Nicely done Apple! After updating my iPhone 3GS to iOS 4.0.1 I started seeing quite a number of issues on my iPhone 3GS. Firstly I lost all my contacts – yes that’s right! That was so cruel I almost cried . But then I remembered that I had a backup of my numbers on my Macbook. OK, guess syncing my iPhone to the Macbook at least once a month is worth it after all. But the funny part was that I did not lose my contacts immediately after updating the OS. It was perfectly fine for a couple of days and then suddenly one day the contacts mysteriously disappeared right after a phone call. Weird! I wonder if anyone else has seen this kind of behavior before?

I’m sure by now everyone who has an iPhone 3G or 3GS will be on iOS4 (I hope the 2G and 3G folks don’t feel left behind). OS4 is really cool for users in many ways. Multitasking, home screen customization, camera zoom, new mail handling capabilities etc etc. So that’s for the users. What about developers? How is iOS4 going to help developers? As Steve Jobs had announced back in April, iAd is going to “revolutionize” the way that application developers will be making money from Apple. I will be first introducing my readers to what iAd is all about and then will follow up with a post on how to integrate iAd into your applications.

This is a question a lot of people have actually asked me. Apple has done a great job of marketing their app store and according to some recent reports, there are more than 80,000 apps in the app store. A lot of people have made it big by selling their apps on the app store and this has actually fuelled a lot of interest among those who don’t even own an iPhone. Not only individual developers but even big game developers have started to embrace the Apple app store. Not exactly surprising considering the fact that some have even suggested that the app store is going to be as huge as the internet. As exaggerated as it may sound, the app is HUGE and it is able to reach to millions of customers each day. The keyword here is – convenience. It’s just too easy for any customer to browse the app store, search for some keywords, look at a few apps and decide to download it for a buck! And when there is enough interest the volume of customers who are downloading apps is enough to make a developer rich.

Although its been a while since I figured out how to play an audio file in an iPhone app, it still is a pain in the ass every time I try to make it work on a new app. I still keep doing some trial and errors or refer to the numerous blogs out there helping out fellow iPhone app developers. So I decided to once and for all document the steps that I usually take to play a sound file. Typically the file extensions that are allowed are:

- .caf
- .m4a
- .wav
- .mp3

In my opinion I find the first 3 easier to work with rather than the popular .mp3 format. For some reason there are audio clips in .mp3 format which don’t seem to work. Luckily there are so many .mp3 to .wav converters around which you can use. Or the easiest way will be to use iTunes to convert to AAC format which will assign a .m4a extension for the audio clip. Anyway, here are the steps you need to follow to play an audio file in your iPhone app.

Its been a while since I wrote an actual programming tutorial for iPhone app developers. I’ve been busy developing a few applications for my clients and since I have completed one major project, I am writing this post to share one of my findings. The app is actually a birthday cake application – sort of like a virtual birthday cake. The user basically downloads the app to his iphone, enters his name (or the person to be wished), lights up the virtual candles and blows the candles out. Simple right? Simple yet fun concept. The tricky part was to design the algorithm for the blow detection into the mic. Once the algorithm was developed, the next part was testing it out. The testing on simulator and device is totally different for one obvious reason – you CANNOT blow into the simulator. So I needed to keep changing variable values while switching from simulator to device until I found out how silly the method actually was. There is an easier way to do this. Here’s how I did it.

Apple recently approved my all new iPhone Application – MTB. This application is an iPhone version of Malaysian Tech Blogger and is intended to reach out to a wider global audience to promote Malaysia. While the app is effectively an RSS reader which gets updated whenever there is a new blog post on Malaysian Tech Blogger it also has different tabs which supports my iPhone App development business and also promotes my iPhone forum – iPhone Kopitiam. I am basically using this application as a marketing tool for my blog, business and also my forum. It is incredible how Apple has opened up such a great platform for app developers to not only sell applications but to also use it as the marketing platform for the 21st century.

I had recently completed yet another app for the app store and happily submitted it on itunesconnect waiting for approval within a week. Well it took about 10 days for the iPhone Developer team to reply and they responded that the app was actually rejected due to incorrect rating. This was definitely quite unexpected for me since this was a fairly simple app and of all the reasons I didn’t expect it to be rejected due to an incorrect rating. So what is the rating of an app? When you submit an application on itunesconnect, Apple expects you to rate the application like below:

How many times have you come across promotions on the App Store when a paid app actually becomes free? Its kind of cool for the developer because he uses it as a marketing tool to get more downloads later on. But how do you actually know when the app becomes free on the app store? There is this cool website called Freeappalert which actually notifies you when a paid app becomes free. Its pretty cool and you can take a look at all the apps which just became free on the homepage of the website itself. You could also subscribe to its RSS feed so that you will be notified about any new apps that just became free as well.

This post is a continuation of How to start an online forum – Part One. In this part we will discuss some good hosting packages available and also how to install vBulletin. Finally we will also see what are some of the SEO techniques possible with vBulletin as well.

For hosting, I would recommend going with Hostgator. Although there are many hosting companies around I have been a fan of Hostgator simply because of the fact that they have an excellent technical support team. Most of my queries have been solved over their online chat link or via email quite fast. They have some good cheap shared hosting packages as low as $4.95 per month and I would advice you to go for the entry level package for a start. Head on to Hostgator and check out some of their packages available.

I’ve recently been busy working on an all new online forum for Malaysian iPhone developers – The iPhone Kopitiam. Although there are quite a lot of information available on the internet for iPhone programming, I started this forum for the following purposes:

- A virtual hangout joint for Malaysian iPhone developers

- Create a closely knit community

- One stop shop for resources

- Share any news related to iPhone in Malaysia

- Any hacks or mods that have been uncoveres

- And finally also share any potential job opportunities

Since this is my first experience in starting an online forum, it was quite a learning experience for me. I had to do quite a lot of research before setting up the online forum and also while setting it up. It wasn’t as straightforward as wordpress installation and I thought I could share how I did it with my readers.