Perhaps we’re releasing a new version of a product, so we might;

• Announce the new product version on Twitter
• Write a new note on the company facebook page about what the new product does
• Send a newsletter out to  customers who’ve signed up for our email list
• Write some html release notes and put them on a server somewhere for auto updating apps
• etc etc etc for as many channels as you can think of.

This is all fairly routine stuff, and none of it’s particulary onerous.  It’s not however, automagical.  And it should be, because everything that is automagical pleases me immensly.

Of course, we could use If This Then That for joining up services like this, and that can often work nicely.  But really, being a lazy programmer, what I really wanted to do is this.

1. Write some description text, with a subject line.
2. Have this transformed as needed, and then sent out to whichever channels I specify.
3. ???
4. Profit!!!

And so we wrote a tool to do that for us.

Introducing Callout

Callout works with templates.  In a template you define what outputs you want (e.g Twitter, Facebook) and how you want you message transformed before being sent out.

Example – Product Release

Here is my original subject and text:

Subject : 0.4.5 of fantastic product ABC is released.

Text:  0.4.5 is available.  It solves these awful bugs

1) Awful bug 1

2) Awful Bug 2

3) Awful Bug 3

Which might get transformed to

Twitter -> 0.4.5 of fantastic product ABC is released.  Download it here (link to binary) and get the release notes here (link to html release notes)

Facebook -> 0.4.5 of fantastic product ABC is released.   It solves these awful bugs

1) Awful bug 1

2) Awful Bug 2

3) Awful Bug 3

Download it here (link to binary) and get the release notes here (link to html release notes)

Support / help is available here (help site).

 And that’s it!

This is all done via predefined templates which allow you to use tags to insert / choose blocks of text.  It’s pretty simple at the moment, but will evolve as we go along.

Callout lives here.  Give it a try if you want some automagical goodness in your development cycle.  And did I mention it has a command line api?

Here’s how the process works in detail.

1.  When you import a pdf into yLIP, it gets split up into separate pages.  A new scene is created for each page, and the content is added as a new image layer.
2. Standard swipe left / right navigations actions are then added to each scene.
3. Each imported scene is made zoomable
4. A pop up scene is created, with a scene browser on it.
5. A double touch action is added to each imported image layer, to show the pop up scene.
6. Any links in the pdf are turned into yLIP link actions.

There’s nothing to stop you from importing pdfs into apps with other scenes (although you’d need to sort out the navigation a bit), or adding other things to the imported scenes.  It’s a really useful and flexible tool for anyone wanting to make an app.

I should also note for anyone thinking of making a book like this that the Apple app review process can be picky about this, and they prefer straightforward books to be submitted to ibooks.  Although that doesn’t seem to be the case for magazines etc.

Create your app here.

Introducing yLIP.

yLIP is a drag and drop mobile app builder.  It’s simple and quick to use, but powerful enough to create some quite sophisticated apps.

Both Alphabet Animals and Magnetic Letters were made using this app, and we’ve been in closed beta for some time, working with a few different people to produce some cool apps.

It’s intended to be easy for non technical people to create apps with.  Why should content creators should not have the tools needed to create amazing looking apps easily, without having to employ programmers?

Mac Desktop Application

yLip is a Mac desktop application, which gives you an editor to compose your app with and a simulator to see what it looks like and how it runs.

This is a screen shot of Magnetic Letters in the making, and you can see the basics of the desktop editor at work here.

You can add different screens (scenes) and add different layers to each scene – images, text, video, sounds, hotspots, even animated image sequences.  Layers can interact with each other ( you can hide, expand, move layers) and can be dragged around the screen if wished, as in Magnetic Letters.

You can import a pdf document into the editor, and it will create an app from it with a different scene for each page in the pdf, and add zooming, swiping, a pop up scene browser and even allow links in the pdf to open up mobile safari.

There’s lots more to yLIP, so please go and have a look if you’re interested.

Finally, I’d just like to say how stoked everybody here at Rosebrae Technology is that we’re now in open beta.  It’s been a long, hard road to get there, but I think it’s been worth it.

Clocks – Multi Time Zone Alarm Clock

Clocks lets you keep track of the time in many time zones at once, whilst doubling as a gorgeous LCD display for bedside clock use.

With it’s built in alarms or use of your own music as an alarm, Clocks can be the bedside / travelling alarm clock you need.

Checkout the video here or download the media kit.