Apple iPhone Apps Reach 2 billion Downloads

Apple announced that more than 2 billion applications for the iPhone and iPod Touch have been downloaded from its App Store, just five months after hitting the 1 billion download mark.

The iPhone app store has over 85,000 apps available to download and there are now more than 50 million iPhone and iPod touch owners 77 countries, and 125,000 developers in Apple’s developer program.

In late April of this year, Apple reported that it had topped one billion downloads and 35,000 applications, and announced that downloads had topped 1.5 billion with 65,000 apps on offer as of July 15 of this year.

Palm is ditching Windows Mobile and going all in with its own webOS."

Choosing a Handheld - a guide for PAs

Rachel Reid has written a nice guide on choosing a Handheld for her physician assistant class with up to date information on devices on all wireless carriers.

As for those who can’t decide on whether to get an iPhone 3GS or a Palm Pre, check out this Flow Chart

from the Palmdoc Chronicles

Choosing a Handheld - a guide for PAs

Animating transitions between views on iPhone

You may know how to do transition from one view to another using buttons. However, the transitioning happens very quickly, and isn't exciting visually. To add transitions like inbuilt photo application on iPhone, you will need to add some animations to the transition. Luckily it is very easy to do using the APIs provided in the iPhone SDK.


To add the transition between views as a smooth page-turn animation following code will be helpful.



otherViewController = [[otherViewController alloc]
initWithNibName:@"OtherView"
bundle:nil];

[UIView beginAnimations:@"Animating view" context:nil];

// Animation duration to one second
[UIView setAnimationDuration:1];

/* Animation curve is set to UIViewAnimationCurveEaseInOut (other available animation types are UIViewAnimationCurveEaseIn, UIViewAnimationCurveEaseOut, and UIViewAnimationCurveLinear) */

[UIView setAnimationCurve:UIViewAnimationCurveEaseInOut];

/* Animation transition type is set to UIViewAnimationTransitionCurlDown (other available animation transitioning types are UIViewAnimationTransitionFlipFromLeft, UIViewAnimationTransitionFlipFromRight, and UIViewAnimationTransitionCurlUp)*/

[UIView setAnimationTransition:UIViewAnimationTransitionCurlDown
forView:self.view cache:YES];

[self.view addSubview:otherViewController.view];
[UIView commitAnimations];

UIToolbar and Autorotate

Wait for it is over...


//==============================================================================
// Declare nCurrentOrientation at application level. Toolbar object also put at application level class
//==============================================================================
- (BOOL)shouldAutorotateToInterfaceOrientation:(UIInterfaceOrientation)interfaceOrientation
{
SampleAppDelegate *appDelegate = (SampleAppDelegate *)[[UIApplication sharedApplication] delegate];
CGRect mainViewBounds = [appDelegate.window bounds];

CGFloat toolbarHeight = 30;
switch (interfaceOrientation)
{
case UIInterfaceOrientationLandscapeLeft:
{
if (appDelegate.nCurrentOrientation != UIInterfaceOrientationPortrait)
return NO;
// size up the toolbar and set its frame

[appDelegate.toolbar setFrame:CGRectMake(CGRectGetWidth(mainViewBounds),
toolbarHeight,
CGRectGetHeight(mainViewBounds),
toolbarHeight)];
//calculate new center point
CGPoint center = CGPointMake(305.0, CGRectGetHeight(mainViewBounds) / 2);

// Set the center point of the view to the center point of the window's content area.
appDelegate.toolbar.center = center;

//Transform the toolbar according to new orientation
appDelegate.toolbar.transform = CGAffineTransformMakeRotation( 3 * M_PI / 2.0);
appDelegate.nCurrentOrientation = UIInterfaceOrientationLandscapeLeft;


}
break;

case UIInterfaceOrientationLandscapeRight:
{
if (appDelegate.nCurrentOrientation != UIInterfaceOrientationPortrait)
return NO;

// size up the toolbar and set its frame

[appDelegate.toolbar setFrame:CGRectMake(0,
CGRectGetHeight(mainViewBounds) - toolbarHeight,
CGRectGetHeight(mainViewBounds),
toolbarHeight)];
//calculate new center point
CGPoint center = CGPointMake(toolbarHeight/2, CGRectGetHeight(mainViewBounds) / 2);
// Set the center point of the view to the center point of the window's content area.
appDelegate.toolbar.center = center;

//Transform the toolbar according to new orientation
appDelegate.toolbar.transform = CGAffineTransformMakeRotation(M_PI / 2.0);
appDelegate.nCurrentOrientation = UIInterfaceOrientationLandscapeRight;


