Balance Guide v1.6 iPhone App

What's new in the latest version of Balance Guide ?

The multi-account feature has been extended further and now includes transfers between accounts. To provide maximum flexibly, the transfer feature allows you enter a different description and date, catering for differences in clearing.

Also a backup and restore feature via Dropbox

Balance Guide iPhone app

Whether to write standard code or re-write and learn code?

When I started developing for the iphone I had to make some decisions about how to structure code. I was face with a dilemma. Do I write code which I'll use often or do I reuse code.

I came to the decision to write code as I needed it, so that I'd learn and remember it. I spoke to friends at the time and this was the decision I arrived at.

Previously I'd always written standard functions and never remember how to code these requirements afterwards.

I've made the wrong decision.

I end up with more lines of code and code which I can never remember anyway. So the answer to write standard functions.

by JM

iPhone, why I moved from FMDB to direct Sqlite3

I'm still quite disappointed, FMDB was easy to implement and only a few lines of code to do almost anything. I've even posted some example code on my blog. But when I sat and thought about, I realised I'd wasted two days (in total) trying figure out why sql wasn't working.

There must be some problems in the libraries as the sql was working but failed on simple sql statements.

So today I've decided to use Sqlite3 directly, which has taken me have a day and I have all the previous code replaced and working. Yes, it takes more code and is more difficult to implement.

by JM

iPhone, how to insert a record using fmdb

One of the easiest ways to perform transactions with a database with the iPhone is with the fmdb libraries. Its a few lines of code to do almost anything.

This is the primary documentation for fmdb http://gusmueller.com/blog/archives/2005/3/22.html

It's pretty good and straight forward. But, I've had some problems today trying to insert a record. None of the usage code I found on the web seemed to be any different to the code I was using.

However, after inserting one field at a time I found my problem was due to using an integer where I needed to use NSNumber. So I thought I'd post the code I arrived at, maybe it will help someone else.

NSMutableString *strAmount = [NSMutableString stringWithString:txtAmount.text]; [strAmount replaceCharactersInRange: [strAmount rangeOfString: strCurrencySymbol]  withString:@""];NSString *strRecurrance = [self.pickerRecurranceData objectAtIndex:intSelRecurrenceRow]; NSArray *parts = [strRecurrance componentsSeparatedByString: @" "]; NSNumber *numInterval = [NSNumber numberWithInt:[[parts objectAtIndex:0] intValue]]; NSString *strIntervalType = [parts objectAtIndex:1]; // string to date NSString *myDateString = btnStartDate.titleLabel.text; NSDateFormatter *dateFormatter = [[[NSDateFormatter alloc] init] autorelease]; [dateFormatter setDateFormat:@"dd MM yyyy"]; NSDate *datStartDate = [[NSDate alloc] init]; datStartDate = [dateFormatter dateFromString:myDateString]; NSString *strDesc = txtDescription.text; FMDatabase* db = [FMDatabase databaseWithPath:@"/tmp/tmp.db"]; if (![db open]) { NSLog(@"Could not open db."); } if (![db tableExists:@"mytable"]) { [db executeUpdate:@"CREATE TABLE 'mytable' ('pid' INTEGER PRIMARY KEY AUTOINCREMENT NOT NULL,'desc' VARCHAR,'sdate' DATETIME,'interval' INTEGER,'itype' VARCHAR,'price' DOUBLE);", nil]; } [db beginTransaction]; [db executeUpdate:@"INSERT INTO mytable (desc,sdate,interval,itype,price) VALUES (?,?,?,?,?);", strDesc, datStartDate, numInterval, strIntervalType, strAmount, nil]; //NSLog(@"Err %d: %@", [db lastErrorCode], [db lastErrorMessage]); [db commit]; [db close];

by JM

How to add a decimal point or a done button to the iphone number pad

Following on from our blog post about how to add the done button to the iphone number pad, here's how upgrade that code to add a decimal point as well, well not at the same time :)

How to add your own Done button to the iPhone numeric keypad



Ok, first of all if you haven't done so already, get the code working posted in the done blog post.

Now open up your NumberKeypadModController.h file and add the following to the top of the file below your foundation import.

#define KeyPadTypeDoneButton 1 #define KeyPadTypeDecimalPoint 2

Add this to the interface.

int intKeyPadType;

And this under properties

- (void)setKeyPadType:(int)value; -(id)initWithKeyPadType: (int)value;

Now open your NumberKeypadModController.m file and add.

-(id)initWithKeyPadType: (int)value { [self setKeyPadType:value]; //self = [super init]; self = [self init]; if( self != nil ){ //self.intKeyPadType = value; } return self; } - (void)setKeyPadType:(int)value { intKeyPadType = value; NSLog(@"key=%i", intKeyPadType); }

Now where you see the line containing @"Done", replace that with ..

if (intKeyPadType == KeyPadTypeDecimalPoint ) { doneButton.titleLabel.font = [UIFont systemFontOfSize:35]; [doneButton setTitle:@"." forState:UIControlStateNormal]; } else if (intKeyPadType == KeyPadTypeDoneButton ) { doneButton.titleLabel.font = [UIFont boldSystemFontOfSize:18]; [doneButton setTitle:@"DONE" forState:UIControlStateNormal]; }

Also replace the following functions

- (void)textFieldShouldEndEditing:(UITextField *)textField { if (textField.keyboardType != UIKeyboardTypeNumberPad) { doneButtonShownRecently = YES; if (intKeyPadType == KeyPadTypeDoneButton ) { [self performSelector:@selector(considerDoneButtonReallyHidden) withObject:nil afterDelay:SLIDE_OUT_ANIMATION_DURATION]; } return; } [self removeDoneFromKeyboard]; }- (void) donePressed { if (intKeyPadType == KeyPadTypeDecimalPoint ) { NSString *currentText = currentTextField.text; if ([currentText rangeOfString:@"." options:NSBackwardsSearch].length == 0) { currentTextField.text = [currentTextField.text stringByAppendingString:@"."]; }else { //alreay has a decimal point } } else if (intKeyPadType == KeyPadTypeDoneButton ) { [self.currentTextField resignFirstResponder]; } if ([delegate respondsToSelector:@selector(donePressed:)]) [delegate performSelector:@selector(donePressed:) withObject:self.currentTextField]; }

At this point, I'd like to cite and give credit to DevUp for the decimal point formatting code in the donePressed function above.
http://blog.devedup.com/index.php/2010/03/13/iphone-number-pad-with-a-decimal-point/

Now in you useage code replace the following code..

int intCurrentKeyPad;- (void)viewDidLoad { [super viewDidLoad]; //intCurrentKeyPad = KeyPadTypeDoneButton; intCurrentKeyPad = KeyPadTypeDecimalPoint; self.numberKeyPadModController = [[[NumberKeypadModController alloc] initWithKeyPadType:intCurrentKeyPad] autorelease]; //self.numberKeyPadModController = [[[NumberKeypadModController alloc] init] autorelease]; numberKeyPadModController.delegate = self; [numberKeyPadModController setKeyPadType:intCurrentKeyPad]; if (intCurrentKeyPad == KeyPadTypeDoneButton ) { [[NSNotificationCenter defaultCenter] addObserver:self selector:@selector(doneButton:) name:@"DoneButtonPressed" object:nil]; } textFieldRow1.delegate = self; } - (void)doneButtonPressed:(UITextField*)sender{ if (intCurrentKeyPad == KeyPadTypeDoneButton ) { if ([textFieldRow1 isEditing]) { [textFieldRow1 resignFirstResponder]; } } } - (void) donePressed:(id)sender { if (intCurrentKeyPad == KeyPadTypeDoneButton ) { UIView* firstResponder = [self.view findFirstResponder]; [firstResponder resignFirstResponder]; } }

Ok I hope this helps you out!

