Nick Kuh - Freelance iPhone, iPad, iOS Developer, Trainer and Consultant - Brighton, UK » Portfolio

Tap to Chat 2 for iPhone and iPad

Nick Kuh — Mon, 23 May 2011 14:26:44 +0000

After 3 very intense weeks of development and design Tap to Chat 2 has finally launched!

Chris Ross and I started the Tap to Chat adventure back in November last year. As two Indie iPhone Developers we decided to team-up and build an Instant Messenger app for Facebook users on iPhone and iPad. The original version launched just before Christmas 2010. Since then Tap to Chat has seen over half a million downloads!

On the back of our success with Tap to Chat, Chris and I have formed a new company – Osmosis Apps – the primary goal being to make software that focuses on great user experience.

Tap to Chat 2 has been written from scratch and includes a brand new, beautiful, pixel-perfect interface. Tap to Chat 2 is: super-simple to use and blisteringly fast to connect all your Facebook Chat and Google Talk friends. We’ve laboured over every detail and included accessibility support for visually impaired users and VoiceOver support. An all-round great user experience.

As part of our launch, I had a lot of fun creating a demo video of the software with a well-known love story theme. Take a look:

Tap to Chat 2 was approved by Apple on Friday night (20th May). In just a few days it has already climbed into the top 25 Social Networking apps in the UK, the US and many other countries.

For all the features and details about Tap to Chat 2 head over to our new company site – www.osmosisapps.com.
Here are a few screen-grabs of Tap to Chat 2 in action on iPhone and iPad:

A ‘Paperless Conference’ App for iPod Touch

Nick Kuh — Thu, 07 Apr 2011 11:55:44 +0000

Commissioned by West End Studios, I led the iOS Development of a feature-rich conference meeting application for Novartis Global. The app enabled delegates to view their personalised conference diary and network with other 450 delegates and speakers.

I built the messaging system for the iPod app using Apple’s Push Notification technology and a custom local/server cache syncing solution. Although initially the messaging feature was a low priority for the app, it ultimately rolled out into multiple features: Private Messaging, Help Desk Chat, and Ask the Presenter a Question.

450 iPods await collection!

Another great feature of the app were the maps. Google Maps wasn’t a viable option as we wanted delegates to be able to access the maps even when offline and not on site. I developed a PDF rendering solution for this which also enabled delegates to find locations of any event in their diary.

The app enabled Novartis to host a ‘paperless conference’. No print outs were distributed throughout the sessions, plenaries or exhibitions. Instead all events were accessible through the iPod app and delegates could access any event documents directly and ‘send to my email’. Both a cost saving in terms of printing and a green solution.

A substantial effort was made during the development to ensure that the app would run most features offline. With 400+ iPods simultaneously attempting to connect to the wi-fi you tend to run into problems delivering a reliable wireless network. Our app regularly synced with the server and then locally cached all data and images (using Apple’s CoreData framework). The guys at West End implemented a streaming media server to deliver conference movies directly to the iPods throughout the event. However, we had a fallback option whereby even the movies would get cached and run locally if requested by the CMS. This was ideal for help videos for example. The flip-side of data caching is of course the security implications. So we implemented a feature into the CMS that would trigger the iPod to instantly clear the local cache and log the user out of the device remotely.

I was at the conference and able to see the software in action. The feedback was incredibly positive. Even the less technically enthusiastic and more sceptical delegates were won over by the end of the three days.

Martin de Planta, head of Global Learning @ Novartis kindly added this recommendation to my LinkedIn profile:

Nick led the development of an innovative, cost effective and dynamic meeting app. A consummate professional he was able to take a concept and turn into a reality where significantly bigger, household names and highly regarded institutions were not! Do not under-estimate the capabilities of this man. World class was how our most senior executives described his work.

iOS App: Tap to Facebook Chat

Nick Kuh — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 12:36:35 +0000

Facebook Chat with your Friends all on one screen!

With multi-user login support, filter by friend list or group and instant message notification, Tap to Chat is the must have Chat app for iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad!

I developed Tap to Chat in collaboration with fellow iOS Develeper Chris Ross.

iOS App: ESPN Media Zone

Nick Kuh — Wed, 01 Dec 2010 12:20:15 +0000

ESPN commissioned me to develop a universal iOS App to keep users up-to-date with ESPN Press Releases, Twitter account updates and photos on iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad.

