Tranquilli.org

Now that the iOS4 is no longer under NDA, I can finally release this. Here are some personal development notes on iPhone iOS4 background/multitasking features (while writing the PlaceTrack app). If you’re on a mobile device, use this link.

Send comments/suggestions/corrections to me by email (or leave a comment on SlideShare).

–> drop me an email with subject “PlaceTrack app store availability request” and I’ll let you know once this app is approved.

July 15: I contacted the app review team and offered to self reject the app, remove some feature off it and resubmit, in case this may help approve the app. No replies as of July 19

July 14: my wife needed to replace her mobile phone… I got her an Android HTC instead of an iPhone

July 13: sent an email to sjobs@apple.com asking why Apple treats developers this way

July 12: I called Apple developer’s relation phone # and left a voce mail message: nobody called back as of July 19

July 6: 18days and still no news. I called Apple another couple of times and got as many mail replies from them. Top news is “we apologize that we do not have any additional information to share with you, but as soon as we do, we will notify you immediately”. I’m sorry I cannot do anything but wait. I’m not considering Cydia or other App Store alternatives at this time, I’m still confident Apple will finally approve this.

June 29: this is the eleventh day the app is stuck “In Review” state. Yesterday I called Apple Developer Relations and got no explanation about this delay (have been told no information from the review team was available). I’m sending Apple yet another email. Thanks to all the people (hundreds!) writing me and hoping this app will finally hit the App Store

June 23: still nothing from Apple. I’m getting a fair amount of web traffic on this page: feel free to drop me an email with subject “PlaceTrack app store availability request” and I’ll let you know once this app is approved

June 21: iOS4 is out but Placetrack is still “In Review” (Apple contacted me saying that the review process for this app “is requiring unexpected additional time”). I’ll post an update with further status as soon as I am able

Original post follows:

PlaceTrack is the long-awaited background Google Latitude updater for iPhone (soon available on the App Store!)

After weeks of testing with the new iOS4 background features, yesterday night I finally submitted this application to the App Store: if all goes well, I should have it approved by Apple in a couple of weeks, just in time for the iOS4 GM release to the general public on June 21st.

FEATURES

• keeps Google Latitude up-to-date with your exact location: install the app, authenticate, enable background, quit and forget about it!
• check out where your contacts are (thumbnails are shown on map or list view) once you confirm each other as friends
• optional location history and KML export: you may export past locations by email as a KML file and see them on a Google Map or using Google Earth
• Facebook support: update your Facebook wall with location data, a map and an optional text
• battery friendly background mode: the application suspends on exit and is woken up only when you move significantly (detected using cell towers signal); most of the time it just sleeps and the GPS hardware is powered off to preserve battery
• automatic relaunch: if the application gets killed for whatever reason (eg, after a power cycle) and background mode was enabled, the application is automatically relaunched in the background on the first location change event
• location by email: send your current postal mail address along with gps coordinates and a small street map and a “directions” link. If your receipient uses an iPhone, the “directions” link launches the Maps application (on desktops it opens the Google maps website with your current coordinates)
• fake location support: you can disable GPS usage completely and input a fake place name to be used as your location. When you enter a fake location, background mode is temporarily disabled
• uses the new OS4.0 multitasking features on supported phone models (3GS and up)
• security: your Google credentials are securely transmitted from your iPhone directly to Google and never sent to our or any third party servers
• a settings page lets you tune most configurable parameters (gps accuracy, timeouts, local notifications, etc.)
• your current location (address and gps coordinates) with altitude and speed (if available) are always displayed on the application main screen and included in Facebook status updates
• the application may send local notification on particular events (location changes, network failures, authentication errors): you can set a notification threshold for the error severity level or turn off notifications completely
• find your iPhone easily: keep the background mode enabled and locate your iPhone through Latitude in case it gets lost or stolen! The application still runs after a phone reboot or power cycle, and updates your iPhone location

mini-itx fanless home server and nas storage

In the process of upgrading my home network, I’ve just picked

- a new NAS, Netgear ReadyNAS Duo, with 1.5TB+1.5TB disks in x-raid configuration (netgear’s raid1 with dynamic exapansion); this is replacing my older Maxtor Shared Storage II

- a fanless CPU/Motherboard, Intel D510MO with Intel’s next-gen Pine Trail Atom processor, as my (always-on) mini-itx linux home server; it replaced an old (unstable) VIA C7+Jetway mobo

ReadyNAS Duo storage server

I use the ReadyNAS Duo to provide redundant/scalable storage to CIFS/AFP and NFS clients, for local/remote backups (rsync for Unix , Time Machine for Apple clients) and media streaming as well. Videos, music and pictures can be streamed to any uPnP/DLNA client on local net (an EVA2000 internet set-top box connected to the TV,  the iPhone…  a future Squeezebox) or iTunes clients (through FireFly straming server).

mini-itx case

The Home Server

The linux based home server will do its work as usual:

- development/testbed server, rsynced to a production VPS in the cloud, for personal hobby/projects
- Asterisk PBX for my voip phones
- OpenVPN endpoint for remote access to the home lan
- SSL tunneling for some home devices (e.g.. imap/ssl access from voip phone)
- mysql server
- monitoring (I’m going to try Zenoss) and usage statistics (mrtg, webalizer)

Dec 02 2009 UPDATE: this is now freely available on the App Store
Dec 04 2009 UPDATE: It’s 4th on the top free applications for the travel category (Italian App Store)
Dec 17 2009 UPDATE: updated version (1.1) now available (includes georeferenced webcams and Last.fm events)

Main application screen

Lately I spent some time learning how to write iPhone applications.
Having been an avid C programmer for so many years it wasn’t difficult to start writing code in Objective-C (a powerful yet simple OOP language based on C);
a good book and the standard Apple docs that come with the SDK did the rest for the Cocoa touch API and the iPhone SDK in general

Finally, a couple of hours ago I managed to submit a first application to the App Store; nothing original but it still can handle maps, gps data, tables and scroll views, images, graphical transitions, REST API calls and results parsing for different webservices (yr.no weather data, geonames, flickr, panoramio, bing, yahoo search, google maps, upcoming.org) mostly through asynchronous network calls. Almost 7K lines of code.

I’m  releasing a new Facebook application: PostInjector.

PostInjector can post your Flickr images collected by the SuckRSS engine to your Facebook profile or page, along with a thumbnail and relevant Exif data (focal length, exposure, metering mode, gps coordinates, etc). A link to a map and a reverse geocoded place name are provided for georeferenced images, as usual.
The application uses the new Open Stream API and has already been whitelisted by Facebook.

More about SuckRSS
PostInjector Facebook application

This is a quick post just to let you know a thing related to my SuckRSS software. From now on, the “HTML generation” module will retrieve EXIF data and automatically add information on some of the camera settings (exposure, aperture, metering mode, gps position and altitude, etc) for ‘educational’ purposes.
I’ve reprocessed some of the past postings.

I’m no longer using FeedBurner. I activated a 30 day redirection but unfortunately
some feed readers (including Google Reader) forget about permanent HTTP redirects and don’t update the subscription URL.

Please make sure you’re pointing to the correct RSS URL:

http://www.tranquilli.org/feed/

The old one will stop working soon. - Thanks!.