Hello!

Few weeks ago I had to move from one server to another. Since January you won’t ever see any messages like “Bandwidth limit exceeded” at the end of every single month. Today, one user reported the problem, that most old articles have missing content – cut off in the half. Fortunately I had the backup from the previous server. Since now, everything works fine again. If you notice any problem at this website, please send me an email and I will respond you as soon as possible.

Polls Online application allows you to create simple online surveys / quizzes / polls and collect answers from iPhone and iPod touch users all over the world.

Create and check regularly your multiple and single choice polls. Ask about anything you are curious about completely anonymously. Just do it in English.

Answer polls created by other users.

** More detailed:

When you start the application a random poll is loaded and displayed. Question and possible answers below. Depending on the poll’s setting it can be either single choice (you can pick one answer – previous will be automatically deselected) or multiple choice (you can pick any answer, even all). When you send your vote (OK button) the results are updated and displayed on your screen. You can always check the results even before voting by pressing the little info button in the bottom, left corner.

If you find current poll interesting you can add it to favorites (star button), to track the results, tap star again to remove it from favorite list. You can quickly check other polls by pressing the reload button in the top right.

If the poll is kinda inappropriate, press the report button (lighting mark), to mark it as inappropriate. Report button allows you to delete the poll if you are the one who created it, either by mistake, or simply you just won’t to remove it.

By swiping your finger, you navigate through different menus like:

1. My polls – displays the list of polls divided into 3 tabs: Created, Voted, and Favourite – as mentioned before.

2. Search – here you can check if the poll about certain topic (like president election, interesting world events and so on) already exists. You can search for the given keywords either in questions or in answers.

3. Stats – here you see how many polls and their votes Polls Online’s users have submitted up-to-date and quickly get the newest, popular or not popular polls.

4. And the last one – “Create a poll” – here you can quickly ask the world about anything. Enter the question first and then specify the answers. By default poll is “single-answer” with the answers Yes/No/Don’t know, but you can of course change it so it suits your expectations. Please add polls only in English so major part of the world will understand them.

Have a lot of fun.

Right now it’s available in BigBoss Repo. During few days it will be also available in iTunes Store in 2 versions free with ads/$0.99 without ads.

Hello!

Sorry for the delay. I promised I would try to figure it out few days before, but due to technical problems with my 3G I couldn’t and the fact that it worked on my 2G cannot be enough proof that the application is working well.

I was investigating every single case what is wrong with the application. The application should save/modify/create files under this path:

/var/mobile/Library/SMS/

it’s hard-coded as it should be, but instead it saves the files somewhere else – till now I’ve not found out where, what is strange to me. Next strange thing is that the application was only tested on iPhone 2G and I’ve received a lot of feedback, that it’s not working on 3G and 3GS – I guess iPhone 2G is not popular anymore – that’s why I’ve not received any reports about SMS Switcher on 2G. But to my surprise it was also buggy on my friend’s 2G when I installed SMS Swticher from Cydia.

My last idea was to install the application on my friend’s iPhone 2G in the same way I installed it on mine – via SSH. And to my surprise it finally worked! Manual installation also via SSH on my other friend’s 3G also worked.

So to conclude. (I guess) SMS Switcher works great. Today and yesterday as well. I guess the installation from Cydia changes some privileges or sth like this. Below you can download the built application you can send (via Fugu on Mac OS X or WinSCP on Windows) to your device to /Applications and respring. You should delete first SMS Switcher using Cydia if you have it installed.

SMS Switcher

UPDATED!!!
http://chris-software.com/index.php/2009/10/27/solved-sms-switcher/

Updated: application was only tested on my old personal iPhone Classic. I’ve just tested it on 3G and confirm it’s not working as expected. Maybe today or on wednesday I will try to submit and update. I’m extremely sorry, but please believe me, I’ll do everything to make it working as I intended!

Updated: sorry for making you wait so long, but I have some technical problems: I’m trying to figure out, how to debug my application over SSH as long as it permanently lost WiFi (my 3G). I need to find somebody who is willing to borrow me the SIM Card with data plan so I can download it over 3G or to buy new iPhone… I’m quite busy recently.

Hi!

Yesterday I added to Cydia (BigBoss) my new simple but useful application: SMS Switcher, and I’ve been only receiving questions “how does it work?” or statements: “It doesn’t work”.

First I’d like to discuss some technical info. Your SMS/MMS messages (created by Messages application) are stored in one file called sms.db, which you will find in:

/var/mobile/Library/SMS/

My application allows you to create another databases for your messages, so when you create databased MyGirlfriendsMSGs, and ImportantMSGs, when you visit again /var/mobile/Library/SMS/ you should also see the libraries you created, that is MyGirlfriendsMSGs.db and ImportantMSGs.db.

But remember that Messages app uses only sms.db file, and doesn’t focus on other .db files in this directory. That is way I call sms.db file the active library – the library from which messages are read and to which new are saved. You can only have one library active at a time. So when you create new library You can set that you want to activate it straight away, or you can do it always later.

When you activate next library, it’s file – *.db file will rename to sms.db, so now it’s used as a Messages’ database, while the previous original library will rename to [previousActiveLibraryName].db.

You cannot assign your contacts to save messages from/to them to one of the libraries – they will be always saved in your active.

