JCJ is an iphone front end for the popular medical locums job agency jcjlocums.co.uk. One of the main requirements was that the app be fun and easy to use which allowed Chris Baxter to use his creativity and come up with a really unique design.

The animated intro was achieved using CoreAnimation to drop UIButtons from the top of the screen. The “multi value fields” used in the search screen are simply UILabels embedded in a UIScrollview using the paging feature to provide smooth scrolling between values. There are existing Calendar libraries for the iphone however I decided in the end to write a custom control which allows much tighter integration into the design.

JCJ Locums app is available free on the app store

iElect UK is an iPhone application with a unique concept. During the upcoming 2010 election users will be able to use iElect to lookup their constituency and view information about their current MP and 2010 candidates. Users can then request that candidates gets in touch with them by sms or email.

Again this project was undertaken with the guys at Gedgers and engineroomapps. Core location and the Mapkit API are used to pinpoint the users location and find their default constituency. Core data is then used to store the list of constituencies and candidates details. The contact feature issues a request to the backend web service, which will forward the provided details onto the candidate. The striking orange buttons and rounded containers are drawn using Quartz 2D.

MyStacks is an iPhone application for browsing questions from the stack overflow trilogy sites, those are stackoverflow.com superuser.com serverfault.com and stackoverflow.com.

Features:

• Themeable UI
• DOM HTML parser
• Save Questions Offline
• Search AND, OR, Phrase, body and title
• FREE!

At present the version available in store is v0.1, which does not include most of the features seen in the screenshots, an update has been submitted and will be available soon. In the meantime you can still download Stack Overflow v0.1 in the app store

Specification

• A user will be able to view news content whilst the application is on-line and off-line
• A user will be able to share a news article by e-mail.
• A user will launch the app and be able to read the latest news from The Business Desk
• A user will view a headlines list to choose a full article to view.
• A user can login

Solution

I worked with the team at engineroomapps.com <http://engineroomapps.com> on this project using using agile development techniques and collaboration tools such as basecamp, git and targetprocess. The app front end interface and logic were development by me using objective c and the SDK 3.0 API. Initially the news data was proposed to be supplied using Ruby & activeresource, however the library was eventually discarded due to stability issues. Instead the feed was provided by the web service team in xml format and parsed on the app side using touchxml. For offline viewing data is saved persistently using core data, reachability code is used to display when reading news online or offline.

The business desk app is available FREE in the app store

iVersion is a SVN client for the iphone 3G and ipod touch.

iVersion uses the open source subversion 1.6 client library, written in plain C, with an Objective C wrapper for simpler interfacing with the Objective C UI. Using an objective C Wrapper the client can easily be abstracted to work with other version control protocols. In the future git, mercurialand bazaar support maybe included.

Features

• Multi-threaded non-locking ui
• OpenSSL support for https:// and svn+ssh:// connections
• svn commands: list, info, cat,
• Browse Directories
• View Commit Logs
• View file Info
• Bookmarks, History & Directory Cache through NSUserDefaults

** Commit Support
Subversion does not allow commiting of a single file without a working copy of the previous directory. A work around for this has been found and commit support should be available in a future version.

Specification:
Desktop Application for Mac OSX 10.5

1. Loads an XML file;
2. Presents the XML data in an a table that can be sorted by each column;
3. Enables custom views of data, i.e., show all columns or only some;
4. Exports updated information back into the XML format;
5. Has an “FTP Widget” that can upload images to a server.

Solution:
As per the clients specification the application was written using primarily Objective C, with Xcode as the development IDE. The UI is designed to be powerful and customizable. Profiles can be created to customize the view of the XML data. The Main window is split between an image view and a table view, which the user can adjust and hide if necessary, which is smoothly animated. Side drawers are used to display additional Options to the user.

XML parsing is handled using Cocoa’s bundled NSXMLParser using the format supplied by the client. The XML file can be imported, searched and exported using a tabular style layout. Fields can be edited, copied or deleted using single or multiple selections. The XML file can be uploaded to the site from within the app using NSURLConnection and http post.

Initially the possibility of using an existing Objective C Ftp library, such as Connection kit was explored, as well as the possibility of interfacing directly with an existing Mac ftp client such as Cyberduck. However the final solution was to write a lightweight ftp client using C Sockets with an Objective C API wrapper. The result is the user can quickly and easily upload and download images directly from the program, without any external dependancies.

Mosiaco has been tested throughly with Xcode’s Leaks and GNU gdb and is stable and leak free without garbage collection.

“ zootreeves was exactly the kind of provider I was looking for in this collaboration: he knew exactly how to take my vision for the app and make it a reality. In addition, he always brought alternative solutions and new ideas to the table. The final product is above and beyond what I had hoped to create. He was a thorough pleasure to work with and I would highly recommend him to anyone looking for a Mac OS X app developer. Timothy Allen President & Creative Director Hypergolica, Inc. www.hypergolica.net”

For more information regarding the Mosaico web gallery desktop software or if you are interested in finding an all in one solution for your online web gallery hosting please contact Mosaico or Hypergolica

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