Feel free to make a comment about this article, let me know if you have any problems with it.

by Jules.

iPhone app description on iTunes observations #iphonedev

I'm at the stage with my app development where I've looking at writing a description for my app which will appear on iTunes. I thought it would be a good idea to have a look at my nearest competition and I thought I'd also look to see what blue had written.

Before I start, I'd just like to summarize my beliefs and expectations on what I think I'll find. As with any sales copy I know you have to sell benefit not features first, then go into the features. Also being iTunes you have to take into account how people will look at your description and how long they will spend looking.  So app icon / logo and screen shots are very important. I'm wondering if a lot of text is a good idea.

OK, I printed out some descriptions, I noticed that there's two different description, one for the US and one for GB, so I'm guessing you must be able to write a different description for each country / language.

I've only found the GB description for Blues app, I think he just sells to the UK not the US. Oddly his price appears in dollars. Whereas the others I have printed are in pounds or dollars, for the respect description country pages.

Blues opening line sells the benefits of the app, he then talks about the features and how to use the app for three paragraphs. Oh at this point, he and there other printouts, have a more link, which makes the screen shots more visible and stops people having the read too much if they just want to glance at the page, good idea.

On paragraph five through seven he talks about the benefits, I think I'd have put this at the start, then he has a sentence about user comments, showing that he's going to be around in the future to produce an update.

Unlike my other printouts, blue doesn't have any customer reviews, which are shown at the bottom of the page.

Printouts 2 and 3, US and GB. Heres, we have a line about the features then some feature bullet points and then a link to a video. This sounds like a good idea in principle, but what if they look at the video and then decide not to download the app, hmmm.  I think with it being so little effort to install an app it would be easier to do that. But I guess it would cost you to install. Hmmm, not sure on this one, I guess a video might be a good idea.

We've then got several meaty paragraphs (much more than blue wrote) , one for each screen in the app.

We then have a short list of one line reviews, which look good. I think this guy should have put his benefits up front and then the reviews, then gone into the functionality, I'm not so sure providing lots of text is such a good idea. However, you do have the more link after the first paragraph, so I guess you do have the option not to read.

Having said that people do like to read the description, especially when it may stop them wasting their money. My gut feeling is that having them read too much, when they could try the app instead, is a bad idea.  Screen shots don't look that fun, all numbers etc. Then has the reviews, which look good.

Print out three is almost identical except from some different terms (language specific) and different reviews.

Print outs four and five are nice and short, the opening paragraph finishes mid sentence before the more button, I like that shows there's more to read. But it does make you think if I read this I should read the rest. But then there isn't a lot to read. I like that. The first paragraph is all about the benefits, there's then a feature list. Actually that paragraph is different for US and GB. The screen shots look very good and only the US has reviews.

To summarise, blues description, he's made the screen shots prominent, he's got one sentence and the more link. I think this is a good idea, however I think he could have more than a sentence, it looks lacking. Looking at my other printouts, a paragraph looks better. I think he should have the benefits next.

I think having a features list looks good, I think you kind of expect it, a way to compare with other apps. I think that can consume a lot of the content you could waffle on about.

So what am I going to do, have an opening paragraph on benefits, have my more link,  then a feature / benefit list.  I guess I might talk a bit about the app next in a paragraph or two, taking care to mention the benefits.  Maybe I could add a video too, I'm not 100% sure on that. In the future I think after the benefits I should add some one line reviews.

by JM

First impressions about iPhone development

The iPhone development language is called objective C and the development environment is called Xcode.

Obj-C, as its commonly abbreviated, is a C derivative language, with all the common syntax and operators available with C,and more, as you'd expect.  My background is mostly VB, but I've done some PHP in the last few years and have found this helpful in learning Obj-C, much of the syntax is the same.

Like other languages these days, there's help and example code to be found on the web. There are also forums where you can ask questions. However, you're expected to have a reasonable understanding of the language. I often find myself being referred to the documentation, which is only natural I guess.

I still need to learn about the framework and common functions.

