Team Assist is a driving schedule application for amateur football players in the Netherlands. The app gives users an overview of current and future games directly from the KNVB. Players can access the latest information about the games; see which team members are playing, the location of the next game, who is driving and where and when to meet.

The News24 application is the first locally developed Smart TV application in Africa. It allows users to access news content on their Smart TVs and navigate to stories or sections of interest using the remote as a cursor.

Sticky Art lets you design sticky-note art using your iPad. You can either create the design manually, or use the trace feature to convert a regular image into a sticky art. The app allows users to customise the window size, zoom in and out to get perspective of how the design will look and email or print the design from your iPad. A design inventory is also shown on your design so that you know how many stickies you need.

Download the VW Team Assist iPhone app

Download theVW Team Assist Android app

Download the VW Team Assist web app

Download the Sticky Art iPad app

The News24 app is accessible from the Samsung Apps Store via the Smart TV UI

Yesterday I stumbled across a very nicely built, but simple, payments app – bill payments in South Africa – called POCiT. What I found interesting about this app, is that it is written using the J2ME Polish platform (Enough Software), and it has come a long way since I last checked it out. And I really liked the speed of the app compared to PhoneGap apps which can be really slow. I’ll try to write more on Polish at a later date.

But the reason for this post is that I found a great introduction to development on mobile platforms on the site. They call it the Mobile Developer’s Guide To The Galaxy and I recommend anyone interested in the field to download and read it. It gives a brief overview of all mobile platforms & how to develop for them; introduces many of the cross-platform development kits & also gives a rundown on mobile web apps. All in all, it is what it says it is – the guide to our galaxy.

Name: Laura Kritzinger
Nickname: Leia
Likes: Gadgets…kitchen gadgets..
Dislikes: Steve’s MK noises
Speciality (what we go to Laura for): All the little things that make Cobi run smoothly
MK signature move: Feeds us real life power ups to create more energetic MK games

Make sure you #import <QuartzCore/QuartzCore.h>

To make a simple rectangular gradient all we need is to add a CAGradientLayer:

CAGradientLayer * gradientLayer = [CAGradientLayer layer];
gradientLayer.frame = CGRectMake(0, 0, 80, 60);
gradientLayer.colors = [NSArray arrayWithObjects:(id)[[UIColor redColor] CGColor],(id)[[UIColor greenColor] CGColor], nil];
[self.window.layer addSublayer:gradientLayer];

This produces a rectangle that can be used in any view:

We can give the layer rounded corners by adding:

gradientLayer.cornerRadius = 10;

For more complex shapes we can set a mask for the gradient layer using a CAShapeLayer:
//Make shape – Triangle
CGMutablePathRef path = CGPathCreateMutable();
CGPathMoveToPoint(path, NULL,40.0f, 0.0f);
CGPathAddLineToPoint (path, NULL,80.0f, 60.0f);
CGPathAddLineToPoint (path, NULL,0.0f, 60.0f);
CGPathCloseSubpath(path);

//Shape layer
CAShapeLayer * mask = [CAShapeLayer layer];
mask.path = path;
[gradientLayer setMask:mask];

//release path
CGPathRelease(path);

UIButton with a gradient:

The graph I made for a project using Core Animation layers:

The latest releases span from an interactive game to a news app.
PimPamPet is a well-known question-and answer game from Jumbo Games, a Dutch founded jigsaw puzzle and games company. The project was commissioned and managed by Amsterdam based mobile agency, FONKMobile, who met with us in Cape Town earlier this year.

The game needs to be played in 2 teams, and the iPad and iPhone apps make use of the touch gesture to spin the wheel, complete with realistic sound effects. Regular outbursts of “Pim!Pam!Pet!” accompanied the development of these apps and now that they’re completed the office is feeling rather quiet!

The iPad app developed for BusinessDay has been long in the pipeline and seems to have been well received. Marc Forrest of MarcForrest.com reviewed the app and said “If you own an iPad I highly suggest you get this app. By far one of THE best daily’s I have seen on the iPad.”

BusinessDay is South Africa’s most influential and respected business news and analysis source, offering incisive coverage of business, politics, labour and other current affairs, written by the country’s award winning journalists.

To get the PimPamPet app, click here.

To get the BusinessDay app, click here.

At first these floats were quite an annoyance because when debugging using NSLog() to check if frames were set correctly you have to use NSLog(@"%f",newView.frame.origin.x); and this is printed as a decimal number i.e. 0.00000

After getting used to this and starting a project that required 3 columns down the screen I thought that I could finally use the floats to their full effect. So I divided the space neatly by three and drew UILabels. UILabel *firstLabel = [[UILabel alloc] initWithFrame:CGRectMake(0.0, 0.0, 1024/3, 768.0)];

Unfortunately this caused my UILabels to become fuzzy or blurry. After an extensive google search I found out that you should NOT be setting your frames using float values. Although CGRects take float values, when a UIView gets drawn and it has a decimal value in the frame it will blur that value to the nearest integer. This makes sense when you remember that the value you are giving is meant to represent a pixel value and a view cannot end halfway through a pixel.

So you should ensure that your frame does not contain any decimal values. An easy way to do this is to use the roundf() function. If placed around all 4 values in your frame you will always have an integer value, however this is a lot of extra code and you only have to do it where there is a possibility of having a decimal value. So my above label example became
UILabel *firstLabel = [[UILabel alloc] initWithFrame:CGRectMake(0.0, 0.0, roundf(1024/3), 768.0)];

Using a view’s center property it is possible to get a point with a .5 value (any view with a width or height that is odd will give you a .5 value). Using a view’s center to position another view should therefore be done using roundf(). For example say you have a white view and you want to cover it from the middle to the bottom right corner with red:

UIView *bigView = [[UIView alloc] initWithFrame:CGRectMake(30.0, 30.0, 67.0, 71.0)];
bigView.backgroundColor = [UIColor whiteColor];
[self addSubview:bigView];

UIView *smallView = [[UIView alloc] initWithFrame:CGRectMake(
                                roundf(bigView.center.x),
                                roundf(bigView.center.y),
                                roundf(bigView.frame.size.width/2),
                                roundf(bigView.frame.size.height/2)
                                                                                                )];
smallView.backgroundColor = [UIColor redColor];
[self addSubview:smallView];

[bigView release];
[smallView release];