Introducing MyHeritage app for iPhone & iPad – share family moments, discover your family history and keep in touch with the people you love anytime, anywhere.

MyHeritage app version 1.0 features:

* Your family tree on the go

* New profile pages, designed especially for mobile devices

* Easy photo sharing – capture, share and store family moments

* Sync with your family site on MyHeritage.com

* Fun celebrity look-alike feature (no login required!)

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Are you a developer?

The Family Graph API provides simple access to the core features and data on MyHeritage.com. The API lets developers create applications using the MyHeritage dataset. It presents a simple, consistent view of the data, with uniform representation of the objects in the graph such as users, sites, trees, individuals, photos and sources; and the connections between them including site memberships, family relationships and photo tags.

Read more about the Family Graph API at:  http://www.familygraph.com/

You can include the Family Graph API in your iOS apps using the Family Graph iOS SDK that I authored.  If you have used the Facebook Connect SDK you will feel right at home using the Family Graph API SDK for iOS.  You can find the SDK on Github:  https://github.com/myheritage/familygraph-ios.

Memories HD

Memories HD for iPad is an exciting new game that returns you to your memories. Memories HD is a memory matching game that uses your photos to create stunning game cards to play with. Relive your memories with Memories HD. Memories HD has a refreshing approach to traditional memory matching games allowing you to fully customize the memories you play with.

With Memories HD, gamers can create different decks of cards featuring photos of friends and family members on the face of each card. Gameplay is for one to four players, and families can enjoy reminiscing as they play. The game creates a six by six matrix of face down cards, and players must correctly find and match the 18 pairs hidden in the array. Based on the traditional card matching game, variously known as Concentration, Memory, Pelmanism, or Pairs, this personalized version of the game in Memories HD is especially enjoyable to play.

Gameplay is simple. The first player touches one of the 36 face down cards, revealing its face. Then the player attempts to touch the face down card that is the unique match. The second card touched, it flips to reveal its face. If it is a match the player scores and gets another turn, and the two cards are removed from the board, and if it is not a match, both cards are again turned face down. If there is more than one player, play proceeds by turns. If it is a solitaire game, the single player continues. The game challenges players to remember the identity and location of each card revealed so they can create matches during their turn. Decks of 18 different card pairs can be created from photos stored on the user’s mobile device or from Facebook photos.

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Feature Highlights:

• Play with up to four players
• You chose the card images
• Crystal clear card rendering
• Photo album integration
• Facebook integration
• Multiple deck management

How to play:

After downloading Memories HD tap the red app icon with your finger.  Before you can create a new game you will need to create at least one deck of cards to play with.

Follow these steps to create your first deck:

1. Tap the Personalize button in the main menu.
2. Tap the plus button on the top right hand corner of the Memories screen.
3. Three tabs are displayed. The first tab will contain a list of all your albums available on your iPad. The second tab will allow you to view all your Facebook photo albums after you connect the app with your account. The final tab will contain the photos you select.
4. Select one of the first two tabs. Select an album from the list. The next view will display all the photos in this album.
5. Tap photos to add them to the Selected Photos tab. (TIP: Select photos that are visually distinct. If you have many similar photos in a deck it will be harder to find matches during a game.)
6. Once you have selected 18 photos a blue save button will appear in the top bar of this window. Tap this button.
7. Enter a name in the text box and click OK.
8. Once your album is created you will see it in your Memories screen.
9. Go back to the main menu and tap Quick Game to start a new game.

These days it is vital to keep track of your social status online. Facebook does a great job of maintaining your list of friends. With the hustle and bustle of today’s life it is easy to let some of your friends feel neglected. When this happens your friend is likely to defriend you. Facebook does nothing to alert you to this and by the time you realize, your former friend is not talking to you anymore.

Enter Friend Keeper!

Friend Keeper keeps you on top of your friends. It will monitor your friend connections and alert you if anyone decides to defriend you. You can easily see your list of friends and former friends within the app.

For a limited time Friend Keeper will be offered at the reduced price of only 99 cents. Get Friend Keeper today and keep your friends forever!.

In my last project, my client wanted me to display photos is a timeline horizontally. In addition to flicking the photos I needed to support a next and previous button. I implemented this by calling [self.scrollView moveToPageAtIndex:currentPage+1 resetEdges:YES]; on my scrollview. This worked to show the next photo however, it did not animate the scroll. This was a big problem for the client.

I went about searching the internet for solutions. I only found others asking the same question. So i proceded to create my own solution.

I didn’t want to do anything too fancy so I came up with this code for my next and previous button handlers:

-(IBAction)nextImage:(id)sender
{
UIView *nextView = [self.scrollView pageAtIndex:currentPage + 1];
UIView *thisView = [self.scrollView pageAtIndex:currentPage];

[self.scrollView moveToPageAtIndex:currentPage-1 resetEdges:YES];
}


The code is pretty straightforward. It does the following:
1) Retrieve a pointer to the current and next/previous view.
2) Create CGRects to indicate where the two views will move to.
3) Set up UIView animations to animate the movement of the two views.
4) Finally, call moveToPageAtIndex on the scrollview to update the scrollview.

This works quite nicely. I would like to hear your comments and any other solutions you come up with. Feel free to comment.

I hope this helps out,

Dov

I have decided to upload a version of the control I developed that has the same function of UISwitch. Mainly, the ability to indicate the on/off state of the control. My switch inherits from UIControl. This allows me to send events like [self sendActionsForControlEvents:UIControlEventValueChanged]; when the state of the switch changes.

To simplify this example I have made the switch out of a PNG included in the sample. To change the background you could change the UIImage. I recommend changing the code in drawRect to draw the UISwitch the way you want. You could include a public property to set the background color and use it in drawRect.

You can download the source code from here: DGSwitch.

Enjoy and let me know what you think in the comments below.

Dov

YNet is Israel’s leading source for news online. YNet for iphone allows you to stay up to date on current events in Israel. See the latest news with embedded movies in articles. Weather information is at your fingertips. See more at YNet’s website.

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I spent the next two weeks watching Stanford University’s iPhone lectures during my train rides to work each day.  I quickly learned all about Objective C and Apple’s strict guidelines for deploying apps on the Apple App Store.  I would like to share some of my experiences with you here.

If you are serious about iPhone development then the following are absolutely required:

1) Mac – for developing

2) iPhone – for debugging

3) Apple Developer Account – to install apps on your iPhone

4) xcode – iPhone SDK version

5) a little patience

OK,  now I am sure some of you are not thrilled at the idea of having to shell out your hard earned cash on that Mac you are going to need.  Some of you might even think about taking a PC and “turning” it into a Mac by downloading some version of the OSX86 project.  I highly recommend getting a Mac that supports the latest version of xcode.  Your life as an iPhone developer will be much easier.

Next you should get yourself an iPhone.  This is important since you will need to test any app you create on a device before you upload it to apple for approval.  The simulator included with xcode is great but, it will not come close to showing you what your actual user experience is going to be.  The simulator is running on your computer and therefore the CPU is faster,  battery is a non-issue and any animations you create will perform very well.  Testing on a device will also reveal any memory leaks you may have so you can figure out how to fix ‘em.

Next I recommend getting a developer license.  Head on over to:http://developer.apple.com/devcenter/ios/index.action.  Here you will find a great deal of help.  Take some time to read some of the How-Tos and watch some of the videos.   If you don’t already have an Apple ID create one and login.  You don’t have to pay any money just yet.  You can download xcode for free.  The first time you will have to worry about money is when you want to start testing on your device.  You will need to purchase an annual license to be a member of the Apple Developer Program.  The cost is 99 dollars.

Once you download xcode run the installer.  When it is done find it in your Application folder and run it.  You will get the following window:

Xcode Opening Window.

Xcode Opening Window

Click on: Create a new Xcode project.

The next window will look something like this:

Xcode Project Types.

Xcode Project Types.

Go ahead and select Navigation based application.  Also,  select the check box for Core Data.  Core Data is described here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Core_Data and a great tutorial is here:http://blog.sallarp.com/iphone-core-data-uitableview-drill-down/.

Once you complete the new project wizard your xcode window will look something like this:

Xcode Project Window.

Xcode Project Window

Now I will briefly explain what the folders and items are in the xcode project.  The blue icon at the top represents the project and double clicking on it will open a window to configure project properties.  In this window you will be able to configure things like build output folder,  target os,  and developer certificate configuration.  It is a good idea to open this window and look through it to familiarize yourself with what is available.  However,  when getting started it is not likely you will have to touch any of these settings.

The next folder is called Classes.  This is where you can (and should) store all your classes that will make up your models, controllers, and views.  Xcode won’t enforce any of this, but it is a good idea to keep your code organized into logical sections.

Other sources starts out containing a *.pch file and your application’s main.m file.  Your application will run in a loop.  It will listen for user interaction and other events from the system and process them in the main run loop.  You will most likely never touch this file.  The *.pch file is your pre compiled header.  It is not necessary to ever edit this file.  However,  sometimes you will want to define some application level constants using #define and this is a good place to put them.  This way all your constants will be available throughout your application.

The resources folder will contain your application images,  sounds,  database diagrams (if using core data) and any XIB files you create to represent your views.  I usually add subfolders to store the images and XIBs separately so I can easily find the file I want to work on later.