I have found development of my first app quite slow, I tend to get stuck and unlike other languages I've used recently, am finding it hard to workaround my problems. However, I think this is due to a lack of familiarity with the language.

There still some fundamental concepts I need to learn but I hope I have got past the dip in the learning curve now.

by JM

Hope to cope with a small screen laptop for a bit longer

Over the last week I've been looking at a lot of paper, statements for accounts etc and found it really difficult to manage with a laptop, so I've ended up being forced to use my desktop. So I'm now use to having dual screens and lots of things open at once, again.

Which normally I'd only be doing for an hour or so in the morning, which wasn't so bad.

Anyways, this morning I've been doing some client work and found the amount of stuff I can fit on the screen of a 14" screen laptop unbarable. So I thought I'd have a go at making things smaller to see if I could improve my situation.

I've turned my DPI down to 84% and found a default zoom level add-on for firefox, which has allowed me to set all pages to 80% zoom.

Also, I use a add-on which splits pages, so I could loads of pages on the screen.

This all seems to be working quite well, this is until I get eye strain later in the day.

Hopefully these measures and increased productivity will lead to the cash to buy a bigger screen laptop :)

A 3rd unlucky technical day

I've been to my mothers today with our son, my plan like the previous two occasions to do some work on my laptop while having my mam look after my son.

The first time I tried, I brought a usb wifi dongle and a wap. I got the wap and my laptop setup fine. The put the dongle in my mams machine, however it didn't work with windows 98. I didn't have any other kit with me so I was stuck that day and got nothing done. Just to explain my mam and my son like to look at train pictures on google images, which keeps them both quiet and out of my hair ;)

My next attempt I brought my wap and had planned to bring an CAT5 / RJ45 network splitter cable, which I bought online and seemed like a great idea. However I forgot it and again had no more tech with me.

Today, I tried to plan for all eventuallities. I brought the splitter cable and an old hub. However, the splitter didn't work as I'd hoped. I had 2 and they both did the same thing, I must have mis-understood when i bought them, one machine would work fine but not the other.

So I thought, I'll just use the hub. However, I was short one network cable. Which by chance I was able to borrow from my mams next door neighbour. Great I thought. However, when I got all setup the hub only seemed to have one port which worked.

So again unlucky. I almost think that I'm not meant to do any work at my mams.

Not sure what I'll try next time, I've got an adsl 4 port router I think I might try.

Its just getting silly though :(

How to keep your home tidy

This is probably an obvious one, but I only just realised how powerful this was they other day.

We often find ourselves in a mess and a lot of the time it comes down the fact that we don't have space to put things. So we tidy things and put them away, but we never have room to put more things. So what do you do. The most obvious answer is to get more storage or find more space.

Right?

No!

We've been doing this for sometime, we even boarded out the rest of our loft and got a bigger hatch and proper ladders. We got a shed the other year too. All of which are quite full.

The answer is to change your life style, don't hoard stuff.

Last weekend I was going through my shelves shreadding and putting paper in our recyle bin, it took me hours and I have nothing to show for it, I've got lots of piles of scrap paper though.

However, it was a start and I now feel a bit better that I did it. I feel now that I need to think carefully about anything I keep.

How useful will that be to me in the future, probably not at all!

How to get a lie in?

We seem to have managed most things with our sons development so far, I think.

On weekdays we make use of a nightlight / clock, which lights up at 6:30am, which means he can come into our room.

However on weekends, he still comes through at 6:30, I guess we could change his clock, but we always forget.

How did you guys solve this problem?

My first mobile post

Great, thought i'd log in to that other blog today on my new mobile and do my first post with it.

But it looks like theres some sort of feature / bug, in the earlier version of wordpress. So i'm going to have to upgrade it.

Anyways this is my first mobile post :)

EDIT:Got this far and it didn't submit :(

Final Burner Free

I just want to recommend a program to you guys.

Final Burner Free version, I've just spent 20 minutes trying to re-find it. I installed it a few months ago, then wnet back to a disk image and lost it.

