Nick Kuh - Freelance iPhone, iPad, iOS Developer, Trainer and Consultant - Brighton, UK

Portfolio Pro for iPad: Brandable Photo and Video Presentation App

Nick Kuh — Thu, 03 May 2012 23:00:48 +0000

My wife is a photographer and when she meets clients she lugs about a very large portfolio case holding a selection of suitable prints for each client. The case is heavy and cumbersome. Sure, the prints are ordered but it can be a pain for her to sift through her portfolio to find particular photographs during a meeting. The situation is a similar problem for thousands of photographers and designers. Far from ideal.

The iPad
The iPad is the perfect device for photographers to present their portfolio to clients. Swiping and zooming through photos on the iPad not only looks amazing on it’s HD display, it enables professional photographers to take their entire portfolio to client meetings in a lightweight device that fits inside an A4 envelope.

Apple’s Photos App
But Apple provide a great Photos App for the iPad already so why not just use that? Here are a couple of reasons.

What about when your private pics get mixed in with your professional ones?
What if you want to add a title and description to each of your photos?
What if you want to import your photos from Flickr or Dropbox and not have to rely solely on iTunes and iPhoto syncing?

iPhoto is a great app for viewing photos and videos of family and friends but when it comes to the professional photographer, you want a bespoke looking app that that looks like it belongs to you. Your Brand. Your Portfolio. Your App.

Introducing Portfolio Pro
Portfolio Pro for iPad, my latest project, is a brandable photo & video presentation app built for photographers, designers & creatives.

With batch import from Flickr, Dropbox and your iPad, Portfolio Pro gives professional users an extensive collection of ways to get their work onto the iPad. The app consists of 3 main sections: home screensaver for featured work, galleries and flippable fullscreen slideshow mode.

Portfolio Management
While Portfolio Pro imports your high res JPGs, PNGs, TIFs, GIFs, MOVs, MP4s and M4Vs you are free to simultaneously drag and drop to rearrange galleries, add names and descriptions to your work (also automatically imported from Flickr and Dropbox).

An Intuitive Experience
Having tried and tested pretty much every portfolio app for iPad in the App Store I can honestly say I think it’s rare to find a portfolio app that is both beautiful to present with and easy to use and configure. That’s exactly what I’ve set out to achieve with Portfolio Pro. Not only does Portfolio Pro look beautiful when presenting your work to clients, making changes to galleries and media is also super-simple and intuitive. Triple-tap any screen to switch between client and edit modes. Check out the video to see it in action.

I’ve set-up a dedicated website for Portfolio Pro here showcasing screengrabs of the app in action and many further details but if you’re already sold already here’s a direct link to Portfolio Pro on the App Store:

LoveThis iPhone App

Nick Kuh — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 14:41:27 +0000

LoveThis is a Startup founded and conceived by Alexis Dormandy who won the company 2 million dollars of Series A funding before they even launched their main product, an iPhone App for sharing recommendations with your friends. Pretty impressive!

The LoveThis iPhone App enables users to share product and venue recommendations with their friends. Even friends not using the app via Facebook and email.

I was contracted by LoveThis to build the majority of the iOS app and to consult on various aspects of the App Store marketplace, native Facebook integration, online/offline Core Data syncronisation and a whole lot more.

After a lot of hard work the LoveThis team finally launched version 1 of their iPhone App a couple of weeks ago and it already appears to be stacking up a lot of 5-star reviews.

The LoveThis app makes it very easily to quickly add and share recommendations and tightly integrates with Google Places API to automatically find relevant locations to your recommendation such as nearby restaurants and bars.

The app is nice and simple to use on the surface but behind the scenes it’s powered by a complex server application that connects multiple social network identities and activity and aggregates the data right into the app. So if a recommendation is shared on Facebook both Facebook comments, LoveThis user email comments and in-app comments are all brought together into a single activity stream within the iPhone App.

It’s early days for LoveThis but I think they have an exciting 2012 ahead and I wish the team the best of luck. I really enjoyed working with them all!