}
break;
case UIInterfaceOrientationPortrait: //EXIF = 3
{
if ( appDelegate.nCurrentOrientation != UIInterfaceOrientationLandscapeRight && appDelegate.nCurrentOrientation != UIInterfaceOrientationLandscapeLeft)
return NO;

// size up the toolbar and set its frame

toolbarHeight = 42;
//calculate new center point
CGPoint center = CGPointMake(CGRectGetWidth(mainViewBounds)/2, toolbarHeight/2);
appDelegate.toolbar.center = center;
//Transform the toolbar according to new orientation
appDelegate.toolbar.transform= CGAffineTransformMakeRotation(2*M_PI );
[appDelegate.toolbar setFrame:CGRectMake(0,
CGRectGetHeight(mainViewBounds)-toolbarHeight,
CGRectGetWidth(mainViewBounds),
toolbarHeight)];

appDelegate.nCurrentOrientation = UIInterfaceOrientationPortrait;


}

default:
break;
}

return ( interfaceOrientation == UIInterfaceOrientationPortrait || interfaceOrientation == UIInterfaceOrientationLandscapeLeft || interfaceOrientation == UIInterfaceOrientationLandscapeRight);
}

Conversion of date and time to/from number of seconds from the reference date

A) Converting date to seconds


//Create nscomponents object
NSDateComponents *objNsComps = [[NSDateComponents alloc] init];
//set date
[objNsComps setDay:10 ];
[objNsComps setMonth:11];
[objNsComps setYear:2008];

//set time
[objNsComps setHour:10 ];
[objNsComps setMinute:15];
[objNsComps setSecond:20];
///conversion in NSdate object
NSCalendar *gregorian = [[NSCalendar alloc] initWithCalendarIdentifier:NSGregorianCalendar];
NSDate *objDate = [gregorian dateFromComponents: objNsComps];
//get number of seconds from refrence date 1 January 1970
///convert into double equibalent// time in secs
double dblSecs4Date = [objDate timeIntervalSince1970];
NSLog(@"dblSecs4DateFrmServer: %f", dblSecs4Date);
[gregorian release];
[objNsComps release];







B) Conversion of seconds into readable date string


double dblDateInSeconds = date in seconds from reference date 1 January 1970;
//Create NSDate Object
NSDate *objDate = [NSDate dateWithTimeIntervalSince1970: dblDateInSeconds];


NSDateFormatter *dateFormatter = [[NSDateFormatter alloc] init];
[dateFormatter setDateFormat:@"MM/dd/yyyy HH:mm:ss"];
//Convert in readable string
NSMutableString *strDate = [[[NSMutableString alloc] init] autorelease];
[strDate setString:@""];
[strDate appendString:[dateFormatter stringFromDate:objDate]];
[dateFormatter release];
NSLog(@"dateString: %@ ", strDate);

No need to spend time on studying Objective C and cocoa to create iPhone apps.

Hello Friends,

Those who interested in starting developing applications for iPhone may be looking for books of cocoa and objective C as the official iPhone SDK uses these. But there is certainly no need to spend time in studying objective C and cocoa because there are many third party frameworks are available in market which use of code written in languages like good, old-fashioned JavaScript or newfangled Ruby and give the user complete control of the screen, just like a native application.

Few named here, Rhomobile Rhodes, Nitobi PhoneGap, Appcelerator Titanium, and Ansca Corona.
These toolkits also offer cross-device development, your software will run on an iPhone, a BlackBerry, an Android handset, and in some cases even a Symbian phone or a Java ME phone.

So why to wait, enjoy coding...
For more info please read following article..

http://www.infoworld.com/d/mobilize/iphone-development-tools-work-way-you-do-309

Thanks
Amit

Added iPhone3 OS Push notification support to application successfully

Hello Everybody,
I am glad to say that I am able to add push notification support to our iPhone application and its accepted on appstore. if anybody wants help in hows to implement it then you can write to me.

P.S. - The first thing you need is your Push certificates. These identify you when communicating with APNS over SSL. Configure your application for handling push notification on program portal of your iPhone developer account for development mode ( and production mode in case you want to release your application). Send your messages to gateway.sandbox.push.apple.com:2195 during the beta period.

How push notification works according to Apples documentation :




Thanks
Amit

This is my first Blog Entry Ever

This is my first BLOG entry. From many days I was thinking to start one. I now realize that there is so much information that I come across that is truly useful to others. Thanks for reading and I hope all my time and effort helps you on many levels. Sincerely,
Amit