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?

Ok, soon after I got over the contacts issue, I started noticing that the phone was actually getting “slow”. Although slow is not a word that I often associate with Apple products, this is what happened to my until then perfectly normal iPhone 3GS. When I say slow I experienced clumsy response while opening SMS, photos and even running some graphic intensive applications. Was something running in the background? With all the multithreading and all built into the OS, I wonder if there is a process that is constantly running in the background that is hindering the performance of my phone.

Well I’ve just updated my phone to iOS 4.0.2 today (yes, I was very late in getting this done being preoccupied with my iPad and all) and hopefully all goes well. Firstly I don’t see the phone stuttering much, and I say that with caution because I want to monitor it for the next couple of days at least. My contacts are still intact (phew!). While still waiting for the iPhone 4 for to be released in the wilderness of Malaysia, I hope my iPhone 3GS recovers soon.

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.

Firstly, why iAd and what the hell is it all about? Do you realize the thousands of free apps in the app store have some form of advertising or marketing in built in them? It could either be in the form of some of those ads from admob or the app could be an extension of a business like ebay. Take the example of the ads served by admob. What happens when you click on the app? You get kicked out of the app and land on the advertiser’s website. So what if you want to get back to your app exactly at the same point that you left? Pretty much impossible if you ask me.

What iAd does is to exactly address this issue. The ad is served in such a way that when the user clicks on the ad, he does not have to leave the app at all. The ad appears right in the application and there is no need to leave the app. So after viewing the ad, the user is able to get back to the exact same point where he clicked the ad. Pretty cool if you ask me. Now users will not have any second thoughts to click an ad if they liked what is was serving.

iAd is supposed to bridge the gap between emotion and interactivity. In Steve Job’s keynote address he mentions that while internet ads have interactivity, they lack emotion. And while TV ads have emotion, they lack interactivity. iAd will have both interaction and emotion which is very apparent from the example ads that he has shown in his keynote. Let’s face it – this is going to revolutionize the ad industry in a big big way. The ads will not be intrusive and will be served to the user only once every 3 minutes. That’s almost like the frequency of a television ad according to Jobs.

As a developer I’m certainly excited to try this out. I have already thought of quite a few free applications which I will be launching over the next few weeks. Instead of just relying on the marketing returns, I can certainly hope for some immediate revenue through iAd IF it is successful. I have not seen any live iAd being served on my current apps. Still waiting to see how it will look like in real life although I do have a good feel of it after seeing Steve Jobs’ keynote address.

If you are interested to view this video then I would encourage you to take a look at this youtube video. Its pretty straightforward and gives you an overall idea of this cool concept. Trust me, its 9:38 minutes well spent

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.

So if you are one of the aspiring entrepreneurs aspiring to take the plunge into the world of iPhone apps, let me tell you something – there are 2 ways of doing this. One is the traditional way – you get a mac, get an iphone, learn up objective C, learn up iPhone SDK and start writing apps and of course put it up for sale on the app store. Simple enough! The other way, the not so traditional way is to hire an iPhone apps developer. Certainly you will need to have a mac at the least since you will need to compile your apps and attach your “certificate” that Apple will issue to you when you register as an iPhone developer. But if you think that you even want to eliminate that investment there is a way to do this too! I will be revealing the techniques you can follow based on my interaction with my clients.

The traditional way!

Ok, this is how I started off. Luckily I did have the headstart of knowing objective C. But learning up the SDK is not really the most easiest thing that I have encountered. When I started off sometime in early 2008, there weren’t many blogs or books or tutorials except for some boring literature from Apple themselves. This is probably the reason why there were few developers around and the app store wasn’t really “booming” like it is now. But somehow I got through it thanks to some great blogs and books that I read.

Blogs/Websites that I recommend:

icodeblog
iPhone DEV SDK forum

Of course there are quite a number of other blogs written by developers including yours truly ! I’ve always had a passion for books and there are a few books which helped me quite a bit on the way too!

