Currency Exchange Launches

We added a new application to our portfolio – Currency Exchange. The application lets you convert the currency from one currency to another with a simple and intuitive interface. The application currently supports 45 most common currencies by default. Complete list is available here.

The application is currently available on AppStore for $0.99. Please do give this a try.

AppStore on iPhone improves category based listing

AppStore now has better listing of application with the recent 2.2 update. The changes are available on AppStore on the iPhone.

When applications are listed based on popularity in iTunes, the listing combines both Free Apps and Paid Apps. Not surprisingly, most of the top 25 Apps are paid apps leaving no visibility to the paid apps. I believe this behavior is about to change in iTunes if we consider the recent changes in AppStore on iPhone & Apple’s website as clues.

When you browse the applications by Category in the new AppStore on mobile device, you now have options to order the apps by popularity (Free and Paid) and by Release date. This gives options to the user which was not available previously.

Infact, the hints of this came earlier this week when Apple made some changes in the AppStore section of the website where they sorted the most popular apps by paid and free category.

Now that we have seen this behaviour in two places, I guess we can expect to see these changes in iTunes very soon. Keep these enhancements coming Apple.

Indian Flights – #1 App in AppStore India

Five days after we released our Indian Flights application in AppStore targeting the India market. The application soon bubbled up to the Number One position in AppStore India. Thank you all for your support. This is very encouraging.

Converter 2.0 Steps Out

We rolled out the 2.0 version of our unit converter application. The key change in this version is the option to reorder all the units in a screen.

As we provide many unit conversions, you had to scroll between units of your interest. With this latest version, you can simply reorder the units of your interest to the top and save the changes.

Please do give this a try. If you’d like to see any further enhancements to the app, please drop us a line.

Indian Flights – Flight Status App for India

We rolled out a new application – Indian Flights. This is basically the Flight Status application for the Indian market.

You can check the status of all flights flying between 83 cities from 12 Airlines carriers in India. As with our Flight Status application, this provides detailed information about th flight timings, delays, gate & terminal information.

The application provides whatever information is available from airports and airlines.

Flight Status 3.0 Steps Out

Our best selling application so far – Flight Status – now has new enhancements and is now available in its 3.0 version. We made some enhancements to the core Flight Status application and also the Trips module. Here are the highlights of the updates for 3.0

Core Flight Status Application:

• As an easy way to see the actual flight timings, we are now highlighting the timings in colors – based on the status of the flight. If your flight is delayed, you’ll notice that the timing will be highlighted in red.
• The departure date will set to the current date by default if you had an older date from an older lookup

Trips Module:

We borrowed several enhancements from our Trips application and included them here in Flight Status app. Here are some highlights.

• Data is now automatically saved in Trips module for each flight entry
• A new Summary screen now shows all flights in your trip sorted by date
• A new Flight Details page is added in the trips module to view additional details of the flight before you check the flight status
• You can now edit an existing flight in Trips module without having to delete it
• A Confirmation dialog is added before deleting a trip

We hope you’ll like the enhancements to our Flight Status app.

AppStore update to fix issues this weekend

If you are an iPhone Developer who rolled out an update or a new app this week and don’t see your apps/updates on AppStore, you are one of the developers victim to an issue in AppStore that was introduced last week.

I see two issues with the recent AppStore update…

1. Recent updates are not reflected in AppStore
2. New & approved apps not showing up in AppStore

I noticed the first issue recently. After we rolled out Trips 1.1, it was approved by Apple but didn’t show up in AppStore. However, when I install the application on the iPhone, the 1.1 version actually shows up on the phone even when the AppStore (both iTunes & iPhone versions) shows the version as 1.0. Looks like this is a new bug introduced in the latest AppStore update. When I talked to Apple Support about this, they said that it should be fixed this weekend.

One of my friend noticed this second issue. If you launched new applications, they are not showing up on AppStore despite their approval. I guess there could be some other important issue behind this and Apple is controlling the roll out. I’ll not be surprised if a ton of apps show up this weekend after they fix the issues.

It could be that these two issues are connected. Lets hope that Apple will be fixing these issues soon.

Update: Apple fixed the issues mentioned in the post. Glad to see the change. Now Trips 1.1 is live.

Apple Changes AppStore behavior on iPhone

Looks like Apple silently made some changes to the AppStore on the iPhone. The changes were primarily on listing the applications in individual categories.

Earlier when you enter a category in AppStore from your iPhone (or iPod Touch) all applications in that category used to be listed. That is no longer the case. By default only 25 applications are listed now in each category. User can click on ‘Twenty Five More’  to see additional 25 application. You can go on this way only to see the recent 100 applications.

I think not good for both end users and for developers. Why? This is because end users will only be able to view the recent applications (in each category) and older applications (even better ones) will get older with no easy way to access them (except pretty much search). I think this is going to be a serious issues going forward. I’ll talk more on this in a separate post.

What do you think? Please share your thoughts.

Trips 1.1 Approved

Our first update for the Trips application has been approved. For existing customers, the update should be available very soon. This version focuses on improving the stability of the application along with some corrections.

One of the most requested functionality for Trips app was the addition of time field for the flight. Another request was to enhance the user experience for entering flight numbers. Both of these requests were taken care in this update.

The first few updates of the Trips application will focus on some of these basics. The application will then get the features some of you requested.

Thank you for your continued support.