iOS and Mac developer
Since iTunes Connect has been down for the holidays, I wasn’t able to check my app store sales until today. I got a very pleasant surprise when I checked the reports. Both the free & premium versions of I Can Has Cheezburger had their best sales day since their release. Even iDjembe had a huge sales spike. Unfortunately PicSlide (which is my favorite application & which I consider my best) didn’t see any such increase.
I just submitted the 1.5.4 update for both the free & pro versions of I Can Has Cheezburger.
New in this version:
Good news: there will be an ICanHasCheezburger app update sometime after the holidays. This isn’t the fabled Three20 based version 2.0, but a minor update which simply changes the feed URL. However, by doing so, it should fix most of the crashes.
Our application uses a ‘scraped’ feed generated from the site content rather than the site’s own RSS feed. We do this because the standard RSS feed only has a limited number of items and must be loaded in its entirety. By scraping the site, we can create multiple pages with unlimited items, which load a lot faster since it only loads 10 or fewer items at a time.
The feed scraper was originally developed by the folks at ICHC for their dashboard widget. I later modified it to support all of their sites and change the output from JSON to simplified XML. Unfortunately that feed scraper has a major flaw. It uses regex pattern matching to parse the HTML, which is a Very Bad Thing. The script can easily get confused by changes to the site and often produces invalid data. It also hasn’t included videos since a format change at the site broke it.
Last night I started hacking at it with PHP’s XML parser and DOM commands and came up with a much more robust script that uses element classes to identify valid items and to avoid outputting bad data that could crash the application. I’m also hosting it on my own server at DreamHost, so I can easily fix it myself instead of having to go back and forth for fixes as we do now.
Unfortunately a few Viddler movies still won’t play, since they must be explicitly enabled for downloading on the site.
Both PicSlide and iDjembe are free for one day only, from now until 6PM EST on Monday, Dec. 21. Download PicSlide here (iTunes link).
I just got an email from Apple saying that PicSlide 1.1 is ready for sale, 10 days after I submitted it. It may take a few hours for it to appear in the store.
Download it here.
I’ll keep the price at $0.99 until the Monday after Christmas, when it will return to the regular price of $1.99.
The major changes in this version are 10 new pictures, a new scoreboard, and the ability to post your completed puzzle scores to FaceBook.
I have just submitted PicSlide 1.1, which adds several new features:
There’s now a Facebook app page for PicSlide.
PicSlide 1.1 is complete and I plan to submit it in the next few days if no bugs are discovered. To celebrate, it will remain on sale for $0.99 until version 1.1 is available.
Here are the changes in version 1.1
I’ve added a real scoreboard to PicSlide, instead of the current ‘game over’ alert. It saves your 10 best scores, with separate scoreboards for each level. You can also post your score to Facebook.
I’m still working on a new icon for the application & I’ll probably be able to submit it next week after I finalize the Facebook application page.
From now through next Saturday, November 28, PicSlide is selling for only $1 (that’s 50% off) to celebrate my birthday and US Thanksgiving.
Buy it here.
I’m adding Facebook connect to PicSlide 1.1. There will be a connect button on the main menu, and when you complete a puzzle it will post a message to your stream with the time & number of moves.
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It will also have a score board listing the 10 best times & fewest moves instead of the current ‘game over’ alert. I haven’t finalized the appearance of the scoreboard yet.
I’m also working on a new application icon which is more suggestive of the actual application with a wooden frame & a real picture instead of colored blocks.
