InfoXenter-Thomas

BindoGPS - Now available in the App Store

Fri, 17 Jul 2009 16:40:46 +0000

Just got the good news from Apple that BindoGPS is now available for download. Get it here while it's still hot:

BindoGPS is a GPS group tracker for the iPhone. It shows your location and the location of your friends that also use BindoGPS in real time.

You can find more information and screenshot over at the BindoGPS website.

Review: Beginning iPhone 3 Development - Exploring the iPhone SDK

Fri, 17 Jul 2009 05:00:37 +0000

If you got

a Mac running Leopard,
an iPhone (or iPod Touch)
interest in programming
lots of spare time (or insomnia)

you most likely want to write an App for the iPhone and quit your daytime job. But where to start learning?

Today I look at at book that helped me a great deal understanding how to write programs for the iPhone, the book is called "Beginning iPhone Development: Exploring the iPhone SDK, by Dave Mark and Jeff LaMarche. They just released a new edition which was adapted to cover the changed in iPhone OS 3. So the new title is "Beginning iPhone 3 Development: Exploring the iPhone SDK"

Who is this book for?

The authors write that they assume that you know Objective C 2.0 to a certain extend. So if you don't know Objective C try to learn this first.

How is the book structured?

The book introduces the different parts of the SDK in a logical way, and by reading the book you get easiy familiar with them.

The different elements of the iPhone UI are introduced step by step with a small Application that shows how to use this UI element and how to connect it to the code etc. Also it seems that each line of code that is written in the book is explained, so you'll know why it's there and what it does.

The good thing about these small applications in the book, they can easily be adapted to your own application.

What's covered in the book?

The book covers the elements of the SDK that you most likely want to use in your first few Apps. More advanced features like Open GL ES are mentioned but only the basic concept is shown.

Also for most UI elements it does not explain all the functions the iPhone SDK is offering. The book shows you what you must know. But once you understand this it is quite easy to figure out the rest by yourself, just looking the iPhone SDK documentaion that is provided by Apple.

The book now also includes a chapter about Core Data, which has been added in iPhone OS 3.0.

What's missing?

Most functions of the SDK that were intrcduced in iPhone OS3.0 are missing, I missed a chapter about MapKit most. MapKit is actually quite easy to use and I think many programmers would like to include Maps in their Apps.

How much and where can I get it?

Here the data from their webite

Publisher: Apress
ISBN10: 1-4302-2459-2
ISBN13: 978-1-4302-2459-4
584 pp.
Published Jul 2009
Price: $39.99
eBook Price: $27.99

You can buy the eBook here: http://www.apress.com

FYI: The eBook comes as a password protected PDF

The website already mentions 2 more books by the same author which cover the new functions of the iPhone SDK, but they are not available yet. But if they follow the same principle as this book I bet they will be worth buying.

Bindo-The GPS Group Tracker iPhone App submitted for Review

Wed, 24 Jun 2009 03:54:02 +0000

Today we finally submitted Bindo the GPS group tracker iPhone App to Apple for review. Check out the BindoGPS website for most updated informations: http://www.bindogps.com

What is Bindo?

Bindo is a GPS tracker that tracks your own location and transmits this to your friends who also run Bindo on their iPhone. So you can see where your friends are at this moment and also your friends can see where you are.

Of course only those friends who you authenticate can see your location.

Features:

Several different Map Styles, depending on your need.
- Hiking/Biking Map with contour lines
- Street Maps
- Map data is cached, so if you go to the same place again, no need to download the maps again from the internet. You can also use this to download the map data via WiFi (e.g. at home or your hotel). Just pan over the area where you plan to go. Once you are out you can use these maps even without any internet connection.
Waypoints
- You can add picture to your waypoint
- Design the waypoint marker, to mark a camp site, bus stop, car etc.
- Send the waypoint to your friends, who can import this incl. picture.
  Of course you don't need to quit Bindo for this.
Trips
- All your trips are recorded on the iPhone
- You can send an entire trip to your friends, who might use it as reference for their own journey.
- Colors and line strength of the trips can be indivodually adjusted.
Messages
- You can send instant messages to your friends without leaving the App.
Website
- On the corresponding Bindo website (soon to be launched) you can look at your trips, show them on Google Maps, export them to Google Earth (KML) or as GPX file.

