Urban Apps

@Ambiance hits 5,000,000 Sound Downloads — Free for today only!

Sat, 04 Sep 2010 23:43:00 -0400

Today marked a very important milestone for us at Urban Apps. Ambiance had it’s 5,000,000th sound download! You read that right — that is indeed Five Million Downloads!

We are very fortunate that our customers have chosen us as the favorite in the Ambient sound category of apps, and are very grateful to them for enabling us to provide improvements and continued development in Ambiance. As a celebration and as a symbol of our eternal gratitude to our customers, and to all App buyers in general, we are making Ambiance FREE for the next 24 hrs (Eastern Time).

Regular Price: ~~$2.99~~

Sept 5th: $0.00

The app will be free today only in the iTunes App Store, BlackBerry App World, and Android Marketplace.

Please tweet this out to share the great news with your friends and followers

Ambiance 3.0.1 Now Available in the iTunes Store

Thu, 24 Jun 2010 00:40:31 -0400

Ambiance 3.0.1 Now Available in the iTunes Store

Ambiance 3.0.1 (with bug fixes) submitted to Apple

Tue, 22 Jun 2010 03:53:00 -0400

Earlier today we had to pull Ambiance 3.0 from the Apple Store. There was a bug that prevented existing customers from properly importing their sounds. We apologize for this bug and have since fixed it. If you held on to your existing ambiancebackup file, you should be able to get all your sounds and data back once again with the new version, 3.0.1

The update has been submitted to Apple and we are now waiting for an expedited, emergency review.

For info on how to restore your sounds once you have the update: Restore Instructions

UPDATE: 6/24/2001

The update has hit the app store. Get it here

Ambiance 3.0 available in the iTunes store with background audio!

Mon, 21 Jun 2010 15:39:12 -0400

Ambiance 3.0 available in the iTunes store with background audio!

How to Make Custom Drawn Gradient Backgrounds in a Grouped UITableView with Core Graphics

Mon, 01 Feb 2010 23:56:00 -0500

In iPhone app design, it is important to find a balance between customization and familiarity. Many times, subtle differences are all you need to make yourself stand out from the crowd. While doing the Ambiance 3.0 redesign, I wanted something to make my list of content a little different than all the other cookie cutter table views out there.

A great place to start is to implement your own background and use a clear table view background. Many apps are now doing this and it is come to be expected from a grouped UITableView that is done with a little love.

Another way to spruce up these tables is to add a custom background color. Since 3.0, this has been as easy as setting the cells backgroundColor property. I implemented both of these and it wasn’t enough for me. It still looked like so many apps out there. I thought about putting a gradient view as the background, only to find that setting a grouped UITableViewCell’s background ignored the nice rounded corners of the cell.

Almost giving up, I googled around to see if anybody else has done it and shared some code.I found this post on StackOverflow: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/400965/how-to-customize-the-background-border-colors-of-a-grouped-table-view

This was a great resource as it helped me in the right direction — Core Graphics. It was meant as a way to customize the background of a cell before the 3.0 sdk came out, but I used it as a basis for my code to draw a gradient! It needed tweaking and optimization, but after a little bit of hacking away at it, I was able to get it to work nicely. I present to you the UACellBackgroundView.

To use the UACellBackgroundView, simply add the .h and .m files to your project, then set your

.h file

http://gist.github.com/292381

.m file

http://gist.github.com/292384

Whenever you want to use it, just set the cell’s backgroundView to be the UACellBackgroundView in your own UITableViewCell Subclass’s initWithStyle method. Then, when you have your data and are creating cells, simple se the position of the cell by calling setPosition, of just call the line directly if you don’t want to subclass the UITableViewCell. The position is important as it lets the cell know to draw itself correctly depending on whether or not the cell is first, last, in the middle, or a single cell.

http://gist.github.com/292388

Hope this helps you in your quest for a better app. If you want to use it, you will have to set your cell labels and elements to have a clear background, so hopefully you have a fast drawing method and have optimized your table view cells to do minimum work during scrolling.

Posted via email from [coneybeare code] | Comment »

Donation Report

Fri, 15 Jan 2010 08:53:26 -0500

As detailed here, Urban Apps has pledged to donated 100% of the revenue of our sales on January 14th, 2010 to Yele, an Earthquake Recovery Relief Fund benefiting Haiti.

There were 902 copies of our software sold on the 14th. We will not only donate the 70% that we get after Apple’s cut, but we will also throw in that 30% out-of-pocket, leaving a grand total of a $902 donation.

