Head over to RadiantTweet page for more details.

• English
• German
• French
• Italian
• Spanish
• Japanese

As before, we used good people from LocalVersion.com for the translations. Could not be happier with their communication and speed of work. We are all still just humans though, thus if any of these languages is your native and you spot an error, please let us know.

Apart from the app, we had them translate the App Store app page thus making it even more accessible to people speaking these languages. We hope this update will be well received and that we will have a chance to add more language options.

It’s available now from the App Store, price unchanged.

There’s nothing special to say about it — if you have not yet acquired a flashlight, check this one out, you won’t be disappointed. Simple and very dark interface, specifically made to be used in dark places (dark UI is easier on the eyes in pitch dark).

Available worldwide on the App Store.

The visual style is inherited from previous two apps — Go Couch to 5k and Guerrilla Cardio — and will continue to be developed and fine-tuned in future work.

Main design goal was to simplify multiple conversions as much as possible, between any number of currencies. When I looked at existing currency converters on the App Store (and there are bucket-load of them) most are either converting between two picked currencies or between one picked and a list of others. Thus that is where I looked to take a slightly different angle.
Dozens of iterations later, I arrived at the UI in the shipping version.

Reviews

Initial reviews for the app are very positive.

Preshit Deorukhkar at Beautiful Pixels praises the UI:

All of these [Radiant Tap previous] apps have one thing in common, something that I’m personally a big fan of, and that’s elegant design. There’s no overdone glossiness, no shiny elements. The design compliments the function.

Cody Fink at MacStories is impressed with the UI simplicity:

What impresses me most about Banca is that the one thing it does is pulled off through a simple tap and swipe interface that’s quick to pick up and even quicker to use. Slide the top bar to select the currency you want to convert from (say USD), then the bottom bar to select the currency you want to convert to (probably the Euro).

Both of these reviews touch on the core design aims I had when making the app and this makes me very happy.

Banca is $1.99 until Aug 8th, after which it goes up to $3.99. Feedback is more than welcome, as always.

I’m putting the finishing touches on the technical aspects of the design, going over each page on various devices (desktop, iPhone, iPad) and fixing as I find issues. In upcoming weeks, all apps will be updated to feature new branding and logo.

The driving idea for the re-design was simplicity, simplicity and clarity. Overall design is grayish, making the app icons and screenshots really stand out. Each app is represented with a short feature list and lots of screenshots. Nothing else. Also, web page for each app will have a video demo, making it easy to check the app in a matter of minute or two.

With hope you will like the new face, a bright future is still ahead — expect some exciting news in next few weeks and months.

• You can now start any running session in Go Couch to 5k, regardless of the order. Not so in Guerrilla Cardio, since all the sessions are the same, thus no point to enable this in that app.
• Redesigned overview screen, to reflect the previous change
• Non-destructive Stop run button: now if you stop the run, the running data up to that point are always saved
• You can now re-do any session you already attempted and even if you finished it. This goes along nicely with previous change
• You can skip back and forth between the pace units. This is useful if you want to skip the warm-up part when you have already warmed up and just want to hit it full speed. Make sure that you don’t actually skip warming up, especially before the Cardio runs.

So, there you go, hopefully you’ll like it. Keep the suggestions coming.

At the end of the program, you’ll be able to run 5km for about 30minutes, without stopping. Interested?

Go Couch to 5k has the same feature set as Guerrilla Cardio:

• near real-time speed and distance tracking
• animated display of pace changes
• automatic highlight of the maximum achieved speed during the run
• full run history with extensive details about each run
• plot of the each run on Google Maps
• voice feedback during the run
• ability to choose music inside the app, even construct a playlist just before the run
• share the best pace on Twitter and Facebook

This is a perfect starting program for new runners . It takes off as lightly as possible, gradually increasing the pace, but nothing really major. And what’s even better, it can be perfectly combined with Guerrilla Cardio. Don’t do it from the start, but from say 4th or 5th week of Couch to 5k program.

Then you can do:

• Mon/Wed/Fri — Couch to 5k
• Tue/Thu/Sat — Guerrilla Cardio

Start this in the spring and by the summer you would be as it as you ever hoped to be.

Go Couch to 5k is available worldwide on the App Store, for $2.99.

