iPhone helps SingTel gain marketshare

SingTel has the iPhone to thank for growing its marketshare in a challenging period. In the first six months since full number portability arrived in Singapore, SingTel's post-paid marketshare in Singapore eked a 0.8 percent increase to 45.6 percent. The is good news because analysts had expected SingTel to lose marketshare to its two smaller rivals once people could easily switch carriers without changing their phone numbers. Analysts say that SingTel's iPhone monopoly helped the telco record a net gain instead. Via The Straits Times.

A sign of the iPhone's popularity in Singapore

How popular is the iPhone in Singapore? Pretty popular, it seems.

I am waiting for my son to finish his gymnastics class at Prime Gym at Toa Payoh Lorong 7. I am not alone of course. There's a whole bunch of other parents here as well, mostly reading the papers, or using their laptops. Some parents are actually watching their kids tumbling about (caring parents. Imagine that). 

Interestingly enough, there seems to be an abundance of iPhones among parents here. Earlier, the man on the table on my right had an iPhone while at my own table, the woman sitting opposite me was busy reading the paper and typing/tapping into her iPhone. 

So in a two-metre radius of me, there are three strangers, united by nothing more than an over-developed sense of parental duty, all of whom have iPhones. (All of us happen to be Macbook users as well, I noticed.)

Does Hon Cheng dream of electric sheep?

Muh Hon Cheng, one of Singapore’s most prolific iPhone developers has just ported SG Buses over to the Android platform. Has he gone over to the dark side? We find out.

Why did you decide to port SG Buses to Android?
SG Buses is a very simple app. So it's a good app to start with if I want to enter the Android market. 

What is it like developing for Android?
After coding for Android, I can better appreciate Apple's effort to make development easy to anyone. Android is probably still an easy platform. It took me three days to do SG Buses for Android. 

I think I'm probably learning about how to code on these platforms rather than learning the language itself. My Java is a bit rusty, but it does help to speed up development.  

How would you compare developing for the iPhone and developing for Android?
iPhone development is a lot easier than Android. Objective-C is a lot friendlier than Java. Some stuff is quite similar, e.g. tables and rows. But Android layout uses XML, which isn't easy to grasp at first. It's similar to HTML layout. It's probably important to make layout flexible for different screen sizes

Publishing apps for Android is a lot easier. Just submit the app and it'll be instantly available.

I think Android is a fun platform for developers to play with because of access to lots of nice features not available on the iPhone e.g. background activities, proximity alerts, better Map API. But I feel that as a user, I'll still prefer iPhone. 

Are  you planning to abandon iPhone development for Android?
Of course not. I see Android as another opportunity in addition to iPhone. I'll continue to develop on both. You'll see buUuk in Android soon as well. Interesting to have iPhone users interact with Android users with buUrps. 

Any plans to be a full-time developer and retire off the proceeds from your many apps?
I'm already a full time developer, probably since I converted my student status to part-time last June. 

How are you dealing with the problem of piracy and cracking?
I have had these problems before the App Store started. No use fighting it. If they want to buy it they will. I'm not bothered by it. Michael has a good idea though.

A new chapter for buUuk

If you find yourself in an unexpected stopover in Jakarta, say because your plane landed without its landing gear and you need to recover from the incident, at least you won’t go hungry; the latest version of buUuk (version 2.3) now comes with a Jakarta restaurant guide.

The developers of buUuk have decided to have on a one app to rule them all approach instead of having city-specific restaurant guides. Jakarta is the first city to be added to buUuk (after Singapore) and the developers hope to include other Southeast Asian cities in the coming weeks.

“This was really our vision from the beginning,’ says buUuk founder Jon Petersen. “Users should be able to use buUuk wherever they are. You don't want 10 dining apps on your phone right? Or have to learn how 10 apps work.”

The new version of the app detects which city a user is in when they first start the app. They then have the option of setting that as their 'Home City" and/or "Current City".

BuUuk has been downloaded more than 30,000 times and Jon says they are “very happy” with usage levels. “Depending on the day of the week, between 10 percent and 20 percent of our users visit the site at least once during the day.”

A quick look at the buUuk forum shows that a lively community is developing. A debate is currently raging about where to find the best nasi lemak in Singapore. (Selera Rasa in Adam Road, Fong Seng in Clementi and Boon Lay Hawker Centre are currently the top contenders).

Thanks to its combination of community and content, buUuk sounds like it is on its way to being a bestseller.

BuUuk (iTunes link) is available for free on the App Store.

Chordica developer presses on

Revolutions aren’t easy. Just ask developer Joash Chee.

Joash developed an app called Chordica (iTunes link) that allows musicians to use the iPhone as a useable piano substitute focusing on chords.

Spurnning the piano interface, Joash developed his own. Open Chordica and instead of the usual ebony and ivory keys, you see what looks like a calculator instead.

Despite the unusual interface, the app has gotten some attention from people. According to Joash, he’s made a few thousand dollars from Chordica, which he sells for US$2.99. Not bad considering that he released at the beginning of the year. However, it is has yet to set the music world on fire.

Joash is determined to forge ahead though, and promises to keep improving Chordica.

How do you feel about the reception to Chordica?

I must admit that I had hoped for a more rousing reception upon launch. However, in light of the difficulties I read about from other developers, I am grateful that there have been purchases on a daily basis.

I have identified the probably chief reason why the take-up rate has been less than spectacular — the interface isn't immediately intuitive. Even after seeing what it can possibly do, it remains alien to the average consumer and there's not enough mainstream leverage to tip the finger onto the buy button.

I have given it lots of thought and have decided not to (radically) change the interface to make it more intuitive. I judge that doing so will only compromise what I've set out to do, and that is to revolutionise the way the world plays accompaniment music.

Take the piano as an example. To a person who's totally clueless about playing the piano, it can't be said to be immediately intuitive. However, there is a worldwide acceptance of the piano interface, and I believe that it has been allowed that status due to an initial effort of education and then later the critical mass.

My next step forward is to educate people on the interface and the reasons behind it, which are many but not immediately obvious. I am convinced, however, that once I've been given that opportunity, people will embrace the Chordica as it is.

This is not to say that the Chordica can't be improved. We'll get to that juicy bit next. :)

What new features are you planning for Chordica then?

I have determined that there are a few core features that will need immediate implementation. At this point, I must plead non-disclosure due to my wanting to make a real impression so that when I revise Chordica, it's always a revolutionary step forward so that people gain trust in Scoreless Music (Joash’s company).

I'm working on a sequencer mode. This will allow users to enter in a number sheet and let it run on its own. I initially coined a name for a separate app that does this, called Auto-Chordica, but I've decided against that and will just focus on making Chordica go pro. :)

With every major feature revision, I will probably up the price to reflect the value of the app as I believe it to be. So this should help early adopters feel a sense of reward for supporting the Chordica before it reaches its prime.

Chordica has done well in Japan according to your numbers. Any reason why you’re big in Japan?

I love Japan! Well, I'm thankful that I have a friend who does freelance translations between English and Japanese.

I think if you googled me, you'd probably discover that I was once the chairman of Miyuki Animation Club. That's a whole other story to tell.

What else are you working on beside Chordica?

I've submitted a third app called Chord/Changer that places a handy pocket reference for folks who want to convert alphabet chord sheets into numbers. It's a free app and you can find the links and blurb at http://chordchanger.scorelessmusic.com

My first app, KeyFinder has been updated to version 1.1. It has the ability to play along with the music on your iPod or iPhone, making it a logical choice to find the keys of the songs on your device itself. It also shows the relative minor keys now as a toggle on the Keys Display. These were the two major features that users requested. I've also changed the website so that the blurb page is at http://keyfinder.scorelessmusic.com

Locate carparks, ERP gantries, get rates

A nice web app called i-Roadmate now allows you to locate carparks and ERP gantries on the map. Tap on the little bubble and it pulls up both carpark and ERP rates. 

Carpark rates come via sgcarmart.com. ERP rates are from the LTA. 

Nice interface. The web app is by the same person who gave us i-Movies, which I use whenever I need to check out movie times.

i-Roadmate is a web app, which means you can't get it at the App Store. Instead, call up Mobile Safari on your iPhone, and go to http://i.sh2sg.com/roadmate.html 

To add this to your home screen, tap the '+' sign in the dock and choose the option 'Add to Home Screen'.

Log in anytime

A local developer has just started selling an app called iLogin (iTunes link) that will allow you to save your log-in name and password for popular sites like Facebook, Flickr, Friendster, Yahoo Mail and YouTube.

