In June at Apple WWDC 2011, TUAW (The Unofficial Apple Weblog) interviewed our Founder and President, Calvin Carter, about our newly released Science360 for iPad published by the National Science Foundation.
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Archive for the ‘Bottle Rocket News’ Category
Update: Science360 Demo by TUAW at WWDC 2011
Wednesday, August 3rd, 2011Apple iPad Hall of Fame: SPIN Play, NPR, and The Civil War Today
Friday, July 29th, 2011
Three Bottle Rocket produced apps have made the iTunes App Store iPad Hall of Fame list and we couldn’t be more proud:
To see the full list, open iTunes and navigate to the iPad section of the store. Under “App Store Quick Links” on the right side of the page, click “iPad Hall of Fame.” Thank you to our clients, A&E TV, SPIN Media, and NPR for allowing us to be a part of your success in the mobile space, and thank you to their fans for downloading and enjoying our apps.
Discovery Channel HD iPad app updated with Shark Week LIVE in iTunes
Thursday, July 28th, 2011
Today, we launched the newest version of Discovery Channel HD for iPad “Shark Week,” free of charge, in the app store, and we are thrilled to be the ones to make Shark Week truly interactive.
Just in time for this season’s Shark Week premier on Sunday, July 31st, this app version has “Shark Week Live,” which allows viewers watching the primetime television show to obtain behind-the-scenes information, exclusive production photos, maps, graphs, illustrations and incredible shark facts not seen on the show. All content is synchronized with the live TV viewing experience.
This new version boasts several new features like:
- Video “Cinepuzzles,” think a traditional puzzle vs. a static image
- The ability to “favorite” content for later viewing
- Live, interactive, co-viewing experiences
The user can also compete against other live viewers in polls and quizzes. Fans of the Discovery Channel’s Shark Week, who definitely want additional information and exclusive content, can now see the show schedules, video clips, and photos, plus chat with other viewers via Facebook and Twitter about show content in this latest app.
Let’s Go for Another SPIN
Friday, May 27th, 2011
Being featured for the fifth time, we are so pleased that we’re blushing over SPIN Play in the iTunes iPad App Store.
For any music lover who doesn’t have this FREE app, why not?!?! Thank you ALL who are downloading our work because we love making great apps!
Bottle Rocket Family Picnic 2011
Wednesday, May 25th, 2011
This past Saturday, May 21st, the Bottle Rocket family hosted the rest of our families for an afternoon “Calling All Super Heroes” and filled with bounce-houses, caricature drawings, flip book making, cape-wearing, tattoo-getting, hamburger-eating fun complete with all the “Bottle Rocket Red Velvet” cupcakes we could stand!
In case you want to get a panoramic view of the happenings, check us out here and here.
A HUGE thank you goes to Julie L. Nelson at Meeting Muse for making our afternoon a Super Hero Sized Success!
State of the State at Bottle Rocket
Tuesday, May 17th, 2011It’s Tuesday and that means that it’s the day for the Weekly Standup (otherwise known as the company-wide meeting where we all stand in a circle so that the meeting doesn’t last long).
Just to give you some insight into our behind the scenes missions and missives, we’re sharing a few notables that happened this week…
The following apps are “Featured” in the iTunes App Store: BET, SPIN Play, NPR Music, NPR for iPad, The Civil War Today, and Annoying Orange (we reached over 5.5 million game plays this week!).
Also in Annoying Orange news, the final votes were tallied on the “Tap below to VOTE for your favorite way to kill fruit in the next update!” and the microwave is the clear winner! Check out where the microwave will sit in the next version coming soon!!!
In addition to several new hires on both iOS and Android developer teams, we have six members of the team who will be attending WWDC in San Francisco during the first week of June.
And finally, be on the lookout for new app updates in HD Radio for iPhone 1.5, Fuel Finder 3.4.1, and the soon-to-be-famous machine of death microwave in Annoying Orange, of course…
SPIN Play is Main Feature in iTunes App Store AGAIN!
Friday, May 13th, 2011
Yes, we’re blushing… What an honor to have one of our most favorite apps we’ve created for the iPad given some PRIME attention and highlighting by Apple in the iTunes app store again!
Download SPIN Play and be prepared to experience music and artists unlike anything ever seen on the iPad. Our team of music-loving developers hand-crafted a visually stunning and user-friendly music discovery, news and reviews app for hours of entertainment.
But, don’t take our word for it. Here’s what others are saying:
- ***** stars: This app is AMAZING! I love how they offer the daily news and reviews content for free, and the issues for only $1.99. There is so much valuable content for such a low price tag, I’m not even sure how that’s possible. I can’t wait to see what else they add into the app, but it’s off to a fantastic start!
- ***** stars: The fact that you can listen to the music while reading the magazine is pretty awesome and makes it a very enjoyable experience.
- ***** stars: I used to work for a national magazine and it isn’t easy to create a digital version of something that most people still prefer to read in print… believe me, we tried. This app sets the bar for how to do it right, especially since the ability to listen to music and view videos actually makes the app “better” than the physical magazine…
Why You REALLY Should Have Been at DalMob Last Night
Wednesday, May 4th, 2011
Last night our Creative Director, Michael Griffith, was asked to speak at the May Conclave of DalMob, a group of mobile development enthusiasts who are platform independent.
