Dock – for the cased iPhone and iPod!

I have decided that Apple is preventing me from purchasing more of their products by not allowing their iPhone and iPad docks to to work with their cases.

When I bought my iPad, I was extremely happy that I had the opportunity to also purchase their case. it’s a glorious, wonderful case that does everything I need, and more. My aim was to also purchase the iPad Keyboard Dock, which I did buy, but had to immediately take back and exchange for a bluetooth keyboard. The simple reason is that taking the iPad out of the case to put it into the dock was just too much of a bother. The iPad case is designed in such a way that you should never have to remove the iPad from it, and my thought was that I should be able to just drop my iPad into the dock and it would just work. Well, the snug fit of the iPad dock is great when you only have the iPad, but even putting the thin iPad case on the iPad is enough to make it too thick to fit the device.

While I wasn’t real happy with the situation, I understood and I moved on. That was 3 months ago. Now that I have my shiny new iPhone 4, and the ever awesome bumper case, I find myself upset that even though our 1st gen iPhone dock will fit the iPhone 4, (as reported by TUAW) I find that I do not want to remove the case just to put the device into a dock. I asked at the store if the dock that they had in stock would fit the iPhone 4 with a case on it and was told no, it was a snug fit to the device. I understand why, and the simple answer is that it keeps the connector pins from bending and breaking.

So now we come back to the question. If Apple took the time to create this awesome device, with a cool bumper case, then why did they not create a dock with a removable insert, something like those provided by iHome so that the iPods fit? Granted, those inserts are also made for the device itself, and in general cannot be used with a case, but making it work with an apple case (the only one sold) seems like it should be a given!

I love what Apple has done with their devices, but a little more thought to this minor detail for the next product would allow me to both have what I want, as well as fund the company that little bit more. In short, Apple should not prevent me from spending the money I want to spend on their products

Ease of use is key!

When writing an API for people outside of your company, ease of use is key! The simple fact of the matter is, if it’s not easy to use, then you will get the questions about how to use it, why it’s not easier and a whole host of other reasons for one of your users to ask questions. After playing with LiveStream and UStream tonight, I must say that neither have documented their iPhone support well, however LiveStream at least put a little effort forth by having a dedicated iphone.livestream.com address which you can use to stream h.264 encoded videos. Their sample feed is great, and showed me exactly what I needed to know to add this ability to my app quickly and easily.

UStream on the other hand has to wait for a developer to contact me about the availability of their app through the API. They have an iPhone app, which tells me that they have the technology, however they have not done the little bit of work that it would take to make all this come to life. I will be sad if they do not have the technology ready prior to the start of the season since one of my feed providers uses them.

All in all, I will be happy when the big players like these are finally h.264 compliant out of the box. LiveStream is, but the feed I am working with is not – though they’re working on it. I know it will take time for everyone to catch up, though more and more people are using mobile technologies like the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch. While these are only a subset of the current mobile technology world, there is enough market penetration at this point for us to warrant a real look into this issue, and change it for the better…

I definitely commend LiveStream, and hope UStream will follow suit soon!

iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad App Store Rank

With every new week, there is a new opportunity to be added to the App Store’s Featured lists. I don’t know about you, but I definitely want to know if my apps have been picked! We have previously discussed AppStoreRank, a Perl script which simply goes out, and gets the app store rank for your application for each country, based on a simple to set up hash at the top of the script.

Here’s a sample of two apps, Hurricane and Weather HD:


my @appName = (
{ appName =>"Hurricane",
appID => 291430598,
popId => ['Paid App','Gross App'],
genreId => 36,
featuredCategories => ["New and Noteworthy","Whats Hot","Staff Favorites"],
categoryName => ["Weather","Top Overall"] },
{ appName =>"Weather HD",
appID => 364193735,
popId => ['Paid iPad App','Gross iPad App'],
genreId => 36,
featuredCategories => ["Staff Favorites"],
categoryName => ["Weather","Top Overall"] },
);

As you can see above, we now have a featuredCategories hash key which is a plain english way of getting the single “Staff Favorites” from Weather HD, or multiple featuredCategories as you can see in Hurricane.

