The latest updates to my two diabetes iPhone (and iPod touch!) apps Diabetes Diary and Insulin Calculator are now available in the App Store. These updates bring a unified look which makes the most of the retina display. Here’s a list of the new features (and bug fixes) available in each:

Diabetes Diary

• New view of metrics for glucose readings, insulin doses and carbs by Time of Day
• Added light-coloured graph background option
• Added highlighting for weekends in list views
• Added insulin type icon to Add/Edit screen
• Fixed bug affecting Today when re-opening application from background
• Dates are more predictable when moving between timezones
• Increased insulin dosage cap

Insulin Calculator

• Support for iOS 4
• Updated icon
• Ability to clear values

After a few small updates I have released version 1.6 of Diabetes Diary which includes the ability to view your history in a grouped list. You can selected to group events by date or time of day (e.g. the same meal or activity).

Tapping on a group in the list will display another list with each glucose reading, carb entry and insulin dose on separate lines so that you can select each individually to get more details and edit them. Deleting a group will delete all the entries at once or you can delete individual entries in the group page.

You can also now see the time range for each time of day in the list. And don’t forget, you can edit this list and add your own by tapping the Edit button at the top.

This release also includes a new icon which should look better with a background image on your home screen. Now that I’ve got an iPhone 4 I can work on updating it to take advantage of the Retina Display

A new version of Squared for iPhone and iPod touch is now available to download from the App Store. Squared now incorporates the OpenFeint gaming network which means you can earn achievements and post your best score to the online leaderboards for all the world to see.

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.