Mehr als einen Monat nach der ersten Veröffentlichung von Erntefrisch, freuen wir uns das nächste Release anzukündigen. Version 1.1 bringt eine verbesserte Benutzeroberfläche, eine umfangreicherere Datenbank und Bugfixes.

Die neue ‘Aktuell’ Anzeige macht es um einiges leichter, direkt zu wissen, welche Früchte zur Zeit Saison haben. So ist man sofort im Stande, beim Einkaufen die richtige Entscheidung zu treffen. Weitere Verbesserungen beziehen sich auf Suchfunktion sowie die Listendarstellung der Einträge.

Das neue Release ist zur Zeit bei Apple zur Review. Wir hoffen, dass das Update schon bald im App Store verfügbar sein wird im App Store unter der Kategorie Lifestyle zu finden. Um schon jetzt einen Eindruck von der neuen Version zu erhalten, lohnt sich ein Blick auf die Erntefrisch Webseite.

Nun geht es an das nächste Update. Das wird Unterstützung für Nordamerika mitbringen. Alle, die häufiger auch mal in den USA sind dürfen also gespannt auf Erntefrisch 1.2 sein :)

After more than a month since we released Seasons (Erntefrisch) 1.0 we are proud to announce the next Release. Version 1.1 comes with an improved user interface, a larger number of entries in the database and some bugfixes.

The new revised ‘Today’ screen makes it a lot easier to get to know which fruits are currently in season. So you will be able to know immediatly what to buy at the market. More improvements address the search screen and the presentation of the entries list.

The new release is currently beeing reviewed by Apple available at the App Store. Check out the Seasons website to have a look at the new release.

Btw.: the next update will bring support for the US and will be fully translated to English. So, watch out for 1.2 :)

A couple of months ago I joined the Google Android developer talk in Munich. At this time no device were available at all. (Sidenote: at this time Apple had not released it’s iPhone SDK). Now that the G1 from T-Mobile of America is available it’s time to think about supporting a new mobile platform.

So, we need to learn the SDKs to create amazing apps. But whenever I think about mobile development my experience in J2ME comes to my mind. Which means 10% idea, 30% development, 60% testing and debugging. Incredible buggy implementations of J2ME on different devices finally stopped me from developing further Java apps for mobiles.

After hearing from Android and the iPhone SDK I wanted to give mobile app development a new chance. The Android SDK is based on Eclipse which is fine. I already had some experience using this IDE. Furthermore Android is Java programming. So, many Java developers should be aware of this new platform.

To create iPhone Apps you have to use Xcode. Which was fine for me too because I did all my ActionScript 2.0 development on Xcode. If you don’t have any experience in Xcode it takes some time to get used to it (setting the Layout setting in Xcode preferences to “All in One” is definitely the best advice I can give for Xcode starters and Eclipse developers). Maybe the major difficulty is learning Objective-C. From what I can say. After a few days with lots of question marks flowing around your head you will see that it’s not that far from other objective programming languages you might already know. Just having the message syntax

[object methodWithParam:param];

instead of the well known dot syntax

object.method(param);

But well, you might want to chose one SDK for now. So maybe it’s not worth learning Objective-C. Looking at the features, Android might be better. It offers background processes and stuff like that.

Coming from a designers background I often create apps that don’t need to run in background. It’ll be more about apps that could turn into some advertising campaign or something. So there have to be a smart idea or even a funny game idea and the app development will start. That’s being said a lot of work will go into user interface and interaction design.

In J2ME almost everything was done via programming. Creating user interfaces for Android and iPhone is lot easier using an Editor in Eclipse (Android) or the Interface Builder (iPhone). Well, and that’s definitly the victory for Apple. The Android Editor does help a lot … in comparison to J2ME. But Interface Builder does a really great job. Sometimes I think it’s even easier to get something to work than using Flash.

So for now Apple has won this round. But as you may know. The first iPhone SDK Beta Release had almost no Interace Builder support. Google will hopefully strengthen the development on this part. For my perspective they have to.

G1. That’s the name of the device that will be officially announced next week by T-Mobile USA … just to remind myself checkin the news on tuesday

Special page about my Mobile Gaming project is now online. Short summary for all of you who didn’t have a chance to see it live, yet:

Have you ever asked yourself what possibilities are in mobile gaming except than porting one PC game after another to different handsets? So was I and I finally came up with some experiments about what people are able to play games using there mobile phones.

Test scene of one of the games. Wheel In is kind of roulette.

Two days ago I went pretty spontaneously to Munich. Google was presenting its new mobile platform “Android”. I had the hope to get an answer if this new platform finally makes the development of mobile applications easier without all the trouble knewn by J2ME.

First half of the session was kind of disappointing because the Google guys did show the same stuff I previously saw on Youtube and the Android documentation. It became more interesting in the afternoon.

First, they announced a new version of the SDK that will be out very soon. And this new version will have a lot of improvements (more consistent user interface, more APIs and bugfixes). Second, they came up with some interesting details which let me look forward to the first devices available in 2nd half this year. Another interesting aspect was the discussion with others who joined the Google session. Obviously I was not the only one who minimizes activity in J2ME because others went also into trouble distributing their apps to different devices. And starting C++ for developping apps for Windows Mobile or Symbian does not sound like an option.