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iPhone app

myNestEgg 1.2 released

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Known problem in version 1.2
(11-21-2010) I received a user bug report this morning: the calculation results is not right due to the extra comma separator in “beginning savings” and “salary”. I fixed the problem this afternoon and submitted the binary (version 1.3) to App store. Stay tuned.

myNestEgg_bug_1

What’s New in Version 1.2
1) Add new icons for the tab bars (the 3 bars at the bottom);

2) Add “shake” function to “Settings” tab bar. When at “Settings” tab, if the user shakes the phone gently, the rates will reset to default values: 7% annual investment return, 2% annual inflation. Note the user still needs to tap “Set Rates” button to make the rates take effect.

3) Fix the minor problem where the inflation rate picker moves when the user switches to the “settings tab”. Note this behavior has not affected calculation results.

I just found a bug shortly after the release. If someone reports the problem to me, he/she will have the opportunity to win the $25 Amazon gift card.

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iPhone app

collegeFund free for now at iTunes App store plus more

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(Update Dec 16, 2010) Free again for limited time (until Dec 25).

What is it?
collegeFund is a college savings calculator iOS app (iOS 3.1.2 or later) I released a while ago (Oct. 5 to be precise). Link to iTunes App store here. For a limited time (this annual benefits enrollment and holiday season), I am making the v 1.0 app for free. I will end the promotion as soon as the v 1.1 approves.

collegeFund_iTunes_store_2010-10-27

Why free?
I am out of mind 🙂 Actually I thought about this before the release. Over the years I came to believe college education is a prerequisite for many things in life: the college experience, the knowledge learned and friendship formed in college, last but not least, the skill of “how to learn on one’s own” and a path to entry level job. For me and my wife this is not possible without the sacrifice of our parents. This March our baby daughter was born, and we enrolled in a college saving plan for her shortly. We are just trying to repeat what our parents did for us.

In the same spirit, we would like share this little app with all the hard working parents.

Is it really free? Am I ask anything in return?
Yes. If you are happy with the app, you can help me out by

1) send me feedback, including write reviews on iTunes store, good reviews only 🙂 ; send me unpleasant reviews by email (uudaddy no spam AT gmail DOT com).

2) I do have a paid app, myNestEgg ~ the retirement calculator at App store. So if you have an extra dollar(s), you can buy or gift this little app during holidays 🙂

What if you already paid for the app?
First I want to say “thank you”. I can either refund you the 99 cents, or give you the myNestEgg app.

What if you already bought myNestEgg too? We are not entering an infinite loop here, let me know and I will send you something, for your patronage.

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401k and Personal Finance iPhone app

Earn $25 filing a bug report, enhancement request, or user story

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for #iPhone #app #myNestEgg ~ the retirement calculator (link at iTunes store) and receive an Amazon gift card (one winner per category).

I am starting this mostly for fun, three categories ($25 per category):

bug report; enhancement request; user story

Send email to uudaddy(No Spam) AT gmail DOT com. This runs until Dec 31, 2010. One entry for one person.

How the prize being determined
My 7 months and a half daugher gets to decide 🙂

Seriously, I will decide according the merits.

AmazonThankYou2010-04-27 myNestEgg_12_2010-10-25_2

Version 1.2 is coming
Just in time for annual benefits enrollment. The following is a glimpse. Note I purchased Glyphish Pro icons this time. So hopefully you can show this app to your friends without being embarrassed for lack of icons in version 1.0/1.1

F.A.Qs

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iPhone app

myNestEgg 1.1 released yesterday

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I know, I know, I am a little late making the announcement. But I was fighting a small battle.

Anyway, the latest and greatest is here. It has all the goodies of version 1.0 plus the following new things:
========
Fix the problem in “email results” when income_ratio is larger than 100%, the email results shows 100%. Now it shows the correct number.

Set default inflation rate to 2% (was 1% before the change); set default investment return rate to 7% (was 6% before the change). We believe the new numbers are more realistic numbers.

Change the calculation of inflation adjustment to fix the “divide by zero” problem in some cases.
========

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iPhone app Stocks

The iPhone development provision problem

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I got this problem 2 days ago, exactly same as it being described at Stackoverflow. My environment: Xcode 3.1.4, iPhone OS 3.1.2, Mac OS 10.5.8 (yeah, I am a little old school).

Struggled a bit, tried creating new certificates, using old certificates, blah blah blah. Nothing, still see the same message after I added the provision (downloaded from iOS dev center) to Xcode: “A valid signing identity matching this profile could not be found in your keychain”

I read that Stackoverflow carefully, also looked at the Apple Offical Q&A 1688. Finally I figured it out: I need to download the dev certificate approved (automatically) at iOS dev/provision center, double click it (to install on Keychain). It initially complained about “two certificates using same name” or something like that. I deleted the old dev certificate in Keychain. After that I fixed the provision for my apps, and download the relevant provisions, then drop those to Xcode => Organizer. I no longer see the error. Subsequent build and install worked beautifully.

A small battle was won.

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iPhone app

Back from Voices that matter: iPhone developer conference

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#VTM_iPhone

The conference was hold in Philadelphia, PA. Note there was a VTM_iPhone conference this past spring in Seattle. This is my first time attending an Apple themed conference, my first time to hear names like Omni Group, Mike Lee, which are almost like household names in Mac/iOS community.

Ok, let me get to the topic, the people and topics of conference. First I want to thank Chuck and Barbara (and all other Pearson Publishing organizers, venue helpers) for their hard work on logistics (food, drink, website etc.), if there is anything could be improved, I think it’s the Wifi access point. Probably due to the overwhelming of iPhone/iPad, and laptop, sometimes we had difficulty connecting to Wifi. But that’s a minor thing, compared the quality of speakers, and the openness atmosphere of participants (Mac community is much friendly than some of the other dev community as I know of).

Technical sessions are excellent, sometimes I had hard time to make a choice but I like to attend all 3 sessions running at the same time. Eventually I decided to take more UI (user interface) and Graphics Design classes as that is my weakness, coming from coder/programmer background and not graphics Q. Here is the schedule of classes. Some of the highlights: Aaron Hillegass talked about the product cycle and going form “independence to interdependence” as business grow. Not entirely new topic, but good reminder to me. Mike Lee reminds me a Chinese guy names Lu Xun (after I gave it more thought): he fired at a lot of places and I think many of his points are valid criticism of “lack of effort/thoughts” in design. I think yesterday Steve Jobs’ fire at Android fragmentation is along the same line. When “Open” is just for business and marketing purpose, how meaningful really is open of Android?

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iPhone app

At philadelphia voice that matters iOS conference

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I am at Philadelphia now. I came here for the VTM iOS conference. Took southwest Air from STL this evening, arrived phl slightly after 10. Planned taking the shuttle, but could not reach the guy per his instruction. Took train to market east/Philly conference center , then called a taxi to hotel. Saw quite some people on street on the way to society hill Sheraton. It seems free AT&T wifi only works on my iPhone, not MacBook. So I settle on iPhone for tomorrow conference info and how to get there.

I also wrote this post via wordpress iPhone app. It requires wp 2.9 but my Stlplace blog was still at 2.0.2 🙁

Oh, by the way, it seems apple fixed myNestEgg app update (1.1) stuck in “upload received” status. It’s in “wait fore review” mode now. This update will fix some of the bugs.

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iPhone app Software development

iPhone iOS dev blogs

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The following are iPhone development blogs I often read. Note I used Google reader to get them. I also listed some of the blogs under “dev” category in the side bar (small).

Technical
iPhone development by Jeff Lamarche. Jeff is the author of the best beginners book for iPhone dev “Beginning iPhone development”. Recently I found his profile at LinkedIn, and found he was a law school graduate, which is total surprise to me. He is definitely not a lawyer type in terms of writing (blog) and talking style (from his tweets).

Cocoanetics (aka Dr. Touch): Oliver Drobnik, the former Windows Admin turned full time iPhone iOS developer lives in Austria (Europe). Note he recently changed the name from Dr. Touch to Cocoanetics. Regardless the name change, I found he has a very good sense of both technology and business: I think his article on Notifications and “Part Store” (he sold his components software like parts) are very interesting.

iPhone developer:tips written primarily by John Muchow, who is the author of Core J2ME (which is the primary mobile development language pre iPhone, it is still used on Blackberry platform, and note Android used a different Java virtual machine developed by Google). I think some article such as “rename Xcode project”, “Prevent application being placed in background” etc. to be interesting.

iPhone development blog: written by Nick Dalton who got into iPhone dev early. A lot of goodies include this iPhone iOS app store reject reasons. I believe he is a co-founder and CTO of a mobile development firm in SF (can not recall the company name on top of my head, you may google).