This simple syntax allows you to set which featuredCategories you would like to use. featuredCategories is not required, so if you would not like to see the results of searching the featured categories, you can remove the whole line.

The available options can be found at the bottom of the script, where we have taken them out of the way of the actual running of the code. This makes it a lot easier to debug on my part, and well, where they are placed really does not matter. You will most likely set this up once, and forget about it.

By default, this script will only get featured categories on Tuesdays, since this is the day that Apple changes the featured list around the world. You will want to make sure that you run the script in the morning of your time zone, so if there is a delay based on time zone, you can catch all countries you are featured in. In addition, a simple change in the code:

if($wday ==2) {

will enable you to change from Tuesday to Wednesday, or allow for multiple days. Removing the check all together will allow this part of the script to be run daily.

If you want to see this type of information in a graph on your Mac, I highly suggest you take a look at AppViz. This is an app that I use daily in addition to my script to ensure that I have the most up to date information about all of my apps!

Once again, my script is a modification of the original by Erica Sandun which was published back in 2008. Unlike some of the other modifications of her script, this one doesn’t require extra packages, and it just works. I keep this script up to date since I have it set on a cron to check the statistics during the middle of the night and email the report back to me… I like waking up to the fresh smell of statistics in the morning, don’t you?

Happy tracking!

Download: AppStoreRank.zip

Tags: app store, iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch, ranking, update

iPad App Store Rank

Now that the iPad is here, we as developers need a way to keep track of how they are doing in all of the various app stores. The Perl script we wrote before was great! Except now they’ve added new popIds to the mix which are specific to the new hardware. This means a code update, of course… So after seeing how Dylan over at AppViz found the new Ids, I went on a hunt to find the rest for my humble little Perl script. Once again, my script is a modification of the original by Erica Sandun which was published back in 2008, but it works really well for me and has for quite some time. Unlike some of the other modifications of her script, this one doesn’t require extra packages, and it just works. I personally keep this one up to date since I have it set on a cron to check the statistics during the middle of the night and email the report back to me… I like waking up to the fresh smell of statistics in the morning, don’t you?

This version has been refined to add a hash of popIds that I would like to choose from, allowing me to write my hash in plain english and translate it to the ID for the app. This version also adds in the new countries from the February 18, 2010 country update…

Happy tracking!

Download: AppStoreRank.zip

Tags: app store, AppStore, iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch, perl script, statistics

Storms and Breezes

This year for the Atlantic Ocean has not been quiet, unless you base your opinion on storms striking land in the continental US. As always, the Caribbean Islands have had a fair share of storms, but not as many as previous years. The oddities have been Hurricane Bill and Tropical Storm Grace both making their way to the UK. While the storm tracks did not follow them through to the coast, the extratropical storm remnants did make it, causing torrential rains and minimal damage to land.

In the Eastern Pacific, off of the West Coast of the US and Mexico, we have had a large number of storms. Right now, we are following Category 4 Hurricane Rick. Hurricane Rick is heading to the Baja Mexico peninsula, which has already seen the remnants of Tropical Storm Andres, Hurricane Jimena, Tropical Depression Olaf, and a quickly dissipating Tropical Storm Patricia.

The Central Pacific is an open area that you would think would not matter much, unless you are in shipping. While that could be partially true, residents and visitors to Hawaii would most certainly disagree with you. Storms like Hurricane Felicia, Hurricane Guillermo and Tropical Storm Hilda form in the eastern Pacific ocean, and travel a long way to become a threat to the Hawaiian islands.

While Hurricane does not presently track Typhoons in the Western Pacific, we have found another oddity of the season. The west coast is feeling the remnants of Typhoon Melor. How often does that happen? About as often as Hurricane remnants hit the UK!

