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X of 365

  • April 21, 2011 11:00

My latest iOS application, X of 365, went live on the App Store yesterday. It is a simple application, designed to help with 365 photo projects by telling you the ordinal day of the year.

When the application starts, it displays the current date and which day of the year it is. You can change the date, or tap on the bottom half of the screen to bring up a menu. The menu will take you back to the current date, copy the text ‘x/365′ to the clipboard (where x is the ordinal day of the year), or show an About dialog. You can also shake the device to return to the current date.

It is a simple application, but I have found it very helpful when tweeting my daily mostly365 shots, and I have a few features planned for a future version that will make it even more useful for 365 projects. I wanted to give it a steampunk look and feel, and the graphic design by Olivier Zibret really does the trick.

The application is free, and can be found on the App Store. I have been using it on my own iPhone without issues, and it should work on any device with iOS 4.0 or higher. If you experience any issues with the app, please let me know.

Knicker Version 2 and Examples

  • April 15, 2011 10:00

Version 2 of Knicker, the Java library for the Wordnik API, is now available. This version supports version 4 of the Wordnik API.

In addition to supporting version 4 of the Wordnik API, this version of Knicker follows the organization of the API more closely. Previously, all the methods were in one class, Knicker.java. Knicker.java still exists, but it is now abstract and contains only constants used by other classes. The methods that access the Wordnik API are now in classes named after the section of the API they access. So account API methods are now in AccountApi, word API methods are in WordApi, and so on. This makes the source a little more manageable, and allows a more modular approach to testing and development.

This version also includes JUnit tests for all the Wordnik API methods. During the development of version 2, these tests helped find several bugs in the API, which the Wordnik team quickly fixed.

One of the coolest features of the new Wordnik API is the ability to retrieve audio pronunciation data for words. Retrieval of the audio data is fully supported in Knicker version 2. Playback of the data is left up to you.

In addition to a new version of the library, I have also started a Knicker Examples project. There is currently one example that shows how to retrieve and display text definitions, and retrieve and play the audio definition for the word. The project contains all necessary libraries, so you can grab it and go. I will probably be adding additional examples as I have time, and contributions are welcome.

As always, please let me know when you find bugs. You can contact me via email, leave a comment here, or post to the Wordnik developers mailing list, which I am subscribed to.

Happy coding!