Guerrilla Cardio implements the best known HIIT training program developed by Ph.D. Izumi Tabata and his colleagues from National Institute of Health & Nutrition in Tokyo, Japan. This is ”the ideal“ aerobics training protocol and Guerrilla Cardio makes it easy to follow and complete the program.

Real-time speed updates during the run

This is challenging program, aimed at people in good shape who want to get rid off that stubborn belly and/or thigh fat. This is possibly the best known high impulse interval training (HIIT) program ever made.

App features are designed to motivate you to improve through-out the program:

Program overview shows the best pace — it challenges you to beat it

We invested a lot of thought and time into this app and can’t wait to hear from you. Don’t forget to read more on the app page.

It’s available now on the App Store, worldwide for $2.99.

There will be opportunities to discuss this more, but for now, here are icons for the two of the upcoming apps:

More details soon.

If you have previously read the About page, you’ll understand all there is to know about the new name. Wine and vineyards are wonderful hobby of mine and when I went looking for a new name, vine-related words quickly gained prominence. Trouble is, most of the good domains using the word ”vine“ were already taken. Hence I went through Wikipedia looking for good synonyms.

Radiant came to me when I was looking through the hundreds of photos from my vineyard — I stumbled on the one you see here and it just clicked. I originally wanted Canopy — it has many meanings, but in this context it refers to part of the vine tree above the ground. However, a simple Tap is more appropriate.

The logo is the work of Miloš Radojević, a talented designer from Serbia. Check out his portfolio on the Genius Logo web site.

Improvements

The old site will forever be up, it will simply 301-redirect to this one. The emails coming to codeaplus.com will be accepted but responses will go out through the new domain name: radianttap.com.

I took the opportunity to re-do the whole site. The main goal was to make it much more mobile-friendly, enlisting the help of the Less Framework 2. No matter what device you use, from iPhone to 30″ desktop display, the site will re-flow to fit the device as best as possible.

Another aim for the new site was to finally make good of my purchase of the Typekit portfolio plan. I adore Adobe’s Myriad Pro font and when Typekit added it to its service, I immediately signed up.

This site is now using Myriad Pro with Light weight as the default for the text. The headers and few other prominent elements use Myriad Pro Semi Condensed, which is a perfect match for it.

For the blog, I customized free WooThemes’ Skeptical theme and as such, the theme may not re-flow properly as the rest of the site, but I hope to remedy this in the future. It’s a great theme though and a great framework that WooThemes have built it on. I have probably also missed to re-design properly parts of the theme, will fix those as I find them.

I hope you will like the new site. And soon we return to what this is all about: great iPhone apps — we have a brand new app currently in ”Waiting for review“ status.

A 57cm, 3.95kg cute little package has been delivered, with both mom and the baby boy (no name yet) doing just fine. To celebrate, I have dropped the prices of all my apps down to $0.99 for the next week (until Aug 14).

Please share and re-face, re-tweet and whatever else:

When you install, you’ll notice few changes. The UI is streamlined and more consistent. Top bar is now working as identical as possible, both on lists and on items view. This is lists view:

And this is items view:

The UI is also working consistently and enables / disables buttons as needed. Thus now, when you’re in Edit mode, add-new-list or back-button are inaccessible. This lessens the available workflow paths and allows you to focus on singular tasks.

Import / Export

That new button next to Edit is where the main 1.4 feature is. Tap it on lists view and you’ll see the options slide down:

Here you have the option to add lists in, from another device (more on this later). Tap at least one of the local lists and then the other two options become available:

Of course, you can still import lists, regardless of what is locally selected, thus middle option is not disabled.

On the items view, this is almost identical, with the difference that all 3 options are always available, except when list is empty.

So, how this works?

Mailing

If you mail lists, it will open the mail controller inside the app, including all the lists you have selected. If you do this on items view, it will naturally add items from that list. This is how the mail contents looks:

- - - - [only to do items] - - - -

Coffee for the office

2 large mochas

1 large late

- - - - [only done items] - - - -

Coffee for the office

*1 small late

- - - - [all items] - - - -

Coffee for the office

2 large mochas

*1 small late

1 large late

The layout is pretty clear; list items are shown in 3 groups:

• only to-do items
• only done items
• all items

This corresponds to the three tabs you see on the items view in Quickie. The * in front of the item denotes a done item. In order to get this into Quickie, select whatever group you want and copy/paste it into Quickie’s Add new list (+ button on lists view) or Add more items (+ button on the items view) screens.

If you mail out multiple lists, their contents will simply be added to the mail body, one by one.

Of course, you can also copy this in the mail controller screen before sending, then close that screen, switch to Messages app and send the list over SMS. From then, copy/paste into Quickie on receiving end.

Bumping

Bump™ is a service that exists for quite some time, but which recently got a big stamp of approval when PayPal implemented it in their iPhone app.

How it works in Quickie:

1. Select some lists in Quickie that you want to transfer to another iPhone. Tap Bump lists out
2. Tap Bump lists in on the other iPhone
3. On both devices, the Bump connect screen will show up. Once you see this screen

   
   then simply bump one device with another. You don’t have to bump the devices themselves, it’s enough to bump hands holding the iPhones (as the Bump logo shows).

4. You’ll be asked to confirm the transfer on both devices and after that, the magic happens. Data will be transfered, Bump screens will go away and you’ll see the lists on the target phone.

You can bump any number of lists you want. The common way I use this feature is when I get home from work and my wife bumps me the list of things I need to fetch from the store; pronto. :)

So happy with this. Version 1.2 should be on sale soon, bringing better performance and some new features to play with.

Run Mate 1.3

Run Mate 1.3 is out on the store for a week or so. It features two new programs included, tailor-made for people that have never, ever run before. You can now set a difficulty level for each program. Program level is shown with an icon in front of program and all its sessions.

The great new feature are completion checkmarks. Those new icons have another use — once you complete the session, it will automatically be check-marked so you can easily track your progress.

More settings are added – you can now turn off voice alerts for sequence repeats and finishes, leaving only pace changes announced.

Our first iPad app

Did you notice all the frenzy in tech press around the April Fools Day? code·aplus has an app right from the start — Animated Mood Lamp. It’s a simple application, showing great animation, best experienced in dark rooms. It also doubles up as a really large map/flashlight when you need one, with the choice of thousands of colors. I hope you will like it — when you get your iPad, please write back how it runs as I don’t know yet when I’ll be able to get an iPad for myself. :)

Quickie

Quickie is not forgotten, 1.3 version is almost complete and will feature some nice improvements. Stay tuned.

Or you can watch on Vimeo or YouTube, possibly in larger resolution.

When designing Run Mate’s integration with iPod music library, my main goal was to be a good neighbor in the iPhone OS and to not impose unnecessary actions to start the run. Thus, if you had any music already started — regardless is it playing or paused, it is enough that iPod app with its library is in memory — Run Mate will go along and re-use that.

If that is the case, then when you get to the Sequence screen this is the display you will see if the background music is playing:

With background music is playing, Run Mate shows pause and stop controls

or this one if background music is paused:

With background music paused, Run Mate shows play and stop controls

If you now tap “Start run” that music will be reused.

If you tap the red Stop button, you will effectively clear out whatever playlist is in memory and thus no music will be available to Run Mate, so the screen will change into this:

No background music available, “Pick music” buttons shows up

Thus now you can tap “Pick music” button and the iPhone’s music picker screen will show up:

The standard iPhone’s music picker

Here you tap any number of songs you want (or just tap “Add All Songs”) and then tap “Done”; you’ll be returned to Run Mate which will again show the appropriate interface with play/pause and stop buttons.

I hope this helps.

I hope this above is correct in all the languages that Quickie is now localized: German, French, Spanish and Hebrew. :) There’s also support for my own, Serbian (both in Latin and Cyrillic) but since Serbian is not an official language on the iPhone, it will have to wait until Apple adds it to iPhone OS.

Translation is the main feature of Quickie 1.2. I built Quickie to support localization from the first version and this is just the first fruit of that work. German, French and Spanish translations were done by LocalVersion — major kudos to Toni Rovira for great response times, mostly under a day. Swedish is done by my brother Damir, while Hebrew translation is by Ziv Kitaro, a writer and journalist from Israel. Big thank you to all of them, for the generous help and their time and effort.

The new icon is the most obvious visual change. I’m pretty happy how it turned out, I hope you will like it too.

