.

Now I am going to create a matching website that will provide the same functionality for those poor souls that do not own an iPhone. From my experience, about 90% of all KOA campers have computers. We currently hand out a local attraction pamphlet which lists local restaurants, stores, and services. But the space on the pamphlet is limited. Providing a website/iPhone app allows providing dynamic searching and sorting, allowing a larger list to be provided.

One really cool thing about the iPhone for this sort of application is the built-in location services (GPS). Not only can I provide a list of items sorted alphabetically or by location, but I can sort the list dynamically based on the users current location, not just the distance from the KOA.

November 6, 2010December 1, 2010

Leander KOA iPhone App in the works

Having completed and submitted the Celestino iPhone App last week, I’ve embarked on a new iPhone app. This app will provide information about the Leander KOA where I live and work part-time. It will utilize the GPS capability of the iPhone to display maps to get to the campground, local restaurants, shops, and attractions.

October 18, 2010December 1, 2010

Celestino iPhone Application

Celestino Couture iPhone Application

I’ve just completed porting the Celestino website to an iPhone application.

I had been looking for an idea for an application to refresh my iPhone skills, and this fit the bill nicely.

This application is essentially the Celestino website deployed as an actual iPhone application. It is not just a web viewer or shortcut to the site.

It is available on the Apple iTunes App Store.

October 18, 2010January 31, 2016

Celestino Couture Website

I just finished completely revising the Celestino Couture website. During the update, I converted everything to Flash. This has allowed doing a lot of subtle transitions, and will enable more as the site evolves.

Check it out.

October 31, 2009January 31, 2016

I’m going to use this time between jobs to learn how to program the iPhone. Since I’m already familiar with Cocoa development, I believe it is going to be fairly easy.

On Tuesday I picked up a copy of the “iPhone Application Development for Dummies” book by Neal Goldstein. I’m already on chapter 11. This book is great, especially for someone like me that already has some Cocoa experience. The coding information is minimal which would probably bother me if I wasn’t already familiar with Cocoa. But it is perfect in my case. It gets me right to what I need to know.

There are a couple example applications which are real applications that the author has submitted to the App Store. I’m going to customize the first for use on my own iPhone by including my picture in it, and making some other cosmetic changes.

The iPhone development environment is amazing. This reminds me of how things were when Microsoft first released Visual Basic. A big difference is that although simple applications can be very easily and quickly created and deployed (like VB) there is a professional strength language beneath it (Objective-C vs. Basic) which will allow full blown application development.

I am really loving this! Thank you God for giving me the time off to go learn this.

October 22, 2009January 31, 2016

Improving my Skills for a new line of work

In trying to discern where God is sending me, I’ve had the feeling that there are 2 strong possibilities:

Utilize my web programming skills in order to extend our band site.
Brush up my Cocoa skills and get involved in iPhone development.

I’ve been playing with our church’s band website for several years, and it occurs to me that this might be something that I could extend to allow other churches or music related organizations to use. I think that some of the key features are the ability to create lead sheets, reuse them in lineups, and transpose them. The ability to strip out the chords for use by singers is also very useful. I had originally implemented this as a WordPress plugin, but then converted it to a Zend Framework based custom application, eventually adding Dojo support. I’m thinking about moving it back into WordPress.

iPhone development has always appeared very appealing also. I’ve recently started refreshing my Mac Cocoa programming skills, and these are exactly the same skills needed for iPhone development. Earlier this week I had joined the iPhone development program. I have some ideas about a simple application to use with my drumming. My primary motivation for doing this though is to work on an iPhone application which would access the band site to display the current week’s lineup and allow playing the MP3s.

I plan on using my C# skills to create similar applications for the PC in addition to a Mac Cocoa application which would use the same web service for listing the current week’s lineup using a PC or a Mac.

October 18, 2009January 31, 2016

Cocoa Programming

I’m starting back on my Cocoa programming. I plan on writing iPhone applications and maybe some Logic plugins. To get started though I’m going to go back through the Aaron Hillegass book before diving into the iPhone SDK. It’s been awhile since I read this before, so I’m going to need the refresher. So starting today at chapter 1.