In no particular order, here’s what you can expect from v1.5:

Carbs

You can record carbs (in grams) alongside glucose readings and insulin doses. These appear in history list views but as yet don’t appear in the graphs.

Time of day

Diabetes Diary always allowed for free-text notes to be added to any reading but you can now specify a ‘time of day’ too. I originally described this as the meal associated with the reading but realised it could just as easily be a repeated action or event, such as exercise. As with insulin types there is a default list but you can edit this and add your own as you see fit. Each time of day has an associated start and end time which is used to auto-fill this information when you add a new reading. You can turn this off in the settings if you wish.

Back-up, restore and email

Up until now the only way to back-up your data was to use iTunes (your app settings and documents are backed up when you sync your iPhone / iPod touch) or download a CSV file of your history. In v1.5 the back-up server allows you to download and restore the Diabetes Diary database. The format of the HTML and CSV files is also much improved. Along with this you can now email your history from within Diabetes Diary and there is a setting for a default recipient to save you a few taps. You can email your entire history from the Manage screen or any previous month or the last seven days from their respective summary screens.

Everything else

• Option to display history in reverse-chronological order
• Default injection site selection
• Improved history list view which now include carbs
• Month list is now a nice table
• Send feedback email from within the app
• Fixed daylight-saving bugs
• Fixed CSV file date formatting bug to improve spreadsheet importing

Keep the comments and suggestions coming and I’ll see what I can include in future releases.

More details available at squared.fridayforward.com

My first iPhone game is now available from the App Store! Its called Squared and is basically an iPhone version of the classic pencil-and-paper game ‘Squares’ (or ‘Dots’). There are four different grid sizes and you can play against the computer and see how many squares you can get on each or play against a friend. You can also play over peer-to-peer using Bluetooth – perfect for the back of a boring lecture which is where I used to play Squares

There is also a lite version which is free but doesn’t include peer-to-peer play and is ad-supported. Its free! Give it a try

Squared is built using Cocos2D for iPhone framework which I thoroughly recommend for anyone looking at writing iPhone games.

This update features integrated app settings (many users asked me how to change glucose readings to mg/dL) and fully editable insulin types.

You can now add your own custom insulin types and set their associated colour which is displayed in lists and graphs. The first type in the list is selected by default so you’ll want to make this the type you use most frequently. A default list of popular types is included which can be reverted back to at any time.

You can also choose to see low and high glucose readings highlighted. The low and high thresholds are set to 4.0 mmol/L (72 mg/dL) and 10.0 mmol/L (180 mg/dL) respectively.

Only a minor update, but I hope v1.4, which should be available next week, will make up for that.

The average 24-hours graph is available from the History Summary screen and displays a statistical average for each hour based on glucose readings and insulin doses in that period. A line graph is displayed for glucose (interpolated between where values exist) and a bar graph for insulin. A snapshot can be saved to your photo album.

Following some feedback I decided to add keypad support to the Add screen so that glucose readings and insulin doses can be added without using the sliders. Tap on the value, it will turn blue to indicate selection and the keypad will slide into view. Values for each digit must be entered so to enter 15.0 units of insulin you need to key in 1 – 5 – 0 when decimal units are enabled in the settings. Once you’re done with the keypad tap the Done key.

Finally I have improved the app’s performance – the List view especially is now much smoother. There are also the obligatory bug fixes.

The new feature comes in the form of a view of injection site distribution. This displays where on the body injections have been administered and can be based on the number of injections or the amount of insulin each site has received. The injection site view is available from the history summary screen for past months and the last seven days.

In addition, version 1.1 adds some more insulin types, increases the range of the glucose reading input selector and includes some bug fixes.

I’m almost done with the next update which I will submitting to Apple within the next week or so. This will bring some much needed performance improvements and some more new features including keypad input of glucose readings and insulin doses, but more on that nearer the time

Over the last couple of months I’ve been learning Objective-C and developing my first (and certainly not my last) iPhone app: Diabetes Diary. At the end of last 2008 I started developing an iPhone-optimised Ruby-on-Rails web app for monitoring my diabetes. I soon realised that while it was a nice way of recording glucose readings, the web-based experience wasn’t ideal and obviously required an internet connection. So I decided to learn Objective-C, build a native application and sign up as an iPhone developer.

I’m proud to say that Diabetes Diary is now available in the iTunes App Store and more information is available at mydiabetesdiary.net.

So what does it do? Diabetes Diary records your blood glucose readings (mmol/L and mg/dL are supported) and insulin doses. You can then look back at your activity and see statistical averages for glucose and insulin for each month and the last seven days and see graphs for these periods. To do more analysis on your history you can download a CSV file to your Mac or PC over a local wifi connection.

Its a simple application and I’ll be waiting on feedback to see how I should develop it further. I certainly don’t expect to make any money from it, although recovering my iPhone dev fees would be nice

The pop-up player presents a webcam feed of the studio so you can see Chris and the team as well as hear them alongside which we display images, now playing track information and incoming SMS messages. In addition to this you will also see barcharts and swingometers representing a public vote or poll.

I joined the project to develop the front-end which is an AS3 flash application built in Flex Builder 3. The components are made up of individual SWFs loaded as necessary and the client is driven through messages sent over the same infrastructure which powers the live text widgets on network pages and the Radio 1 tag cloud.

Early comments on the Radio Labs post and elsewhere have been really encouraging.