Features Include:

- Read ESPN’s most up-to-date Press Releases

- Email press releases directly from the ESPN MediaZone app.

iPad App: Buddies Facebook Browser

Nick Kuh — Tue, 16 Nov 2010 10:30:00 +0000

Browse, share and upload Facebook photos. Update you status, add comments and check out your friend’s walls.

Facebook Chat with your friends all on one screen!

With multi-user login support, filter by friend list or group and instant message notification, Buddies Chat is the must have Facebook Chat experience!

Featured by Apple in over 50 AppStores Worldwide, Buddies is a hugely popular native Facebook browser for iPad receiving some great reviews:

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TheNextWeb.com: ★★★★ “Buddies is pretty much what an official Facebook app would look like.”

MacStories.net: “An excellent companion to the regular website which offers neat photo uploading capabilities (something you can’t do on Mobile Safari) and multi-account support”

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Jayzus Decides: iPhone App

Nick Kuh — Fri, 01 Oct 2010 01:00:06 +0000

Even small decisions can lead to big arguments, and we can’t bother the real JC with all our trivial questions but he does represent a great ambassador for peace, so in the interests of promoting more peace on Earth we thought, “Who better?!” This app is intended to bring a little light-hearted fun in to your daily decision making process, so you can all stop worrying about the little things, and get on with enjoying the gift of life

Add your own groups of people (e.g. ‘pub’, ‘work’, ‘home’)
Add your own custom tasks (e.g. ‘make dinner’, ‘wash the dog’)
The first item in a group/task list automatically becomes your ‘favourite’
Decisions can be made with a single click!
Include/Exclude people from a round without removing their name.

Portfolio to Go for Flickr

Nick Kuh — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 13:44:16 +0000

Portfolio to Go for Flickr has just been approved for sale by Apple and is now availabile for iPad on the App Store.

A recent winner of Apple’s ‘iPad App of the Week’ award, Portfolio To Go features an elegant and intuitive photo-wall giving users instant access to all of their Flickr photosets: scroll each gallery horizontally to browse thumbs, scroll vertically to traverse through all synced galleries.
The main purpose of Portfolio To Go is to enable photographers to present their portfolio offline to clients – perfect for use with iPad wi-fi: just sync and go. Photographers create and edit photosets on Flickr.com and Portfolio To Go acts as a presentation tool, keeping in sync with all your Flickr changes.

Portfolio To Go supports all iPad rotations so can be flipped vertically for portraits and horizontally for landscapes.

Another unique selling point of this app is the ‘Send Portfolio to a Client’ feature. The Photographer picks and chooses which of his galleries to share and can then send an auto-generated email to clients and friends containing a free download link to ‘Portfolio To Go Player’ iPad App. By clicking the emailed link clients launch the photographer’s portfolio on their own iPad(s).

Check out this great video review of Portfolio To Go on iPad. Mark Wallace from Adorama TV takes you through most of the key features of the app

Key Features

# Photo Wall:
View all your Flickr photo galleries at once – scroll each gallery horizontally to browse thumbs, scroll vertically to traverse through all synced galleries. Click on any thumbnail to jump into the main image view.

# Main image view displays gallery thumbnails to enable intuitive gallery navigation. Just click the main image to go full-screen.

# Flickr Authorization: access to all of your private, friends and family and public photos

# Multiple cached portfolios: add unlimited Flickr portfolios via your contacts or Flickr IDs to P2G and switch between them.

# Auto-cache photos: all photos get cached in the background while you browse (you can turn this feature off in settings)

# Send Portfolio to a Client: Pick and choose which galleries to include and then send your portfolio straight to clients and friends by email from the app. Clients will download the free Portfolio to Go Player app to their iPad and launch your portfolio from the emailed link.

# Share your photos and Flickr links via Facebook, Twitter or Email

# Save favourite Photos to your iPad Photo Library

Loop&Learn: iPhone App

Nick Kuh — Sun, 02 May 2010 20:04:19 +0000

After 5 months ‘ad hoc’ development and a short but anxious 6 day wait in the Apple submission queue we have finally launched our ‘Social Learning’ App for iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch: Loop&Learn.

Loop&Learn is more than just ‘my best ever iPhone App’, it is my best ever app… desktop, web, mobile or otherwise. It is both technically and content-wise the coolest software I’ve been lucky enough to develop.