Its a great program for burning video to dvd discs.

by JM

Get more work done with noise cancelling headphones

I spend a lot of time in a room where there are two tvs going and my son noisely playing with his toys. Normally I wouldn't be too bothered. However, recently I've been getting a lot of headaches, which are commonly at the same time of the day.

I also spend a lot of time with my laptop, not being able to get much done and getting really frustrated.

I don't seem to be able to work at my desktop pc at all these days again, due to noise and not being able to concentrate.

Its kind of a vicious circle, get less done, get frustrated and then get a headache.

I tried using some normal headphones, but this didn't drown out the noise.

So I discovered you could get noise cancelling headphones, mine have a battery in them and an on/off switch. It causes a hissing sound. Apparently there supposed to be a microphone near the ear which interacts and produces the hissing noise.

When I'm listening to music, it just seems louder, but the hiss, seems to block out some background noise. Not all noise, so I can hear if my son trips over or something, but enough to allow me to concentrate.

Over the weekend, I was sat doing some coding, in a couple of short sessions, where normally I'd have to spend ages trying to concentrate then struggle to do a few lines of code.

Anyways, my life has been transformed :)

Credit Crunch: How big is a Billion?

During the recent financial turmoil the numbers being thrown around by the UK and US governments are making large numbers seem like pocket money. Every week it seems like some bank or insurance company is being bailed out to the tune of a few billion pounds or dollars. The thing is, I'm slightly confused about how big a billion really is. My confusion is that historically I think the US and UK definition of a billion were different:

US Billion = 1,000,000,000, i.e. one thousand million

UK Billion = 1,000,000,000,000, i.e. one million, million

I've been assuming that when some UK bank get 30 billion pounds, they're getting 30 thousand million pounds but lately BBC News have started showing actual figures in their headlines and occasionally I see figures like:

£1,200,000,000,000

Surely this can't be the money given to a bank? It's more than the UK GDP isn't it?

With all these large numbers, it's hard to put into context how much money is actually involved. Another recent trend I've noticed on news programs is to show two stories back to back with the first involving a credit crunch fantasy bailout figure and the second a real world financial figure. For example, yesterday there was a story about Quantitiave Easing (a technical term much more aptly described on Question Time by Shirley Williams as Financial Laxative) involving a figure of £150 billion. The next story told how £140,000 had been allocated to fix potholes in all the roads in the county of Shropshire. To contrast these figures:

£150 billion = enough to fix all the potholes in Shropshire for the next 1,000,000 years

or

£150 billion = enough to fix all the potholes in the UK for over 10,000 years

Where is all this money is coming from? And who does it get paid back to?

Wired GameCube Controllers are better that Wavebirds

Since I last spoke to you I was considering buying an expensive used WaveBird wireless controller for my wii and I was about to borrow a wired controller.

I tried the wired controller and found the cable very short. I discovered that I could use a couple of extension cables, which would give me the length I required. However, I was worried about pulling my wii off my shelf.

So I bought a wavebird. Which was much better, but very expensive.

I then discovered that mine didn't vibrate, which wasn't a fault. The reason it wasn't designed to vibrate, was due to power it zapped from batteries. Which I found both odd, as the third party one did and frustrating. It just wasn't the same.

I then had a bit more of a go of the wired controller I had borrowed and decided that I'd sell my wavebird and with the money, buy 2 wired controllers and 4 extensions, 2 each.

My wavebird is on ebay and my new kit has arrived today.

Going to give them a try tonight :)

by JM

Summary of my usage data

I'm not going to name my program here, but you guys will know that its my kids programs.

I've analysed my uninstall usage data and have produced some stats shown below. I haven't included stats from bug reports, which I haven't got round to yet.

The summary is based on all 880 reports from the last release in July.

I'm hoping you guys will comment on my findings.