The app also supports Wireless@SG (which free app SG Wireless also supports).

iLogin is being sold for $0.99. 

The developer, Hartanto Andreas, is the man behind the excellent SG Transport (iTunes link). I use SG Transport to bookmark all bus stops that I regularly. Whenever I am at that bus stop, I call up SG Transport to see bus arrival times. No need to type in obscure five digit codes anymore. In the very beginning, the app used to give me problems, but now it works flawlessly for me.

Local developer fights piracy by thinking different

When life gives you lemons, make lemonade -- that’s the philosophy of local iPhone developer Michael Tan. When he discovered that his countdown app, Upcoming Events, had been cracked, he decided to turn it into an opportunity. Instead of treating the users of the cracked version as crooks, he decided it would be more helpful to treat them as users of time-limited trial software.

If you use the latest cracked version of Upcoming Events (version 4.0) often enough, you will get a note telling you that the trial version of the software is expiring soon. Continue using it and the app will not display your data. The data is still there, but you will not be able to see it. 

To access this data again, users have to buy and install a legitimate copy of Upcoming Events on their device. “As long as the cracked version has not been deleted from the iPhone, the legitimate version will be able to access the old data,” says Michael. 

Michael’s approach is a clever way to get around Apple’s App Store policy of not allowing trial software. Legitimate users pay for a fully functioning app while users of cracked versions get to use the app for free, but for a limited time only. If people like it and find it useful, they would be happy to buy the legitimate version, which is being sold at an affordable US$5.99 (currently on sale for US$4.99).

Upcoming Events is like a contacts database which stores dates like birthdays and anniversaries. When you start it up, it will tell you how many more days to the events in your database. The latest version of the app allows you to add a photo to the contact, making it much easier to use.

Discuss your fav restaurants with buUuk

The latest version (2.2) of local iPhone restaurant guide buUuk is now available for download. New features include a forum, the ability to tag restaurants as halal or non-halal (over 500 tagged so far), and pricing. 

The pricing function relies on crowd sourcing.  "Users get a slider when they write a buUrp (review) about a restaurant and can use it it provide their estimate of price. We then average the inputs," says Jon Petersen, one of the founders of buUuk.

The company is now setting its sights on new markets. They are hoping to launch buUuk for Jakarta in the first quarter of this year, timed to coincide with the launch of the iPhone in Indonesia. 

BuUuk (iTunes link) is free.

Doodle Kids zooms past 250,000 mark

Highest position reached on the list of Top Free Apps in the US App Store? Number 6. 

Buy GV movie tickets - maybe

The latest version of iGV promises to allow you to buy tickets online. Sadly, it always crashes on me when I try to do so. Anyone else having this problem?

Doodle Kids busts 100,000 mark

Lim Ding Wen is currently Singapore's top iPhone developer, at least by downloads. Since it was released 21 days ago, Ding Wen's free painting app Doodle Kids (iTunes link) has been downloaded an impressive 149,000 times, according to his dad. It is currently number 7 on the US App Store's list of Top Free Apps making Ding Wen the only developer from Singapore to have made it to Apple's top 10 list in the US. Not bad for a 9-year-old. 

Silly love songs

Just in time for Valentine's Day. Joash Chee, the developer of Chordica (iTunes link), is busy rolling out 101 Love Songs for people who use his app. Learn to play Richard Marx's Right Here Waiting or Debbie Gibson's Lost in Your Eyes. Joash hasn't quite reached 101 songs yet but he promises that it's only a matter of time. Download scores here. (Note: You'll have to register first.)

Find that shop with MallmentSG

I hate VivoCity. Not because it's a crappy mall, but because it's so big. I constantly get lost and I end up wandering around because I can't find the store I'm looking for. Developer Zhou Wenhan believes he has a solution though -- MallmentSG.

This is a store directory of all the major malls in Singapore. Every store in the mall is just a phone call away so if you get lost, you only need to call the store itself and ask for directions. The app also has a map of the different malls, though not all malls have this yet.

To get to the mall, you can either search through the alphabetical list, or you can tap the 'nearby' button to find malls near your existing location. Neat.

MallmentSG (iTunes link) is free and is now available on the App Store.

Writing an iPhone app not child's play

After this blog broke the story of Ding Wen's remarkable achievement, the news spread like wildfire around the world.

