iOS and Mac developer
I just submitted LOLCats 1.2, which will most likely be the last version. The major new feature is Zooomr support.
I’ve shifted my attention to the Official I Can Has Cheezburger app, which will use RSS feeds from that site & related sites. Most likely I will pull this application when I release the official one.
I’m also working on a more advanced Flickr browser (LOLCats was a proof of concept for it).
After reading the reviews of LOLCats in the App Store, I’m seriously considering pulling it. That application has become a nightmare for me.
Some asshole put up an inappropriate image which they tagged LOLCATS, causing the application to display it. Even though that image has been removed, every single review mentions it. The application has NO control over what images are displayed – it simply uses tags. If someone uses the wrong tag, it will display their image. Remember, I DIDN’T TAG THOSE IMAGES. Don’t blame the application, complain to the person who tagged that image inappropriately.
UPDATE: Minutes after I posted this, I got a notice from Apple that the update has been approved and is now ready for sale.
Apple still hasn’t approved my update to LOLCats. Still no response from Apple for the second update, which I feel is pretty urgent, since it reduces the possibility of inappropriate images appearing, which I’ve received several complaints about.
I’m now getting close to another update, which adds Zooomr support.
Meanwhile, I’m working on a second Flickr-related application. I had expected to share a lot of code with LOLCats, but it turns out I’ve only reused one class, my Flickr parser.
For this app, I need to support Flickr authorization, so it seemed easier to rewrite Flickr’s ObjectiveFlickr code, which already supports authorization. However, ObjectiveFlickr depends on XMLDocument, which isn’t available on the iPhone. I’m replacing the response handling code with my Flickr parser class. When it’s finished, I’ll release the Flickr-related code (not the entire app) as open source.
On a fun note, I purposely added the LOLCATS tag to this photo of Midnight to make it to appear in the application. As a result, the number of hits on that photo are about 100x the average for my similar photos.
Inspired by John Casasanta’s blog post, here are my sales figures for LOLCats. Since this is a free application, the figures are fairly high.
| Day 1 – Jul. 31 | 2393 |
| Day 2 – Aug. 1 | 6801 |
| Day 3 – Aug. 2 | 5909 |
| Day 4 – Aug. 3 | 5420 |
| Total: | 20523 |
I would expect a paid application to sell about half that amount.
I just submitted LOLCats 1.1, although it will probably take a few days before the update becomes available.
New in this version:
Sorting by interestingness or relevance should avoid bringing up some of the inappropriate images a few people reported, although new images don’t appear as frequently. If you prefer, you can still view by date, which will work the same way as 1.0 did.
I’m now working on another Flickr-related application, as well as discussing the details of the official LOLcats app, which will use the RSS feed from icanhascheezburger.com instead of Flickr.
I’ve received a few complaints about some images that showed up in the LOLCats application.
Unfortunately I have very little control over which images appear (except for the one that appears in the initial loading screen, which is my own cat, Cody). I simply search Flickr for the tags ‘LOLCAT’ or ‘LOLCATS’ and present any images it returns. Since I’m not logging into Flickr, it will always do a safe search, although that depends on the images being tagged as not safe. Perhaps requesting the results sorted by relevance or interestingness may improve the results; I’ll experiment with that for the next version.
I’ve been asked to make the OFFISHUL LOLCATS application, which will use the feed from icanhascheezburger.com and several related sites. I will continue to maintain both applications.
I have a few fixes planned for an upgrade. Most importantly, it will verify Flickr’s reachability, so it won’t simply hang if it has no network connection. Since it can take long to load images over an Edge connection, I’ve also disabled user interaction while the image is loaded, since swiping during that time can cause the image to disappear.
Checking Apple’s daily stats, it ‘sold’ almost 2400 copies in one day, including 2200 in the US, 159 in Canada, 19 in Mexico, and a few in several other countries. Since this is a free app, I’m not getting paid for it, of course. Not bad for something I just wrote for fun and as a proof of concept for testing the Flickr API 🙂