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WOW, where has this been? I have needed something like this for quiet sometime!  iQuickText This is a handy tool that will allow you to do something that you would have expected to be built into the iPhone. This is especially handy when you do not have time to compose a message in SMS. This allows you with just a few clicks to send a stored SMS message to anyone in your address book. You can also save new messages, you are not limited to the messages that come with iQuickText. Another great tool from MerckTech. Get your copy here.
You will then see a pallet displayed with five boxes of the following sizes 512, 256, 128, 36, and 16 pixels. To create your icons, just drop the picture that you want to use in the 512 box. Icon Composer will now resize in to all the other options. Then choose File, Export, and save. When you open the saved file you will see copies of all your file in the various sizes that you can now use. Just drag and drop them to where they are needed. They will be in tiff format, but that can be changed by just opening and saving as another format. This is a simple but very useful tool when you need any of these specific sized icons and you will as you progress doing development for the various Apple platforms.
 Image Conversion Ever need to convert one image format to another? Well, I just did, and yep, I used Automator. Here’s how, if you ever need to.
NOTE: This Automator process will overwrite your original files, so if you wish to retain them, make a copy of them before starting this process.
Not quite yet, but maybe soon. With all the rumors swrilling these days about Apple-Twitter, Apple-EA, etc, it is hard to keep up! The rumor mill is churning, ferociously, on many fronts, which usually means there is some truth in there somewhere, but we are not looking at exactly what that is, at the moment. What I am looking at is the idea that Apple could become a gaming empire apart from whether or not they buy EA. There are two paths one could take down this path, buy a company, or build relationships with current game developers. Both have their risks and rewards. I would submit that Apple has been building their gaming portfolio one small iPhone application at the time. Well done games for the iPhone are very appealing. I have been surprised how compelling some of the best games on the iPhone are. I didn’t think you could create a real interactive feel for complex games in such a compact environment. Boy, was I wrong. Games on the iPhone produce a great gaming experience. The graphics, response, inputs, and sound, with head phones, are all great! I know, sound is awful on the iPhone. I don’t know what you can do with speakers on such a small device, but maybe someday they will solve this issue, but I digress. Myself and others, really enjoy playing games via the iPhone and iPod Touch. Now on the building front. There has been hiring going on at One Infinite Loop that leads the keen eye to see a heavier focus being put on gaming. They just hired, Richard Teversham, the senior director of business, insights and strategy for Xbox’s European division. There have also been several jobs postings of late that were gaming related. Could be nothing, but it could be the silent building of an empire. Look, I know that there is no guarantee of success here, remember the Pippin? I do. Well, I also remember the first Apple PDA, the Newton, at the time, it was not a roaring success, but it laid the groundwork for what we now have, the iPhone. So, lets not read too much into a failure at a company that over time has had great success in so many things! Game on!!!
Do you ever need to grab a bunch of images from a webpage? If so, check out Automator. All you need to do is open Automator and drag the following three canned functions in to it.
I created a special directory for the downloads to be stored in, but you could have used the default. For a ton of information on Automator check out automator.us.  Grab Pics from Webpage
I have been working on a simple iPhone application, NixCookies (iTunes), in my spare time. Once I had it to a level where it was good enough to be put in public I started thinking about getting it out on the App Store, but from the war stories that I was hearing and reading about, I was afraid it would be a hassle. All in all, it turned out to be a no frills experience. First, I had to download and configure the deployment certificate for Xcode. This was the same process that you would use to setup on device testing. As long as you follow the Apple provided docs, you will not have any problems, but you must really read and follow them, or you can get off track and have to start over. I did this on the certificate configuration for downloading and testing on my iPhone. Continue reading » |
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Need to know quickly what the color values are somewhere on your screen? If you do check out DigitalColor Meter. It is in the Utilities folder. Once you open it up, all you have to do is choose how you want to display our values, then just hover over the spot that you would like to identify the color. It is just that easy. 
Icon Composer is a must have if you are building applications. It comes as part of the Apple Development Kit. You can download a copy of the developer kit from the 