Erica Sadun
erica at ericasadun.com
Erica Sadun | 10:07 am | October 31, 2007 | Update, Utilities, Software, iPod touch, iPhone
doQuery is the newest member of the Erica Utilities. It works just like doAlert but gives you a choice of Yes or No. To see which was returned, use the $? return value in your shell of choice. 0 is Yes. 1 is No.
Erica Sadun | 9:40 am | | Update, Feature Requests, Utilities, Software, iPod touch, iPhone
Over in Erica Utilities, I put a demo Mac client for catching files sent from your iPhone. This app receives files you throw from the iPhone command line using the “throw” utility. Right now, you must tap the sender’s name in order to download the file to your Desktop. I’ll get around to making this automatic–and maybe with Leopard, I’ll change the destination from your Desktop to your Downloads folder.While this (and throw and catch) all work well–and you’re welcome to use them right away–I’m trying to step back a little and plan where to take this next. I am designing a protocol so this technology can expand to general file sharing between iPhones, Macs, PCs and other portable devices. Right now, the apps I’ve produced send two things: the file and a requested name. This obviously needs to be better and more completely designed but within the iPhone limitations. Unfortunately, you cannot easily go back and forth with the current CFNetwork implementation on iPhone so you cannot handshake, etc. That means the package needs to be sent with all authenticating and descriptive material in one chunk.Here’s my first cut at a list of items I want to include in this protocol. Please comment and make your recommendations.
Erica Sadun | 9:11 am | | Update, Applications, Software, iPhone
SendSong is still a work in progress but that work is…progressing. The latest experimental version is 0.20–although I should have a newer version out very soon. Significant changes are as follows:
Also remember, you must reboot your phone after using SendSong or you’ll still hear Marimba.
Erica Sadun | 9:05 am | | Coding, Utilities, Software, iPod touch, iPhone
I threw together a command-line demo program (pumpkinfx in Pumpkin Utilities) that shows off many of the fabulous effects that Pumpkin and friends discovered hiding in Layer Kit. I’m told that quite a lot of Core Animation was developed on iPhone and these LK calls seem to support this idea.The original iPhoneDevDocs discussion is here and Pumpkin’s code that I used is here
Erica Sadun | 5:04 pm | October 29, 2007 | Bug Reports, Admin, Software
If you launch an app after installing it via Installer.app and it launches and then quits, please try installing the BSD Subsystem before emailing me. Thanks!!! More information about this at Shaun’s blog
Erica Sadun | 6:59 pm | October 28, 2007 | Admin, Software
If you get package errors for any of my software, please check out this debugging page over at smxy.org. If that doesn’t help, go ahead and contact Shaun at ste@psmxy.org. Not my fault, honest!
Erica Sadun | 3:36 pm | | Admin, Software
My Widget.app utility barely worked on 1.0.2. It doesn’t work a damn on 1.1.1. Please consider the application deprecated. I’d be stunned if Apple doesn’t show up with Dashcode-type Widget support fairly soon. All the infrastructure is in-place on the phone. Silly me. See update. I forgot to install the WidgetResources folder.
Erica Sadun | 3:34 pm | | Update, Utilities, Software, iPod touch, iPhone
At the prodding of the always-vigilant and much better organized Shaun Erickson, I have put together archives for both the Erica Utilities and iPhone Utilities. They’ll be available shortly through Installer.app. Both packages require you to use the command-line. Thank you Shaun for remembering!
These utility packages include all kinds of command-line related tools, including playing audio, restarting your SpringBoard, throwing up alerts, and so forth. The Phone utilities are meant to be used only on the iPhone. You won’t do well, for example, trying to record audio on the touch.
The Utilities will be getting installed this go-’round into ~/bin. (They used to go into /usr/local/bin, a location I much prefer.) This is because the touch has so much less space on the OS partition than the iPhone. Installing–regardless of touch or phone–onto the media partition helps preserve that very limited space.
Make sure to add /var/root/bin into your path, using whatever shell you pick as your default. Since the TIFF-exploit-jailbreaks remove the Media ‘noexec’ tag from /etc/fstab, so you’ll be able to happily run whatever you like from your root folder.
Erica Sadun | 1:43 pm | | Feature Requests, Bug Reports, Admin, Utilities, Software, Applications, iPhone
I’m about to do a few updates on Voice Notes and need your feedback. Voice Notes is my iPhone recording program. It allows you to record your voice using the speech-specific AMR format, and then play back those notes, manage your notes library, and share those notes by email.
For those of you familiar with VNotes, what features do you want to see? What changes do you want me to make? Bugs to fix? Here’s my current list of feature improvement goals. Feel free to add!
Sharing Add a feature that allows you to share wirelessly between iPhones. Add iPod touch receiver & playback.
Voice Mail Scan the voice mail folder as well as the recordings folder, so you can play back and share vmail as well as vnotes.
Beeps Users have requested quick beeps at the start and end of recording.
Improved renaming Better names and debugging.
Import into iTunes Frankly, I am nowhere near figuring out how to add to your music library. But this remains on the list as a feature I’d really like to add.
Scrubber bar This one is low on my priority list, guys. A scrubber with pause/stop, positioning.
MP3 conversion The magnificent core of wickedpsyched.com has ported ffmpeg to iPhone. It converts amr to mp3. But given how huge this tool is, I’m hesitant to include it in the otherwise compact VNotes distribution.
So that’s my working list. What do you guys want to see? Let me know in the comments.
Erica Sadun | 7:38 am | October 26, 2007 | Admin
I should be back late Saturday or early Sunday. Leave questions, comments, suggestions and requests in the comments. Cheers and happy Leopard!