Frameworks contains libraries that are used in your application.  For example, if you want to add support for Maps to your application you would right click on this folder and select add existing Framework.  In the popup that shows next select the MapKit.framwork folder and click OK.  The folder already comes configured with the most commonly used Frameworks.  UIKit contains the views like buttons,  switches,  view controllers and labels your app will use.  Foundation contains objects to represent strings,  url requests,  dates and other such datatypes.  If you open the folder with the arrow next to it you can see the header files included with each framework.  This will help determine what each framework can do.  Coregraphics is used to draw on the screen.  Lastly,  CoreData contains the headers to support the coredata feature we selected when opting for coredata support when we created our app.

The Products folder contains a shortcut to your app.  Until you first compile your app it will show up in red text indicating that Xcode cannot find it in the specified location.  This is fine.

Targets contains references to your application bundle.  Here you can configure what headers and source files and XIBs will get compiled into your app.  More often this will just happen on its own and it will be rare that you have to even venture inside this folder.

Executibles contains a reference to you app as an executable.  Double clicking on the contents will show a window where you can configure items such as launch parameters.

Find results will contain active project searches.  Select Edit -> Find -> Find In Project…  to bring up the project find window.  Once you do a search you can close the window and the results will appear here as well.

Bookmarks will contain your project bookmarks.  To add a bookmark simply press Command+D while at a particular line of code and type a name.  The newly created bookmark will appear in the Bookmarks folder of your Xcode project.

SCM will contain information regarding source control management.  I will not go into particulars here but it is worth looking up.

The Project Symbols smart group, one of the built-in smart groups provided by Xcode, allows you to view all of the symbols defined in your project. You can sort symbols by type, name, file, and file path, and you can search for symbols that match a string. To see the symbols defined in your project, select the Project Symbols smart group in the Groups & Files list. The detail view displays the symbols in your project.

The last two items are smart folders that contain your projects implementation (*.m) and XIB files.

The project that we added sets up a basic app for you that contains the following important classes

1) DemoAppDelegate – This is your app’s delegate class.

2) RootViewController – This is the view controller that is first displayed.

3) Demo.xcdatamodel – This contains the CoreData Entity Diagram.

4) MainWindow.xib – the first XIB file used to define the view.

5) RootViewController.xib – Defines the view used in the RootViewController.

If you click the build and run button you will see the following running inside the simulator window:

Xcode Simulator Window.

Xcode Simulator Window

This is what you for free when creating a new UINavigation based project.

To get you started I will show you the code that gets the view up and the code that handles the buttons displayed.

Inside the DemoAppDelegate.m file you will see a function like this:

- (BOOL)application:(UIApplication *)application didFinishLaunchingWithOptions:(NSDictionary *)launchOptions {

}

 

As the name implies this function is run when the application is done starting up for the first time.  The navigationController which is defined inside the MainWindow.xib file is added as the main view of the window.  The navigationController contains a root view controller called RootViewController that contains the code for the buttons that are used to edit and add new items to the table view.

Inside the RootViewController.m file there is a function:

- (void)viewDidLoad {

}

This function adds the edit button defined in the RootViewController.xib file as the navigation bar’s left bar button item.  A new add button is added with an action of insertNewObject.

- (void)insertNewObject {

}

This function accesses the Managed Context and adds a new item to the database.  If you read the tutorial on CoreData provided above, you will know all about how the table view is automatically updated.

Please go through the rest of the code.  This project is a great starting point and will get you started as an iPhone developer.

Do you like letting your friends know how you are feeling? Do you sometimes find it difficult to express exactly how you feel? When you are short for words QuoteUp is here for you! Simply install the QuoteUp iPhone app and you are on your way to intriguing your friends.

QuoteUp works by just giving your iPhone or iTouch a shake and presenting you with a great quote each time. Of course you can update your Facebook status right from the app. So no matter where you are your friends know whats on your mind, even if you didn’t think of it yourself!

QuoteUp gives you access to OVER 10,000 quotes in over 40 categories.

If you find a quote you like QuoteUp allows you to save it in your favorites so you can easily find it again.s.

Let your friends know by clicking the “Quote It” button to send the quote to your Facebook status..

QuoteUp allows you to search through our large database of quotes using live search. Just start typing and QuoteUp starts working for you.

QuoteUp has over 40 categories including:
Songs
Poems
Love
Kids
Law
Literature
Men and Women
News
Politics
Riddles
Sports
Work
Food
Fortunes
… and many more.

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Can’t take your eyes off your iPhone? Now you don’t have to. TypeWrite allows you to keep your eyes on what you type while keeping you alerted to your surroundings.

TypeWrite uses your iPhone’s camera to show you what is going on around you while you type away. Easily update your Facebook status or Twitter Tweets from within the app. You are also able to copy text to use in other apps on your iPhone with the click of a button. Compose and send emails right from within the app.

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This app is for singles looking for fun all over the world. 4Singles uses the location services built into the iPhone to help locate singles in your area. You can befriend, rate and interact with the hottest singles in your area. This app features advance chatting capabilities including the ability to send voice messages to others.

This app was recently reviewed on YNet.

This app was recently reviewed on Calcalist.

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