Birthday Reminder for Facebook iPhone App

Nick Kuh — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 17:16:01 +0000

Birthday Reminder for Facebook is a beautiful and useful iPhone App that will stop you from forgetting your friend and family birthdays ever again!

I built Birthday Reminder over a period of 5 development days as part of a new book that I’m currently writing for Apress/Friends of Ed publishers. The concept of the book is to teach new iOS programmers how to develop iPhone Apps by building an app from start to finish! It’s very hand-on and a great way to learn Objective C programming for iPhone.

The book (which you can pre-order here) is titled Foundation iPhone App Development: Build an iPhone App in 5 Days with iOS SDK and will be published in September 2012. It covers all kinds of iOS and Xcode features from Storyboarding to Core Data. At the moment it’s all iOS 5 but assuming WWDC announces iOS 6 this summer you can bet that the book will also cover new iOS 6 APIs.

Birthday Reminder works even when you’re offline and will fire local birthday reminder notifications based on your settings.

Import friends birthdays straight from Facebook or the iPhone’s native address book. It’s really fast and intuitive to use.

I’ve featured the app’s birthday cake user-interface and icon design in a number of presentations recently on How to Make Lickable Apps! I’m right in the middle of writing chapter 9 of my book which is all about iOS skinning techniques including the iOS 5 Appearance APIs which are a really awesome new addition to iOS SDK.

Macworld Express iPad App

Nick Kuh — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 17:51:36 +0000

Working for Grapple Mobile, I was contracted to develop Macworld Express iPad App for IDG. IDG provided the designs, Grapple project managed the development and I provided the iOS development expertise.

Macworld is the world’s best-selling Apple magazine and creating a native iPad app enabled their users to read, save and digest Apple news and reviews even when they’re offline.

Macworld Express allows users to customise their own app homescreen, selecting and prioritising between Macworld news, reviews, blogs and master classes.

Spot a Macworld article you want to read later? Tap and save your favourite tips, reviews and news. Perfect for train journeys even when 3G fails you!

Tap to Chat 2 for iPhone and iPad

Nick Kuh — Mon, 23 May 2011 14:26:44 +0000

After 3 very intense weeks of development and design Tap to Chat 2 has finally launched!

Chris Ross and I started the Tap to Chat adventure back in November last year. As two Indie iPhone Developers we decided to team-up and build an Instant Messenger app for Facebook users on iPhone and iPad. The original version launched just before Christmas 2010. Since then Tap to Chat has seen over half a million downloads!

On the back of our success with Tap to Chat, Chris and I have formed a new company – Osmosis Apps – the primary goal being to make software that focuses on great user experience.

Tap to Chat 2 has been written from scratch and includes a brand new, beautiful, pixel-perfect interface. Tap to Chat 2 is: super-simple to use and blisteringly fast to connect all your Facebook Chat and Google Talk friends. We’ve laboured over every detail and included accessibility support for visually impaired users and VoiceOver support. An all-round great user experience.

As part of our launch, I had a lot of fun creating a demo video of the software with a well-known love story theme. Take a look:

Tap to Chat 2 was approved by Apple on Friday night (20th May). In just a few days it has already climbed into the top 25 Social Networking apps in the UK, the US and many other countries.

For all the features and details about Tap to Chat 2 head over to our new company site – www.osmosisapps.com.
Here are a few screen-grabs of Tap to Chat 2 in action on iPhone and iPad:

A ‘Paperless Conference’ App for iPod Touch

Nick Kuh — Thu, 07 Apr 2011 11:55:44 +0000

Commissioned by West End Studios, I led the iOS Development of a feature-rich conference meeting application for Novartis Global. The app enabled delegates to view their personalised conference diary and network with other 450 delegates and speakers.

I built the messaging system for the iPod app using Apple’s Push Notification technology and a custom local/server cache syncing solution. Although initially the messaging feature was a low priority for the app, it ultimately rolled out into multiple features: Private Messaging, Help Desk Chat, and Ask the Presenter a Question.

450 iPods await collection!

Another great feature of the app were the maps. Google Maps wasn’t a viable option as we wanted delegates to be able to access the maps even when offline and not on site. I developed a PDF rendering solution for this which also enabled delegates to find locations of any event in their diary.

