Handstream

I remember the company Dragon from way back in the '90's. They produced voice recognition software called Naturally Speaking that I played with on my trusty 286 desktop. Well they have kept up with the times and have produced a FREE iPhone app that records a voice speaking into an Apple device and interprets it into editable text that can be copied and pasted elsewhere on the device. I had this app when it was just available in the U.S App Store but now it's available here in the U.K. It uses a clever system that uploads your recording to a server which does the heavy computer crunching and returns to you the spoken word. It could be useful in a driving situation for something,  lets say, tweeting on the M4 (legally) or an alternative to Apple's native app, Voice Memos. Also with Apple's very strong support for disadvantaged people, namely  Accessibility , this app overlaps that initiative very nicely, maybe becoming something that could grow to be dependably vi...

I have spent a few weeks wrestling Apple's class implementation of Google Maps in the SDK. Most of the stuff is quite easy to understand but I had a memory leak problem. I substituted my code with an Apple example code project and was still getting the leaks. It appears that MKMapKit places the imagery from Google into the applications cache and using the MapView class ends up with massive cryptic memory leaks of varying size and error responses. Along with the fun of fixing memory leaks it tends to car-crash an app if you thought you cleaned all the leaks up but one was lurking, waiting for the fifteenth press of the map button. To fix this frustrating problem add this snippet of code in your app's appdelegate. - (BOOL)application:(UIApplication *)application didFinishLaunchingWithOptions:(NSDictionary *)launchOptions{     //memory clearance     NSURLCache *sharedCache = [[NSURLCache alloc]initWithMemoryCapacity:0 diskCapacity:0 diskPath:nil]; ...

The reason for my poor blogging history is simple. I have been overwhelmed by the whole app developer scene. So much so, that I have put my money where my mouth is and left my safe, secure full-time employment to freelance as a developer. The last few months have been a crash course in Objective C, the language of all things app like. I have secured a few contracts for apps which, until released, I'd prefer to keep private and the reason I am able to spend a few minutes writing this blog is, the main app I have been working on has been submitted to Apple for scrutiny and should hopefully be available for purchase shortly. I have been called mad, reckless and ill informed. I have been called worse plus, I can't think of any other job that I am capable of doing where I get to play with toys all day and get paid handsomely. Explaining to people that you write applications for devices carries a certain amount of mystique and interest, far more that building websites. So - I...