BravoBug News

BravoBug is proud today to announce the 2.0 release of its popular Blackout application for Mac OS X. Blackout provides instant screen dimming without any adjustment of your monitor’s hardware or gamma settings.

New in this version is better integration with Leopard’s Spaces feature. Now when switching spaces, Blackout will automatically move the dimming window to your current space, providing system-side and Spaces-wide darkening.

You can download the new 2.0 release here.

Because Blackout 2.0 is now integrated with Spaces, it requires Mac OS X 10.5. However, users of Tiger (10.4) can still get the 1.0 version of Blackout by clicking here.

Blackout is freeware. Enjoy!

MiLife 1.3 is in the works and will be released ahead of the revamped 2.0 version (which is still in an early stage). MiLife 1.3 will contain several much-requested features and a few small bug fixes. Some of the things expected in 1.3:

• Arrange and re-order pages now possible
• Page dates can be changed or set
• More back-up options for diaries
• More navigational options, including jump-to-date
• Much more!

This release is still being cooked up in XCode but will be available soon. Please stay tuned and thank you very much to those of you who have supported MiLife by registering your copy! If you have a suggestion for a feature you’d like to see in 1.3 please don’t hesitate to send me an Email. In the meantime be sure to check out some of BravoBug’s recent apps including Blackout (freeware) and Mega BrickBash 3000.

Recently I’ve received several E-mails regarding the A-star (A*) path finding algorithm in Objective-C. I’m not sure why there has been a sudden interest in it (influx of iPhone developers, perhaps?). For those who haven’t yet seen it, be sure to take a look at the sample code and article that I posted in November. (The original article with source code and a sample Mac OS X app is here.)

For the sake of those interested I thought I would post a few extra links that might be useful. A-star can be a tricky algorithm to implement.

What I found most helpful was the pseudo-code explanations I found at various places on the net. Additionally, there are some interesting video demos that show the A star algorithm in action which may help conceptually.

People interested in A-Star might take a look at:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A*_search_algorithm

http://www.policyalmanac.org/games/aStarTutorial.htm

http://www.geocities.com/jheyesjones/astar.html

http://wiki.gamegardens.com/Path_Finding_Tutorial

And again, if you’re on a Mac using XCode, Obj-C, and Foundation/Cocoa, be sure to check my article (link) for a sample app. Happy coding!

Oh wait, no… it’s the website for Dell’s new laptop, the Adamo.

“Fall in love” ? Good grief… Props to you, Dell, for trying to get innovative with your laptops but next time don’t hire the marketing team from Calvin Klein to promote your computers.

Related: The Dell Adamo with its 13″ screen is $2000. :O I would sincerely hope that any rational consumer about to spend 2 grand on a laptop would consider purchasing a 2.4GHz 15″ MacBook Pro instead.

From time to time BravoBug’s emails will not be delivered to your inbox but instead dropped into your Junk or Spam folder. It’s an unfortunate side-effect of having strong Spam protection: occasionally, legit Emails will get tossed as junk.

Although this is mentioned on the support page I wanted to post a quick note to remind anyone who sends in a support Email or is expecting a registration key, that if you don’t have an Email reply back from us in 24 hours, please check your spam folder to see if it accidentally got marked as junk. It’s rare, but it happens.

Thanks for supporting BravoBug’s Mac shareware!

Hackers have broken Apple’s iTunes Gift Card algorithm and subsequently sold the information to other Chinese hackers who have begun selling $200 iTunes gift cards for a fraction of the price. As word spread the already absurd prices dropped even lower, some $200 cards now selling for as low as $2.60.

No word yet on how Apple will respond to this fiasco.

As many of you know, there are some new competitors to Apple’s app store for the iPhone, which have sprung forth to address many of the perceived problems with Apple’s existing store infrastructure.

Among the complaints from developers and users alike are the restrictions placed on some apps, perceived censorship by Apple, marketing issues, and problems with developers renewing their contracts. The new ‘third party app stores’ will allow people with jailbroken iPhones to download apps they couldn’t otherwise get through the app store, as well as allowing an alternative venue for developers to distribute their software.

Not surprisingly, Apple isn’t happy at all, and has begun preparing for legal warfare against the new alternative app stores, citing copyright infrigement.

A few of you who registered a BravoBug app earlier today may have found your registration email, containing your license key, took much longer than normal to arrive (in some cases several hours). This appears to have been a network latency issue which has been resolved.

Registration delivery speed should be back to normal now (within 5-10 minutes of processing). I will be keeping an eye on all orders processed over the next few days to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

Thanks for your patience and thank you for supporting independent Mac developers like BravoBug.