iGotcha - our latest app - is sent to Apple for approval. We spent several months designing and finetuning the app (both graphical design as well as "gameplay" design) and are proud the app is ready for prime time!

Suppose you're on vacation, sitting on a nice and sunny beach and you witness a beauty on the beach: with iGotcha you can capture that moment and share it with others.

Now, suppose you're sitting at home, it's raining outside and you're about to get a winter depression: launch iGotcha and instantly enjoy real people's pictures from a beach somewhere on the other side of the world.

Why share your "catch" with others?
Because it will give you credits to download the nice pictures of others!

Catch beauties on your phone and share your catch with others!

We removed Telenet Meter - our latest free utility app - from the App Store as Telenet NV (the Belgian broadband company) sent us an infringement letter stating we have to remove the app from the App Store immediately.

We will continue to discuss this matter with Telenet, but in order to avoid legal issues we have removed the app from the App Store right away. Since we're only a small Belgian company, we cannot afford to battle against Goliath in court. Anyhow, lots of people showed interest in the App, so we really plan on getting it back in the App Store soon (either by changing the name and/or icon of the app, or whatever it takes). As there are similar apps available for Windows and OSX, we expect to resolve this issue with Telenet soon.

So stay tuned for any updates on this matter!

Telenet Meter - a utility app to check the amount of bandwidth you have left in Belgium - is yet again rejected by Apple.

No big news, but the complete story is pretty interesting: we got rejected 2 weeks ago, because we used Three20 - a public library from Joe Hewitt - which seemed to be using some non-public APIs. Apple's rejection letter clearly stated only the non-public APIs used in Three20 (in detail
'UITouch._locationInWindow'
'UITouch._phase'
'UITouch._previousLocationInWindow'
'UITouch._tapCount'
'UITouch._timestamp'
'UITouch._touchFlags'
'UITouch._view'
'UITouch._window'
). We quickly fixed the issue (removed these API calls as we were not using them anyway) and resubmitted our app.

And yes, today we got another rejection letter from Apple - this time stating we used another non-public API (removeFileAtPath:handler:), this time introduced by the Google Toolbox library. Why-o-why couldn't they (=Apple) report the Google-Toolbox-non-public-API the previous time? This costs us yet another 2 weeks of approval time. Is it so hard for Apple to report all non-public APIs in 1 go? Can't they release the static analyzer they use, in order for us - developers - to check this prior to submission - gaining time for us and them? As more an more libraries become available, it gets harder and harder to make sure no 'illegal' API calls are used within those 3rd party libraries.

And want to know what's even better: we do have an app on the App Store - Skynet Meter, identical to the Telenet Meter app - only a different provider is queried - which is available on the App Store and got approved in just 2 weeks!

On Windows we had DLL Hell, on the iPhone we have Approval Hell.

It's been a while since our last blog-entry - which either means we had a long and relaxing holiday or we have been working like h*ll. And to tell you the truth - it's been the last one.

We have a few great apps in the pipeline, of which 2 are waiting for approval on Apple's side. One of the apps we're currently working on is a combination of a fun photography social app with a take-a-peek-into-my-life-App. Great fun, and hopefully great pictures too! We plan to finish the app by the end of this month - so stay tuned.

We're also working on a well-designed timesheet app which will stand out amongst the others by it's marvellous design and great usability. Probably available by the end of 2009.

And in between those app creations, we continue to support and implement new features of our flagship product Movies.

So, we're still in business and working harder as ever before in order to get new and cool apps on the App Store. Meanwhile, you can always have a look at our existing apps and grab a copy of those.

As more and more users are integrating Movies with their PC/Mac movie catalog, we implemented a conversion page to convert exports from your favorite movie catalog to the Movies format

We first introduced the XSLT convertors, though using those was pretty technical and hard to understand. So we wrote a wrapper around them, and to the conversion on our webserver! Take a quick look at our Movies Convertor and start converting database exports from ANT Movie Collection and DVD Profiler. If you want additional movie catalogs to be added, just send us a sample XML and we'll try to get it converted.

