iPhone Fonts

The iPhone SDK documentation often leaves a lot to be desired in comprehensiveness. One area that Apple could add more information is in the font department. More thorough examples and documentation would make it easier to customize your interface with different fonts. This awesome blog post give as list of all fonts available, and here they are rendered.

Thoughts on the 3G

I am definitely late to the party getting my 3G, but boy was it worth it. I don't know how I suffered for so long with the Edge network. Every time I can get a speedy connection on the go, I marvel at how powerful the iPhone really is. The only bump in the road of getting my phone set up was transferring my settings and contacts to my new phone. While I can live with out just about everything on my old phone, my contacts are indispensable information I can't live with out. After digging through the iTunes settings I was able to determine my contacts weren't being synced all along!

I then started downloading the indispensable apps I need on my phone. At the top of that list: Facebook, NYTimes, Meebo (web), Solitaire, and Backgrounds

Load a file on the iPhone

If your application has settings or data stored in a file/database, you can't just load the file normally as you would in C/C++ in the current directory. First, to get a file on to the phone, it needs to be stored in the App bundle. This is accomplished by placing the file in the "Resources" directory of the XCode project. Files are stored on the phone in an application's bundle, so you need to query the iPhone for the path to your file. The following code will accomplish that for a file, "dictionary.db".

NSString *dbFilePath = [[NSBundle mainBundle]
                         pathForResource:@"dictionary"
                         ofType:@"db"];

New 3G Activation

My new (refurbished) iPhone 3G just arrived in the mail, and I started the activation process this morning. Unfortunately, the phone asked me to wait, and said that it could take a while...a long while. I find this a little puzzling, but hopefully it will finish in the next 8 hours.

Viximo and VixML

I attended a hack-fest for VixML sponsored by the folks at Viximo. Viximo, traditionally known for its digital goods platform, has released VixML as a quick and easy way to build an interactive iPhone App with a simple mark-up language. You don't need to know the ins and outs of OpenGL ES to develope for the iPhone. The lead developer for VixML, Chhean, went through creating an entire app including a flying space ship that could shoot passing asteroids.

I personally have been intimidated by developing an OpenGL app, but this development environment was simple and intuitive. I was impressed by technology but not the business model. Viximo will partner with VixML developers to release their App as part of the VixML App library, but at a cost of 50% of revenues.

iPhone App Launcher

Apple allows developers to register a URL protocol for launching an App. A number of developers have implemented this, and you can use it to launch many apps on your phone from the web. Try these on your iPhone:

Loopt (loopt://)

Where (where://)

Yelp (yelp://)

iPhone Screen Shot

Many people I have talked to didn't know about the iPhone screen shot feature. You can save a screen shot to your Photo Library by holding down the round home button and pressing the power button. The screen will flash when it saves the picture with your other pictures. This feature is great for application developers, or anyone wanting to record their high score on a game. What else have you used this for?