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iPhone app: ZATV Guide
Being the avid TV show-loving geeks we are at immedia, we realised that a guide shouldn't just be a damn guide. We wanted more from it. ZATV Guide is the premier South African TV Guide for the iPhone. It lets you favourite your favourite TV shows and channels for quick one-touch access. More than just that, it also tells you when repeats of your favourite shows are airing. And the icing on the cake? Search. Yeah, a simple thing like search makes a world of difference in a TV Guide. No more hunting around to find your shows, just search for it. If you have an iPhone and love TV like we do - enjoy ZATV Guide - another proudly South African free app with love from immedia. Approved apps in the iPhone App Store: two. And counting.
ZATV Guide
Last month I submitted another iPhone app that I'd been working on for a few weeks. And two weeks after I'd submitted it, Apple approved it in it's first submission, ie. without any rejections. Yeah, you read right. I submitted an app that got accepted first time round. Legendary, I know. The app, ZATV Guide (link opens iTunes), is the best South African TV guide for the iPhone. And I'm not just saying that because I'm the developer. It's true. The others are painful. One only shows you the SABC channels, and the official one is just a guide and nothing more. Which I guess is what was expected it should be. But you know, I work for immedia. And we just don't do mediocre. We started the app well before the official one was accepted into the store, and finished it before we left for WWDC (San Francisco) in June. I didn't submit it until 23 June because Apple themselves had a bug in SDK 3.0 (which I pointed out to them in one of the iPhone labs at WWDC).
The Twitter Tango
Follow me on Twitter: @kishyr
It's been a busy (for lack for a busier word) past few months. I can't seem to balance my time enough to blog about landmark events in my life anymore. And it's not just blogging. It's pretty much everything socially online: Facebook and Flickr too. One networking service that seems to have taken the schlep out of updating your life online is Twitter.
In 140 characters or less I can micro-blog about anything. I can even snap a photo on my iPhone and upload it seamlessly to twitter and twitpic - without any bother at all. Twitter integrates into your life's flow so painlessly that you can 'tweet' about pretty much anything you like in under a minute. I can keep track of my friend's flows too without the bloat that Facebook brings with it.
Now, not to say I don't see a purpose of blogging (I do). I just think it's great that we have these two separate, independent frameworks that allow us to explore our simple day-to-day thinkings (Twitter), and when we need to, to explore in-depth news, issues, and opinions (blogging).
If you're keen on keeping up with my day-to-day world and musing yourself while I rejoice and curse over code, follow me on Twitter: I'm @kishyr.
My first iPhone app
One such email that I merely click-glanced at was from Apple. Yes, Apple - the computer and phone manufacturer. Now, this wasn't much of a big deal at first because I had thought it was one of their usual promotional emails. For those of you that don't know (and that's all of you since this was kept hush-hush for a while) I had submitted my first iPhone application for review in the Apple iTunes App Store on 23 January 2009. Since then, Apple has been mailing me alerting me to bugs and fixes, etc, for my app.
Those emails were in a pretty boring serif font. I was expecting my approval letter from Apple to be in the same style. Oh no. No no no. Being Apple, they sent me a very nicely styled email letting me know that my first app was finally in the magnificent App Store.
And what a moment it was.
A flood of emotion touched me as I had just realised the feat I had accomplished (or rather, we had accomplished - I couldn't have done it without our the amazing designs our brilliant designers Basil Percimoney and Nirissa Govender had churned out over and over again). An immedia app was finally in the App Store, and I was a published iPhone App Store developer. Wow. I felt like an author that had just gotten his book published. So amazing and liberating. The app, by the way, is called YFM MobiYze. It's for GP's Hottest Frequency, YFM 99.2. YFM is a hot, trendsetting radio station based in Rosebank, Joburg. From the description in the app store:
The first South African Radio Station to provide iPhone and iPod Touch technology to enhance its users' radio experience on the fly. Catch up on the latest weather, station events, blog postings and even the current song that's being played live on air... or you could just listen to it LIVE straight from your iPhone or iPod Touch! So go ahead and be one of the firsts to experience GP's Hottest Frequency courtesy of YFM 99.2
After this whole approval process, I finally understand and get why there is a need for it. And am very thankful for it. The whole process ensures that the quality and stability of an app is something worthy of an iPhone user using it. So, if you have an iPhone, you can find YFM MobiYze by downloading it in iTunes on your computer, or using the App Store on your iPhone or iPod Touch (check the Entertainment category or search for "YFM"). Try it out, and let me know your feedback so I can push out an awesome 1.1 release soon!
Finally, I'd like to thank Basil Percimoney and Nirissa Govender for their earth-shattering designs and time, Anice Hassim (Head Strategist of immedia), Shashi Pillay (Digital Agency Manager) and Kanthan Pillay (CEO of YFM 99.2) for their groundbreaking ideas and innovation, and to everyone who tested the app while in beta.
Karmic Instinct
Call it what you may. The universe, karma, God even. There is that force that glues everything together. Let's call it Karma.
Sometimes, someplace, somehow you find yourself in a bit of a void. You realise all of life's challenges are hitting you at once. At times, you'll make the wrong decision. Many times maybe. But then there will be that one decision that will make or break you. And depending on how many Good(tm) points you've earned in your life, you'll make it through the storm and dance in the rain. That's Karma at work.
And that deciding moment in your life relies heavily on instinct. I'm not saying that our lives are written in a book and we're just playing out our story. I do believe we are in control of our destiny, but I think it's Karma that makes us skip a chapter, or go back one. Instinct. That feeling in your spine, that unforseen vision of your future. That idea that inspired all those Sprite commercials. That. That is what connects the dots in our lives.
As Steve Jobs said in his Stanford Commencement speech, it's not easy trying to connect the dots looking forward in our lives, but it is very easy to do so looking back. And that is why I believe Karma, and Instinct is what we need to live successful lives.
