Nick Kuh - Freelance iPhone and iPad Developer - Brighton, UK

Speaker at the next Brighton iPhone Creators Meetup

Nick Kuh — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 09:54:20 +0000

As per the title, I’m going to be speaking about iPad Development at the next Brighton iPhone Creators Meetup. Here are a few details about the event:

Presenting: iPad Development: New Challenges and Opportunities for iPhone Devs

When: Tuesday 21st @ 7pm

Where: The Skiff, 6 Gloucester Street, Brighton, BN1 4EW

I’ve been primarily asked to talk about iPad development so that’s going to be the main feature in my 20/30 min presentation. How iPad development creates new challenges (User Experience, Development for multiple iDevices etc) and opportunities for iPhone Devs (increased sales, AppStore rankings).

I’m also planning to share some of my experiences of developing for the AppStore such as tips on how to improve your app reviews and ratings and how to avoid some of the mistakes I’ve already made

That’s it for now… Gotta get on with my latest app idea

Portfolio To Go goes Mini!

Nick Kuh — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 10:28:53 +0000

Portfolio to Go Mini has just been approved for sale by Apple and is now availabile on iPhone and iPod from the App Store!.

Following the success of the iPad version and winning Apple’s prestigious App of the Week award, Portfolio To Go goes mini and arrives on your iPhone and iPod touch!

Portfolio to Go syncs your Flickr photosets to local, cached galleries on your iPhone or iPod Touch. Once all galleries and images are cached you can view your portfolio without an internet connection. Perfect for use with wi-fi: sync and go.

Portfolio To Go is elegant and intuitive, giving users instant access to all of their Flickr photosets. The unique interface design presents thumbnail images horizontally and vertically on a photo-wall capable of displaying thousands of images simultaneously that scroll at the touch of a finger.

Portfolio To Go supports all device rotations so can be flipped vertically for portraits and horizontally for landscapes.

Another unique selling point of this app is the ‘Send Portfolio to a Client’ feature. The Photographer picks and chooses which of his galleries to share and can then send an auto-generated email to clients and friends containing a free download link to ‘Portfolio To Go Player’ iPad/iPhone App. By clicking the emailed link clients launch the photographer’s portfolio on their own iPad/iPhone/iPod Touch.

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Screen Grabs

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Key Features

# Photo Wall:
View all your Flickr photo galleries at once – scroll each gallery horizontally to browse thumbs, scroll vertically to traverse through all synced galleries. Click on any thumbnail to jump into the main image view.

# Main image view displays gallery thumbnails to enable intuitive gallery navigation. Just click the main image to go full-screen.

# Flickr Authorization: access to all of your private, friends and family and public photos

# Multiple cached portfolios: add unlimited Flickr portfolios via your contacts or Flickr IDs to P2G and switch between them.

# Auto-cache photos: all photos get cached in the background while you browse (you can turn this feature off in settings)

# Send Portfolio to a Client: Pick and choose which galleries to include and then send your portfolio straight to clients and friends by email from the app. Clients will download the free Portfolio to Go Player app to their iPad/iPhone/iPod Touch and launch your portfolio from the emailed link.

# Share your photos and Flickr links via Facebook, Twitter or Email

# Save favourite Photos to your iPhone/iPod Photo Library

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Portfolio To Go Player

You can try out the Portfolio To Go Player experience for free (just like your clients and friends) by following 2 simple steps on your iPad, iPhone or iPod Touch:
1) Click and download this free iPad app: Portfolio To Go Player
2) Click and launch this link (it will open in the downloaded app): Nicole Carman’s Portfolio

Video Review of Portfolio To Go

Nick Kuh — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 02:36:46 +0000

Just came across this great video review of the latest version of my iPad photography app Portfolio To Go for Flickr. If you want to preview all the new features I’ve added in a recent app update this review from Adorama TV covers most of them

Download Portfolio To Go for Flickr

Portfolio to Go for Flickr

Nick Kuh — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 13:44:16 +0000

Portfolio to Go for Flickr has just been approved for sale by Apple and is now availabile for iPad on the App Store.

A recent winner of Apple’s ‘iPad App of the Week’ award, Portfolio To Go features an elegant and intuitive photo-wall giving users instant access to all of their Flickr photosets: scroll each gallery horizontally to browse thumbs, scroll vertically to traverse through all synced galleries.
The main purpose of Portfolio To Go is to enable photographers to present their portfolio offline to clients – perfect for use with iPad wi-fi: just sync and go. Photographers create and edit photosets on Flickr.com and Portfolio To Go acts as a presentation tool, keeping in sync with all your Flickr changes.

Portfolio To Go supports all iPad rotations so can be flipped vertically for portraits and horizontally for landscapes.

Another unique selling point of this app is the ‘Send Portfolio to a Client’ feature. The Photographer picks and chooses which of his galleries to share and can then send an auto-generated email to clients and friends containing a free download link to ‘Portfolio To Go Player’ iPad App. By clicking the emailed link clients launch the photographer’s portfolio on their own iPad(s).

Check out this great video review of Portfolio To Go on iPad. Mark Wallace from Adorama TV takes you through most of the key features of the app

Key Features

# Main image view displays gallery thumbnails to enable intuitive gallery navigation. Just click the main image to go full-screen.

# Flickr Authorization: access to all of your private, friends and family and public photos

# Multiple cached portfolios: add unlimited Flickr portfolios via your contacts or Flickr IDs to P2G and switch between them.

# Auto-cache photos: all photos get cached in the background while you browse (you can turn this feature off in settings)

# Share your photos and Flickr links via Facebook, Twitter or Email

# Save favourite Photos to your iPad Photo Library

Portfolio To Go goes Pro!

Nick Kuh — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 13:33:37 +0000

Portfolio to Go for Flickr has just been approved for sale by Apple and is now availabile for iPad on the App Store.

Following the success of Portfolio To Go Lite – a top 10 free iPad App for Photographers – this pro version adds many new features including:

Photo Wall:
View all your Flickr photo galleries at once – scroll each gallery horizontally to browse thumbs, scroll vertically to traverse through all synced galleries. Click on any thumbnail to jump into the main image view.
Main image view displays gallery thumbnails to enable improved gallery navigation. Just click the main image to go full-screen.
Pick and choose which galleries to display and which to hide
Share your photos and Flickr links in app via Facebook, Twitter or Email

Apple has chosen to feature Portfolio to Go for Flickr in the new and noteworthy section of the iPad Photography category – they did the same for the Lite version

Loop&Learn: iPhone App

Nick Kuh — Sun, 02 May 2010 20:04:19 +0000

After 5 months ‘ad hoc’ development and a short but anxious 6 day wait in the Apple submission queue we have finally launched our ‘Social Learning’ App for iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch: Loop&Learn.

Loop&Learn is more than just ‘my best ever iPhone App’, it is my best ever app… desktop, web, mobile or otherwise. It is both technically and content-wise the coolest software I’ve been lucky enough to develop.

Whether you want to learn Chinese or are an avid bird watcher, there’s a loop for that

Here’s my business partner, Neil Gerstenberg, presenting our app on YouTube:

As Neil describes in the video, Loop&Learn is a tool to help you learn ANYTHING! Right on your iPhone you can create multimedia ‘Learning Loops’ consisting of recorded audio phrases, images and text. On iPhone and iPad the audio recording works directly from the device microphone. On iPod Touch you’ll need a compatible microphone earphones for authoring but all of the study and learning loop playback is compatible without any extra hardware.

Create

We’ve designed the authoring process to be as intuitive as possible with features such as:

body text is auto split into loop phrases based on line/paragraph breaks – so you can easily import large learning texts into the app
auto-record in the phrase editing screen detects silences and enables you to split up your multiple audio phrases without continuously clicking a record button
the full current paragraph text is instantly displayed when recording each phrase
while editing body text the app enables users to play the existing audio phrase associated with the current text cursor position

New/Edit Loop Home Screen and Body Text Editor

Phrase Record and Edit

Learn

Likewise, in study mode here are just a few handy learning features offered by our app:

multi-gesture control: double tap to start/stop playback, swipe left and right for next/prev phrases, swipe down and up for next/prev looping groups
single or multi-select the loop blocks at the top of the screen to split your learning into looping bite-size chunks
2 learning modes: ‘Repeat with me’ and ‘Listen’n'Repeat’ – the latter plays the full loop group and then repeats silently giving you the chance to repeat aloud

Saving the best for last, my favourite feature of Loop&Learn is the new collaborative learning concept it introduces: ’social learning’.

Users of our app can share the learning loops they create via our ‘Loop Library’. All that’s required is an account with Twitter. Once a user shares one or more of their learning loops they retain ownership of the loop and can change and update it at any time via the same share and update process.

Think of the amazing possibilities that social learning offers. Language learning for example: User A is French and wants to learn English, User B is English and wants to learn French. If User A and User B create and share language loops in their native tongues then they both will benefit from the shared content!

In anticipation of launch, Neil, myself and friends have created some example loops that demonstrate how versatile the app is. Take a look at the Featured Loops page on loopandlearn.com. You’ll find learning loops for:

Just a few of our examples to kick off the app. As more people purchase Loop&Learn we expect the content to grow and it will always remain free to download user generated loops so the loop library should get bigger and better

Thanks to the power of Twitter when users share new learning loops Loop&Learn sends a tweet with a link to the newly created loop preview page on our site. Like this one for example: http://www.loopandlearn.com/9ddbb9

what’s really cool is that on the top right of that preview page is a download link which when clicked on by Loop&Learn users via Safari or most iPhone Twitter clients Loop&Learn will automatically:

launch on the iPhone
download and install the loop being previewed

The Website

www.loopandlearn.com stays up-to-date automatically with the latest learning loops uploaded by Loop&Learn users. We have also launched the site with a ‘Hot Loops’ / Featured Loops section.

Happy Looping!

W.A.Ellis Property: iPhone App

Nick Kuh — Sun, 02 May 2010 20:00:53 +0000

Built for Property specialist digital agency World Archipelago, I was supplied with the customized design and commissioned to build a reskinnable iPhone property app that can be added to WAI’s range of online solutions for their extensive range of Real Estate Agencies.

Here’s a live version for Estate Agency Halls:

The app includes the following features:

Auto-paginated property search
User-location finding for local property searches
Auto-saves recent search requests
Saved property list between sessions
Property location display on a map
In app email property to a friend
Property details image gallery
Cached thumbnails

With additional functionality such as previous/next property buttons directly from within each property page this app is a great solution to most estate agency requirements. A robust, optimised and elegant-looking iPhone property app.

Jesus Decides: iPhone App

Nick Kuh — Sun, 02 May 2010 12:32:06 +0000

Even small decisions can lead to big arguments, and we can’t bother the real JC with all our trivial questions but he does represent a great ambassador for peace, so in the interests of promoting more peace on Earth we thought, “Who better?!” This app is intended to bring a little light-hearted fun in to your daily decision making process, so you can all stop worrying about the little things, and get on with enjoying the gift of life

Add your own groups of people (e.g. ‘pub’, ‘work’, ‘home’)
Add your own custom tasks (e.g. ‘make dinner’, ‘wash the dog’)
The first item in a group/task list automatically becomes your ‘favourite’
Decisions can be made with a single click!
Include/Exclude people from a round without removing their name.

Introducing Loop&Learn: my best ever iPhone App!

Nick Kuh — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 04:35:16 +0000

Whether you want to learn Chinese or are an avid bird watcher, there’s a loop for that

Here’s my business partner, Neil Gerstenberg, presenting our app on YouTube:

Create

We’ve designed the authoring process to be as intuitive as possible with features such as:

body text is auto split into loop phrases based on line/paragraph breaks – so you can easily import large learning texts into the app
auto-record in the phrase editing screen detects silences and enables you to split up your multiple audio phrases without continuously clicking a record button
the full current paragraph text is instantly displayed when recording each phrase
while editing body text the app enables users to play the existing audio phrase associated with the current text cursor position

New/Edit Loop Home Screen and Body Text Editor

Phrase Record and Edit

Learn

Likewise, in study mode here are just a few handy learning features offered by our app:

multi-gesture control: double tap to start/stop playback, swipe left and right for next/prev phrases, swipe down and up for next/prev looping groups
single or multi-select the loop blocks at the top of the screen to split your learning into looping bite-size chunks
2 learning modes: ‘Repeat with me’ and ‘Listen’n'Repeat’ – the latter plays the full loop group and then repeats silently giving you the chance to repeat aloud

Saving the best for last, my favourite feature of Loop&Learn is the new collaborative learning concept it introduces: ’social learning’.

launch on the iPhone
download and install the loop being previewed

The Website

www.loopandlearn.com stays up-to-date automatically with the latest learning loops uploaded by Loop&Learn users. We have also launched the site with a ‘Hot Loops’ / Featured Loops section.

