The front page of this web site now has a new look. It now highlights the products I’m working on, and this blog can still be accessed through one of the buttons on the home page.

Food Diary version 1.1 is now available for download from the App Store, as a free update for those who already bought it. The store page says 1.0.1, but due to a last-minute revision, the actual binary version is 1.1. The biggest change is the addition of custom presets.

I just created a new page just for Food Diary calorie counter.

Here’s a question I’m getting frequently lately: “How do I get Food Diary to start a new day? The first screen only lets me add to yesterday’s total.”

Answer: The first screen shows the past 24 hours, so
it’ll always show part of yesterday that’s within the past 24 hours. So if you have breakfast at exactly 6:00 AM every day, when you launch Food Diary before 6 to enter your breakfast, you’ll see yesterday’s breakfast. But if you launch it again at 7:00 AM, yesterday’s breakfast will no longer be shown, only today’s.

There isn’t a way to change that, but you can use the History screen to look at just today’s entries.

I designed it this way because some days I don’t eat meals at set times, and sometimes the mealtimes aren’t easily categorized into “breakfast, lunch, and dinner.” So by showing a rolling window of the past 24 hours, I can see whether I’m within by calorie budget without thinking about what time it is or what this meal is called.

I submitted version 1.1 of Food Diary to the App Store today. Here’s what’s new:

• You can now save your own custom presets. When adding an entry, go to Presets->Custom to add your own presets.
• Fixed metric (cm) height picker: maximum height goes up to 220 cm now.
• Greater range of calorie picker values (0 to 1500 kcal).
• Larger text editing frame when entering the description.

If you’re a beta tester, you should already have received an email with the special build of Food Diary 1.1 for beta testers.

I’ve submitted version 1.0.1 of Food Diary to the iTunes App Store, and any beta testers who want the update can download a version built specifically for them. If you’re a beta tester, you know how to contact me.

Also when Food Diary went back up in the App Store, the price was dropped to $2.99.

After a few days where Food Diary wasn’t available in the iTunes App Store while I sorted out an issue with my paid apps contract with Apple, it’s now back: Food Diary on the iTunes Store. It still shows the “release date” as the date it was approved rather than the date it was actually made available, so it doesn’t show up in the category page, but I have an update in the works which will fix that.

My first iPhone app is on the iTunes App Store! Here’s a direct link that will open in iTunes: Food Diary on iTunes App store. It was officially released on March 14, 2009, is priced at USD $3.99, and is available worldwide. See more information on Food Diary.

If nothing else, “Darjeeling Limited” has taught me to bring lots of Louis Vuitton luggage when traveling to Asia. And to avoid bringing poisonous snakes on trains.

I’m going to be flying out to Asia tomorrow, and won’t be checking my email for the next two and a half weeks. Freeverse will take care of pretty much everything while I’m away.

I’m actually bringing only two bags, and as little stuff as I can get away with bringing: a notebook computer, an iPod, my iPhone, a small digital camera, a suit, clothes, my Nike Plus sneakers, and various chargers and cables. Also I’ll be bringing Cold Mountain and A Perfect Storm (books that the Delicious Librarians lent me at Macworld), the latest issue of the Economist, and my Moleskin sketchbook.

To paraphrase Merlin Mann, Thus begins an Internet break until Pi Day. XO.