The app enabled Novartis to host a ‘paperless conference’. No print outs were distributed throughout the sessions, plenaries or exhibitions. Instead all events were accessible through the iPod app and delegates could access any event documents directly and ‘send to my email’. Both a cost saving in terms of printing and a green solution.

A substantial effort was made during the development to ensure that the app would run most features offline. With 400+ iPods simultaneously attempting to connect to the wi-fi you tend to run into problems delivering a reliable wireless network. Our app regularly synced with the server and then locally cached all data and images (using Apple’s CoreData framework). The guys at West End implemented a streaming media server to deliver conference movies directly to the iPods throughout the event. However, we had a fallback option whereby even the movies would get cached and run locally if requested by the CMS. This was ideal for help videos for example. The flip-side of data caching is of course the security implications. So we implemented a feature into the CMS that would trigger the iPod to instantly clear the local cache and log the user out of the device remotely.

I was at the conference and able to see the software in action. The feedback was incredibly positive. Even the less technically enthusiastic and more sceptical delegates were won over by the end of the three days.

Martin de Planta, head of Global Learning @ Novartis kindly added this recommendation to my LinkedIn profile:

Nick led the development of an innovative, cost effective and dynamic meeting app. A consummate professional he was able to take a concept and turn into a reality where significantly bigger, household names and highly regarded institutions were not! Do not under-estimate the capabilities of this man. World class was how our most senior executives described his work.

Extreme Facebook Chat on iPad

Nick Kuh — Sat, 18 Dec 2010 20:20:45 +0000

We’ve just launched a new app this week – Tap to Facebook Chat – all your open chat windows on one screen – extreme Facebook Chatting!

Check out the screen-grab below, Tap to Facebook Chat let’s you toggle between open chats all on the same screen, no other Facebook Chat app does this!

We’ve launched our app at just $0.99 so grab it while it’s cheap here.

Tap to Facebook Chat is a universal app so it’s also been built from the ground up to work great on iPhone and iPod too.

Tap to Facebook Chat includes multi-user login support – fast Facebook user switching on the same iPad or iPhone.

If you’ve spent time creating Facebook Friend Lists or new Facebook Groups you’ll find that Tap to Facebook Chat allows you to show just the groups of friends you want to chat to.

OS4 multitasking is also supported – you get a notification when a new chat message is received and clicking ‘Reply’ immediately drops you back in the app chatting to the user who sent the message.

In landscape mode on iPad Tap to Facebook Chat can easily display 3 open chat windows simultaneously even with the keyboard visible – just tap on whichever Friend you want to send your next message too

iOS App: Tap to Facebook Chat

Nick Kuh — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 12:36:35 +0000

Facebook Chat with your Friends all on one screen!

With multi-user login support, filter by friend list or group and instant message notification, Tap to Chat is the must have Chat app for iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad!

I developed Tap to Chat in collaboration with fellow iOS Develeper Chris Ross.

iOS App: ESPN Media Zone

Nick Kuh — Wed, 01 Dec 2010 12:20:15 +0000

ESPN commissioned me to develop a universal iOS App to keep users up-to-date with ESPN Press Releases, Twitter account updates and photos on iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad.

Features Include:

- Read ESPN’s most up-to-date Press Releases

- Email press releases directly from the ESPN MediaZone app.

iPad App: Buddies Facebook Browser

Nick Kuh — Tue, 16 Nov 2010 10:30:00 +0000

Browse, share and upload Facebook photos. Update you status, add comments and check out your friend’s walls.

Facebook Chat with your friends all on one screen!

With multi-user login support, filter by friend list or group and instant message notification, Buddies Chat is the must have Facebook Chat experience!

Featured by Apple in over 50 AppStores Worldwide, Buddies is a hugely popular native Facebook browser for iPad receiving some great reviews:

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TheNextWeb.com: ★★★★ “Buddies is pretty much what an official Facebook app would look like.”

MacStories.net: “An excellent companion to the regular website which offers neat photo uploading capabilities (something you can’t do on Mobile Safari) and multi-account support”

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