Prior to creating our iPhone App Hurricane, I like most people in the US paid little attention to the tropical systems outside of the Atlantic Ocean. Growing up in South Florida made it necessary to watch those storms because we were directly affected. Last year, Hurricane Norbert opened my eyes to the simple fact that hurricanes do affect the west coast of North America. This year, thanks to Hurricane, I have kept better track of the affects of hurricanes on areas outside of my little sphere. As an application developer, my hope is that Hurricane can help travelers and residents stay better informed about storms that affect you.

Even as this year’s storm season seems to have come to an early close for most on the US eastern seaboard, we will continue to keep watch on the tropics around the world.

If you track hurricanes, and want to see a little of what Hurricane can do for you, I often post screen shots directly from Hurricane on twitter @weatherangel. Feel free to take a look and see what you have been missing! Keep in mind that my screen shots are not automated, I post them as time allows or I see fit.

App Store Adds New Countries

Previously I wrote about where to find cool scripts to handle getting the App Store Rank for each country. Back in April, Apple added a few more countries to the app store, did you know? The script attached below needs to be credited to the original author: Erica Sadun. The version I use is based off of Ben‘s script with my own modifications to it to handle multiple id’s a little cleaner, and really, just a tad of code clean up that made me feel better

The script itself is attached as a zip file here: AppStoreRank.zip. This version is still written in Perl, but it is extremely easy to add a new app to the script. At the top, just modify the following section:

@appName = ( { appName =>"Hurricane",
appID => 291430598,
categoryName => "Weather" },
{ appName => "Cat Calls",
appID => 308620543,
categoryName => "Entertainment"}
);

appName is just for display purposes
appID is your application ID from the iTunes store.
categoryName should match a category in the list below (this will pull the right category number).
As you can see in my list, the order of the parameters does not matter.

Added the following store codes to my script:
# stores added April 1, 2009
143508 => “Dominican Republic”,
143509 => ‘Ecuador’,
143516 => ‘Egypt’,
143518 => ‘Estonia’,
143510 => ‘Honduras’,
143511 => ‘Jamaica’,
143517 => ‘Kazakhstan’,
143519 => ‘Latvia’,
143520 => ‘Lithuania’,
143515 => ‘Macau’,
143521 => ‘Malta’,
143523 => ‘Moldova’,
143512 => ‘Nicaragua’,
143513 => ‘Paraguay’,
143514 => ‘Uruguay’

I am a little more retentive than most, and wanted my rankings to be listed in alphabetic order, so my version of the script does this automatically.

Also the way the script is written, it can be used as a stand alone script, or as part of a package.

If you have updated the script to add a check for Ratings, I would be very interested in seeing your changes!

Enjoy!

Tags: iPhone, perl AppStoreRank

iPhone App Hurricane Ranking

In my previous post, I mentioned an app that shows you your current ranking in the iTunes App Store.  This list is modified for order, but uses the script:

Hurricane Ranking in Category Weather:
Mexico: 1
United States: 8
Canada: 11
El Salvador: 12
Slovenia: 17
Indonesia: 22
Deutschland: 24
Thailand: 26
Singapore: 29
Luxembourg: 29
Argentina: 31
Sweden: 33
United Kingdom: 35
Greece: 32
Italia: 45
Belgium: 46
Nederland: 46
Espana: 51
Turkey: 53
Norway: 55
Japan: 57
France: 61
Schweitz/Suisse: 61
Australia: 70

Using this perl script, I could also take a look to see how my competition is doing in the same markets.  For data and information, the possibilities are endless.

Tags: app store, hurricane, iPhone, ranking

How to track iPhone App Success

A few months ago, I posted that our Hurricane App hit #1 in Mexico. I checked back again yesterday, and it still seems to be at #1, or it hit #1 again. While I haven’t automated the check, I did notice that there were a lot of people looking for how to find their App Ranking in various countries in the iTunes store. For us, tracking the ranking of Hurricane has been fairly easy. We have remained in the top 25 paid weather apps in the US since the release on September 16, 2008, and have been within the top 10 since February, and hit top 5 when a storm looked like it was brewing this week. Over all, considering the amount of apps that are now in the weather category, and that Hurricane is a very niche app, it is doing exceedingly well.