Who needs Bindo?

Bindo can be used by many persons

Hikers, Bikers can track their locations to make sure nobody gets lots
Families who want to share their locations
Companies who need to track the locations or their drivers, repair-crew etc.

Screenshots

App Store Database now supports US, German and French store

Mon, 16 Mar 2009 00:11:41 +0000

When you looked at our App Store Database recently you probably have noticed that we made some changes:

Support for US, German and French App Store.
When you click on the flag of the corresponding country the App descriptions and the Price from that particular App Store will be displayed. But please note that only some Apps have descriptions in several languages.
When you change the App Store the website won't reload completely only the descriptions will be updated.
Hover with the mouse on a short description to display the full description.
Usually we only display the first few lines of an App description. Now if you move your mouse over this short description, the full text will be loaded and displayed.
Faster way to show screenshots
If you click on "Load screenshot" the screenshot will be loaded and embedded into the website, also without re-loading the full webpage.

Coming up, support for more App stores, translation of some texts into several languages and some other small changes.

iPhone App database revised

Sat, 14 Mar 2009 04:46:56 +0000

We added some new features and redesigned our database for the iTunes App Store over the last few days:

Most noticeable is the chart that displays the price of an App since the App was released. You can easily see if the current price is really a bargain or not. You can also see the age of an App on the horizontal axis. For new Apps this chart won't be displayed.
Please note that these chart won't be displayed on the iPhone/iPod Touch, because the load time of the site would take too long.
You can now hide/show the search function.
The description of an App has now a similar layout as seen in the iTunes App Store.
You can now also access the App store database with this URL: http://apps.infoxenter.com.

Official Apple iTunes App Store RSS feeds

Mon, 09 Mar 2009 00:44:16 +0000

Many people look for RSS feeds to get the latest updates from the App Store. You can subscribe to my RSS feeds which inform you about new and price reduced Apps:
New Apps
http://feeds2.feedburner.com/infoxenter-newapps

Price Reduced Apps
http://feeds2.feedburner.com/infoxenter-reducedprice

Recently released Apps with a User Rating of 3 or more Stars
http://feeds2.feedburner.com/Infoxenter-goodapps
Please note that there are no brand new Apps in this RSS feed. Apps appear in this feed usually 1 day after they have been released.

But Apple also offers some official App Store feeds. You can go to this link and create you own RSS feed:
http://itunes.apple.com/rss/generator/

You need to choose the Media Type "Applications" and after that you have two choices for your feed:
Top Free Applications
Top Paid Applications

So there is no official RSS feeds to show all new Apps but you can get the Top 100 for each Genre, which is also not too bad.
Here some examples for official RSS feeds from the US Store:
Top 100 free Apps:
http://ax.itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStoreServices.woa/ws/RSS/topfreeapplications/sf=143441/limit=100/xml

Top 100 paid Apps:
http://ax.itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStoreServices.woa/ws/RSS/toppaidapplications/sf=143441/limit=100/xml

Fake eggs from China

Mon, 23 Feb 2009 04:53:56 +0000

A few days ago I read this article in The Standard, “Health alert after mainland fake eggs found” (Note: “Mainland” refers to China).
Fake eggs? I couldn't believe it, who wants to produce this. Let alone who wants to EAT this?

The reason these eggs are produced is of course money, The Standard writes fake eggs cost 1 to 5 Hong Kong Cent to produce compared to about 25 to 30 Cent for real eggs.

China is producing many fake goods and is copying designs, products etc. which is already bad enough. But producing fake food makes people sick and can even kill them.
Last year China had this big scandal about Melamine contaminated milk, a few years before fake milk powder for infants starved many babies to death. And there were many other similar incidents.

I really hope these fake eggs won't be available for long or cause a health alert like the last Melamine contaminated milk did.

Are there actually other countries who produce fake food? Please leave a comment if you know other incidents.

Howto: Play HD Videos on Apple-TV (MOV, MKV, AVI) Part 1

Thu, 05 Feb 2009 07:52:42 +0000

As you might know the AppleTV is very limited in HD playback. According to Apple it supports MPEG4 H.264 Low Complexity 1280x720 at 24fps. Anything beyond that won't play.

So if you took a HD Video with your own camera or you got a MKV, AVI file with HD content you need to convert this to 1280x720 at 24fps. I'll take a look a two scenarios:

The HD-Video is already edited etc. and just needs to be converted (or better transcoded) for the AppleTV
You are editing the file in iMovie and you need to export it after you have finished editing. (coming soon in Part 2)

Converting HD-Video for AppleTV

If you already have a completed Video file, you just need to convert it. The easiest tool for this is probably Handbrake. Handbrake is free and available for Mac, Windows and Ubuntu-Linux. For other Linux distributions there is only a command-line version of Handbrake available.

Open the file in Handbrake.
If you use Handbrake for the first time better choose the Menu item Presets/Update Built-In Presets once.
Choose the template AppleTV. If you can't see this, click on Toggle Presets.
This chooses the settings to create a Standard definition (SD) Video. It keeps the AC3 Audio if it exists and adds a second Audio Track with a stereo down-mixed Dolby Surround Pro II soundtrack.

Choose Video and click on Picture Settings.
At the top right corner click on Anamorphic and select None.
Change the Video size with the arrows to 1280 x 720. If the video has a different Aspect ratio than 16:9 increase the values until the width is 1280 or the height is 720.
Click Close to close the Video Window.
Click Start to start the encoding process. This will take a long time. On my iMac 2.4GHz it encodes an average of about 7fps. So for a 2 hour Movie this will take about 6-7 hours.
You can try to adjust the different Video/Audio settings of Handbrake but I found the default settings work quite well.
Unfortunately I had some Videos that made Handbrake crash. I am not sure why, maybe there was a glitch in the HD broadcast. Once I tried the same file again and it worked the second time.

Park'n Shop Price reductions

Thu, 01 Jan 2009 06:53:29 +0000

First I want to wish a Happy New Year to all my readers!

To celebrate the New Year we launched a new website which tracks the price changes for the Park'n Shop Online store. This is certainly only of interest for people living here in Hong Kong, but it will help you with your daily shopping.

Check it our here http://pc.infoxenter.com and spread the word.

This will definitely help you to save some Hong Kong Dollars in this difficult economic times.

Twitter in the Firefox Sidebar

Sun, 14 Dec 2008 06:17:06 +0000

About 2 month ago I just ignored Twitter, everybody talked about it, but I couldn't see how that would help my Blog, my Business or myself.

But some time ago somebody mentioned that he would like to get the App Store Updates in Twitter, rather than reading the website or using an RSS feed. So I checked the Twitter API and added a few lines of code to my software. So now immediately when a new App or a price reduced App is found the software will create a Tweet with a link.

I didn't expect much from this and I didn't even mention this in my Blog. But to my surprise quite a few people became my "Followers" with-in the first day. And I also got some referals from a Twitter search. I still didn'ty pay much attention to Twitter but the number of my Followers kept growing constantly.

Well I told my wife about this new Twitter feature and it seems she became more excited about Twitter than me. She told me about this great new web-sites she found using Twitter. Finally we watched this interview between Robert Scoble and Guy Kawasaki which changed my view of Twitter. Finally! Guy says "Twitter is a weapon" and some other interesting things. If you have about 20 Minutes time, it's really worth watching.

Firefox Plugin for Twitter

So now I like Twitter but I don't like following the Twitter updates on the Twitter website. So I looked for a plugin for Firefox that shows the updates in the Firefox Sidebar.

I found these 2 Plugins which I quite liked:

Both were quite good but not exactly what I wanted.

Website in the Firefox Sidebar

During my search I came along a solution that shows how to view any website in the Firefox Sidebar. Of course most websites are too big to fit in there, but websites which are optimized for the iPhone or other Mobile webbrowsers work usually quite well.

Somehow I liked the TwitterGadget website best for my Twitter needs. It automatically updates the Tweets every 3 Minutes and it looks very clean and tidy. So how can you get this Web-site into your Firefox sidebar?

Go to the website of TwitterGadget http://www.twittergadget.com/gadget.asp
Add this website to your Firefox bookmarks.
From the Firefox Menu choose Bookmarks/Organize Bookmarks.
Click on the Bookmark you just added.
Click on "More" and tick the option "Load this website in the Firefox sidebar"
You can now close the Bookmark Window.
When you now choose this Bookmark it will be opened in the sidebar.

You can follow me on Twitter here:

http://twitter.com/thomashk