One of earliest requests was for the application badge. I was thinking how to do it, since there’s room only for one number. One option was to add up all the to-do items in all lists and show that; I quickly gave up on this, it would not make much sense if you have one week-long list and one for the day.
Thus I decided to use the number of to-do items in the top most list. That would probably be the most urgent/important list to you, so it makes sense to use it. Re-ordering lists is easy, in case you want to change which list is connected with the application badge.

Minor improvements: UI is refined, buttons are re-drawn, a list with no t0-dos left is grayed out a bit.

Please note that while Quickie is now localized into 4 more languages, I don’t speak any of them. Thus if you write to me, please do so in English or Serbian. As usual, comments and suggestions are more than welcome.

First, you can now add multiple items to existing list at once, in the same way as when initially creating the list — using separate multi-line input field. When in items view, tap Edit then the + button in the top bar and type in. I was contemplating other solutions but in testing they proved to be counter-intuitive and surprising. This solution adds to the consistency of the interface, which I value greatly.

Second, you can now re-order both items and lists. This was originally planned for later versions, but I switched gears due to UI changes and features got moved up a bit. This is primary reason why I never publish road maps for my apps. Things that seem easy when outlined can turn out to be quite a challenge and could actively prevent the releases.

Third, in-app help is gone. Quickie is very simple and that icon was taking space that can be used better. More important is that help text, as the single largest body of text, was actively stopping the internationalization process. Apart from the help, the Quickie UI has about 20 words and short phrases — help section was like 20x that. So it’s gone and translations are coming in.

I intended to ship 1.1 with at least 2–3 translations, but decided to leave them for future, as I did not want to postpone the 1.1 anymore. Once first translations are in, you can expect 1.1.x in the updates.

Forth, the green check-mark for done item is now on the left. I really liked the left/right split, as it clearly separated the done and to-be-done items. However, with such layout, there was no place to put additional stuff I want to implement; I tried all UI layouts I could think of, nothing worked satisfactory. Thus, change. The space on the right is now free and will be used for a lot of stuff soon.

Fifth, audio cues are changed. Hopefully for the better. :)

Sixth, the UI widgets are re-visited, as they were few pixels larger than regular iPhone OS widgets. The interface is also polished a bit and extraneous movement of the items when entering/exiting edit mode is removed and whole experience is better. Widgets now slide in and out while the text stays in place.

I hope you’ll like the changes; please let me know in either the comments or through Feedback page.This is by no means an end, there are quite a bit more useful additions already in the works.

A review on the App Store page for Quickie is also very welcome. ;)

P.S. Quickie got great review on Smoking Apples. Very happy.

What Quickie does

Quickie is to-do application, made for people who occasionally need to quickly write down a list of things to do, checked them off one by one as being done and forget about it. This kind of ad-hoc lists is usually done in a hurry, of the top of one’s head.

Take this for example, a take away list of food to get for the office co-workers or for friends who dropped in to watch a movie or football game.

Creating new list

This can be typed in 30s — you don’t really want to spend any more time on this.

So the fast entry is paramount and Quickie delivers – list of things in Quickie is created by typing the list name, followed by items, each on separate line. No back and forth through multiple screens, no picking items from endless lists — just type what you need. I often just type-in shorthands for the things I need, not full names. Here’s the usual shopping list

• br
• che
• yog
• milk
• apl
• ora

which translates to bread, cheese, yogurt, milk, apples, oranges. On tapping Save, this text is instantly transformed into list of items ready to checked off.

List items, instantly ready to be checked off

Don’t worry if your forget something - adding items is just as easy and quick. Tap Edit and type-in new item, directly in the list.

Adding new items

Convenience and fast entry again — no need to go to another screen to enter the name, just type directly in the list. If you need to add multiple items, tap the green + icon and new placeholder will show up. Keep repeating that and you can add several entries as fast as you can type.

More goodies to come

Quickie’s development is driven by my needs so far and there’s already few new features planned for the future. I would really like to hear what you need. Few suggestions from beta testers are already in development for one of the next versions. Let me know what would you like to see in the comments, or through this Feedback form.

All suggestions will be considered, taking into account the basic Quickie premise — simplicity and speed. Give Quickie a go through the App Store. Or watch the demo first on Quickie pages (where you can find more screenshots) and then decide. I’m sure you’ll find it useful.