Well I purchased a new Mac Book Pro 13.3″ laptop on the weekend.

Very sexy piece of hardware

That gave me the opportunity to do a bit more work on Remote Kitten. Functionality wise Remote Kitten has received very favourable reviews. The biggest complaint is that it is UGLY.

I am trying to rectify that. I have replaced all the buttons and removed the dark gradients. They are all black now with thin borders. You can choose the colour scheme in the application settings.

I am not sure what functionality I will add to the free version. At the moment the free and paid version are identical except one has advertisements. I think any new functionality I will only add to the paid version. I need something to differentiate them.

- Jared

It’s funny how hard it was doing a presentation at school. In the real world it is so much easier.

Well it feels like it. I will know for sure in a few hours

Obama peace prize? hahahaha.

Remote Kitten is live on the App store. Here are some of my thoughts.

• In my case the apple review process was pretty painless. 13 days ( 9 business days ) from submission to approval.
• It’s not so easy to get 100% add fill rates. I signed up with two add companies and used adwhirl to switch between them. Most of the time there are no adds available to display. I threw in a custom add once I realised this to upsell users to the paid version of the App.
• I am supprised at how many downloads I am getting. I don’t know anyone else who uses Windows Media Center. I guess the market is just that large. Gotta love globalization.
• People will pay for software if it is cheap enough. 5% of my downloads are for the paid version. I am pretty happy with that.

Finally I have finished one of my projects!

I have submitted two versions of Remote Kitten to the app store. One for $0.99 and one free version with banner adds through adwhirl.

Now just to wait for the review!

Development is finished I should be able to submit this baby to Apple tonight.

Woo Hoo

The paperwork aspect is a bit of a killer, ABN, GST, possible export compliance, contracts with ad companies, contracts with apple. yada yada.

It would be silly to give up now though after spending so much time on it.

Just posted some screenshots of Remote Kitten.

iPhone MCE Remote Screenshots

Basically finished development. I still need to link up a few of the buttons. 2/3 of them are done.

I am not defending the segment that got the show cancelled but I think Kyle Sandilands is just the fall guy.

The 14 year old girl said she got raped and he asked her another question about her sex life. That was pretty stupid BUT the his excuse is that he was shocked and spoke whilst not thinking while he was trying to get the segment off the air.

The real outrage should be directed at the producers of the show and 2Day FM. Why was the segment put to air in the first place? What about the mother. Fancy putting your daughter through that.

Everyone should remember the Kyle is paid to be outrageous and a jerk on the radio. The listeners lap it. He is just doing his job. The media slant on the story is that he was sacked from the show. The show was cancelled because Kyle refused to go on air.

The correct approuch would be to work out who had editorial control over the segment and hang them out to dry.

This is another one of my little side projects. I think I might finally finish this one though.

http://www.kared.net/rk

It is an App for the iPhone that acts as a Windows Media center remote over wifi. Apple provide something similar to control iTunes.

The only competition I could find had a horrible interface. I want to replace my media center remote with my iPhone. The interface needs to suit sitting on the couch flicking through channels.

The App controls Media Center through a program you install on the media center PC. That part of the software is finished. The website is also finished.

The App needs a few modifications to the interface. Once that is done I will get a few people to test it and then send it to Apple to put on the App store. I am thinking of selling it for around $5 but having a fully featured free version as well supported by advertisements.

Where is it???? Push notification for Twitter is a game changer.

Well, I bought an iPhone. I don’ think I will be looking at google android for another 2 years now which means my game has been put in the deadpool

I need to work on less ambitious projects from now on or I will never finish anything useful!

I didn’t get an Android phone because:

• They took too long to get a decent phone to market. I waited a long time but I was paying $30 a month and had no phone. They ran out of time
• The G1 sucks. It is big and ugly.
• Multitouch is awesome. Apple are evil and multitouch patents hold the whole industry back. BUT it’s still awesome and I couldn’t imagine mobile web browsing without it.
• The app store is awesome. Apple are once again the most evil. They force you to buy through them. They have to approve everything that goes on the phone. They charge developers just for the SDK. But the apps are awesome

I might work on some iPhone apps now instead. Something a bit simpler. I have a few ideas