I thought I'd share a major productivity hack I've been employing to great success.

White noise.

Brown noise, actually, as I find the lower pitch less harsh on my ears- but it amounts to the same thing: completely blocking out the distractions that arise from the auditory sense. Music never did it for me; probably because I love it too much not to give it at least some of my attention.

Couple that with some decent noise-cancelling headphones and I'm basically unstoppable while working.

Here's a white noise generator called Noisy on google code. It works better as an app instead of a looping sound file because you don't get the brief drop-outs while the file loops. Noisy didn't have brown noise so I added it. Unfortunately I haven't been able to reach the project administrator so I have temporarily hosted my brown noice capable version here.

I wonder what other productivity hacks have I been missing out on.

Call Nearest has been updated to version 1.1 on the App Store.

This app was originally something I threw together in a single weekend. It was certainly useful in version 1.0 but it always felt somehow lacking. The problem was when you clicked "Call" you never saw any details about what you were calling. It was the equivalent of a google "I'm feeling lucky" search. You didn't know where you were going until you went. A little verification was in order.

On the other hand I wanted this to be a on-the-go / no-thought / one-tap kind of utility. I didn't want the user to have to think.

I went with the best of both worlds: display a countdown along with the matching search results. When the countdown reaches zero Call Nearest will do exactly what it used to do: call the nearest match. Otherwise, it will allow the user to call other nearby matches or cancel and start over.

The new functionality completes Call Nearest. In its new and improved form there is really no excuse for not having it on your phone.

Download it from the App Store here.

Today I put together a maintenance update for Quik. While I was at it I took at look at the most used search plugins. Here are the top 10:

1. Google
2. IMDB
3. Wikipedia
4. Youtube
5. Amazon
6. Urban Dictionary
7. Google Image
8. Twitter
9. Dictionary.com
10. WebMD

Biggest upset: Urban Dictionary is three spots above Dictionary.com. I guess fake words are just more fun. I also had no idea people used WebMD so often. In light of this the new version will make these the starting ten plugins on the front page (Edit: for new users- don't worry I won't mess with your front page... intentionally).

Expect 1.0.2 to be out in the next 1-6 weeks depending on Apple.

I am going to be backpacking in China for three weeks starting Thursday so I have decided to spill the beans on my latest iPhone project a little early: Call Nearest.

Call Nearest does exactly what its name says: you type in a business name and it will call the nearest match. It's that simple really.

It should be hitting the App Store any day now. Head over to the project page for more details.

The latest version of Quik became available on the App Store today. This version is mostly about bug fixes but there are still some pretty cool features worth a mention.

I have added 17 new plugins to Pro version and 22 to the Lite version. Among the new plugins are three unique ones that will pave the way for many more of their kind: plugins that interface directly with other apps on your iPhone.

The Tweetie and Twitterrific plugins are very useful for posting tweets straight into those apps. The App Store plugin offers a very fast way of finding specific iPhone Applications.

Second, the Pro version will now allow you to use any of the 76 default icons when creating your own custom searches.

Finally, I have taken steps to speed up the app's load time. After all, the point is that using Quik is... quick - right?

Enjoy the new versions (Pro and Lite) and keep the excellent feedback coming.

Quik Search Pro has hit the App Store! The iTunes app listings are showing some really strange behavior so it can only be found by searching or direct link:

iTunes Link

The pro version has:

• Landscape browsing
• No ads
• More plugins
• A few minor bug fixes

There are some amazing features coming up in version 1.1 that will further differentiate Quik Search Pro from Quik Search.

Enjoy!

It has come to my attention that the make quik method of adding your own plugins won't work for Google's "I'm Feeling Lucky" because the url redirects before the page fully loads.

Here's a url you can manually type in to add a "I'm Feeling Lucky" plugin:

http://www.google.com/search?q=$1&btnI=I%27m+Feeling+Lucky

I'll make sure to add this in the next release of Quik because its a very cool search to have.

Quik has received its first review in video form from Ryan @ UniqueApps.com. Ryan's video is very thorough- I think he did a better job explaining my App than I could.

I hate to spoil the ending (Bruce Willis was dead the WHOLE TIME!) but he gave Quik a 5/5. Check it out here:

Quik is here.

