Get Feathers today and decorate your tweets!

I need your advice – those of you who have had apps featured by Apple – what should I do to really take advantage of this? Any and all ideas welcome!

Floating on cloud nine at the moment :)

Thank you all for your amazing outpour of support and your wonderful feedback on Feathers. You have no idea how much it means to me! And thank you to the wonderful peeps at Apple who chose to feature my app – it's lovely to have such great validation on your work and I'm so happy that you like Feathers :)

Twitter started rolling out access to its new xAuth beta to developers over the weekend. As you may know, I'm a big fan of xAuth for mobile and desktop applications and as such I began implementing xAuth in Feathers right away.

In the meanwhile, however, I found that the process was more convoluted than it needed to be, and, adapting an existing oAuth framework for xAuth brought along with it a lot of oAuth browser-based authentication bloat that you simply do not need to do xAuth.

So, I decided to bite the bullet and build a slimmed-down XAuth-only library called xAuthTwitterEngine based on the Twitter-oAuth-iPhone library by Ben Gottlieb et. al. (so many people have worked on this; check out the Acknowledgements, below, and the readme file in the source.)

Source and downloads

You can find the source code and download packages for the xAuthTwitterEngine library and demo in the XAuthTwitterEngine Github repository.

Note: The XAuthTwitterEngine is currently being updated rather frequently. Please make sure you check the repository and pull the latest version on a regular basis.

Usage: Overview

1. If you haven't done so already, register your app with Twitter and ask for xAuth to be activated on your account by opening a support ticket. Make sure that you include the App ID of your app in your support ticket. The App ID is the number at the end of the URL on your app's Twitter page (e.g., http://twitter.com/oauth_clients/details/your_app_id).
2. Open the XAuthTwitterEngineDemo XCode Project and add your Consumer Key and Consumer Secret into the constants at the top of XAuthTwitterEngineDemoViewController.h
3. Run the app to test it out and look at the source to see how XAuthTwitterEngine works. Everything should be self-explanatory.
4. Drag the Twitter+oAuth group under Libraries into your own project to add XAuthTwitterEngine to your project. Don't forget to add the libxml2.dylib framework to your project too.

The important bits of the code in the demo are highlighted, below.

Setting up an XAuthTwitterEngine instance

//
// Initialize the XAuthTwitterEngine.
//
self.twitterEngine = [[XAuthTwitterEngine alloc] initXAuthWithDelegate:self];
self.twitterEngine.consumerKey = kOAuthConsumerKey;
self.twitterEngine.consumerSecret = kOAuthConsumerSecret;
 
if ([self.twitterEngine isAuthorized])
{ UIAlertViewQuick(@"Cached xAuth token found!", @"This app was previously authorized for a Twitter account so you can press the second button to send a tweet now.", @"OK"); self.sendTweetButton.enabled = YES;
}

Here, you instantiate the an XAuthTwitterEngine instance with the View Controller as its delegate (XAuthTwitterEngineDelegate). Note that the View Controller also implements methods from MGTwitterEngineDelegate.

Exchanging a username/password pair for an xAuth Access Token

This happens when the first button is tapped:

NSString *username = self.usernameTextField.text;
NSString *password = self.passwordTextField.text;
[self.twitterEngine exchangeAccessTokenForUsername:username password:password];

If an access token is successfully retrieved, the storeCachedTwitterXAuthAccessTokenString: forUsername: XAuthTwitterEngineDelegate method will get called with the tokenString and the username as arguments. In this method, save the tokenString to the keychain so you don't need to authenticate every time the app is run. (In the demo, it gets saved to NSUserDefaults to keep the demo simple – don't do this in real apps as it's not secure. Check out SFHFKeychainUtils if you want a simple way to store and retrive data from the keychain.)

Once you have the xAuth token, you should discard the user's username and password as they are no longer necessary.

If user authentication fails at this point, the twitterXAuthConnectionDidFailWithError: error: XAuthTwitterEngineDelegate method will get called instead.

Making a request

Once you have the xAuth access token, you can simply use the XAuthTwitterEngine like MGTwitterEngine (since it's basically Isaiah's oAuth-aware version of the MGTwitterEngine library.)