Reason CountOfReason
(Please select) 774
Other 33
Just didn't like the program 33
Trial expired 14
Found it too complicated 14
Had a problem 10
Missing an expected feature 2

So theres not much of a pattern there, except that users couldn't be bothered to select a reason.
--------------------------------------
Whether they were willing to enter into a competition to win a license.
No 796
Yes 84

This didn't require people to provide an email address, provide comments etc.
--------------------------------------
OS CountOfOS
XP 772
VIS 100
98 6
23K 2

I think I'll drop windows 98.
--------------------------------------
I haven't yet analysed my Max Reached Point information, I do have stats but I haven't look to see where these point are in my program. I hope to do this before the end of the thread.
--------------------------------------
DaysInst CountOfDaysInst
0 540
1 43
3 31
2 25
4 22
7 18
-- Snip --

So most people use the program for less than a day then uninstall.
--------------------------------------
MinsUsed CountOfMinsUsed
0 226
2 115
3 68
4 44
5 49
6 30
7 30
8 24
9 26
10 12
11 20
12 14
13 21
14 9
15 9
16 12
17 6
18 10
19 3
20 14
-- snip --
99 25

So that varies.
--------------------------------------
ProgRetryCount CountOfProgRetryCount
1 365
2 173
3 104
4 56
5 33
0 33
6 28
8 16
7 13
9 12
10 8
11 6
12 5
14 4

So users do close the program and retry it.
--------------------------------------

Crash CountOfCrash
No 843
Unc 33
Yes 4

So not a massive percentage of crashes.
--------------------------------------

PrintBtnUsed CountOfPrintBtnUsed
N 737
Y 143

This is how many people used the print button.
I guess I would hope this to be higher.
--------------------------------------

PrintsLeft CountOfPrintsLeft
0 95
1 6
2 7
3 10
4 25

From people who did print.

by JM

Strange SERPs results

As I wrote a few days ago, SoftwareLode has been disappearing from Google search results. I did have 3500 pages in the main index in mid-January but over the following weeks most of my pages were dumped from the index and my visitor levels crashed. Whereas I was making a good $5 a day on Adsense I ended up being lucky to make $1.

The strange thing was though that for keywords on the homepage I still did well. For "Free DVD Software" I was still on page 1 and for "Free Software Downloads" I was around #40. In the last week though, I started disappearing for "Free Software Downloads" too. For the last 3 days I didn't appear anywhere for this keyword in the first 1000 results.

Today though the trend is reversing and all of a sudden I have 100 more pages in the main index than yesterday. The other good news is that I'm doing better than ever for "Free Software Downloads" - I'm at #27 on google.co.uk and #19 on google.ca. This compares with SoftTester at positions #49 and #68 respectively on .co.uk and .ca. Why SoftwareLode is higher than SoftTester I'm not sure.

What project to work on next?

Over the last year or so, I've been trying to manage my time better to give all of my projects time. However, I've tried to put the big earners first, but still give all my projects some of my time.

I haven't done any work on my kids program since July and I have millions of bug reports and uninstall questionnaires to wade through, then summarise then fixes to make.

It not so much that its been shoved to the bottom of the pile, more that I've felt that other project never get any time where it did use to get a lots.

Now I've not got any great hope that my kids program will suddenly start to make a lot of money. However I still do sell licenses for it every so often.

Should I work on it now?

by JM

Form Editor/ Designer

Lately, I've been working towards a forms designer that can be used with a new version of my main software.

The idea is to let people freely edit their own invoice templates to suit their own business. A fair percentage of people seem to want modifications, e.g. in the colour of text, or they want to add new images and fixed text. This new forms designer should let customers do all these kinds of things very easily. I'm also going to let people adjust the widths of columns as well as add new columns. We do use a version of the template editor in-house to do custom modifications for people for a fee. This brings in a little bit of income but we think that if people could edit their own templates we'd probably get a lot more customers. The thinking is that if 1 in 10 customers asks us if templates can be modified, a lot more must simply reject the package and choose a competitor's without getting in touch at all.

The forms designer itself isn't specific to my main package and could be used to design forms for any purpose. It could even be used as the data output (print/ email) engine for other data sources. Any ideas on a possible use for it outside my main product line?