What is the point of such application:

1. if your library is very big – like thousands of messages, opening it takes few seconds out of your life. Either you can delete some messages, or create new library while you always can switch the library to the original one and read your messages. You can always make a copy while creating new library, so now you have the same to files, but you can delete unwanted msgs – the app will respond faster and you have a backup if you delete something important.
2. It saves your privacy. A lot of people read your messages when you left your iPhone unprotected. Not all of them are hackers and not all of them knows this application. So by switching libraries the typical inquisitive person won’t have access to your (very) private data.
3. And the example from the application. If you have two or more girlfriends/boyfriends/wives/husbands/fiancees… (I don’t say it’s good, it isn’t) you can easily switch libraries so one girlfriend/boyfriend/wife/husband/fiancee won’t find out about the other.
4. Think of your own reasons

So again step by step instruction

1. Obvious: install the application from Cydia (search, type SMS Switcher).
2. Obvious again: launch the application – nice icon like messages applications with recycle symbol (two arrows).
3. You should see a list with one database only – it’s a database created by already using Messages app. If it’s not listed it simply means that you have never received any message (make some friends), you have never opened Messages or you have just restored your device and because of above two reasons, this file doesn’t exists – it’s not a problem.
4. So now let’s create new SMS library – just tap the top right [+] button. Enter it’s name – just to remove typical file-naming problems you are only allowed to use letters A, B, C to Z and number 0, 1, 2, 3 to 9. If you want to activate this library straight away (it means that messages will be saved to this library, and read also from this library – and as long as it’s empty, your Messages app will display nothing). Only while creating new library, you can easily import all messages from any existing libraries.
5. You can repeat step 4 to create more libraries. If you already activated one library it will be used for next messages. You can later launch the app again and switch back or switch to another.

OK and BTW: when you start your application, the main SMS library is always called Unnamed.

Please tell me that you get it. If not, use the comments above.

Hello!

I do really apologize that I haven’t added anything on my blog for last few weeks.

As many of noticed I do a lot of programming job recently. I’ve added a lot of applications, a lot of updates, and what is more, I have a lot of ideas what to do next with iPhone SDK.

Follow this link to see my productions in App Store:

http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewArtist?id=307085735

I’m also quite popular in Cydia in Big Boss repository. My best production I’m really proud of is Best of YouTube

To try my other apps in Cydia follow this link:

http://apt.thebigboss.org/packagesfordev.php?name=Best%20of%20YouTube

Regards

Chris

Hello!

It’s my first post published using the iPhone Wordpress application. Well done! It’s really nice and easy to use.

Although, nothing appears on my blog except comments and my replies, it’s totaly different than how it looks.

As many of you’ve noticed, I have added some applications without even publishing any info about them here.

Two most popular apps are: Magic Ball (fortune telling toy) and Anonymous (send fake emails). Both available in Cydia.

I have a lot of reports than anonymous doesn’t work like it should. It sometimes does sometimes doesn’t send emails to hotmail or gmail accounts. Please excuse me and believe me I can’t do anything and fix it right now. Rather it’s unfixable. All the data you enter in the app is sent to my PHP script and email is sent using mail() function, withour providing any external SMTP server. Some providers don’t accept this emails. Even more, very rarely my provider fail to send an email even you’ve been told it was sent. That is way why Anonymous sometimes fail to send an email to the same address.

I have also to more questions about it. Yes, soon I’ll post an update with reply-to optional field. And the 2nd: NO you can’t read any emails from others’ email accounts. It’s almost impossible, illegal and… I’m not going to explain why.

Before I finish I’d like to tell you about one more thing. Since two weeks ago, I’ve almost stopped distributing stupid applications for free. Since then, all existing and new apps will be for free with tiny not-annoying ads from AdMob. Some apps that I’m really proud of like Funny Face, Hot Banana will be also available for 1$ without ads.

And next one more…
New really nice apps and tutorials are on their way.

Hello!

and goodbye for some next days/weeks

I’m very sorry to inform you about that, but I’m really busy lately and I don’t have enough time to create new tutorials and develop new games.

Programming has always been my hobby, but of course I’m not going to quit it in near future, otherwise . Bus since few weaks, I was really, really, really, really…, really busy. I’ve been trained to become a professional and independent financial advisor and I do really see many advantages, this job can bring me, even more then programming.

When I started programming I wanted to earn 1 mln $, but, no matter how hard I tried in first month I earned only:

$296 × 70% = $207       [30% = Apple provision]
$207 × 78% = $161       [22% = Value Added Tax in Poland]
$161  ÷ 2 = $80              [two heads two share]
$99 ÷ 2 = $50                  [cost of iPhone Developer Program]
$80 – $50 = $30             [the profit]

In other currencies I earned less then equivalent of $10, except Great Britain: £27, and the European Union:  as well 27€.

Next month was even worse, about 25% of previous month income. Such a small amounts Apple withholds until next month or forever if the trends don’t change.

So as I said now I spend much more time being the financial advisor and I have three little contracts to write iPhone apps. Because of this I can’t write my own apps because of lack of time although I have some ideas.

Could you help?

I’m not asking you to:

• send me money to my bank account / PayPal / address in envelope
• click google AdSense commercials

I’m just asking 4 – 7 hundreds people that visits Chris-Software.com every day: Could you please buy one or more of my applications – Funny Face [ App Store ] or Hot Banana [ App Store ] or others? They cost only $0.99 and I guess they are worth even more, but I don’t ask for more as long as they are not as popular as I intended. That would really helped with my budget and you would got a lot of fun with them.

Hope to return soon.

Regards, Chris
poor man from Central Europe