Thank You everyone who purchased an Urban Apps application yesterday for this purpose.

-Urban Apps

A Days Worth of App Sales to Haiti

Thu, 14 Jan 2010 12:53:00 -0500

Inspired by Gaucho Software and their decision to donate sales proceeds to the disaster recovery efforts in Haiti, Urban Apps has decided to donate all sales of our apps for January 14th, 2010 to Yele, a Earthquake Recovery Relief fund.

Not only will we donate the proceeds from our app sales (the 70% that Apple gives us after their cut), but we will fund the additional 30% out of our pockets. This means that if we sell 10,000 copies of our apps (all $0.99), then we will donate $10,000 to Yele.

Please help us spread the word by Tweeting, emailing or publishing the link to this page on Facebook.

Tweet This

You can find a link to all of our software here.

-Urban Apps

Ambiance Now Fixed for BlackBerry OS 5.0

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 01:34:00 -0500

We have submitted version 1.0.2 to BlackBerry App World for approval. Once again, we would like to apologize for any inconvenience Ambiance may have caused you and thank you for your patience. We will post here again as soon as BlackBerry approves the app.

If you cannot wait, you can pick up the app at the MobiHand Store instead.

UPDATE: 12/2/09

The new version is now live

Ambiance-BlackBerry OS 5.0 Update

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 12:08:00 -0500

As with many other apps, Ambiance is having compatibility issues with the new BlackBerry 5.0 OS. We are fully aware of the issues and are working around-the-clock to resolve them. At this time, we advise you to NOT purchase ambiance if you are running the BlackBerry 5.0 OS. Urban Apps would like to thank you for your patience in the matter.

We originally thought that the problems with volume were fixed, but we are having mixed results across different devices and networks upon further testing. Urban Apps has thus had to pull the 1.0.1 update from the store. Ambiance is confirmed to work flawlessly on any OS lower than 5.0, but we regret to say the 5.0 is not supported until we can get to the bottom of this.

If you are running 5.0 and have already purchased the app, you have a couple options:

You can wait for the new version to come to the BlackBerry App World with the 5.0 fix. We do not have an accurate timeline for this but do know that we are working around-the-clock to resolve these issues.
You can request a refund through BlackBerry App World athough they do make it difficult. See FAQ 9 here

We understand the frustration and unease that comes with paying for something that does not work, but please know that Urban Apps has no intentions of leaving you without a working app. We wish to provide every customer with a working Ambiance application. Again, we appreciate your patience while we work on a fix.

Thank You,

Urban Apps

BlackBerry Giveaway Winner!

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 18:05:00 -0500

As promised here, we have chosen a winner of our first BlackBerry Tweet and Win giveaway.

There were 410 entries over the course of 1 week after deleting ineligible tweets that were not exactly like the one in the posting, and the tweets of us, friend and family.

We went over to http://random.org and plugged in 1-410 and got… number 102!

Counting up to the 102nd valid tweet since the beginning of the contest, we get Brandy Whipkey (@keylee95). Congrats!

Thanks for tweeting everybody! If you have a BlackBerry, go Download Ambiance!

Win a BlackBerry of Your Choice! Ambiance for BlackBerry Now Available!

Sun, 01 Nov 2009 15:35:00 -0500

To celebrate the release of Ambiance for BlackBerry (available now in the BlackBerry App World storefront), Urban Apps is giving away a new BlackBerry phone. If you win the contest, you will get to chose a brand new BlackBerry from the 5 models Ambiance is available on!

Storm 2
Storm
Bold
Curve
Pearl

All you have to do to enter is tweet the following:

UrbanApps BlackBerry Giveaway! Tweet and win a BlackBerry to celebrate the release of #Ambiance on BlackBerry App World! http://bit.ly/e5ZGl

Multiple entries (tweets) are not only OK, but encouraged! Just make sure the tweet is exactly the same as above. We will randomly choose a winner from those tweets on Monday, November 9th. The winner will be notified via Twitter from the account @urbanapps. Good Luck!

Fixing symbolicatecrash...

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 01:28:00 -0400

Because you found your way here, I am assuming you already know what symbolicatecrash is and when/why you would use it. If not, take a detour < href=”http://furbo.org/2008/08/08/symbolicatifination/”>here and come back. This tool has been great but is very temperamental. It worked for a while when I first started, then it broke and stopped giving results. I applied the Alan Quatermain Fix, but things still weren’t right.