Whether you want to learn Chinese or are an avid bird watcher, there’s a loop for that

Here’s my business partner, Neil Gerstenberg, presenting our app on YouTube:

As Neil describes in the video, Loop&Learn is a tool to help you learn ANYTHING! Right on your iPhone you can create multimedia ‘Learning Loops’ consisting of recorded audio phrases, images and text. On iPhone and iPad the audio recording works directly from the device microphone. On iPod Touch you’ll need a compatible microphone earphones for authoring but all of the study and learning loop playback is compatible without any extra hardware.

Create

We’ve designed the authoring process to be as intuitive as possible with features such as:

body text is auto split into loop phrases based on line/paragraph breaks – so you can easily import large learning texts into the app
auto-record in the phrase editing screen detects silences and enables you to split up your multiple audio phrases without continuously clicking a record button
the full current paragraph text is instantly displayed when recording each phrase
while editing body text the app enables users to play the existing audio phrase associated with the current text cursor position

New/Edit Loop Home Screen and Body Text Editor

Phrase Record and Edit

Learn

Likewise, in study mode here are just a few handy learning features offered by our app:

multi-gesture control: double tap to start/stop playback, swipe left and right for next/prev phrases, swipe down and up for next/prev looping groups
single or multi-select the loop blocks at the top of the screen to split your learning into looping bite-size chunks
2 learning modes: ‘Repeat with me’ and ‘Listen’n'Repeat’ – the latter plays the full loop group and then repeats silently giving you the chance to repeat aloud

Saving the best for last, my favourite feature of Loop&Learn is the new collaborative learning concept it introduces: ‘social learning’.

Users of our app can share the learning loops they create via our ‘Loop Library’. All that’s required is an account with Twitter. Once a user shares one or more of their learning loops they retain ownership of the loop and can change and update it at any time via the same share and update process.

Think of the amazing possibilities that social learning offers. Language learning for example: User A is French and wants to learn English, User B is English and wants to learn French. If User A and User B create and share language loops in their native tongues then they both will benefit from the shared content!

In anticipation of launch, Neil, myself and friends have created some example loops that demonstrate how versatile the app is. Take a look at the Featured Loops page on loopandlearn.com. You’ll find learning loops for:

Just a few of our examples to kick off the app. As more people purchase Loop&Learn we expect the content to grow and it will always remain free to download user generated loops so the loop library should get bigger and better

Thanks to the power of Twitter when users share new learning loops Loop&Learn sends a tweet with a link to the newly created loop preview page on our site. Like this one for example: http://www.loopandlearn.com/9ddbb9

what’s really cool is that on the top right of that preview page is a download link which when clicked on by Loop&Learn users via Safari or most iPhone Twitter clients Loop&Learn will automatically:

launch on the iPhone
download and install the loop being previewed

The Website

www.loopandlearn.com stays up-to-date automatically with the latest learning loops uploaded by Loop&Learn users. We have also launched the site with a ‘Hot Loops’ / Featured Loops section.

Happy Looping!

W.A.Ellis Property: iPhone App

Nick Kuh — Sun, 02 May 2010 20:00:53 +0000

Built for Property specialist digital agency World Archipelago, I was supplied with the customized design and commissioned to build a reskinnable iPhone property app that can be added to WAI’s range of online solutions for their extensive range of Real Estate Agencies.

Here’s a live version for Estate Agency Halls:

The app includes the following features:

Auto-paginated property search
User-location finding for local property searches
Auto-saves recent search requests
Saved property list between sessions
Property location display on a map
In app email property to a friend
Property details image gallery
Cached thumbnails

With additional functionality such as previous/next property buttons directly from within each property page this app is a great solution to most estate agency requirements. A robust, optimised and elegant-looking iPhone property app.

Final Fantasy XIII / Xbox microsite

Nick Kuh — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 21:48:39 +0000

Working with the talented design team at Staak I programmed the Flash App for ffxiiixbox360.com: a branding microsite to launch the hugely popular game Final Fantasy XIII on XBox 360.

The site integrates with the Twitter api to display the latest Twitter tweets about the new Xbox game and enables Twitter users to add their own FFXIII tweets directly through the Flash site.

The latest tweets are presented as interactive tweets orbs orbiting a simple 3D space. This effect was achieved through open source AS3 library Away3D.

Working on an XBox site was a lot of fun and the build went incredibly smoothly for such a tight schedule. So smoothly that I’ve been sent a complimentary Xbox as a bonus