Books that I recommend:

Beginning iPhone Development 3
The iPhone Developers Cookbook

If you need some basics then you can start reading the three part series on how to become an iPhone developer.
How to become an iPhone app developer – Part one
How to become an iPhone app developer – Part two
How to become an iPhone app developer – Part three

These are all great resources to get you started on developing your apps. Of course more than developing apps what is important is getting your market research done. Look at what apps are doing well, why are they doing well etc. Next thing you need to figure out is whether you want to put in your app as a paid app or as a free app. There are pros and cons for both which I will be discussing in the upcoming continuation posts of this series. I hope that you will find the above resources to be helpful for your next app development.

I will be discussing the non traditional way of entering the iPhone App business in my next post. Lookout for it! If you would like to be notified about my future posts, do consider subscribing to my RSS feed.

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.

1. Copy the audio file to your project directory
2. Create a file called SoundEffects.h with the following code:

#import <UIKit/UIKit.h>
#import <AudioToolbox/AudioServices.h>

@interface SoundEffect : NSObject {
SystemSoundID soundID;
}
- (id) initWithContentsOfFile:(NSString *)path;
-(void)play;

@end

3. Create another file called SoundEffects.m and add the following code to it:

#import “SoundEffect.h”

@implementation SoundEffect

- (id) initWithContentsOfFile:(NSString *)path;
{
self = [super init];
if (self != nil) {
NSURL *filePath = [NSURL fileURLWithPath: path isDirectory:NO];

AudioServicesCreateSystemSoundID((CFURLRef)filePath, &soundID);
}
return self;
}

-(void)play {

AudioServicesPlaySystemSound(soundID);
}

@end

4. Add the following code in your main.m

-(void) awakeFromNib {

NSBundle *mainBundle = [NSBundle mainBundle];
soundEffect = [[SoundEffect alloc] initWithContentsOfFile:[mainBundle pathForResource:@"farSound" ofType:@"caf"]];
}

5. At the place where you want to play the sound file, add the following code:
[soundEffect play];

You will need to manually add the Audio Toolkit framework to your application bundle as well. This is a step that a lot of developers forget to do. If you do not do this, then your project will not compile. Wish Apple could make this much more straightforward rather than going through so many steps and invoking the Audio Toolkit framework. Anyway, hope this will be helpful for your development and as usual do let me know if you face any problems.

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.

This code’s inspiration was from Jeff Lemarche’s blog post.

NSString *model= [[UIDevice currentDevice] model];
NSString *iPhoneSimulator = @”iPhone Simulator”;

float k=0.7; //This can be any value
uint detected;

if ([model compare:iPhoneSimulator] == NSOrderedSame)
{
// iPhone simulator
detected = MODEL_IPHONE_SIMULATOR;
k=0.0; //This can be any value}

Don’t forget to declare MODEL_IPHONE_SIMULATOR as an enum!

Simple right? In the above code example the variable k takes the value 0.0 if it detects that the program is running on a simulator. The variable k takes the value 0.7 if it detects the program running on a device. Once you have this done, you can use a simple if-then-else statement to continue the rest of your program to respond accordingly. I have tried this out and works perfectly. Don’t take my word for it – you can try it out yourself too!

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.

Although the first version of MTB is pretty simple I have plans for enhancements which will be done over the next few weeks. MTB is currently on the app store as a free app and I have received very good response especially from fellow Malaysians. I hope that you will download MTB as well and hope to receive your feedback as well. So if you love gadgets, technology and tips and tricks I’m sure you will love this application and what better way to keep in touch with it than to download it on your favorite iPhone.

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:

My application had no nudity, no obscenity, no pornography and certainly no offensive materials. So I chose the lowest rating (which is of course the best rating in this case) and sent it to Apple. But I received an email from them about 10 days later which literally made me fall off my chair. Here is what the email said:

My iPhone application actually has a couple of tabs which connects to the internet. But these webpages are hardcoded in the app and cannot be changed by the user. There is no way of entering any other webpage as I did not provide a full fledged browser to enter the URL as well. It was a custom made browser with a couple of harmless webpages. I wonder how smart the people at the iPhone Developer team are to come to the conclusion that this application allows unrestricted access to the internet and hence should be rated 17+? Weird!