Well, tonight I had a client app rejected from crash I couldn’t reproduce. I only had 1 crash log from Apple, and the stupid symbolicatecrash script wasn’t finding anything! I had to dig in and see what was up. After spending a little bit brushing up my Perl, I was able to fix the problem. Basically, the Regex that the script uses was failing to match in two places: the bundle name, and the versions.

Change lines 372-377 in the symbolicatecrash script to look like this:


^\s* (\w+) \s* \- \s* (\w+) \s*    (?# the range [1,2])

(\+)?                              (?# the application may have a + in front of the name [3])

([^\s]+)                           (?# bundle name [4])

\s* \w+ \s*                        (?# the versions--generally "??? [???]")

\?                                 (?# possible UUID [5])

\s* (\/.*)\s*$                     (?# first fwdslash to end we hope is path [6])

There are 2 changes from the pre-Alan-Quartermain-Fix:
On line 374, I changed the (.+) to be ([^\s]+) just like the AQ fix.
On line 375, I changed the \s+ .+ $.+$ \s* to be \s+ \w+ \s* because my crash reports never have versions in parenthesis.

I don’t know if this will work for everybody, but it works for me and the crash reports I get back from iPods and iPhones. Good luck!

Posted via email from [coneybeare code] | Comment »

Ambiance has been named the "App of the Day"...

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 00:56:37 -0400

(via http://appoftheday.com/app/Ambiance)

Its a great honor to be named alongside apps like Tweetie 2 and DropBox. This is great!

Posted via email from [coneybeare code] | Comment »

Overriding -[UINavigationController drawRect:] to add a custom background image...

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 00:57:13 -0400

I needed to do this across the board for a client app and thought I would share…

Posted via email from [coneybeare code] | Comment »

Ambiance and Ambiance Lite 2.2 Just Released...

Mon, 12 Oct 2009 15:29:26 -0400

Ambiance and Ambiance Lite 2.2 have just been accepted by Apple. The 2.2 update is a pretty big update to Ambiance with some new and highly-requested features being added. Here is whats in the release:

NEW FEATURES

- Send and Receive Sounds, Mixes and Playlists between 2 devices running Ambiance or Ambiance Lite!

- Facebook Status Updates

- Twitter Status Updates

- Backup your sounds and settings — Restore them if something goes wrong

- New Playlist Support! Sounds can be in multiple playlists

- Can now turn off iPod playlist when timer exits

BUG FIXES

- Push Notifications now will hold settings if you choose not to get them.

- Alarm now works again when the phone is unplugged overnight.

- Fixed a rare quickstart bug that would crash the app

- Easier editing of mixes and playlists (on the mix/playlist details screen)

- Various smaller bug fixes

- Memory enhancements

Posted via email from [coneybeare code] | Comment »

Another Stupid Apple Rejection

Wed, 08 Jul 2009 13:26:05 -0400

Today, Twittch and Twittch Pro were rejected for the following reason:

Currently, shaking the device does not produce a random comic though the application description states “shake for random”.

If they took any time to inspect the app, they would see that there is a switch to enable/disable the shake feature. I have such a love/hate relationship with Apple.

Ambiance 2.0.5 Released

Mon, 15 Jun 2009 00:50:39 -0400

After a long 5 weeks in the Apple Review Queue, the Ambiance 2.0.5 update is finally in the stores. While you will not find any new features in this bug fix release, you will find:

Fix for Quickstart Lockout
iPhone OS 3.0 compatibility
Stability Enhancements

We deeply apologize for any inconvenience caused by the review delay. Enjoy Ambiance!

White House Photostream

Fri, 08 May 2009 03:04:00 -0400

White House Photostream:

Urban Apps newest app just hit the stores. I think its a great way to follow Obama… through his Flickr photostream!

Ambiance QuickStart Busted!

Wed, 06 May 2009 16:41:35 -0400

For some users, using the new QuickStart feature on Ambiance will cause the app to crash on load. The worst part is that you can’t remove the setting because the app won’t open. so you are stuck with a useless app. The fix has been submitted to Apple (2.0.5) and hopefully they get it out soon to fix this problem. Sorry!

We just finished the White House Photostream iPhone/iPod app and...

Fri, 01 May 2009 21:51:49 -0400

We just finished the White House Photostream iPhone/iPod app and have submitted to Apple for review! Assuming all goes well, expect to see it in the iTunes app store in about a week!