Let’s get one thing straight — Lim Ding Wen, the 9-year-old boy who wrote an iPhone app, did not download the iPhone SDK one day, learn Objective-C on his own, write Doodle Kids, and then post the app to Apple for approval.

The story is much longer and more complicated than that. It’s a story of a smart kid with an interest and aptitude for programming, a supportive father who is himself a highly skilled programmer, and many, many hours of hard work on the part of the boy to master different programming languages. It also involves, of all things, an Apple IIGS.

The story begins in 2006, back when Ding Wen was in primary 1 (first grade). He was then six going on seven. His father, Lim Thye Chean, remembers that Ding Wen wanted to write a game so he promised to help his son if the boy did well in his exams. 

Thye Chean is eminently qualified to help, being the CTO of a high-tech company and a hardcore techie himself. One of his favourite languages is Forth, where you think and write in reverse polish notation.

More importantly, Thye Chean was, and still is, also a true Apple IIGS fan. He had been programming on the Apple II ever since he was a teenager and he lusted after the IIGS from the moment it was released in 1986. Thye Chean bought his first machine, a secondhand IIGS, in 1990 for the outrageous price of $2,000. 

When his son first said that he wanted to write a game, Thye Chean researched various languages to find one that was suitable for his son. He could not find anything he was happy with, so he settled on an interim solution, Applesoft BASIC on the IIGS.

Back to BASICs

Thye Chean first taught his son Applesoft BASIC on a Mac running the Sweet16 IIGS emulator. Ding Wen learned to write simple programs but BASIC is obviously a hard program to write a
graphics-heavy game on.

They lucked out when they found an old version of Complete Pascal designed for the IIGS. Complete Pascal's graphical IDE, ease of use, and ease of compilation, combined with Apple's QuickDraw API, made it much better platform for learning to write a game.

With the discovery of Pascal for the IIGS, the father-son project became more intensive. Recalls Thye Chean: "We spent days going through old bookstores to find old Pascal books. We even used the Borland Delphi book to learn about Pascal."

Because of his background in BASIC, Ding Wen picked up Pascal quickly and he wrote his first program in a few days. Eventually, he wrote Doodle Kids, which was completed at the end of May 2008. The application was Ding Wen's first event-driven program.

Doodle Kids was written over a few days, with some help from dad. Ding Wen studied the source code of his dad's Pascal painting program Simple Paint. Thye Chean also helped his son debug the colour cycling part of the program. According to Thye Chean, his son knew how to use hex numbers to do the RGB calculation, but he had trouble understanding part of the loop code used in colour cycling. (This part of the Pascal program did not make it over to the iPhone version).

Porting to the iPhone

A few months later, Ding Wen decided to port Doodle Kids over to the iPhone, not surprising as Ding Wen's favourite game device is his dad's iPhone which has over 100 games on it.

By this time, Ding Wen had learned Javascript so he rewrote Doodle Kids in Javascript, with the help of a drawing library called GScript that his dad had developed. GScript is a drawing routine for JavaScript simulating QuickDraw commands. It uses the Canvas feature available in all web browsers (except for IE). "With the QuickDraw-like commands, it made it easier for Ding Wen to port, so that he could concentrate on language changes and less on the API," says Thye Chean.

Javascript applications can be turned into iPhone apps relatively easily. What's needed is a WebKit browser (UIWebView) to host a web application. All iPhone technologies, including multi-touch, canvas and animation, can be used in the application, according to Thye Chean. (Full details are available here.)

He taught his son some Objective-C so that Ding Wen could write the wrapper for WebKit. After debugging, Doodle Kids for the iPhone was sent to Apple for approval in mid January 2009. Two weeks later, Apple gave the OK.

Ding Wen is now learning Objective-C, his seventh language, and is porting his game Invader War to the iPhone. Invader War is Ding Wen's first object oriented program, and was written in Object Pascal.

Anyone can write a program

Thye Chean insists that his son is not a whiz kid, though he allows that his son has above average intelligence. His son's experience has convinced him that anyone can learn to program. As Thye Chean notes in a blog post, it used to be that anyone could write a simple program. Not so today. “Programming has become a science, where you need to be a rocket scientist to just to do something simple!”

In order to bring back the good old days when programming was easily accessible, Thye Chean developed GScript BASIC, a modern Applesoft BASIC-inspired language. "It is what I think Applesoft BASIC would be if it evolved, and ran on a super Apple IIGS," he says.

GScript BASIC running on Mobile Safari on the iPhone.

GScript BASIC will create a 640 by 400 Super Hires screen in Safari, Firefox, Chrome and Mobile Safari. You can run GScript BASIC scripts over the web or you can download GScript BASIC and run it off your local machine. It is not a clone of Applesoft BASIC though as it has new commands for drawing shapes, playing sounds and doing animation.

GScript BASIC turned out this way because Thye Chean had always dreamed of having a super Apple IIGS with a 640 by 400 resolution (the IIGS could only handle resolutions of 320 by 200 and 640 by 200).

"Unfortunately, such a product never existed so I designed an imaginary Applesoft BASIC-like language (based on JavaScript), to run on an imaginary Apple IIGS. The result? You can do programming like you can on a super Apple IIGS, but on a modern computer."

Thye Chean originally wrote GScript BASIC as a simple programming language for his 5-year-old daugher Xin Quan. She still hasn’t quite decided if she wants to follow in her brother’s footsteps yet, but if she does, watch out Ding Wen. Younger sisters seldom play fair.

Wireless@SG app, others now in App Store

Coincidentally, Apple has approved a bunch of apps from Singapore-based developers on the App Store in the last day or so. Here's a quick look at them:

1. SG Wireless (iTunes link) is a free app that helps you to connect to Wireless@SG. (Developer: Ong Jun Da)

2. Foyage (iTunes link) is a location-based service that tells you what shops, restaurants etc are around you. (Developer: Xsago)

3. MovTrailer (iTunes link) is an RSS reader that tracks the latest trailers available on Apple's movie trailers website. (Developer: Muh Hon Cheng)

4. TubeJunkies Lite (iTunes link) is an RSS reader for YouTube. The free and ad-supported version of TubeJunkies. (Developer: Muh Hon Cheng)

Free lite version of SG ERP now available

If you've always wanted to own SG ERP but were too cheap to fork out the US$1.99 for it, here's your chance to get it for free. The developer, Muh Hon Cheng has just released a freeware version called SG ERP Lite (iTunes link). 

With SG ERP, you can find out what the current ERP charges are at the different gantries around Singapore.

The main difference between the two is that the lite version is ad-supported and it is not location-aware. This means you can see all ERP gantries listed alphabetically, but not arranged by distance from your current location.

SG ERP Lite is the second lite version of a Singapore-specific app that I've seen on the App Store. Beating SG ERP to the punch was Fund Watch Lite, the free version of the US$7.99 Fund Watch (iTunes link).

Some guys have all the luck

SG Girls screenshot: Warning -- Dangerous curves ahead

It’s a tough job, but someone has to do it. Developer Ong Jun Da spends about 20 minutes each day picking out attractive Singapore women to add to his iPhone slideshow app SG Girls (iTunes link).

As a result of his tireless efforts, SG Girls (US$3.99) now has more than 2,000 pictures of attractive women. More are added each day.

How do pictures make the cut? According to Jun Da, “the pictures must be appropriate, decent and of good quality (in terms of resolution).”

Currently, he gets all the pictures from Flickr but he is looking at getting pictures from other sources as well.

The idea for SG Girls came up during a conversation over MSN Messenger with a friend last November. “Confirm top free app lor. Even top paid,” said his friend.

It is not the top paid ad yet, but it’s not doing too badly. SG Girls is currently occupying the number five slot in the photography category, which is not bad for an app costing US$3.99. (It is no. 76 on the list of top paid apps at the time of writing).

Apple took about two months to approve the app and at one point, Jun Da gave up hope of the app getting the OK from Apple. However, now that it is in the App Store, he is all fired up and has plans to improve it.

“SG Girls was developed quickly in a span of two weeks, and I admit it is raw. The icons for the app was also whipped up in an hour.

“In fact, the ‘Save image’ button was changed in 10 min when Apple rejected the app due to my use of an iPhone image in the button.”

In future, users will be able to swipe left and right to go through the slideshow. They will also be able to change the slideshow’s refresh rate.

SG Girls is the first step in Jun Da’s efforts to build his media empire. Once he’s gotten the new features out, he intends to roll out more slideshow apps along the same lines, starting with VN Girls (spotlighting Vietnamese women). If this takes off, and there is no reason to think it won’t, Jun Da will soon be doing all his development work from his beach villa in Bali.