iPhone - Programming Blog

Posts Tagged ‘iPhone’

20 Mar 2010

Let me paint you a picture (no pun intended): You’re about to move into a new place but have yet to paint the rooms to your liking. How do you know which colours will suit you best? Colour swatches are handy but they leave a lot to the imagination. Think of the distraught when you realise that the colour you painted didn’t turn out like how you pictured it to be.

PaintingWalls is a simple iPhone app that will help you to decide there and then. It simulates different paint colours on your walls and lets you make an informed decision. It usually retails for $0.99 but we have 25 codes to give away.

This giveaway runs for a little under 48 hours and will end tomorrow, 21 March 2010 at 2100hrs PST. Grab them quick!

In order to use PaintingWalls, you’ll need an image to work with. Either load it from your camera roll or take a new image. This iPhone application was designed to help simulate different colours on clear, empty walls but it works just fine if the room is furnished, as you can see from the middle image below. I was in Ikea yesterday and took a snapshot of a dimly lit Swedish living room. Tap the colour palette to select any colour (although its best to select a colour that contrasts the original colour of the wall you’re trying to paint), you can change the colour later.

After selecting a colour, tap on an area in the image you wish to fill with paint. The app will try to “fill” the surrounding similar coloured areas. Then here’s the fun part. Tap and hold the screen then move your finger in either a clockwise or counter-clockwise direction to expand/contract the painted area. Don’t try to expand until the entire wall is filled with paint — it doesn’t work that way. What you should do is tap on an unfilled area and expand the paint separately. Pretty soon, you’ll have the entire wall painted (even with furniture acting as obstacles). Now, you may use the colour palette to select a new colour and it will automagically replace the paint’s colour in your image.

Go ahead and experiment! Change the colour until you find something you like. If the image of your room is poorly lit (like mine was), PaintingWalls has this really cool feature which lets you optimise the paint according to the lighting in the room. When you’re done, it will allow you to save the image, send it to someone via email or share it on Facebook and/or Twitter.

PaintingWalls is a pretty easy tool to use and it really helps cut down on unexpected events when adding colour to your new home. We have 25 codes to share with MakeUseOf readers within the next 48 hours!

How do I become a winner?

It’s simple. Just follow the steps.

STEP 1
	Join our Facebook page by clicking on the Become a Fan button on the left. If you can’t see the fanbox, click on this link. If you’re already a fan, skip this step.

STEP 1

Join our Facebook page by clicking on the Become a Fan button on the left. If you can’t see the fanbox, click on this link.

If you’re already a fan, skip this step.

STEP 2
Share	Share this post with your friends by clicking on the Share button on the left.

STEP 3
	In the comments section below, fill in your name, email address, paste the link to your Facebook profile in the URL field and tell us why you’d like to win. Make sure to enter your real email address so that we can contact you if you win!

STEP 3

In the comments section below, fill in your name, email address, paste the link to your Facebook profile in the URL field and tell us why you’d like to win.

Make sure to enter your real email address so that we can contact you if you win!

This giveaway will end on Sunday, 21 March 2010 at 2100hrs PST. Be sure that you grab them quick — first come, first served! Codes will be sent to winners via email after the giveaway is over. Have fun!

MakeUseOf would like to thank Xavier from Enginy Studios for his generosity while participating in this giveaway. Interesting in sponsoring? We’d love to hear from you. Get in touch with us via email.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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Tags: colour palette, colour swatches, coloured areas, empty walls, iPhone, middle image, new colour, new image, paint colours

Notes for week #250

In: web resources

20 Mar 2010

It’s been a while since the last time I wrote weekly notes. We’ve been busy – a good thing, no doubt. Since the time we announced we were only doing a total of 4 consulting gigs this year, we’ve accepted one and have a second one on the deal table. We’re quite happy with the self-imposed constraint – it gives us more time to work on things we’re really passionate about (both personally and collectively).

Goplan has been growing steadily, which is definitely exciting. Having companies like Boxee or Mozilla – both of whom we’re big fans of – using the product means we’re doing at least something right. Tiago has been working with our new credit card payment gateway to finally bring credit card processing into the application and dump Paypal, which will make it easier for us to change our pricing, give accounts away or offer discounts. Meanwhile, I’ve been tightening pixels inside the application, improving things one page at a time (no app is ever truly “done”).

We’ve been thinking a lot about the iPhone and the iPad. We have ideas we want to try out on both platforms and we can’t wait to finally begin in a week or two when the bulk of the stuff we’re working on gets done. It’s weird that we’ve been on the development program since day 1 and haven’t been able to dedicate much time to it.

Conference season is right around the corner. We’ll be at Ux-Lx, Shift and Switch in the next couple of months – hopefully others later in the year ^[1]. My new talk on entrepreneurship – a follow-up to the Lessons Learned talk I did way too many times last year – is on the light table and I’m quite excited about it. If you’re in or around Lisbon in a few weeks, you may catch it at Shift. Thanks to a partnership we just did with Adaptive Path, we’re probably heading out to UXWeek in San Francisco in August as well ^[2].

Speaking of conferences, we’re organizing a startup contest at Switch Conference this year and all the details on it are coming this monday. We’re excited to see what people around us have been working on – that should be pretty good.

Have a great weekend!

Footnotes

^[1] It’s a shame that there will be no Reboot in 2010, but I’m sure Thomas needs a rest. Reboot is a delightful conference that everyone should experience at least once. I hope someone else steps up to organize a conference to fill its shoes this year.

^[2] If you’ve read our notes for week #241 you know we’re thinking of moving out to the bay for a couple of months – for the change of air, mostly -, so it may end up being that we head out to UXWeek and just stick around.

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Tags: credit card payment, credit card processing, ipad, iPhone, no doubt, payment gateway, PayPal, Tiago, year 1

Apple Starts Accepting iPad Apps for Review

In: IT news

20 Mar 2010

Let the iPad content free-for-all begin.

: European Pressphoto Agency

Apple today told media companies and software developers that the company is starting to accept iPad applications for review and approval. Until now, developers have been working feverishly on new applications, but they didn’t know when Apple would start green lighting content for the tablet computer, which debuts April 3.

As it has done for each of the more than 150,000 apps available for the iPhone, Apple is pre-screening all applications for the iPad.

“Now Accepting iPad Apps,” read the subject line of the email Apple sent to developers. “Submit your iPad app now for an initial review by the App Review Team and receive feedback on its readiness for the grand opening,” Apple said. (”Grand opening” appears to be Apple-speak for the April 3rd iPad release date.)

The company set a March 27 deadline — at 5 p.m. Pacific time — for developers to submit their apps in time for the initial iPad release.