Update for Unofficial iJustine is coming…

July 20th, 2010

So – many of you have seen all of our updates to our vlogger apps and have noticed or e-mailed asking where the update for Unofficial iJ is.  It’s on the way.  I submitted all of the updates at the same time, but then over the weekend I found a small bug in the iJustine blog view (the first tab in the default layout) that has been perplexing me for a little while.

Some of you have noticed that when looking at a blog entry, sometimes the content scrolls off of the right side of the page.  I have an algorithm in place that determines the size of the content and scales the view accordingly – but due to a small error on my part, it was not 100% effective, so sometimes articles still spilled over the right side of the page and required you to zoom out to see the whole content of the article.

I found the little bit of code that was incorrect, and fixed the issue.  Rather than allow the iJustine update to go through with this bug, and then submit yet another fix (Which would require that you perform two updates, and also would require Apple’s review team to go through a second submission), I decided to reject and resubmit the corrected application.

This update is in review now and will be available to you soon.  Check back to the Dev Blog (you’re reading now) and/or follow us on Twitter (@geekutils) and we’ll let you know when it’s all ready to go.  Thank you for your patience!

Posted in App Updates, iJustine | No Comments »

A quick thank-you.

July 20th, 2010

I just wanted to take a moment to say a quick thanks to everyone who has downloaded and are enjoying our apps. Tonight, GeekUtils again made it into the “What’s Hot” feature section in the App Store in the Social Networking and News categories.  Definitely proof positive that an indie developer can indeed make it in the app store.

I am humbled and so appreciative that you all are enjoying the apps, and very thankful that @phillyd, @charlestrippy, @allispeed and @olgakay have allowed me to work with them to provide official apps for their content streams.  I also have a few more apps to be released very shortly for some other wildly popular vloggers (announcement later) – and I’m simply thrilled that these great content providers are finding value in my work.

Tonight marks a huge milestone in that I have realized that GeekUtils currently has around 150,000 unique users, who have registered around 2.8 million individual sessions since January 17, 2010 when Unofficial iJustine was launched.  This is absolutely huge – it means that since January 17, 2010, on average, a GeekUtils app has been launched every 5.6 seconds worldwide.  I can’t possibly thank you all enough for your downloads and I look forward to continuing this trend, and continuing to release great apps that i know you’ll love.

When I started working on these apps in November of 2009, I hoped, but never imagined that they would be received so well.  So…  Thank You!

Posted in iPhone Apps, YouTube | No Comments »

The Updates have Arrived!

July 20th, 2010

So a few days ago I mentioned some updates to all of our vlogger apps that were coming to support iOS4 devices as well as the iPhone4’s beautiful Retina display. I’m happy to announce that these updates are now available through the App Store!

In order to take advantage of these updates, you must be running a second or third generation iPod Touch, iPhone 3G, 3GS, or iPhone 4 and you must update to iOS 4.0 (It’s FREE, don’t hesitate – just do it :))

These new versions of our popular apps add full support for fast app switching (3G iPod Touch, iPhone 3GS/4), and also provide much higher quality graphics and thumbnails on the iPhone4, taking full advantage of the Retina display.

Additionally, we have tweaked the video listing display a little, and updated our apps to use less network traffic when talking to YouTube’s API – which means that listings load faster, comments load quicker – and the overall experience is better.

Please download the apps and give us a great review! If you have any troubles, questions, concerns, etc – please use the “About” tab in any of our apps to send us an e-mail – we’d love to hear from you.

Also – don’t forget to follow us on Twitter (@geekutils)and/or check our blog often for the latest news and updates!

Posted in App Updates, iPhone Apps | No Comments »

iOS 4? iPhone 4? New Updates submitted!

July 13th, 2010

Since I could not make it to vidcon last weekend (other than watching the livestream), I decided to spend the weekend working on updates to the framework that drives the “Vlogger” apps.  I’ve submitted these updates to Apple for review, so hopefully they will be live and available to everyone in the coming days from the app store. These updates are significant, and are built for use with iOS 4.  What do these updates include?  Well – here’s a short rundown:

  • Built to take advantage of iOS 4 (Yes, that means you will need to be running iOS 4 in order to download the new updates)
    • With full support for iOS 4’s fast app switching, you can stay up to date with your latest vlogger’s videos and have the convenience of not having to watch the app load from scratch each time it’s launched.  This is supported on the latest iPods, the iPhone 3GS, and iPhone 4.
    • Video listings, store listings, and blog entries will automatically refresh for the latest content at pre-defined intervals (or, of course, you can still manually refresh any listings whenever you choose).
  • Built to take advantage of the iPhone 4’s retina display.
    • All graphics and thumbnails in the app will now load at a resolution which just looks amazing when you are on an iPhone 4.  For all other devices, the apps continue to run just as smoothly as they always have.
  • Browser views have all been updated with both a home and a back button.  The home button always re loads the screen as it was when you originally loaded the content.  The back button always takes you back one page in your navigation tree.
  • YouTube like / dislike support is now fully implemented rather than the old five star rating system.  Video listings and detail views have also been updated to show you what percentage of voters like a particular video.
  • Video listing view has been updated with a slightly new look.
  • Network communication between our app and YouTube’s API has been significantly optimized.  When fetching comment and video listings, our app now transmits and receives up to 60% less data to provide the same content.  This means that video and comment listing views now load quicker than ever before.

This is only the tip of the iceberg!  We have many more updates planned (including push notifications for new content) – Keep checking our blog at www.geekutils.com or via the “Dev Blog” view inside any of our apps to stay up to date with what is coming.  With that, I say thank you and provide a few screenshots, below 😉

Posted in App Updates, Uncategorized | No Comments »

New Apps and more updates coming…

July 5th, 2010

We’ve been hard at work this past weekend making several updates to our existing apps and bringing four new apps into our collection.  Check back here often for release information, and be sure to follow us on twitter for the latest updates (@geekutils).

The new updates will include:

  • Full support for the new iOS 4 features, the most notable of which is fast-app switching.
  • Updated higher resolution graphics for iPhone 4 users
  • A more consistent look across all of our “unofficial” apps

Because iOS4 is a free update for everyone, and includes some great new features that enhance the user experience on iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, and third generation iPod touch devices, all of our future applications will be built using the iOS4 framework instead of 3.1.2 as we have in the past.  In order to stay up to date with our latest applications, please be sure to update your devices to the latest version of iOS.

Posted in App Updates, iPhone Apps, New Releases | No Comments »

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