Base64.h

@interface Base64 : NSObject {
}

+ (void) initialize;
+ (NSString*) encode:(const uint8_t*) input length:(NSInteger) length;
+ (NSString*) encode:(NSData*) rawBytes;
+ (NSData*) decode:(const char*) string length:(NSInteger) inputLength;
+ (NSData*) decode:(NSString*) string;

@end

Sample Usage

[Base64 initialize];
NSData * data = [Base64 decode:@"SGVsbG8gV29ybGQ="];
NSString * actualString = [[NSString alloc] initWithData:data encoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding];
NSLog(@"%@",actualString);
[actualString release];

Download base64 encode / decode class

Class.h

+ (NSString *)getMD5FromString:(NSString *)source;

Class.m

+ (NSString *)getMD5FromString:(NSString *)source{
	const char *src = [source UTF8String];
	unsigned char result[CC_MD5_DIGEST_LENGTH];
	CC_MD5(src, strlen(src), result);
    NSString *ret = [[[NSString alloc] initWithFormat:@"%02X%02X%02X%02X%02X%02X%02X%02X%02X%02X%02X%02X%02X%02X%02X%02X",
					  result[0], result[1], result[2], result[3],
					  result[4], result[5], result[6], result[7],
					  result[8], result[9], result[10], result[11],
					  result[12], result[13], result[14], result[15]
					  ] autorelease];
    return [ret lowercaseString];
}

Class.h

+ (UIColor *) colorWithHexString: (NSString *) stringToConvert;

Class.m

+ (UIColor *) colorWithHexString: (NSString *) stringToConvert{
	NSString *cString = [[stringToConvert stringByTrimmingCharactersInSet:[NSCharacterSet whitespaceAndNewlineCharacterSet]] uppercaseString];
	// String should be 6 or 8 characters
	if ([cString length] < 6) return [UIColor blackColor];
	// strip 0X if it appears
	if ([cString hasPrefix:@"0X"]) cString = [cString substringFromIndex:2];
	if ([cString length] != 6) return [UIColor blackColor];
	// Separate into r, g, b substrings
	NSRange range;
	range.location = 0;
	range.length = 2;
	NSString *rString = [cString substringWithRange:range];
	range.location = 2;
	NSString *gString = [cString substringWithRange:range];
	range.location = 4;
	NSString *bString = [cString substringWithRange:range];
	// Scan values
	unsigned int r, g, b;
	[[NSScanner scannerWithString:rString] scanHexInt:&r];
	[[NSScanner scannerWithString:gString] scanHexInt:&g];
	[[NSScanner scannerWithString:bString] scanHexInt:&b];

	return [UIColor colorWithRed:((float) r / 255.0f)
						   green:((float) g / 255.0f)
							blue:((float) b / 255.0f)
						   alpha:1.0f];
}

The problem is due to my DNS, but is still funny as hell.

The toughest part in the plugin is to configure the Amazon S3 Setting, create a folder for caching and setup the wordpress cron file. Once these settings are done you don’t have to worry about anything else. The plugin will look for media files in your post and automatically schedule the files for amazon upload. Once the file is uploaded the media urls will be from the CDN. There are no changes done in your database and if you disable the plugin everything will go back to the old state.

Download WordPress Amazon S3 Plugin

WordPress Amazon S3 Plugin

More information on WordPress Amazon S3 Plugin

Apart from that I was busy past month updating iPhone app Naviflix. The new version is already submitted to the app store. Once it is approved I will share some the hurdles I crossed while development.

Some of my friends requested me to write a plugin which helps to move the media files in their blog to Amazon S3. I have written a simple plugin and once I get the space in wordpress subversion I will be posting more details about the same. I have uploaded my niece Afifa picture below.

If my plugin is working fine it should be serving the image from the S3 cdn.

After a series of discussions we understood that so many of us @flipmedia were hard core movie buffs. Watching movies in the cinema was on the top of our entertainment list. From the list of suggestions, movie app scored number one. We had brainstorming sessions on what next and how can we go about building this app?. We did some rough sketches and kind of finalized on the final working version and it’s features.

Our creative team began their magic on the wire-frames and gave application the best look and feel. Technical team got final designs in few days and started working on the app code. Before starting the actual work we had to make sure that we did not repeat the mistakes we encountered during the first app production. Thanks to our creative team as they made our life harder with a nice but difficult to implement design.

Our challenge was to give the same look and feel and at the same time make the application responsive. Our creative team started working on the application icon. You can see how the logo got evolved

After working on the app for 5 weeks we completed the first version of Naviflix 1.0 and submitted to app store. Thanks to Google, Apple SDK Documentation and some great forums, without those references we would have been lost. After submitting the app we could not just wait, and we started testing it with our friends. They reported few bugs. We worked on them as fast as we could submitted version 1.1 to app store.

Naviflix Demo

Would like to hear your comments and suggestions on how we can improve the app. You can purchase Naviflix on the app store for USD 1.99

I decided to restore my iPhone to previous 3.1.3 firmware and I kept getting this annoying error 1015. After searching almost a day I found this method which helped me to get back to 3.1.3 firmware. I hope this will help you all

Pre-requisites

• iTunes 9.1
• Original firmware 3.1.3 [ iPhone 2G, iPhone 3G, iPhone 3GS ]
• iRecovery v 1.3
• Libusb library

Step #1 Download and install the library “libusb”.

Step #2 Download and copy the application “iRecovery” to the desktop

Step #2 Open iTunes, click the ALT key + Restore and manually load the original 3.1.3 firmware.

Step #3 During the restore process, you’ll notice a pop up with error 1015, neglect it.

Step #4 Click Ok to close the pop-ups and close iTunes.

Step #5 Now open the terminal and type the following commands:

cd Desktop
. /iRecovery -s
setenv auto-boot true
saveenv
fsboot
exit

Step #6 Wait a few seconds and disconnect the iPhone from the cable, then reboot the phone by clicking Home + Power buttons simultaneously.

Step #7 Once you connect the phone via USB and proceed normally, the Apple logo appears on the display.

My sincere thanks to Chris Martin for translating this original article.

Timbaland – Apologize (feat. One Republic)

Hope you enjoyed watching both videos

Incrementing Build Numbers in Xcode

To that script I made few changes to suit my needs.

#!/bin/bash
# Auto Increment Version Script
buildPlist="Project-Info.plist"
CFBuildNumber=$(/usr/libexec/PlistBuddy -c "Print CFBuildNumber" $buildPlist)
CFBuildNumber=$(($CFBuildNumber + 1))
/usr/libexec/PlistBuddy -c "Set :CFBuildNumber $CFBuildNumber" $buildPlist
CFBuildDate=$(date)
/usr/libexec/PlistBuddy -c "Set :CFBuildDate $CFBuildDate" $buildPlist

Please make sure you have added two variables “CFBuildNumber” and “CFBuildDate” in Project-Info.plist

You can access the version information using the following code

NSString * version = [[[NSBundle mainBundle] infoDictionary] objectForKey:@"CFBundleVersion"];
NSString * buildNo = [[[NSBundle mainBundle] infoDictionary] objectForKey:@"CFBuildNumber"];
NSString * buildDate = [[[NSBundle mainBundle] infoDictionary] objectForKey:@"CFBuildDate"];
NSLog(@"Application Version: %@ Build No: %@ Build Date: %@",version,buildNo,buildDate);

Hope this helps