Ray Wenderlich: the blog bears the author’s name. It has a lot of meaningful tutorials (not those “Hello world” stuff). Besides that, I found this How to host beta test for iOS app” to be interesting.

Other Resources, news, gossips etc
iPhone developer news (Apple): get it from Apple iOS developer center. The official place for all the announcement etc.

Mobile Orchard: used to be good technical stuff, stopped update this April, just resumed blogging.

43 iPhone app development resources: the list is a bit dated, but still useful.

I will add more as time goes.

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401k and Personal Finance iPhone app

Submitted 2nd iPhone iOS app collegeFund ~ college savings calculator

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(Update 10-26-2010) I forgot to mention that app is available at iTunes App store since Oct 5. The product support page is at uudaddy. Sorry for my omission 🙂

(Original) I submit the collegeFund app 3 days ago. This app is similar to the myNestEgg ~ the retirement calculator, it helps parents (and other family members who are willing to help) to calculate the kid’s college savings fund vs. the retirement fund in the retirement calculator.

I got this idea more than a year ago when a close friend who is sending kid to college. I can felt financial burden of the father, while I can also fully appreciate the kid’s decision to go to a well known college instead of the college his dad and yours truly both went (btw, the job prospect of our alma mater was very good).

This March, our daughter was born, I was hoping I don’t have to be put into such as tough spot when my kid starts college (btw, her father will have to seriously think about the retirement plans then). Hence, I opened the Ohio 529 plan a month after her birth, and started to put away the money we received from family. Meanwhile, I set an automatic monthly deposit for her account.

CF_currentSaving0_age0_annual5000

Anyway, I wish this is a beginning for parents, grand parents, uncles, aunties etc. to plan for their kids’ college education. Now let’s hope the app gets approved soon 🙂

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Stocks

Barnes and Noble: a declining book selling empire?

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I started writing this post a while ago, after I bought Barnes Noble nook (e-reader), and Barnes Noble stock (NYSE:BKS). BN recently changed its brand of e-reader app on Android from BN to nook (it already use nook on iPhone and iPad), so nook is more than an e-reader, it’s at the center of BN’s digital book.

What’s up with Barnes and Noble stock
Stock was under heavy selling pressure, after announcing price cut of Nook e-reader, and fiscal 2010 Q4 result (2011 Q1 and full year outlook), before the announcement of potential “taking private” and Ron Burkle (its second largest shareholder) proxy fight. The stock bounced from as low as about $12 to $17 in couple months since the announcement.

But the fundamental problem facing the company: transition from traditional book to ebook is too high a mountain for BN to climb. Back in “printed book” days, BN can use its scale to get better rate from publishers and commercial real estate companies, beating a lot of mom and pop stores on the way. Now physical stores become a liability. Compared to Amazon (kindle) and more recent Apple (iPad), nook is not standing out (both hardware and software, read this Mossberg review on 3 e-reader apps for iPad), and can not win from scale, even presence at BN book store does not overcome Amazon Kindle’s TV commercial and Target store presence. Target is going to carry iPad soon. BN does have presence at Best Buy, but Kindle is coming to Best Buy soon.

Burkle criticized BN founder and largest shareholder Riggio almost anything (Riggio did the same to Burkle). At the dispute is the recent transaction of BN buying College bookseller (valuation discussion below). Valuation aside, I think Riggio is trying to salvage his empire by banded the retail stores with more stable business – college book store. College book stores are perceived as more stable because students have to buy textbooks. As long as college enrollment does not decline (this usually holds as nowadays college degree is necessary for most white collar jobs). The only thing is here digitization is happening too. BN does have some initiative, Amazon Kindle DX was trying to make a dent here (was not successful), but Apple iPad is posing a serious player. This is causing more problem for BN.

So who should you vote in the Proxy fight? As I said earlier both sides accuse the other side as totally moron. I think the truth is somewhere in between. I don’t think Burkle has a magic bullet here, and I don’t think Riggio really understand this facebook era. I can see Kindle has a facebook page, and BN has a facebook page, but NO facebook page for nook. WOW. Notice BN does not air commercial on TV as well (this is more understandable because they don’t have deep pocket as Amazon and Apple). But NO free facebook page (for marketing and brand awareness). Something is broken in the BN management.

more readings at WSJ.

College bookseller buy valuation

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