iOS and Mac developer
I got my app store sales report for yesterday and the results were less than dazzling. My sales for the day were just about average and lower than on some normal days. Yesterday’s sales were $42, but my best recent sales day in the last week was $51. Rather than donating yesterday’s sales, I will be donating my highest sales total for the week to Partners In Health.
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In addition, I also bought several other apps and a BassJump yesterday.
At final count there are over 140 developers signed up for Indie+Relief. Although they only list PicSlide, I’m donating all of my app sales tomorrow to Partners In Health.
Here are some scenes of the earthquake destruction, set to the song “Haiti” by Arcade Fire.
Arcade Fire’s Régine Chassagne, whose family is from Haiti, wrote a very touching piece about how the earthquake affected her and telling why she endorses Partners In Health:
It is strange that I was introduced to my country by a white doctor from Florida called Paul Farmer who speaks perfect Creole and knows how to pronounce my name right. He is the co-founder of an organisation titled Partners in Health (Zanmi Lasante in Creole). There are several charity organisations that are doing good work in Haiti – Fonkoze is a great micro-lending organisation – but in terms of thorough medical care, follow-up and combining of parallel necessary services (education, sanitation, training, water, agriculture), there is none that I could recommend more than Partners in Health. It takes its work for the Haitian people very seriously and, indeed, most of the staff on the ground are Haitian. PIH has been serving the poorest of the poor for more than 20 years with a curriculum that really astounded me, given the limited resources available in the area.
Visiting its facilities, I was overwhelmed by, and impressed with, the high-level, top-quality services provided in areas where people own next to nothing and were never given the opportunity to learn how to sign their own name. I was delightfully shocked to see the radically positive impact it has had in the communities it serves. Of course, during my visit, I saw some clinics and hospitals that were at different stages than others, but through it all, I could clearly see that PIH staff are very resourceful and set the bar extremely high for themselves. I know that, right now, they are using their full capacities to save as many lives as possible.
So in these critical times where death comes every minute, I urge you to donate to Partners in Health (www.pih.org) and be as generous as you can. I know from having talked to some staff that they are on the ground right now, setting up and managing field hospitals as well as receiving the injured at their clinics in the surrounding areas.
You can follow Partners In Health on Twitter and see the great work they’re doing.
I am participating in Indie+Relief tomorrow (Jan. 20) with 100% of all app sales going to Partners In Health.
I’m participating in Indie+Relief. On Wednesday Jan. 20, I’m donating the proceeds of my app sales to Partners In Health for their Haitian relief work.
The guys at Viddler made a few tweaks to the site and now ICanHasCheezburger videos will play in the application.
I’ve made quite a bit of progress on ICHC 2.0 in the last few days, but it’s still far from finished. I’ve thrown out most of the code from the current version except the Cheezburger API. The feed & image loading is completely rewritten, and the image display code is all new.
Still need to do:
Promo Dispenser is a new site where developers can make promo codes available and encourage users to rate & review their apps. It looks like it can help developers get more exposure and gives users an opportunity to get free apps legally in exchange for reviewing & rating them.
I have 14 promo codes available there for PicSlide, so go download & rate it!
I made a lot of progress on I Can Has Cheezburger 2.0 this weekend, although it’s still far from finished. I was having too much trouble with Three20’s TTPhotoView, in particular extremely slow loading since the ICHC sites don’t have thumbnail sized images, which it uses to load a low-resolution preview, and the inability to include videos in the photo stream.
Instead, I’m now loading images asynchronously using code similar to this (the current version loads images synchronously using PerformSelectorInBackground, which is actually more complex).
I’m still using Three20 for the home screen and launcher view, which even lets you rearrange items.
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I now recognize movies that are unplayable (which includes almost all videos at ICanHasCheezburger.com, since Viddler movies need to be specifically download enabled to be playable on an iPhone). For those movies, I’m now displaying a notice rather than just loading the page which will tell you Flash must be installed.
There’s still a lot more that needs to be done before I can release it:
This will be a free upgrade for all users. I’m thinking of adding in-app purchasing to the free version to allow users to remove ads & unlock other pro features (logging into ICHC and saving favorites) instead of purchasing a separate version. However, I will need to support both versions so owners of the pro version won’t have to download the free version & pay for pro features.
UPDATE: I’m now remembering the current item for each site. I’m doing it in a much better way than I do in the current version. Currently I save a fixed array of offsets which correspond to each site in the same order they appear in the selector. In 2.0 I’m using the site name as the preferences key, which will let me add or rearrange sites without affecting the settings for each site.
I Can Has Cheezburger 1.5.3 crashes immediately at startup because the feed it uses is broken. You don’t have to email me to let me know – I get about 10 reports a day.
Apple still hasn’t approved version 1.5.4 free although they approved 1.5.4 Pro in 24 hours. The updated version uses a different feed which I’m hosting myself. See this post from Dec. 24 which gives the gory details about why 1.5.3 crashes.
I just got the following email from Apple regarding the free version of I Can Has Cheezburger:
Hello Mike,
Thank you for submitting your application update to the App Store. Unfortunately, the update to I Can Has Cheezburger 1.5.4 cannot be posted to the App Store because the Release Notes mention features that are only available in the Pro version of the application. It currently reads “Save to favorites is available for all items in the pro version.” instead of accurately describing this application’s update, which may lead to user confusion.
While your iTunes Connect Application State is displayed as Rejected, it is not necessary to upload a new binary. Once the necessary modifications are completed, please reply to this email and we will proceed with your application review.
Regards,
iPhone Developer Program
I changed the description as requested, so hopefully it will be approved soon.
I just submitted the 1.5.4 updates for both ICHC ad-supported and ICHC Pro yesterday, and I just got an email saying that ICHC Pro is ready for sale. This is the fastest approval I’ve ever seen from Apple. Hopefully ICHC free won’t take much longer.