When looking for your app ranking in other countries, the missing key is simply to go to the iTunes Store main page, scroll all the way down to the bottom, then use the select box to switch your country, or click on the flag dot to see a list of flags and countries.

Once you are in the new country, click on App Store, and your category, then start searching for your app. You cannot use the “search” feature because you will loose your place. Quite annoying I assure you.

To find your reviews, there are automated systems out there which you can purchase and/or use.

AppViz by Ideaswarm – $29.95 – Mac OSX
This Mac OSX application not only downloads and visualizes decent daily/weekly/monthly monetary reports, it also pulls the reviews for each country. It will also export the original reports.  This app has saved me hours of spreadsheet time!  I fire this app up a few times a week to check on how things are going with my sales.

AppSales – a Google Code project – Free – iPhone
I have this app loaded on my iPhone. When I got it, it was the only iPhone App tracker app available for the iPhone. This is the app I look at every day to see where my sales for the previous day were. This app shows you your daily and weekly sales, accumulates them for the month, as well as the break downs per app and per country. It is a very simple interface, giving the basic necessities. They have an updated version which also has graphing – which I will need to pick up very soon! Someone asked why they are not selling this app in the App Store, and the simple reason was because they want you the user to know that your data is secure. This app must be compiled by a developer and put onto an iPhone. Considering my financial information is in that app, along with identification information, I am VERY okay with that reasoning.

Sales Tracker by CXI Gaming – $18.99 – iPhone
This app can be found in the iTunes App Store. I haven’t checked it out, since I’ve already paid for AppViz. However, it seems to have all the same data as AppSales, with a much more refined interface. For security, they say they use the Apple Keychain, and have the ability to turn off automatic login. The drawback that I can see with this app is that it requires OS 2.2.1, which means that anyone who has not yet upgraded their iPhones (not sure why this would be an issue for a developer??) will find this app a waste of their money.

Scraping AppStore Reviews article by Erica Sadun – Perl Script
If you are looking to pull iPhone Reviews and understand Perl, this article was written with all the details, and the script. This script could also get you started on pulling app store ranking as well. But you really need to dive in and understand the system before you can do this.

Scraping App Store Rankings Around the World article by Ben Chatelain – Perl Script
This however is the script to beat all scripts. Again, it’s written in Perl, but it will report back what your current app store ranking is in each country. This one I just found while writing this article, but now, I think I will go give it a whirl. It would be neat to see if I can get AppViz to incorporate this into their application

In short, a quick Google search on what you are looking for really provides some great results. Some of these things I happen to know about because of word of mouth, so maybe this will help those apps get a little more visibility.

If you know of other apps that I have not listed here, please feel free to comment!

Tags: app store, finance, hurricane, iPhone, ranking, reviews, tracking

Hurricanes, Amateur Radio and life

What I should be doing with my free time right now is getting the new hurricane site finished up, but I am having a hard time getting into it. Lately I have been working on certifications, learning the new changes from the NHC and spending much needed time with my family. The other thing is socializing on Twitter (@weatherangel) about all of my interests, and more. It is amazing how much time that service can suck up when you are not paying attention! And then work gets 10 hours of my day, every day.

What about today? Waiting for my son to finish math tutoring while posting here, updating plugins, watching Twitter and listening to the radio. Mult-itasking at it’s best!

Tags: ham, hurricane, skywarn

Taking classes? Need flash cards?

There are various reasons and ways to use flashcards. If you are like me, you want to take them with you, hand an iPhone or other device to your child while you’re on the go so they can study up on absolutely anything. That is where Study Stack and gFlashPro come in. Study Stack is the back end providing the flash card data, and gFlashPro is the iPhone app which allows you to take your flash card deck anywhere you go. The combination helped my daughter pass a music vocabulary test she was worried about, as well as improve grades in other subjects. She simply created her flash card deck on Study Stack, then grabbed the stack using gFlashPro, and now she can take it with her anywhere we go. In the car, in a restaurant, or in her room – Study Stack lets her study when and where she wants without taking a bulky stack of cards anywhere.

Tags: flash cards, iPhone, study