Hydro Smart Now Available in Apple App Store

Last week I released the "Hydro Smart" iPhone/iPod/iPad application. This app is targeted at people living in Ontario, Canada, who are on the "smart meter" system for hydro (electricity).

If you have a smart meter, you're subject to a quite complicated series of rates and times. If you run your appliances at the wrong time, you'll be billed significantly more for electricity usage. This application helps you to establish which rate you're being charged at any given time, so that you can make educated decisions about when to use more (or less) electricity.

This app is currently available for just 99 cents, an amount you can quickly and easily recoup simply by following the rate charts. It's good for you and it's good for the environment.

My First Published iPhone App is for Perl Hackers

This past June (2010) I released my first iPhone application. @ioncache and I had put our heads together to build a tool we felt was lacking in the Perl community. All of the documentation for Perl's massive software archive, the CPAN, was not available as an iPhone application. If you're a Perl hacker, you may well find this to be a very useful tool. You can grab it here.

iCPAN brings you the documentation for over 60,000 Perl modules in the palm of your hand, for offline browsing whenever you may need it. You can bookmark your favourites and also view your recently searched modules. I've used it many times myself and I find it to be a great tool for reading up on modules with which I am already familiar and also for discovering new tools I can use when hacking on code (like the WunderCounter).

After getting lots of valuable feedback, we're now optimizing this application for the iPad. I'll post again when the iPad version is available in the Apple app store.

Adding a WunderCounter Link to Your iPhone's Home Screen

Since a number of you are checking your stats with your iPhones, I thought I'd share this handy tip with you. To get a link to the WunderCounter directly from your home screen (with your other applications), do the following:

1. Open Safari on your iPhone
2. Go to http://www.wundercounter.com
3. Click the "Login" link at the top right of the screen
4. Wait for the login page to load
   
5. Now, click the "+" icon at the bottom of your screen
6. Select "Add to Home Screen"

This will add a new icon to your iPhone which looks a little bit like the home page of the WunderCounter. You can arrange it just as you would any other icon. Clicking it will take you directly to the WunderCounter login page in your Safari browser. It's a handy little thing that can save you a bit of time here and there. You can, of course, do this with pretty much any web page you'd like to bookmark in Safari. I use it myself and I find it to be quite helpful.

Do You Have a GPS-Enabled Camera/Phone?

One of the projects I'm working on right now is a web site which is inspired by the Gawker Stalker. This web app will allow users to upload or email photos, which will then be added to a Google map. In the case where users have GPS data embedded into their photos (like a location-aware iPhone), the images will automatically be thumbnailed and added to the map.

The difference between this site and the Gawker Stalker is that:

• you'll be able to upload your own photos
• photos (and sightings without photos) will be mapped in real time (lag will be 1-2 minutes)
• photos and sightings will be tweeted as they are added to the map
• you'll be able to map any location which can be mapped by Google maps, so you're not restricted to Manhattan etc
• if your phone is email-capable, you'll be able to shoot a photo and upload it to the site immediately, giving real time feedback

I'm looking for some beta testers who are willing to help me test out the functionality. We're planning to move to a "live beta" of the site in the next couple of weeks, with a view to going live worldwide later this summer. I'm specifically looking for folks who have camera phones which will embed GPS data into their photos. So, all generations of the iPhone are good. Blackberries may need some tweaking. I'm not too familiar with other phones which may have similar functionality, but if you have one of these phones, please do get in touch with me.

I should add that, for the beta, you won't need to post photos of celebrities in your neighbourhood. This is more about testing the functionality of the site than trying to get any specific content.