Finally: We’re switching to the new Birdie Online Course Editor tonight!

Unfortunately, it’s a little bit more work than just uploading the new web application: The new course editor is based on a new database model, managing Birdie’s course database. The new database is not only much more flexible for future extensions, but also faster (hopefully).

This also means, that Birdie on the iPhone and iPod touch will fetch it’s course data from a new source in the future. If everything is working as planned and expected, the whole switch should be transparent to Birdie users and there’ll be only a short disruption in the availability of Birdie’s course database during the next few hours.

We took the old course editor offline when we started the transition earlier tonight. But the new course editor should be up and running until tomorrow (Monday) morning, CEST.

The new course edior is not only much more comfortable to use and more compatible with all the different web browsers, it also enables users to directly edit existing course data. There’s already one tutorial movie for the new course editor available in German. English tutorial movies will follow soon. The editor itself will be available in German and English localizations.

We’ll keep you updated on the progress right here in the blog. 

[Update: Monday, 11 AM CEST]: The update has finished successfully. The new Course Editor is now available!

Ted Landau interviewed me at WWDC for the MacObserver.

Click here to read the interview on the MacObserver homepage.

At June 8, this year’s WWDC (Apple’s world wide developer conference) starts in San Francisco, CA. As in the past years, I’ll be there as an attendee, learning all news around Mac and iPhone development (I hope).

That’s why I’ll be out of office from Friday (June 5th) for about 2 weeks. Of course, I’ll continue to check e-mails and handle support requests during this time, but probably not as frequent as usual. Please excuse any delays during this time.

Übercaster v1.6.3 beta 4 is now available for download and testing.

Here’s a preliminary list of changes:

• Solved several issues with Undo/Redo on the Cut Layer
• Audio from the Audiochat panel and the Skype panel in the same project are now routed correctly. Audio in from a Skype panel is now also routed to audio out of the Audiochat panel (i.e. “Ubercaster Out”) and vice versa.
• Pressing “Backspace” deletes the selected chapter marker when the Chapters subview on the Cut layer is activated (i.e. has the keyboard focus and displays a blue border).
• Fixed an issue with AAC export when running on SnowLeopard <rdar://problem/6004695>
• Fixed an issue with Skype panels concerning spaces and dashes in telefone numbers
• Fixed a memory management bug concerning Skype panels (crashed sometimes on hang up).
• Fixed a GUI problem with the Source subview on Cut layer, when deleting the currently displayed track.

Please give it a try. Any feedback appreciated!

With Birdie v1.6, Pleasant Software takes the next step and releases a major update for its golf scoring application for the iPhone and iPod touch. In response to the #1 feature request, Birdie v1.6 enables users to start rounds in training mode. In this mode, Birdie tracks additional data like putts, drive length, fairway hit and more.

New in Birdie v1.6:

• New “Training Round” mode for tracking statistical data like putts, fairway hit, drive length etc.
• Measuring drive lengths with GPS on iPhone 3G.
• Extended scorecards.
• It’s now possible to send game results as CSV files by e-mail.
• When searching for courses by name, Birdie now automatically tries to find nearby courses for the entered location.
• Several more improvements and bug fixes.

We just added new content to the Developer section on our site: Creating a Microphone Enhancer for Übercaster.

Übercaster comes with a default MicEnhancer for Microphone panels and another one for Skype panels.
But it’s no problem to add additional MicEnhances with other characteristics or specially designed for specific devices. If you like to create your own MicEnhancer for Übercaster, please have a look on the new documentation.

After 8 days waiting, TwittMS has been approved by Apple and is now available in the App Store!

TwittMS is an application for sending and receiving Direct Messages within the Twitter network. Never before has this feature been accessible in an easy to use way. By concentrating on this specific task, TwittMS finally does it right and offers unmatched features: Conversations are displayed in chat-style views, contacts can be grouped on multiple pages, and much more! 

We just submitted TwittMS v1.0 to the iTunes App Store and now wait for its approval.

The TwittMS homepage has been launched yesterday. Besides detailed information on TwittMS and some FAQs, it also presents a nice screencast of TwittMS.

Be sure to get a glance at our new, shiny app on its product page.

We surely let you know when TwittMS gets approved and will be available in the App Store.

The course lookup feature on Birdies Homepage received a major update:

When searching for golf courses in Birdie’s database, besides displaying courses exactly matching the entered keywords (i.e. having the search term in the course name or address), the search engine now also searches for “nearby courses”.

In order to do so, the it tries to determine a geographical location point from the entered search term and then searching for courses in Birdie’s database, located within ca. 40km around this location.

For example: When searching for “Bordeaux”, the search engine not only finds the two courses having “Bordeaux” in their name or address, but also the four additional courses, currently available in Birdie’s database nearby “Bordeaux, France”.

We’ll include this feature also in one of the next updates for Birdie on the iPhone.

Birdie is already able to search for neaby courses from your current location. Just open the “Course lookup” view in Birdie (tap the “+” button in the “Courses” view) and tap on the “Autolocate” button left to the search field. Birdie will then try to autolocate your current position and search for nearby courses.

In the most current screencast on pl0g.de (pl0g screencast #02 - Griffin Powermate, in German), PiP is used in a very creative and interesting way:

The screencast was created with ScreenFlow, using its built-in feature to record a live picture of the screencaster. But from 2:30 minutes in the screencast on, they’re using PiP to superimpose the image of a second webcam with a closeup shot of some live action. This way they get a TPiP (Two Pictures in Picture ) in their screencast!