Happy Looping!

How to create square thumbnails using iPhone SDK / CG Quartz 2D

Nick Kuh — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 16:14:20 +0000

Today I wrote a useful Objective-C method which uses Quartz 2D from the iPhone SDK to dynamically generate square thumbnails from any portfolio or landscape UIImage. I failed to find helpful results on Google for the various CGContextClipToRect/CGContextTranslateCTM/CGContextScaleCTM Quartz functions so after a lot of trial and error I managed to get the results I was after with a fairly efficient script – shown below.

So, if for example you want to get a 32×32 pixel square thumbnail, you can pass 32 as the ‘length’ parameter in the function below. For portfolio images the code will take a full square from the original image from the centre using the full width of your original portfolio image. Likewise, for a landscape image the script will use all the height available, clipping the right and left sides.

I think the most import thing I learned when writing this script is that when you call UIGraphicsBeginImageContext(CGSize) make sure that the size you pass in is the size you want your final image to be. Otherwise you end up having to call UIGraphicsEndImageContext() and UIGraphicsBeginImageContext() multiple times with different CGSize instances which I’m sure isn’t an optimised way to achieve the same results.

- (UIImage *)thumbWithSideOfLength:(float)length {

NSString *subdir = @”my/images/directory”;
NSString *filename = @”myOriginalImage.png”;
NSString *fullPathToThumbImage = [subdir stringByAppendingPathComponent:[NSString stringWithFormat:@"%dx%d%@",(int) length, (int) length,filename];
NSString *fullPathToMainImage = [subdir stringByAppendingPathComponent:filename];

UIImage *thumbnail;

NSFileManager *fileManager = [NSFileManager defaultManager];

if ([fileManager fileExistsAtPath:fullPathToThumbImage] == YES) {
thumbnail = [UIImage imageWithContentsOfFile:fullPathToThumbImage];

}
else {
//couldn’t find a previously created thumb image so create one first…
UIImage *mainImage = [UIImage imageWithContentsOfFile:fullPathToMainImage];

UIImageView *mainImageView = [[UIImageView alloc] initWithImage:mainImage];

BOOL widthGreaterThanHeight = (mainImage.size.width > mainImage.size.height);
float sideFull = (widthGreaterThanHeight) ? mainImage.size.height : mainImage.size.width;

CGRect clippedRect = CGRectMake(0, 0, sideFull, sideFull);

//creating a square context the size of the final image which we will then
// manipulate and transform before drawing in the original image
UIGraphicsBeginImageContext(CGSizeMake(length, length));
CGContextRef currentContext = UIGraphicsGetCurrentContext();

CGContextClipToRect( currentContext, clippedRect);

CGFloat scaleFactor = length/sideFull;

if (widthGreaterThanHeight) {
//a landscape image – make context shift the original image to the left when drawn into the context
CGContextTranslateCTM(currentContext, -((mainImage.size.width – sideFull) / 2) * scaleFactor, 0);

}
else {
//a portfolio image – make context shift the original image upwards when drawn into the context
CGContextTranslateCTM(currentContext, 0, -((mainImage.size.height – sideFull) / 2) * scaleFactor);

}
//this will automatically scale any CGImage down/up to the required thumbnail side (length) when the CGImage gets drawn into the context on the next line of code
CGContextScaleCTM(currentContext, scaleFactor, scaleFactor);

[mainImageView.layer renderInContext:currentContext];

thumbnail = UIGraphicsGetImageFromCurrentImageContext();

UIGraphicsEndImageContext();
NSData *imageData = UIImagePNGRepresentation(thumbnail);

[imageData writeToFile:fullPathToThumbImage atomically:YES];

thumbnail = [UIImage imageWithContentsOfFile:fullPathToThumbImage];
}
return thumbnail;
}

So if, for example your original image looked like this:

Using the method above you could request a 100×100 pixel thumbnail which would result in this: