It has been a while since our 1.0 release of I think I spider, but we have been working hard on a new major release with a couple of great improvements. Last week version 2.0 was approved by Apple and is available in the App Store.

While the new Android version is going to be released soon, I'll tell you all about the improvements of the iOS App.

One of the most impressive talks for me at WWDC 2010 was session 306 - "Automating Use Interface Testing with Instruments". I've been wanting to check it out ever since iOS 4 was released. A couple of weeks ago, I finally had a chance to give it a test ride using our very own App "I think I spider".

All you need to get started is an App, Instruments and some basic JavaScript skills. Apple provides a set of JavaScript libraries, that you can use to drive your tests and simulate user interaction. Your custom test scripts are run using the Automation Instrument in Apple's Instruments App, targeting your App either in the Simulator or on an actual device.

On Wednesday, I'll be giving a presentation on Apple's Game Center at the local CocoaHeads Group, here in Karlsruhe.

Game Center is Apple's social gaming network, that lets you invite friends to play, share your highscore and achievements through leaderboards and it even auto-matches you with other players for online-multiplayer games.

If you are interested in getting to know more about Game Center, drop by RetroGames on Wednesday 24th of November at 19:00.

When you enable Apple Push Notifications (APN) for your App, your device generates a unique device token and pass it to the didRegisterForRemoteNotificationsWithDeviceToken method in your App delegate. Usually, you'll hand the token to your server in order for it to push notifications to your device.

There are different tokens for production and sandbox, depending on which provisioning profile you build/sign your App with. One more gotcha, you need to be aware of when it comes to those device tokens: don't mix production and sandbox tokens!

Today we are proud to present our own very first App (it's actually our second Android App) that made it to the App Store and Android Market - I think I spider!

In corporation with Lars, a great designer from upstruct and the content from the hilarious website ithinkispider.com, we managed to release an App that hopefully puts a smile on your face every single day.

It has been a while since my last update on our efforts over at the mobile solutions blog.

The most important announcement was without any doubt the imminent release of our new side project: "I think I spider":

The "I think I spider"App idea was born, when we discovered the corresponding web site. We had so much fun with it, that we decided to bring all the joy to the major mobile platforms.

Although, we haven't revealed any specific features yet, reading our vast number of blog posts on "I think I spider", you've probably got an idea of what the App is gonna bring to you.

In the previous part of this series we took a look on how to develop mobile applications with plain HTML, CSS & JavaScript (furthermore refered to as the web stack). A few pieces of absolutely laid out CSS for the views, a dash of custom jQuery events for controller code invocation and standard in-browser SQLite access for the model -- every aspect of a MVC application should be accounted for, shouldn't it? Not quite ...

If you add a store to your app and use In App Purchases to collect your payments, there are a couple of limitations your have to live with. One of those limitations is not being able to fully test your App in the iPhone Simulator:

Store Kit does not operate in iPhone Simulator. When running your application in iPhone Simulator, Store Kit logs a warning if your application attempts to retrieve the payment queue. Testing the store must be done on actual devices.

Wie passt das alles zusammen? Ganz einfach ...
"Holla the woodfairy - holla die Waldfee". Was haben wir gelacht über diese und noch viele weitere "Übersetzungen" auf der Website "I think I spider". Und da lachen bekanntlich gesund ist, kamen wir schnell zu dem Entschluss noch mehr Menschen zum Lachen zu bringen. Was liegt da also näher, als eine iPhone App zu diesem Thema zu entwickeln? David Linsin, Ansprechpartner für den Geschäftsbereich Mobile Solutions, war sofort begeistert von dieser Idee und nahm Kontakt mit dem Betreiber der Website auf. Mit seiner Erlaubnis fiel der Startschuss für die unkommerzielle Entwicklung der App.

We improved our "I think I spider" App quite a bit since Beta 1. Among other stuff we added some nice sound effects. If you want to check it out, let us know and we'll hook you up!

If you are like me and not a big fan of sounds, you probably want to turn them off. That's why we provide a Settings Bundle, which lets you flip a switch in the Settings Application of your iOS device, in order to turn off sounds.

While implementing this feature, we ran into some pitfall with Settings Bundle's default values. You can define default values in the appropriate Root.plist, like this: