Tuesday, June 3, 2008

Progress Update

My blog posts seem to be only about what's going on with Fern, but I would also like to discuss what else I have been up to. Yes I have been working on Fern 0.3 which will introduce support for Picasa web albums and image uploading but I have halted development to spend time on Fern 0.2.5 which is completely rewritten to take advantage of Core Data for storing of posts. This version will have everything that 0.2 has as well as a new accounts feature for keeping track of logging details. Core Data simplifies storing account information as well as posts and it supports rich text which is a major bonus, just gotta get that rich textness (it's a word now) to join blogger on the internets. Version 0.2.5 will become 0.3, all the work done on the current 0.3 will be transferred to the new Core Data Revision.

Among Fern development I have also been working on another project, Waterpoint Manager, the Mac version of my first Windows application. I'm building it to learn about Core Data and to demonstrate to my teacher my ability to build a multi-platform tool.

All the learnings of cocoa development and imminent public release of Water Manager for mac as led me to thinking about an unofficial company name, by unofficial I mean not real, just a name to release my free and donationware software under. Some of you might know my design work under Alex Mills Design so I have been floating around the idea of AMD Software, what do you think? Drop a comment if you have an better ideas :) As soon as I decide on a name I will launch a new Google Site (or possibly a hosted site) that will give you people better access to software, pre-release versions, help and documentation to complete the experience.

As always school and work override my cocoa and web development so give it time and hopefully it should all fall into place, I literally can't wait to release Fern 1.0 to the public, except it will probably have a more network/technology/connected consumer/googlelike name that I have yet to find. Any ideas, drop a comment :) I'm here making free software for the most advanced platform in the world, we might as well do it together. Soon mac users won't have to pay to post to their blogspot blogs from their leopard desktop, I think I will add more services after the release of version 1.0.

I'm also waiting for Apple to drop the delicious iPhone in Australia so I can get one :)

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