As always, we try to improve your Movies experience. Please let us know what you think of it!

As a small sideproject - only interesting for the few Belgian iPhone users - I made SkynetMeter, an app to track the amount of traffic left on your DSL account.

Yes - you read it right! We Belgians only have a lousy 25GB per month of download traffic on our broadband account. Since I almost monthly go over this limit, I wanted something to easily track how much traffic I used already. So here we go, SkynetMeter. Just specify your DSL account (username and password) and SkynetMeter does the rest. If fetches your limits from Belgacom and shows them nicely in your iPhone.

Since it's a free app - go grab your copy from the App Store as soon as it becomes available!

We just submitted Movies 1.8.2 to Apple - our latest bugfix release of Movies. It features a few minor new things and fixes some bugs. As we're working towards a 2.0 version of Movies, this will probably be the last 1.8.x release.

As of Movies 1.8 you can rotate your iPhone/iPod Touch 90 degrees and Movies will show a Coverflow(tm) alike interface to browse through your movie collection!

What's new/fixed in 1.8.2?

• Added Spanish, German, Norwegian langauges
• Improved barcode scanning (optionally enter barcode manually)
• Improved duplicate detection
• Fullscreen coverview shows lowres cover in case no highres cover is available
• Crashes when barcode is not found in the database

So if the Apple elves allow the update, it should become available in the App Store soon.

This morning, we found some tweets flying around from Will Shipley regarding Movies and abusing his wood texture.

We quickly investigated the issue and even though we fetched our textures through Google Images seeking for royalty-free textures, it seems it was indeed Will's texture. We changed the wood texture to one we created ourself now, and submitted 1.8.1 to Apple. Problem solved. Even a public apology would not have been a problem.

Too bad (famous/powerfull) people don't feel the need to contact the small fish out there. If we knew it was their texture, we would have changed the texture without hesitation, just as quickly as we did now. Without needing to embarras us in public. Or calling us thieves. Since we are not. We just try to make the best Movie app for the iPhone. Like they try to do the same for Mac.

As Movies imports a ZIP file containing all cover images plus 1 XML file, it is pretty straightforward to write convertors to import a catalog from an external movie system to Movies

And today we're proud to announce the second convertor is officially available for DVD Profiler.

What is required?

• An XSLT convertor (like msxsl for Windows or online XSLT convertor)
• The DVDProfiler.xslt script: dvdprofiler.xslt

How does it work?

Export the catalog from DVD Profiler to XML and convert the XML from DVD Profiler using the XSLT script into an XML for Movies (for MSXSL the commandline is msxsl.exe collection.xml dvdprofiler.xslt -o export.xml). Now copy all covers into the same folder as the newly created export.xml. Finally create a ZIP file which contains the newly created export.xml as well as all cover JPG's and name this ZIP file export.zip.

This is the ZIP file you need to FTP to the iPhone when tapping the [Restore] button in the [Settings] page of Movies.

It's that simple!

As Movies imports a ZIP file containing all cover images plus 1 XML file, it is pretty straightforward to write convertors to import a catalog from an external movie system to Movies

And today we're proud to announce the first convertor is officially available for Ant Movie Catalog.

What is required?

• An XSLT convertor (like msxsl for Windows or online XSLT convertor)
• The ANT.XSTL script: ant.xslt

How does it work?

Export the catalog from Ant to XML and convert the XML from Ant using the XSLT into an XML for Movies (for MSXSL the commandline is msxsl.exe sample.xml ant.xslt -o export.xml). Now create a ZIP file which contains the newly created export.xml as well as all cover JPG's and name this ZIP file export.zip.

This is the ZIP file you need to FTP to the iPhone when tapping the [Restore] button in the [Settings] page of Movies.

It's that simple!