Please give it a download and let me know what you think.

For those that are curious how the process with Apple went:

• Feb, 17 2009: Quik was submitted to Apple for the first time.
• Feb, 23 2009: Quik was rejected because it misused the reply button.
• Feb, 23 2009: Ten minutes later, Quik was submitted to Apple for the second time.
• Mar, 01 2009: Apple sends me those magical words: "Your application status is Ready for Sale"

The entire process took 12 days.

I have a feature request for Apple: a way for developers to send a messages to a specific device ID.

Why, you ask?

All three of the iPhone projects I have worked on communicate with a backend service in some way. In this communication I always extract the device's unique identifier:

NSString * id = [[UIDevice] currentDevice] uniqueIdentifier];

This gives me stats on a per user basis. For instance the average Shelf Life user adds 9 items but there are a few outliers who have added more than 200 items! If anyone knows how I could improve Shelf Life it would certainly be these people. I'd really love to get their feedback (and I'm sure some of them would love to share it). Unfortunately right now there is no way for me to do so unless I build my own messaging system into my Apps or collect email addresses.

If Apple implemented a messaging system we could solicit some valuable feedback from our star users. I see lots of ways for this to work while still being non-invasive and voluntary:

• Allow SMS-like messages to reach users who have opted-in by enabling the "Receive Developer Messages" setting in the Settings App.
• Create a place in the AppStore App where Users can download these messages.
• Allow the users to optionally specify an email address in the Settings App.

The App Store is being overrun with junk food Apps. By giving developers who are trying to produce quality apps (as opposed to fart noises) a direct channel of communication with their users, Apple would help us raise the bar a bit.

Thoughts?

After long last, something new is headed your way from no trails. It's a new iPhone app named Quik.

Quik's project page will be available as soon as it hits the App Store.

Hold your breath.

Shelf Life 1.3 has been out for a few days. This version is geared towards maximum stability. The bug reports have almost entirely stopped trickling in, so I must be doing something right.

This version is so much more stable because I stumbled upon a static code checker that supports Objective-C named Clang. I highly recommend this to all developers out there.

Now that I can feel fairly confident in the stability of Shelf Life, I will look at some of the feature requests I have gotten and see what direction to take the future version. If you have any interesting ideas you'd like to share, feel free to leave a comment for everyone to discuss.

Apple has just approved the 1.2 update for Shelf Life.

Improvements have been made to make the backend services much snappier.

Also included in this update are fixes for small bugs that a few people noticed. It's getting hard for me to find bugs to fix, but I know they must be lurking in there somewhere. If you notice anything strange or have any crashes please drop me a line.

The no trails company website is finally up and running. With all of the fun iPhone programming I always have on my plate these days, it is tough to find time for web development.

Please check back here for information regarding Shelf Life and future projects that I am working on.

And in case you were wondering: yes, all of the posts before this one were made retroactively.

The first update for Shelf Life is now available.

This update is mainly geared towards improving stability with a few UI improvements here and there. Overall, the App should be much more crash-proof now.

My props to Apple for getting this out so quickly: I posted my update to Apple's site on Friday, and they have approved it today, Monday. It seems like Apple is really kicking the iPhone Application review process up a notch. Either that, or there are far fewer new Apps for them to review than there were initially. Either way, I'm not complaining.

Cory Bohon at The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) has given Shelf Life a first look. Fortunately, he liked what he saw (and says so in his review).

Hopefully this extra visibility will help Shelf Life gain traction: the most users it gets the larger the item database will grow, which in turn will make the product more valuable to the users- me included.

Here's a link to the review.

It has been a long and winding road: designs have been scrapped, obscenities have been uttered, and a few things were thrown across the room... but now that Shelf Life is on the AppStore, I can honestly say that it was worth it.

Surprisingly, Apple approved my app after only a few days of the final binary being submitted. Having heard all of the rumors of month long waits only to have your application rejected by Apple, this is an encouraging sign indeed.

On the other hand, I figured I'd have at least a couple of weeks to throw together a no trails web site and to seed the Shelf Life database with even more items.

Guess I better get back to work.