But then again, I’m just a small drop in the ocean for the immensely popular app store and I decided to not swim against the current. I updated my app on the “Mature/Suggestive Themes” column and chose the option “frequent/intense“. The next thing I know, my app is a 17+ app instead of a 4+ app. Well I guess I can’t do much other than to send the app for approval and sit tight! Alright Mr. Smarty Pants at the iPhone Developer Program, you got your way. Now let my app get into the app store!

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.

It definitely seems to be a growing tactic among iPhone developers (I have tried it myself) to make your app free for a limited time. It ensures that there is enough exposure considering the number of apps that are currently on the app store. It also helps to get reviews on the app as more eyes translate to more reviews as well. If you are lucky enough, it could also make it up to the top downloads list which could mean that it would definitely be a candidate for more sales in the future! Go ahead and try it yourself!

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.

One you have you domain and hosting setup, the next step would be to purchase vBulletin and download it from their website. Once you have downloaded vBulletin you will also have access to the online manual which outlines the steps required to install vBulletin on your website. Typically you will install vBulletin on a folder such as www.my-domain.com/forums.

Here are the basic steps:

Step 1:

Download the latest copy of vBulletin here.

Step 2:

Go to where you downloaded it, and UNZIP the file. Inside, you will find a file called config.php.new. (Located in upload/includes).

Step 3:

You will need to edit the following information:

$config['Database']['dbname']=’Insert Database Name Here’

$config['Database']['technicalemail']=’Insert Email address to send errors to’

$config['MasterServer']['servername'] =’Insert Host MySQL Server Here. Your webhost should have it.’

$config['MasterServer']['username'] =’Insert Username here for MySQL Database’

$config['MasterServer']['password'] =’Insert Password for MySQL Database.’

Prior to doing this step, you will need to create a MySQL database from the control panel of hostgator. The steps do do this can be found here. Note the database name and username that you have created which will be used to update the values above.

Step 4:

After you are done editing the values above, save the file and rename it to config.php

Step 5:

There will be a folder called “upload” which you will need to upload to your domain using an ftp program such as FileZilla.

Step 6:

Now comes the Install Script. Yay. Enter the full path of the URL like this: www.my-domain.com/forums/install/install.php

Step 7:

This is the first step of the installation and this is where you will need to enter your customer number.

Step 8:

Continue with the remaining screens and your installation should proceed well if you have created the MySQL database correctly as well as the username. Don’t forget to remove the install script once you finish the installation.

That’s pretty much all that you need to do to install vBulletin. Once you have your forum up and ready you might want to do some SEO to ensure that you get enough traffic. Some common techniques might be using adwords and twitter. Another good software that you might want to try is vbseo. A lot of forums have seen good results with vbseo and it should be a good investment for your forum as well.

Once you have completed all these steps, you will be on your way to creating your very own community or forum. Have fun like what I am doing with The iPhone Kopitiam. Good Luck!

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.

First of all you probably will need to choose between free hosting and paid hosting. There are quite a number of free forum hosting websites but you will not be able to use your own domain. Here are some of them:

Forumotion
Lefora
Website Toolbox
Zetaboards

Note that when you use free forum hosting like the above, you forum will have quite a number of ads and this could be annoying for your users. So I would advice you to go for paid hosting instead. Here are some of the top paid hosting forum software available:

Vbulletin – $180
PhpBB – Free (opensource)
Simple Machines – Free

You could actually evaluate which suits you the best. But after doing some research I found that vBulletin suited my needs as it was pretty easy to use and to setup as well. And the support also made a difference in making my decision. Of course it meant that I had to fork out $180 as initial investment but then which business doesn’t have an investment? So I went ahead and purchased vBulletin.

I found a great website which has a comprehensive review of all the top forum softwares available and even demos/screenshots. In fact I used this website to make my final decision. If you would like to check it out, head on to Forum Software Reviews.

Stay tuned for “How to start an online forum – Part two” where I will discuss hosting packages available and also how to install vBulletin for first time users.