Weather Hopper (weatherhopper.com) launched!

I'm really excited to wrtie about my newest project, Weather Hopper (http://WeatherHopper.com). What is it all about?

I like to describe Weather Hopper as ultimate source for worlds historical (and average) weather.

My project aims to answer questions like following:

• Are you looking for a nice place for vacations in February?
• Do you wonder what the weather migth be in French Alps during April?
• Do you want to make sure you are not going to hit rainy place in September?
• Or maybe you just want to find warm place in November somewhere in Asia?

Weather Hopper is all about that. It would be perfect for you if you are a permanent traveller, business person, weather geek or you just want to plan short vacation.

How it works?

Just explore the map and find places that suits your needs.

This is also great resource to check what the weather for your business trip might be.

Weather Hopper also shows you weather forecast and location pictures - everything is in one place.

You can also try search based navigation - just type in full name or starting letters - Weather Hopper will search our locations database for you.

Places

Please support Weather Hopper by subscribing to one of following channels:

http://facebook.com/WeatherHopper

http://twitter.com/WeatherHopper

Any ideas?

Please send your feedback to:

feedback@weatherhopper.com

Hope you'll like it!

Tech quickies: How to restore PowerPC support in Xcode 3.2.6

Starting from Xcode 3.2.6 Apple dropped support for PPC architecture. What is even worse there's a big chance that you won't event notice it - I didn't and it caused releasing Que 1.3 build without PPC architecture.

Fortunately there is still easy way to restore PowerPC builds in Xcode. To do that you just need to change settings for your build target (right click on target and choose "Get Info"). Your current settings (without PPC) should look like:

Click on current architecture (the one marked with red rectangle), popup menu will appear - choose "Other..." option, following sheet should appear:

Now you need to edit architecture list, Que app supports i386 and PPC so for my case I deleted $(ARCHS_STANDARD_32_64_BIT) and added two other architectures:

Click OK and you should be set up.

You can easily test if it works for you - make a new build and check if output binary contains selected architecture - to do that just use file program (Unix command line tool for determining type of FILEs):

mymachine:~ wojtek$ file ~/que/trunk/build/Release/Que.app/Contents/MacOS/Que 
/Users/wojtek/que/trunk/build/Release/Que.app/Contents/MacOS/Que: Mach-O universal binary with 2 architectures
/Users/wojtek/que/trunk/build/Release/Que.app/Contents/MacOS/Que (for architecture ppc7400): Mach-O executable ppc
/Users/wojtek/que/trunk/build/Release/Que.app/Contents/MacOS/Que (for architecture i386): Mach-O executable i386

As you can see everything worked fine and Que binary has 2 architectures. That's it.

Que 1.3.1 is out.

This release is mainly quick fix for missing PowerPC architecture - Apple dropped official support for this architecture in Xcode starting from version 3.2.6 - I didn't event notice that 1.3 build wasn't prepared PowerPC.

Fortunately there is easy way to make universal build in Xcode 3.2.6, which I will write about in Tech Quickies soon.

Update: There is new blog entry on restoring PowerPC architecture in Xcode 3.2.6.

Download Que 1.3.1 here.

Que 1.3 and Online dictionaries released!

New version of Que goes live. This long lasting phase of development and testing brings brand new category of features called Online dictionaries. Its main purpose is to provide possibility to share dictionaries via internet. Here's what you can do with it:

• browse list of dictionaries
• download dictionary you are interested in
• upload your dictionary

All features are build in application and are extremally easy to use. Here's example window with dictionary list:



Online dictionaries is all about community. It means that it's content is provided by and for users. It's free and to use key features you'll need to follow simple registration process (only nickname, e-mail address and password is required). Once you confirm your e-mail address you are all set up to use all new exciting features.

As usual, new version of Que also brings some usability improvements which hopefully will make your Que experience even better.

Are you already Que user? Do you have some dictionaries filled in? Contribute to Que project and upload your dictionaries.

Requirements

• Mac OS X 10.5 or Mac OS X 10.6
• Intel or PowerPC processor

Feedback

As usual comments, ideas, suggestions are welcome. Contact me at wojtek.janiszewski@gmail.com.

Download

Download Que 1.3 here

Project home page

Visit que.foomatik.com

Tech quickies: bulk mail, decent hyperlink matters!

Sending e-mails from your application can be tricky. Todays spam filters are doing really great job sorting out junk e-mails, but they also can be a problem for legit web creators. There are some resources on the internet about creating proper newsletters, the first thing you want to read is probably Bulk Senders Guidelines by Google.

Recently I bumped into problem registration e-mails were classified as spam, even with signed DKIM and all other juicy stuff. Long story short, the registration e-mail had registration confirmation hyperlink in it and obviously it was too long, ie:

http://host.tld/registration/confirmRegistration.do?id=123&confirmationCode=FJK947MNHL89BHGFJHMMNG

The solution was to cut link to shorter form, as ie:

http://host.tld/cr.do?id=123&cc=FJK947MNHL89BHGFJHMMNG

Happy 1st birthday Que!

I'm proud to announce that exactly one year ago first version of Que was released. This is my first such long term, non profit and personal project. Hope it will last for many years!

This is great occasion to show some numbers!

• over 1 year of development
• 2 different hosting providers used
• $3 donation received (thanks!)
• 5 versions released (1.0, 1.1, 1.1.1, 1.2, 1.2.1)
• almost 6 language versions (French in progress)
• 11 hours spent on website recovery after first provider server crash
• $54 spent on hosting providers, domain
• 119 returning users (10 and more application launches)
• 127 SVN commits
• 5754 que.foomatik.com visits
• 9523 lines of Objective-C code (without header files)
• 9823 downloads (+ downloads hosted outside foomatik.com)
• 13489 registered application launches (+ launches without internet access or without application update check)
• infinite amount of fun!

Thanks for staying with me!

Russian and Ukrainian translations for Que, 1.2.1 release is out.

Que 1.2.1 version is out! It's just quick release which brings Russian and Ukrainian translations (thanks to Alexander Zhurovich and Illarion Khapersky). Currently I'm actively involved in development of stunning features, scheduled for 1.3 release, stay tuned for details.

Download Que 1.2.1 here