A few days ago I largely finished chapter 5 of my book where I explain how to print a sheet of QR stickers as well as individual serial number barcodes to roll-feed printers. The latter is a new capability of iOS 7 and extremely useful if all you want to print is a single label. This is why I picked the use case of a serial number barcode for my book. The assumption for the sample app is that you want to print a single serial number as Code 93 which you would stick to the back of some corporate IT hardware item.
Category Archive for ‘Reviews’ 
Nest Protect
The regional government of Lower Austria is currently doing a promotion where you can get smoke detectors at a discount. They are doing that to nudge more people to become interested in securing their homes from break-ins and fires. You get a detector with a 10-year battery for 16 Euros. This reminded me that I have like half a dozen of such detectors still in original packaging in the basement, never got around to installing them. Two reasons: we have rarely any open fire and they are boring.
MailChimp Launches iPad Editor
More than 3 million people use MailChimp to design and send email marketing campaigns. And today they launched a native iPad client that lets you create and edit such campaigns. For the parts of that which require rich text editing they rely on our DTRichTextEditor component.
iOS Developer Challenge
it is very rare that I review other developer’s apps; and usually only if they make use of one of my components. But for the iOS Developer Challenge I am making an exception. This app is quite unique as it is a fun mixture of being an iOS development game and education app.
Individual Learning App uses DTRichTextEditor
Stefan Zimmermann of CoSciCo kindly provided me with this testimonial about why and how they licensed DTRichTextEditor for their iLA app.
ILA (CS) is the first incarnation of the iLA platform and is designed with deep learning, easy knowledge sharing and project planning in mind. Well, sure you can also just take notes and “beam” them to a friend or colleague.
Excerpt, organize and share, thoughts, ideas, and knowledge topics in a natural way, – simple and fast, without the interruption of the flow of ideas by having to think how to organise it, first.
Stefan’s own words after the break.
Ziner Uses DTCoreText
You know I love to hear from developers who are making good use of my open source or commercial components in released apps. A shining example of lat is Ziner.
Ziner is the latest entry in the battle for the best Google Reader client, fighting it out with other heavyweights Reeder, Feedly, Flipboard, Mr. Reader, FeeddlerRSS and Newsify.
I asked Ziner’s developer Jay Zhao to share with us a bit of the back story of Ziner.
TWIT haunted by Cocoanetics
One day before the WWDC 2012 keynote a group of Austrians hired a car and drove north to Petaluma where the TWIT podcast studio is located. We have been long time fans of Leo Laporte and his prize-winning podcast pioneering. So we were delighted to be witnessing the taping of This Week in Tech #357.
One year before, when I attended my first WWDC I was less well organized and at this time Leo Laporte was still residing in what they called the “TWIT Cottage” a small house with next to no room for guests. But this year 2012 was different since just a few months earlier TWIT had raised enough money to move to their much larger current studio.
Because of this emailing ahead and reserving seats was but a formality.
DTCoreText Case Study: NMSTC
Despite some advances in rich text support coming in iOS 6 my DTCoreText open source project continues to prove its usefulness. First and foremost it provides the ability to convert simple HTML text into attributed strings to give you the ability to retain full control over the display of the text.
I love to receive mail telling me about where in real life DTCoreText finds good use. Especially so if it is used for good, like by the Nottingham Multiple Sclerosis Therapy Centre info app. A case study.
Getting Around San Francisco
There are multiple ways of maneuvering around San Francisco, whether you are attending WWDC or just in town to take in the air. Here’s a summary of some things that were not immediately obvious to me.
Updated: added info on Clipper.
iPhone User Interface Cookbook
A month ago I was contacted by PacktPub with a “Review Request” and was provided with a ePub copy of the book for this exact purpose. PacktPub – which I had never heard of before – apparently is trying to get traction on the iOS developer market with a dozen books on the subject matter. But this pales in comparison to the hundreds of books they published for non-iOS ecosystems (Microsoft, Web, Java, etc.)
Is it just me or does it seem like more and more iOS developer are hoping to supplement their living from getting book royalties?
At the end of my procrastination I sat down and forced myself to read the first half of the book, taking notes to give this book a fair and balanced review. A word of caution: this will be a tragic comedy of epic proportions.
In Austria we have a saying: “Nothing is useless, it can always serve as a bad example”. It is my hope that this bad example serves to improve the overall quality of literature on our favorite subject matter.
