a be | daronco production

We were getting reports of Fit Phone crashing for people at launch.  It looks like these people are using iPhone 3G with iOS 4 installed.  Apple has admitted (well, as much Apple will admit anything) that there are issues with iOS 4 running on iPhone 3G.  They are also allegedly addressing this with a software release.  We hope they do.

Until then we have come up with a fix to help people out.  The crash wasn’t really a crash at all.  It was simply taking too long for Fit Phone to launch so the OS was shutting it down.  So we moved our data loading so that it occurs independently of the launch.  It still takes awhile to load on iPhone 3G but it will load, and that’s the important part.

We also fixed an issue with online restores.  If you enter you name in the Body Stats section with a first and last name, or just any space in it, you won’t be able to restore body weight and body measurement data.  That’s getting fixed with Fit Phone 6.3 and it is highly recommended that you perform an online backup when you first start Fit Phone 6.3.  This is to ensure that you get the latest files onto our servers.

Update July 1, 2010: Fit Phone has just been approved by Apple and should be available soon for download!  Enjoy!  Read on for all the new features and bug fixes.

Oh iOS 4, why do you hate our apps so much?  We love iOS 4 but it hasn’t been all that kind to us.  The good news is we think we have all of our issues fixed and are ready for Apple to unleash them to the world.

First up is the stupid keyboard issue.  I won’t even get started as to why there is no number pad built into the iPhone that has a decimal point.  As it is we have to manually add a decimal point to that keyboard type and iOS 4 removed that ability.  We found a way around that so the decimal point will be back on all screens that require a decimal.

Now we can get into some of the fun and exciting stuff iOS 4 lets us do.  We have made Fit Phone work in the background.  If you leave the app while tracking a cardio exercise Fit Phone will now continue tracking your location and continue giving you audio updates.  So if you take a call while running you will still be tracked.  If you like to text and run, you will still be tracked.  I think you get the point.  And no matter what you’re doing in Fit Phone if you leave the app you will come right back to where you last left it when you enter Fit Phone again.  We like it and we hope you like it to.

We also have another backup option for people.  This one requires you to have a facebook login.  You login using your facebook account and we then store all your Fit Phone data online based on your Fit Phone ID.  So what does this really do for you?  It gives us a device independent way to store your data.  So if you have two or three devices you can login using your facebook account and be able to transfer your Fit Phone data back and forth between all the devices.  We are going to look into adding support for more account types in the future but for for now it’s just facebook.

There are a couple other bugs fixed with the new release.  One involving emailing a lot of results.  Another one dealing with the break timer and messing up the audio.  Hopefully those are all fully fixed as well.

We hope you enjoy it!  It should be available within a week or so.  Next up is trying to get Glimpse working on iOS 4!

It’s been awhile since we posted but we can assure you we’re still alive!  We are currently working on updates to just about all of our apps.

Pet Phone is getting some long overdue attention.  We’re going to finally bring that up to 3.0 and fix a few minor bugs.

Fit Phone continues to be our flagship app.  It’s getting landscape mode for the cardio tracker as well as tap to get your current pace, distance, and time.  We are also working on creating an iPad version of Fit Phone as well as porting it over to android.  So big things are ahead for Fit Phone.

We are also working on glimpse.  We at be | daronco really love glimpse and glimpse cloud.  We think it’s a great and original idea for an app.  We also think the popularity suffered due to releasing it right when Apple was changing the way things were displayed in the app store.  Due to a glitch in the system, glimpse was never displayed on the main photography page.  This really hurt our exposure.

But something is currently happening with glimpse and we’re not quite sure what.  We have seen a very high number of glimpse lite sales but we’re not sure what’s causing the sudden spike.  Whatever it is, we’re taking it as a signal to get off our butts and finally finish the update that’s been close to complete for months now.  It’s a huge overhaul to the app and we’re really excited about it.

So, as you can see, we’re extremely busy at the moment.  The updates will keep coming as things get done, so just sit tight.  We think it will be worth it.

Update (April 16, 2010): Apple just approved Fit Phone 5.0! It should show up in the app store shortly.

Fit Phone 5.0 has just been shipped to Apple for review.  Fit Phone 5.0 brings some very exciting features to Fit Phone.  Read on for all the gory details.

The first major part of 5.0 is the addition of online backups.  You can now upload all your Fit Phone data for storage on our website.  There is no account needed.  No signing up.  Just choose the online backup option from the “Reports” tab in Fit Phone.  All your data will be uploaded safely stored on our servers.  You can then perform an online restore at anytime.  Fit Phone will also suggest you perform a restore if you haven’t done one in over a week.

The second major addition to 5.0 is Cardio Tracking.  Using Fit Phone you can now track your cardio activities.  Simply add a cardio log exercise to a workout and when you go to the results entry page you will have an option to track the activity.  While tracking, Fit Phone will follow you using the built-in GPS of the iPhone.  Your time, distance, pace, and route will automatically be saved for you.  Fit Phone will also announce your time and distance at whatever interval you specify.

Once you’re done with your activity you can play the results back using our custom player.  Follow your route on a google map and see your times at each step.  Even if you don’t have GPS or you’re working out indoors, you can still use the tracking option to automatically keep your time.

We’re very happy with these two new additions.  We also fixed a few bugs here and there to make Fit Phone better overall.  Hopefully it won’t take too long in review.  Until then, check out some screenshots:

Updated March 13, 2010: Fit Phone 4.2 has just been released by Apple.  The update should be available shortly in the iTunes store. Read below for the info on 4.2.

Well, we weren’t planning on doing much right away with Fit Phone.  In fact we were going to take a little time and work on getting an update out for Glimpse.  But we found something that we’ve been wanting to do for quite awhile and now we just can’t resist.

There is no way to use the SDK to display a calendar.  You pretty much need to develop an entire calendar application if you want to display a calendar to a user in your app.  We started working on our own calendar so that users of Fit Phone can lay their workouts out on a calendar view.  We really like this idea but we stopped work on it because the calendar control itself was just taking way too much time.

But just yesterday I stumbled on some work by Klazuka over at github:  http://wiki.github.com/klazuka/Kal/at-a-glance  He has done some really nice work with a calendar control for the iPhone.  I was able to grab this code and implement into Fit Phone in only a few hours.  And somehow it all worked!

Like I said, we weren’t planning on a major upgrade to Fit Phone and we surely weren’t planning on this.  But it’s just too nice to pass up.  So here is what we now have.  The main display that comes up is now a calendar view.  On that view will be dots on the days you have workouts.  When you tap on a day with a workout it shows up in a table below the calendar.  This should be very familiar to everyone since it’s exactly how the iPhone calendar works.  Once you tap the row for a workout you will be brought to the workout screen where you can start adding notes and results just like before.

You can also create new workouts from the calendar view.  Just select a day and then tap an add icon in the top right.  You will be presented with a table to create a new workout or select a previous workout to copy.  All the same functionality of Fit Phone is there, it will just be controlled through a calendar.  You can also switch into the original list view at any time.  Here are some screenshots: