KazuyaYokoyama.com

My three iPhone Apps have been updated. They are waiting for a review now. The biggest point of this update is supporting iOS 4 multitasking. You’ll see them soon.

If your application doesn’t care for launching and terminating of it, you just compile and build it on newest SDK and it can support iOS 4. If your application needs to care for the lifecycle, you should add some source code for entering foreground and background. Especially you should pay attention to save some user data. Moreover you can add higher resolution icons, then your application supports Retina Display of iPhone 4. It must look more beautiful.

If you’re unwilling to support iOS 4, it’s important for lots of users to optimize your applications for iOS 4, the current OS. Enjoy your development!

I’ve never written my blog for 3 months. What did I do? I was thinking about lots of things; iPhone apps, Android apps and web-based apps. I understand that it’s very important for me to develop web-based apps that are open open sources. Of course developing iPhone apps such as SpeedMemo and Translator is also important in aspects of studying the architecture and making money.
Developing web-based apps is challenging and exciting. I’m going to write my blog, that is “lab.kazuyayokoyama.com” in Japanese only, about what I’m doing and how I’m developing it. I’ll show it to you soon. By the way my iPhone apps, SpeedMemo and Translator, will be updated for iOS 4 soon.

My second iPhone App “SpeedMemo” has been released on App Store. You’re able to download this app here.

Have you ever forgotten important ideas or to-do list? “SpeedMemo” is application specialized in taking the memo fast. You can take memo as soon as it starts up. After you save memo, you can e-mail memo, tweet it to Twitter and save it on Evernote.

It supports the latest technology of Evernote. You know, Evernote launched “Emailing Into Evernote Just Got Better « Evernote Blogcast“. It’ very easy to save everything on Evernote.

Please try this new app and review it if you like.

My first iPhone App “Translator - in your hands” and “Translator Lite - in your hands” have been released on App Store. They are very simple applications. You’re able to translate lots of languages from your native language with these apps.

“Translator Lite” is free, and helps you to translate quickly. It supports Google Translation Service and Microsoft(Bing) Translation Service, and you can select them as you wish. If you are foreign language learner, it must help you. Please try it.

“Translator” is paid application. It has bookmark, Twitter and mail supports. You can bookmark the result of translation if you think the result is good. Twitter support makes you to tweet the result directly. It’s very easy operation. If you have many chances to mail with foreigners, it must be great time saver for you.

The back-end of these iPhone apps use Google App Engine with Python. Google App Engine is one of the best platform as a service in my opinion. It’s easy to control the scalability of apps even though it’s difficult to move apps on it into other platforms like LAMP. I need to learn it more.

A happy new year 2010!!!
This blog began last year and I’ve posted some entries into it. It’s not tough for me to write blog in English but it’s really tough to think my opinion in English. When I write blog, I think what to write in Japanese at first and then write it in English with translating from Japanese to English in my brain so far. It takes longer time than blogging in Japanese.
I’m going to change this situation. I’ll complete ‘just thinking in English and writing in English’. I’ll write my blog a few entries a month this year. More entries I write in my blog, more experience I have.
And I got a new communication tool, Twitter last year. I’ve tweeted over 2,500 tweets and gotton over 300 followers for a year. Thanks to my followers for supporting me. So my output tool in English is both Twitter and blog.
I won’t be afraid my mistakes and will publish my opinion aggressively this year.

I had a spare time today. So I went to theater and saw “A Christmas Carol: An IMAX 3D Experience” with my wife. Its story was so-so but its experience was wonderful. Guess what? We can see it as 3D movie at least in Japan. We were wearing 3D glasses through the 90-minute show. I’ve seen 3D animation movie before, blue and red glasses was needed.
3D experience already exists around us; movies, cameras and TVs. Many 3D movies and DVDs will be released according to releasing 3D-TV next year. I’m looking forward to how our life will be changed !

I’ve got Moleskine that is one of the most famous memo pads. It has squared grid and is small size. Frankly speaking, I didn’t like a memo pad and a schedule book because I used them for just a few months from new year day. Especially, I’ve never paid attention to them at all since I bought iPhone.

However, I’ve noticed that all my ideas are based on only texts or photos because of using iPhone and Evernote. At least my ideas exist in my brain with having form, figure and graphic; so I needed to transform from figure into text purposely. I may waste my limited time.
For those reason, I think I have to output my ideas as naked as nature intended. Having a pen and writing with my hand is the best way to provide ideas in my opinion. Let’s get started with Moleskine.

I’ve noticed that Twitter has launched new function ‘Lists’ from this month. Fortunately I’m able to try the beta preview version of ‘Lists’ on my Japanese Twitter account.

My review of ‘Lists’ beta:

• It’s very easy to create lists and add followers to the lists.
• We are able to add users we don’t follow to our lists. It seems to be great idea but we should think about the meanings of ‘follow’ at the same time.
• We can follow not only the lists others made but also users.
• We see the number of lists including ourselves.
• It’s convenient to create private lists. I’ve already created one as my co-workers’ group.
• How many lists we belong to must be more important than the number of followers.

I’m looking forward to Twitter client software such as Tweetie, TweetDeck. When will Twitter launch it as an official version?

Google Chrome for Mac has been released. It seems to have full functions, is just an official developer preview. Anyway, It’s good news for lots of Mac OS X users including me. We can download it from Google Chrome for Mac. You have to check it out if you’re a Mac user.
My review of Google Chrome for Mac; It has very simple UI, good-looking and is working as lightly as Safari. Firefox is more powerful than Google Chrome if you live on a web browser all the day; where is mouse gesture? where is Greasemonkey? There is no strong reason that we should choose Google Chrome for Mac with quitting Safari or Firefox in my opinion. I’m looking forward, though, to its influence to web browser market share on Mac OS X.

iPhone has over 20,000 apps so far and many people including not geeks use it all over the world. What does it mean for Apple? Apple has got lots of platforms to drive themselves and develop their products.
The platform of product is very important for many companies. It makes money though it costs much to build it. Especially contents platforms such as music, movies and games are very strong. Once you release a product on the platform, you just focus on producing impressive contents for users. Of course you need to update your products as well as contents increase.
Apple have got at least five platforms so far : music, movies, games, applications and computing. And they have connected with each other efficiently. You’ll notice that the connection works on just one application; iTunes. We can sync all of our contents through iTunes with operating very easily. It’s not too much to say that iTunes is Apple’s platform. They are going to realize everything on the platform. What will they do next? We’ll see.