As with most things, the amount of work we as developers see when starting an iOS application is just the tip of the iceberg. There’s artwork, “About” screens, tutorial pages, icons, the app’s website, and all the marketing the app needs to get it out there. Even writing the app’s description or taking screenshots for the App Store is a time-consuming process. So anything I can do to cut down on the time needed to release my app, the better I am. Therefore when I decided to have myDrumPad translated to other languages to widen my user-base, I wanted to do make it as painless as possible.

I tried tried to have friends and family who understood foreign languages help with translations, and while they were very well intentioned it really didn’t work out in the end.  What I discovered was that there really is no substitute for hiring a trained professional.  But luckily it doesn’t have to be outrageously expensive. Read on for more.

I’m a fairly decent web designer.  I’m not great by any stretch of the imagination, but I’m not really visually creative.  I tend to express my creativity in the apps I build, as well as in my writing.  So given the fact that I’m really proficient in CSS and HTML, I can make simple web applications look good if I don’t have the help of a designer.  That being said nothing replaces a great UI designer, who are worth their weight in gold!

Last night while watching TV I had a conversation with my wife Deanna that made me realize that she is, as far as I’m concerned, a Jedi Knight.

I never really have that much of an appetite, and it’s not uncommon for me to skip meals altogether.  Since yesterday we had a late lunch, I ended up skipping dinner.  Normally it wouldn’t be a big deal, except that I thought I’d forage for a little snack in the evening.  After a cursory scan through the kitchen I didn’t find anything that sat comfortably below my laziness threshold, so I decided to forego eating anything at all.

While developing myDrumPad, I came across an interesting problem for my in-app purchase support. The app allows users to download additional packs of sounds (referred to as “sound packs” in the app) that they can use to tap out songs and rhythms. The sound packs themselves were a collection of CAF-encoded uncompressed PCM audio files, with a single configuration file describing the labels and arrangement of the sound files on the drum pad’s grid of buttons.

I wanted to be able to add additional sound packs without issuing a new release of the app, but since the information describing the sound packs is largely static, I didn’t want to have to worry about maintaining a dynamic server for the app to continue functioning. I wanted it to largely be “fire and forget”.

What I came up with is, I think, a best of both worlds. The app functions without needing me to maintain a server, but I can still dynamically add additional resources to the app instantly.  Read on to find out more.

Today, I’m proud to announce that I’m officially a Canadian Citizen!  I’ve lived in Canada for 7 years now and almost all of my family lives here, but since I was born in California, I’ve technically been an American for all that time…until today.

No longer will I have to sheepishly explain myself when US teams play against the Canucks.  No longer will I have to carry a stupid Permanent Resident card with me when flying home to Canada.  And probably most importantly, I no longer will I have to worry about losing my immigrant status if I need to stay out of the country for more than 6 months in a year.

I’ve been working recently on getting more exposure to my existing apps, especially myDrumPad.  It’s a fun app, and I have a few more updates that are in the works when I get a couple of free weekends, but frankly I’d like to see its sales figures climb a bit higher than they are now.  Of course, if you’re an iOS developer, you’ll know the biggest thing that can improve your sales rankings is to be featured on the AppStore.  A large part of getting featured is left up to lucky chance, but to improve your odds, one of the things you can do is to target Apple employees with Facebook ads of your application.  Read on to see the results I’ve had so far.

I’ve been considering starting a new project recently, and have been torn: Should I create my project using Three20, or should I use UIKit directly?  I know Three20 is supposed to help by making applications easier to develop, but what does it really buy me as a developer?  In my experience, most of my time with Three20 has been spent working around its various quirks.  And from what I can tell from my recent research, it doesn’t seem so straight-forward to support Universal applications across iPhone and iPad devices.

Because of my friend Chris Simmons, I’m going to try my hand at NaBloPoMo, the National Blog Posting Month. As if people didn’t write enough drivel on the Internet when they have something substantial to say, people are encouraged to blog even more with nothing at all to motivate them.

Okay…I’ll bite. I’ve been meaning to be more consistent in my blogging lately anyway. So starting today, I’m going to attempt to blog every day for the duration of this month. After all, I was somewhat upset over the fact that I didn’t have time to participate In NaNoWriMo yet again this year. So if I can limit myself to a blog post per day, perhaps next year I can finally get myself to the point that I can finish a draft of that SciFi novel vie been meaning to write for years.

Some of you who follow me on Twitter may have noticed recently that I’ve been talking about working for a new company.  This week is my first week working for Salesforce.com.  I’m really excited about the move for a number of reasons, some of which I’ll go into here.

As of this past Monday, I’m now a full-time iOS developer, instead of being limited to evenings and weekends.  I’m a new addition to an amazing team of developers at Salesforce.com developing apps to be released to the App Store, utilizing their amazing cloud-computing infrastructure.  From a technology standpoint this is right up my alley, and the company seems to have a great commitment to quality, agility and a good work environment.

I’m an avid “Idea Man”.  I love coming up with new ideas; for iPhone apps, for web apps, and even for real-world inventions.  Most of my ideas only sound great in my head, but when I open my mouth the idea seems to turn sour.  A smaller number of ideas manage to survive the thought-to-word boundary.  An even smaller minority of those ideas manage to make it down onto my “Idea Book” that I use to keep track of all the potential projects I’m going to work on.  Admittedly it’s not so much a single “book” as a collection of binders, scraps of paper, and in some cases 3×5 index cards.