So, in the demo, here's how we send a tweet:

[self.twitterEngine sendUpdate:tweetText];

The requestSucceeded:connectionIdentifier: or requestFailed:error: MGTwitterEngineDelegate methods will get called as normally based on the outcome of the call.

Using cached tokens

Since you don't want to the user to have to authenticate every time, you should store the returned token string in the keychain and use that in future sessions. There are two ways you can use a cached token string: either by implementing the cachedTwitterXAuthAccessTokenStringForUsername: XAuthTwitterEngineDelegate method or by setting it directly on the XAuthTwitterEngine instance using the setAccessTokenFromTokenString: method.

The delegate method gets called automatically if you try to make a Twitter request using XAuthTwitterEngine without setting an access token first, so implementing the delegate method is a good way of passively ensuring that the engine will always use the cached token, if there is one.

For Twitter apps with multiple accounts (or if when the user wants to change the account in apps with a single account), you will want to update the access token manually within the session. For this, use the setAccessTokenFromTokenString: accessor method mentioned above.

Go forth and xAuth!

Now that Twitter has begun to support the xAuth flavor of oAuth for mobile and desktop apps, there is absolutely no reason for you not to implement it in your apps. Implementing xAuth means that your apps can take advantage of the organic marketing provided by the source parameter (the "via My App" bit at the bottom of tweets) and it means that users can revoke access to your application if they want to (for example, if your phone is stolen.)

xAuth won't stop malicious mobile/desktop apps from phishing user's details and neither is your application's identity any safer (since the consumer secret and consumer key are embedded in your app, ripe for reverse engineering) but these issues were not be addressed by browser-based oAuth either – not for mobile and desktop apps in any case.

I applaud Twitter once again for their pragmatism in creating xAuth. The next update of Feathers, which I hope to submit to Apple this week, will have xAuth implemented so you should start to see "via Feathers for iPhone" tweets start popping up on your timelines (in fact, if you follow me, you already have!)

I hope you enjoy XAuthTwitterEngine and that it saves you some time in getting up and running with xAuth.

Acknowledgements

Ben Gottlieb's effort was already based on a number of excellent components by Matt Gemmell, Jon Crosby, Chris Kimpton, and Isaiah Carew.

My xAuth version wouldn't have been possible this quickly without Steve Reynolds (author of the new Chirpie Twitter app for iPhone) who pointed me towards this xAuth implementation Norio Nomura.

For full credits, please see the readme file in the source.

• Shape Export to Objective-C - as3swf - GitHub
  With as3swf you can automatically generate Objective-C source code (Core Graphics, Quartz) from SWF Shapes, to reuse those shapes in your iPhone projects. The as3swf Core Graphics shape exporter generates ready-to-use Objective-C class files (UIView subclasses).
  (tags: as3 swf objective-c iphone shapes uiview workflow tools)

The new update has two new styles and new magic quotes substitutions for you to play with. It also brings with it the option to turn of auto-correction (including auto-capitalization and those annoying periods that get autoinserted when you enter two spaces following a character.) Auto-correction is on by default but you may want to turn it off if you do a lot of Unicode art.

Finally, Nicolas will be happy to know, that the Feathers icon no longer displays the shine so you can see it as he always intended it to be seen! ☺

Hopefully, the update will be approved by Apple and go live on the App Store within a few days.

A full list of changes in Update 1.1 follows.

What's coming in Feathers 1.1

• Added two new text styles: 1337 and S̸t̸r̸i̸k̸e̸
• Magic quotes: Added new substitutions. —> and -> become →, <3 becomes ❤
• Magic quotes: Added two slightly more complex substitutions. Try out :)) and :((
• Added an option in the Settings to turn off autocorrection. This is useful if you use Feathers to make Unicode art as it won’t auto-insert periods, prompt you for word substitutions or ask you to capitalize letters. Autocorrection is on by default.
• Magic quotes: Fixed <— not rendering as ← (<- was already working).
• Made the little birdie’s “Tap me to tweet!” thought bubble more prominent since some users reported missing it. You are also now warned before you tweet the default welcome message.
• Fixed: The confirmation screen after sending feedback still had the old name of the app on it.
• Fixed: The icon no longer includes the auto-gloss reflection.

It’s exactly 20 years since Adobe unleashed Photoshop 1.0, and we celebrate by asking creative experts about their lives with the all-conquering image behemoth… So to celebrate its 20th birthday we got in touch with some of the top names in our big creative address book and asked them about their relationship with Photoshop.

Read How Photoshop changed my life on Computer Arts.

If you haven't seen the short 1-minute screencast yet, what are you waiting for? Head over to feathersapp.com to watch it!

So what do people think of Feathers?

❤ from Inspired Magazine

Within days of release, the lovely folks at Inspired Magazine included Feathers in their post titled 10 Beautifully Designed iPhone [UI]tilities alongside such greats as Tweetie 2, Pastebot, and Convert.

Needless to say, I'm honored to have Feathers featured next to such greats.

Twitter ❤

I was floored by the initial response and the outpouring of love on Twitter. Here's a smattering of the initial tweets.

Love the humor and appeal to human emotion in @aral 's new app http://feathersapp.com/. Smart design.

– Aarron Walter, view original tweet

So impressed with @aral's new http://feathersapp.com that I'm making @Dabr work with it (Whaddaya mean that's no way to spend Friday night?)

– Terence Eden, view original tweet

Feathers iPhone App... best feature: "Play spy" http://feathersapp.com/ Genius app in a flooded Twitter app market.

– Zachary Johnson, view original tweet

@aral I can't believe you took something as serious as Twitter and did this.

Downloading now.

Awesome.

– Isaiah, view original tweet

MrDSaunders: #feathers is great little app with a good support forum. Check it out. Best 59p spend this year!

–Dave Saunders, view original tweet

❤ Feathers? Help me to spread the word!

Since I'm a one-person band, I can use all the help I can get to spread the word about Feathers. If you haven't already, here are a few things you can do that would really help out:

• Leave Feathers a lovely rating and review on the iTunes App Store
• Rate Feathers on oneforty.com
• Tell the world you use Feathers on iusethis.com

And, if you know any review sites, or magazines, etc., it would be lovely to see reviews of Feathers (I've submitted it to several and I'm waiting for responses from them.)

Finally, the introductory sale ends this Friday so please tell your friends.

Thank you all again for your wonderful outpouring of support and your wonderful feedback. I'm so happy to hear that so many of you are enjoying Feathers.

• Welcome to NSCampfire, an event directory of sorts — NSCampfire
  This is a site for Cocoa, iPhone, and iPod people and companies to list their events. If you are running a conference, seminar, or training event please register and add your event here.
  (tags: iphone ipod ipad events cocoa touch conference seminar training community)

It appears that boobs are the hottest new thing in social networking. At least if you take the Social Networking category on iTunes as a reference.

As of Monday morning, February 15th, there were six Boob Apps in the list of the top 25 apps by release date on the UK App Store: Awesome Top Doll, Awesome Top Friend, Attractive Sweet Mate, Attractive Sweet Queen (who comes up with these names?), Awesome Sizzling Girlfriend, and Awesome Sizzling Teen all by a publisher called Hotix Studios. The other non-social-networking-related app in the list was the refreshingly boob-free BathroomFan (plays a fan sound so people don't hear you poopin').

Why it gets on my tits

Why is this such a bad thing? Because it's spam. Plain and simple.

It means, for example, that my new iPhone app, Feathers – which actually belongs in the Social Networking category – is now third from last on the recently-released apps list and will soon fall off it. The Boob Apps are effectively spamming the list and stopping users from finding genuine newly-released social networking apps.

How to get this off our chests

Apple has to do something about this if it doesn't want every category in the App Store to become the Boob Category. Or, if Apple won't enforce any controls on categories, why not scrap them altogether? They are almost meaningless as it is at the moment.

The solution to the boob spam issue is simple: create a separate category for adult apps and reject apps that blatantly place themselves in the wrong category in an effort to spam the category system.

• App Store devsugar: Browser-based previews and URL tricks
  Everything you always wanted to know about making iTunes App Store links (including linking directly to the reviews page of your app.)
  (tags: itunes app store links review page direct link)