My home on the web

Today I’m bringing a selection of three iOS apps that I’ve been using lately. Hope you find them useful as I did.

Weather+

This first app is a weather app.

As with all weather apps, it shows you the weather, gives you forecasts and can have multiple locations.

However, you have a nice home screen, with a lot of detail and a animated background that changes based on the weather forecast.

Sure is not something important, but it looks nice and they also have a free version supported with ads.

Theodolite

This is a really cool app that makes use of all the iPhone sensors.

It gives different information like altitude, baring, position, angles, and so on.

It also uses the camera to generate the background image, so you can use it to align something on a wall for example.

It has a free and a paid version, with the free version being supported by ads as usual.

Fit It!

This last one is a game that although it might look like Tetris, it has a very different objective.

Basically you get different shapes, and with them you need to create a square. Sounds simple? It isn’t, as you get trough the game, it actually gets harder.

The game is free on its full version, and new levels are added by the community every day. Be sure to check this one out.

This will be all for today. Next time I’ll be back with a couple more selected apps for iOS.

Well, today I updated the iOS on the iPhone to version 4.3 beta 3.

So far so good. The phone seems as fast as usual, battery usage is normal as well. I noticed two new features (besides the AirPlay which I can’t test): we now can see which apps use the location services, and my favorite, we can now create a personal wifi, which basically turns the phone into a hotspot.

I’m guessing in a couple of weeks we should have the final version, hopefully

Well, today I got a MacBook. It was something that was long due, and because of the scare with the Dell, something that was going to be mandatory.

But, since I got the Dell up and running again, I was going to delay the purchase of the Mac. However I found a nice deal for a used one, so, I couldn’t let this one go by.

It’s not the latest one, but for what I want is good enough (although I need to upgrade the memory from 1GB to 2GB). It’s going to be used mainly to make some experiences at home developing for iOS, so who knows, maybe I’ll come up with a nice ideia like the Angry Birds game :p

So I guess now the circle is completed: iPod mini -> iPod nano -> iPod touch -> iPhone 4 -> MacBook

PS: And finally went cycling after a long time. It’s still freezing, so it hurts to cycle on this cold, and the chain needs WD40 after all the rain it has poured over it!

Well it looks like my laptop is dead for good. After calling tech support they reckon it needs a replacement board.

Guess it will be time to look into a MacBook.

EDIT: And is working again No need to replace the motherboard. Just need to replace the cable that goes from the board to the power button.

Hello all. It’s been a while since I’ve posted something here.

Lately I’ve been trying this tweet plugin to push my tweets to my blog, but it was time I wrote something bigger for a change.

So, I’ve been developing for the iPad for a week now. It’s been a good experience so far, and although I’m doing a simple app, I definitely enjoy more building for the iPad then for the smaller devices. Its so much easier to work with a larger screen.

This also made me come back to an old project I had for a web game. I finished part of the game engine today, and hopefully a couple more week(ends) and it will have the engine finished. Since the web is by now full of web based games, so I want to make something different with this one: you’ll still be able to play on a browser (and even for testing and balancing is probably easier), but afterwards the plan is to build an richer interface for the iPad reusing all the backend already developed and tested by the community.

It’s definitely a large endeavour just for one, but is about time I start finishing the projects that have been left under the desk for a long time now.

Well, now is bed time, because this will be a very very veeeery busy week :p. Cheers.