I’ve finished putting up a bunch of HeavyInk info on my new personal website/blog: 1.21 Jigowatts. You can right to the HeavyInk stuff here:http://heavyink.121jigowatts.com. You can subscribe to HeavyInk-related blog posts using this RSS feed.

The app has been accepted into the app store! You can find it by searching for “HeavyInk” on the App Store or if you’re on a computer, go to one of the following address to directly open it in iTunes.

Link to the free version

Link to the paid version ($2.99)

• The ability to see cover art and issue descriptions
• The ability to cancel and uncancel orders

I spent a lot of time on this app, and plan to spend much more. I’m not being paid by HeavyInk, so if you like the app and want to support it I’d appreciate you buying the paid version. If not, no worries, I’ll try to make sure nothing essential is held back from the free version (and there aren’t any ads in it either).

If you have problems/comments about the app, please post a reply to this blog entry or make a post on the forum thread for the app: http://heavyink.com/forum/forums/1/topics/1465 Please do not e-mail anyone at HeavyInk.com, they didn’t develop the app (and don’t even own iPhones!) so they won’t be able to help you.

The app was rejected because of some minor user interface complaints (no error or warning was displayed if you didn’t have an internet connection or didn’t have any orders to display in the app). This has been fixed and the app re-submitted. Hopefully it will go through this time, should know in a week or so.

Well after a lot of technical difficulties, I’ve finally been able to submit the app to the App Store. Now it just needs to go through their review process and be approved, this usually takes 2-4 weeks (assuming nothing else goes wrong). I’ll post some video of the final product here later.

Still waiting on a response from Apple Tech Support. In the meantime, here’s the new item detail screen. It shows the solicit text and cover art. Tapping the cover art brings it up full screen (tapping the full-screen image hides it).

Since it’s been quite a while, I thought I’d update you all on the status of the app.

I’ve been having some problems getting the app accepted by the iTunes submission website. I’m currently talking with someone at Apple tech support to get the problem resolved.

In the extra time I’ve had, I’ve been working on adding more features in. The initial version should now have a nicer details view screen, complete with cover art and solicit text.

Sorry this is taking so long. It’s (mostly) not my fault. I hope to get this all straightened out within the next week.

The first version of the app is completed. A video is below.

There will be two versions of the app. The free version will list your orders, but you will not be able to click on items to get more details and cancel/uncancel orders. The paid version will have all the functionality shown in the video. Additionally when I add new features, the paid version will get those updates first.

I’ll be submitting it to the store soon. I’ll let you all know when it’s available.

You’d think by now I’d have learned to stop posting estimating release dates for things, since they’re inevitably completely wrong. Every time I’ve said something is “coming out soon” or “in a few days” I always get set back by months, and whenever I say something “is going to take a while” I have it done the next day. In this case, beta versions of the app did NOT go out. Some API changes were made, and I realized I needed to beef up the error checking and catching a lot before I released anything. Since it seemed pointless to send out a beta that was going to need heavy re-writes anyway, I didn’t bother. No promises this time on a release schedule (it’s surprisingly hard to work a full time job, work on the app, and still have time for things like sleep and a social life). Rest assured work is still being done.

I’ve gotten some e-mails from people wanting to beta test. To anyone who e-mailed me, I’ll be sending you a version of the app to download sometime this week. If you want in, send your iPhone’s ID number to me ASAP (instructions below). The version I’ll be sending is pretty much exactly what you saw in the last video (except for some back-end changes that aren’t visible). There hasn’t been a ton of progress this week because I’ve been busy, but I hope to have some more cool stuff to show you soon.

To beta test the app, I need your iPhone or iPod Touch’s ID number. To get this, plug the device into your computer and open iTunes. Go to the screen that displays the device info. Near the top should be displayed your iPod’s serial number. Click on that and it should change to a 40-character ID code. E-mail that to me (radixlecti at gmail.com).

Alright, here’s a new video of the app. What you’re seeing here is pretty much feature complete for the first release of the app. It doesn’t look all that different from the last video, but the backend has been completely re-written and so now I can start working on adding more features.

Again I need some testers before I submit it to the store. If you’re interested, shoot me an e-mail at radixlecti@gmail.com

Here’s some images of the updated Orders tab I’m working on. I sort it by series name instead of order number because I think that’s more helpful. There’s also a search bar to make it easy to find issues, and I’ve re-colored the whole app to fit HeavyInk’s theme better.

So I just remembered today that HeavyInk lets you have a blog! I’ll be posting updates about the development of my HI iPhone app here instead of the forum in the future.

In the thread I said it would probably be out this weekend, but now that’s definitely not true. I’m reworking large parts of the app for improved awesomeness. When starting new projects, I have a tendency to jump in head-first without really thinking things through, so this time I resolved to do things differently. I actually spent a good couple hours yesterday planning out the application (GUIs, screen flow, data models, programming logic, etc.). Surprisingly when you plan stuff out ahead of time, everything actually gets much easier in the long run. Who knew?

So basically the finished product is going to be much nicer than what i showed in the forum thread, but it’s going to take me a while longer to finish and properly test. I’m probably going to do a closed beta, so if you have an iPhone or iPod Touch and would be willing to do some testing for me leave a message in the comments.