DalMob provides a rousing forum for discussion and resource-sharing for all aspects and tasks related to software and creative development for mobile devices.
Rather than writing out Michael’s awesome preso notes here, how about viewing it yourself? However, here are some thoughts Tweeted from the talk:
- Learning to design for mobile is NOT the same as the web
- No, Mr./Ms. Client, you can’t take your content from the iPhone straight to the iPad “just bigger.”
- Embrace the HIG (Human Interface Guidelines)
- Love thy Designer, Strategist, Creative, Developer, etc… as Thyself
- Do not turn your web site into an app. Apps that succeed? Look at TED
Thank you, DalMob, for the invitation and I know some of the Bottle Rocketeers will be back for the next meeting!
Bottle Rocket Developer Bootcamp Re-Cap
Tuesday, May 3rd, 2011
photo by Jenni Leder, outstanding Art Director @_BottleRocket
On Saturday, April 30th, from 10am to 4pm, the Developer and Creative teams here @_BottleRocket hosted our first Developer Bootcamp for IT college students around the Dallas area. Our goal for hosting these events quarterly is not only to help build the iOS community in Dallas, but also to lay a foundation for Dallas to become the epicenter of magnificent mobile minds. Plus, we’d like to identify potential Interns for our paid Summer and Winter term programs. Maybe these kids will be future “Rocketeers” one day soon?
photo by Jenni Leder, amazing Art Director @_BottleRocket
One of our head developers, Doug Russell, lead the teaching and here’s his re-cap and next steps from the event for those who attended. And, those of you who wish to take the “Tweet Rocket Challenge” below, whether you attended or not, we look forward to your results!
Before you write anything take a few minutes to gather some information. Skim through Apple’s docs, consider picking up a book, try to make a project and get it to do something.
Here are some resources we recommend:
Apple
Beginning Videos
Beginning Docs
Learning Objective-C
Creating an iPhone App
Stanford
Developing for iOS (Stanford)
Books
Big Nerd Ranch Guide
Programming in Objective-C 2.0
Blogs
Cocoa Design Patterns
Cocoa Samurai
Cocoa With Love
CIMGF
Tweet Rocket
Your assignment, should you choose to accept it, is to make an iPhone app that parses a Twitter search feed.
1. Create a project using the Navigation-based Application template. Call it TwtRkt. This template will create a project with a navigation controller hosting a table view controller called RootViewController. RootViewController is where we'll be doing most of our work.
2. Assign the provided loading screen and icon.
3. Add JSONKit (provided at camp on Saturday) to the project and import it into RootViewController.
4. Download twitter search results from the URL: http://search.twitter.com/search.json?q=iOS as NSData using NSURLConnection as an asynchronous process.
5. Parse that data into an NSDictionary using JSONKit.
6. Populate the table view with the array stored in the parsed dictionary with the key @"results". Relevant Fields: * Who sent the tweet * The content of the tweet * How long ago was the tweet posted (or when it was posted)
JSONKit URL Programming Guide NSDictionary Class Reference NSNumber Class Reference Table View Programming Guide NSDateFormatter Class Reference
EXTRA CREDIT: 1. Download and display avatars for the users who posted the resulting tweets 2. Thread your networking (most especially your image downloading) 3. Add a refresh button that goes to get fresh tweets using the return refresh URL 4. Progress indicator while download is happening. 5. Make it a universal (iphone/ipad) app
UIActivityIndicatorView Class Reference
Threading Programming Guide(NSURLConnection on a secondary thread has to be synchronous, not asynchronous)
DO NOT
1. Use NSData, NSString, etc initWithContentsOfURL: methods. These are not the best or even really an ok way to do networking. 2. Do any UI work on any thread other than the main thread.
DO: Ask questions… If you run into trouble or need some clarification, feel free to contact Doug: doug(dot)russell(at)bottlerocketapps(dot)com
photos by Jenni Leder, awesome Art Director @_BottleRocket
See more information and slides here:
Finally, huge THANK YOUs to all who attended… We had a blast and hope you did, too!
SPIN Play is an Apple “Favorite”
Thursday, April 28th, 2011
Apple has a section in the iPad App Store featuring magazines titled “Subscribe to Your Favorites” and our SPIN Play is featured again! Here at Bottle Rocket, we are proud of our 4.5 star rating, and here’s an update on all the awesome stuff you get with this FREE app:
- READ: a steady stream of news and reviews directly from SPIN.com plus all the content from SPIN magazine.
- LISTEN: for only $1.99 per issue (or $7.99 annual subscription), get 60-plus streaming songs and 30-plus streaming videos curated by SPIN’s editors
- WATCH: exclusive video interviews and performances with featured artists or via Airplay
- SHARE: your discoveries with friends on Twitter, Facebook and email
Check out the App Store now for this amazing app lovingly crafted by our music-loving rocketeers for music fans and fans of the magazine.