• Fixed a bug that prevented automatic image downloading from working properly.

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Today marks the beginning of a new venture for Polkapps: iPhone application development. During the past few weeks, I have been heads-down learning how to program for this small computer that you can hold in your pocket and the fruit of my labor is already available on the iTunes App Store!

The application I built is called DutchTab. It lets you easily split bills between friends and co-workers, and is most useful when a bunch of people order lunch and there is only one bill for the whole order. It lets those who have cash with them cover the bill, then get paid back their due later.

If you have an iPhone or iPod Touch, I invite you to check it out and tell me what you think! And if you have a device that runs Windows Mobile, you too can enjoy DutchTab: my good friend Martin from slimCODE is putting the finishing touches on DutchTab for Windows Mobile, and it should be available soon.

I took the release of DutchTab as an opportunity to finally build my new website, which had been in the “coming soon” state for way too long. I’m not quite done with the migration of the TuneSleeve content from its current location, so the new Polkapps site still links to the old TuneSleeve site for now. But the move to the new website should be complete within a few weeks.

Speaking of TuneSleeve: those of you who have been patiently waiting for an update to TuneSleeve should rest assured that I still plan on doing the upgrade I talked about months ago. In fact, I should be getting back to TuneSleeve pretty soon now that my first iPhone project is behind me.

Also, this iPhone development experience means good news for everybody who have been waiting for TuneSleeve on the Mac: Since programming for the iPhone is very similar to programming for the Mac, I now have the skills required to make a Mac version of TuneSleeve so it could become a reality sooner than expected.

Have a great summer!

Je suis heureux d’enfin offrir TuneSleeve en français! Étant moi-même francophone, je pourrai aussi offrir le service à la clientèle en français.J’ai mis sur pied un groupe de discussion pour les utilisateurs francophones: http://groups.google.com/group/tunesleeve-frN’hésitez pas à y poster vos questions ou commentaires, je serai là pour y répondre!

• French translation

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I have just created a Google Group for TuneSleeve users: http://groups.google.com/group/tunesleeve

Don’t hesitate to use this forum to ask questions or provide feedback, and if you know the answer to another user’s question, feel free to contribute!

TuneSleeveは日本語での利用が可能ですが、作者自身日本語が理解できないため日本語でのテクニカルサポートはできません。TuneSleeveの利用にあたり問題または質問がある場合はTuneSleeveの日本語ユーザーフォーラムに投稿してください。アドレスはhttp://groups.google.com/group/tunesleeve-jpです。

I realize that this is not the 1.1 update that I have been promising for a while, but it still is an interesting milestone. Indeed, more and more people have been asking for a version of TuneSleeve that could install and run on a 64-bit version of Windows, and this update finally makes it possible! Thanks to Christian for helping me figure out what I needed to do to overcome the major hurdle I was facing in this endeavor!

In this version, I am also providing a Japanese translation of the application. A thousand thanks to Yuko for her amazing work on this translation!

Finally, I have good news for Vista users who were suffering terribly slow image saving times with TuneSleeve: it looks like the problem has been fixed in the latest version of iTunes (7.6). I have been able to confirm this on my own Vista test machines, and I have asked some customers who had experienced the problem to test it as well. If they report that iTunes 7.6 fixed the slow saving time for them, I’ll consider this bug officially closed and will recommend iTunes 7.6 to every Vista user.

And now, back to work on version 1.1!

• TuneSleeve now installs and works on 64-bit Windows.
• Japanese translation
• Minor UI touch-ups

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I have create a page for TuneSleeve on FaceBook, so you are welcome to come by and visit!

Hint: you’ll find a coupon code for a discount on that page.

It’s been a little more than 3 months since I said “this summer should be dedicated to TuneSleeve”. The summer being over, I feel it is now time for a status report.

First and foremost, I must admit that I did not work on TuneSleeve as much as I had intended to during the summer. But the good news is that I am heads down in the code right now, and intend to release a new version before Christmas, and another one shortly after.

Here is what can be expected in the short term (version 1.1):

• Ability to set a minimum size for downloaded images
• Ability to specify which international Amazon catalog should be queried
• Support for Windows 64 bits
• Display the size of each downloaded image
• Ability to cancel any ongoing operation
• Local caching of images that have been downloaded so they don’t need to be downloaded again when TuneSleeve is restarted.
• Better resilience to errors returned by iTunes
• Diagnostic logs to help me troubleshoot problems
• Better download performance
• Better image saving performance on Windows Vista

This will be a free upgrade to existing users.

Stay tuned!