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Unlike much of the work I’ve publish here which is proof of concept or “building blocks” for applications, this is the complete source for a real application that you can download on AppStore for free. If you want to check out the application you can get it through iTunes/AppStore. The source can be downloaded at the end of this post, as usual.

Mitt Saldo, or “My Balance” if translated, is an iPhone application for the swedish banks Swedbank, Nordea, ICA Banken and Handelsbanken. All of these banks has already released their own official iPhone apps or web based apps some time ago and I’ve personally used Swedbanks application a lot. These “applications” however are nothing more than browser wrappers and provide no or little additional functionality compared to their iPhone adapted web based internet banks. In fact, most of them have just thrown in a UIWebControl and pointed the start url to their internet banks. This has obviously been a successful stunt and rightfully so, it’s not obvious to everyone that you can create a shortcut to their sites directly through iPhones Safari browser.

Keep reading, source code ahead! »

We’ve been busy at Avantime this summer working on a major update for “Finn din Bolig” which I wrote about when it was released earlier this year.
The update was released on AppStore a few days ago and DnBNor Eiendom is now launching a very cool national TV-ad campaign to promote the new app.

The main focus is of course search and the new version has augmented reality which is all the rage these days. Augmented reality works with iPhone 3Gs and later due to the lack of magnometer in earlier models. My iPhone 4 will arrive in October, yay!

“Finn Din Bolig” sports a number of cool features:

• Find real estate for sale based on your location
• Find real estate for sale by selecting a geographical location
• Filter search results based on price, size, exhibitions etc.
• Search result presented in a list with thumbnails or directly on a map
• Flip the phone to landscape for an item-per-item search result featuring large images.
• Augemented reality!
• Favorites
• Add exhibitions to your calendar
• In-app email
• Facebook connect. Share with your friends!
• Calculate the total cost per month based on interest rates from DnBNor
• Find out what your current house/apartment is currently worth by uploading images and/or video

Watch the TV-ad, it’s pretty damn cool!

Want to win an iPad? Download the app and take the quiz over att dnbnoreiendom.no

But what about Android?

Of course, there’s an Android version as well!

Download “Finn din Bolig” for Android!

Do you like the way application images are displayed in AppStore or the way Safari flips between tabs? This post contains a complete  horizontal, paged UIScrollView with preview control.

Alexander Repty posted a sample on his blog and my sample is based on his work. I’ve encapsulated the solution into one, easy to use, control and solved the problem where “pages” in the scrollview didn’t detect touch/tap events. Here’s a short video showcasing the control:

Code and sample project here »

Ever been in a situation where you need to wait for an asynchronous task to complete. This is a rare case but sometimes you need to do this. I used this techinque in my previous post on how to extract the user-agent string from a UIWebView. Check it out for a more complete sample.

The trick is to use NSRunLoop which allows you to access the applications run loop. runMode:beforeDate allows you to execute one loop at the time so calling this in a while loop you can wait for something to complete and then move on. Here’s a sample:

int i = 0;
while (i < 10)
{
	// This executes another run loop.
	[[NSRunLoop currentRunLoop] runMode:NSDefaultRunLoopMode beforeDate:[NSDate distantFuture]];
 
	i++;
}

This will execute/wait 10 run loops before moving on. Obviously this is a retarded sample because it has no real use. What you might want to do is wait for a UIWebView to execute a request or for a NSMutableURLRequest to complete. Yes, NSURLRequest has a synchronous mode but that doesn’t allow for delegate methods to execute. If you don’t understand why you would want to do this, DON’T DO IT!

In each new version of iOS the browser gets a new user-agent string. I’ve been searching for a way to get the user-agent string from the API but haven’t been able to find a straight forward way to do it. Here’s my solution:
» Find the solution here..

I’m working on a new application that will be released on Appstore sometime soon and the full source will be posted on this blog, but I want to share a part of my application already.

I want to restrict access to my application using some kind of password and I really like the pattern style unlock screen found on the Android. If you are a total iPhone nerd/geek and don’t know what I am talking about, check out this clip:

The clip showcase an Android style unlock screen on iPhone available for jailbreaked devices through Cydia. I’ve recorded the sample app I am presenting here as well. I think you can appreciate the similarities between the Cydia app and my app:

Do note however that this is not an unlock screen for the phone itself, it’s a password function for your app.

Features

• Quartz 2D based
• Delegate driven (easy to use)
• Customizable background image
• Supports any complexity pattern

Code and more.. »

DnBNor Eiendom, one of Norways largest real estate broker, joins the iPhone train today with the release of their location aware app “Finn din Bolig“. Building on the successful application “Hitta Hem” released by Svensk Fastighetsförmedling little over a year ago.

The application utilize the GPS functionality and finds homes, appartments and vaccation cabins for sale on www.dnbnoreiendom.no close to the devices’ location. It’s available in iTunes App Store Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Finland. Localized in Norwegian, Swedish and English.

Just like for the Hitta Hem release there’s a YouTube video showcasing the application inspired by Apples’ own advertisement.

Finn din Bolig on YouTube

Back-end technology used to power the application: Microsoft SQL Server 2005, .NET 3,5, Windows Comunication Foundation, EPiServer CMS 4.

This is the second iPhone application I’ve built at Avantime release on app store, and more applications are in the works!

Download Finn din Bolig from iTunes

If you’re building a somewhat complex NET TV application with multiple views and want an application like feeling you probably want to allow users to use the back button on the remote to navigate but still control the navigation paths instead of the default “web style” back functionality which makes absolutely no sense in an application. The problem is that if you hook the key event for the back button and redirect the user yourself you also make it impossible to get out of your application and back to the NET TV portal, well, not impossible, you can still hit the “Net tv”-button to get there. Still, the Philips engineers won’t appreciate this.

Solution

The solution is very simple. Using javascript you can pass the browser back and forward using the “window.history” object. When you want to close your application and send the user back to the portal screen, just call:

<script type="text/javascript">
// <![CDATA[
window.history.go(-1000000);
// ]]>
</script>

Pass the user one million pages back, unless the user has visited one million pages in your application he will end up on the NET TV-portal