Archive for October, 2008

The road to 2.0

Sunday, October 12th, 2008

As I mentioned before, the development of TimeTracker has reached a stable plateau with the release of TimeTracker 1.2 on October 7th. Currently, I do not plan to release any new features and wil only offer bugfixes if necessary.

Instead, work has begun on the next major version of TimeTracker. Basically, it will be a complete rewrite with a lot more new features. Because I’m only working on the application part-time I’m happy that I found someone to work with me on this project: Péter Fankhauser. Soon after the first release of TimeTracker was out he got in touch with me to share his toughts about a time tracking application. Besides the various feature suggestions he brings in his graphical design skills, a talent I clearly miss. The current logo of TimeTracker shows this without any doubt.

Currently, we are compiling a catalog of features we want to have in the new version. Additionally, prototypes of the new views are created and discussed. As always, we incorporate the critics and feature requests of our users to offer them a more useful application.

Over the course of the next weeks we will post details about the progress of the development on this site. In the meantime, if you have any feature requests or want to support us as a beta tester please post a comment.

Posted in TimeTracker | 19 Comments »

App Store listing order

Tuesday, October 7th, 2008

Last week, Apple published changes to the App Store. There’s a really great article at AppleInsider which provides details about the changes.

One of the changes affects the way applications are listed in their category. There’s a good blogpost by Krishna Vegesna which describes the consequences of the previous ordering of the applications. With the latest changes to the App Store applications are sorted by the date they were first release now. However, the release date can be easily changed by the application developer via the iTunes Connect website. The related form field can be found on the “Pricing” tab when editing the application information. Changing the date almost immediately results in updates to the App Store.

To see if there is an actual loop hole I have set the release date for TimeTracker to October 7th this morning. And indeed there is a problem! So this could be easily exploited by developers who want to push the sales of their applications artificially.

However, the changes to the release date seems to affect only the sorting of the application in its primary category which is a little confusing, too.

I hope that Apple will offer a solution to this problem soon to provide the same chances to all developers and all the apps on the store!

Tags:
Posted in iPhone Development | No Comments »

Localizations

Tuesday, October 7th, 2008

For the next version of TimeTracker, 1.2.1, only minor bugfixes are planned. New features will only be available in the next major version, 2.0.

However, since there are people all around the world who use TimeTracker, I would like to offer a localized version. Currently, TimeTracker only supports the languages English and German. I already have the translations for Polish and Spanish. I hope to get French and Italian translations soon. I think that these will be pretty accurate although the latter ones will be provided by non-native speakers.

If you would like to see a localized version for your country, please drop me a note. I will send you 6 words which need to be translated. If you are a native speaker of one of the languages mentioned above I would be happy if you could check if the translation is appropriate.

Posted in TimeTracker | No Comments »

TimeTracker 1.2 released

Tuesday, October 7th, 2008

For the first time I received official notification from Apple which tells me that TimeTracker is “Ready for Sale” now. It’s not available on the App Store yet, at least in the German version, but I expect it to show up in a few hours.

As mentioned before, it brings one of the most frequently requested features: modification of start and end time of invocations. As always, TimeTracker 1.2 is available as a free update to all existing users.

If you have any feedback, like a feature request or possible defect, please post a comment.

Posted in TimeTracker | No Comments »