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Hong Kong Weather 3 Submitted

We just submitted the Hong Kong Weather 3!

- Added Push Notification of Warning in force - Fixed rainfall chart - Added new chart of Visibility, Max/min air temperature, and Relative humidity - Added relative humidity in 7 days forecast - Added sun rise and moon rise data - Added tide data - More frequent update with HKO - other minor bug fix

- 新增Push Notification。主動提示天文台生效警告 - 修正雨量圖表 - 新増能見度、最高最低溫度和分區相對濕度圖表 - 新增七天濕度預測 - 新增日月岀落資料 - 新增潮汐資料 - 和天文台更緊密的資料同步 - 其他修正

一同計計多久才能上架吧!!

Where is the rainfall chart?

Q. Rainfall displayed wrongly. 雨量圖錯了。 A. HKO changed their layout and data structure. 天文台轉了新的格式，圖片的連結不同了。

Q. When can we have an fixed version? 何時才會有修正的版本 ? A. Sorry for the delay, NEW version of Hong Kong Weather is finishing the development! We will submit it to Apple in a week. 我們正在完成新版本的香港天氣，下星期就會提交給Apple。

Server Upgrade

iPhone App HK Weather，Enjoy及Reading 3.0.0 今晚(HKT July 30 02:00)會進行伺服器升級，服務會暫停10至20分鐘。 We will have a server upgrade tonight (HKT July 30 02:00), services of HK Weather, Enjoy and Reading 3.0.0 will be suspended for 10 to 20 mins.

Update: 2009 July 30 02:25 HKT Server upgrade completed.

Sorry, they have a problem with our Reading.

Sean and I have finally received feedback from the iPhone Developer Program regarding our app Reading 悅讀港民.

We got a REJECTION – with the most dragging and illogical (at least to us) reason.

Here’s is the reply.

“Thank you for submitting Reading 悅讀港民 to the App Store. We’ve reviewed Reading 悅讀港民  and determined that we cannot post this version of your iPhone application to the App Store at this time because it is not appropriately rated. Our review indicates that the application content is not consistent with the current rating. Reading 悅讀港民 allows unfiltered access to the internet, where content with mature or suggestive themes can be accessed. Applications must be rated accordingly for the highest level of content that the user is able to access. Please visit iTunes Connect to resubmit your binary and rate your application appropriately.”

Ok. They are not satisfied with our RATING. For those who may not know, developers rate their own applications at either a 4+, 9+, 12+, or 17+ levels. And these ratings, of course, give an idea to the buyers that the application should be clean, or with content mildly or 「fiercely」, touching violence, offenses, sexuality or whatever that is not appropriate for children under that certain age.

We made Reading, a news reader. We rated it 4+, because when we have looked at the other news reader worldwide -

Yahoo! news – 4+ Wall Street Journal s – 4+ USA today – 4+ Reuters – 4+

Ok, to be fair, for some reasons, NY Times is rated 12+

Anyhow, now they are suggesting, we should rate Reading APPROPRIATELY before a resubmission, and that is… we actually had no idea, a 12+ maybe?

Well, we are confused. Too much blood or nudity in our news?

Btw, we see another similar story here -

http://www.pcworld.com/article/168619/app_store_rating_system.html

One last thing, we tried to be a nice good kid to react this asap. But the iTunes Connect doesn’t allow me to change that rating on the “Edit Information” page. The radio buttons are disabled.

I am using Safari 4.0.

Update : Jul 21 9:30

We emailed Apple for more information about the APPROPRIATELY rating and here is the reply.

When the user goes to tap “瀏覽原文「 in the new details page, Reading 悅讀港民 brings up browser access.

Well, all Twitter client should rated 17+.

iPhone selected the best porn provider, Google, as the default search engine of iPhone.

And the Safari actually is a 17+ application but they are so kind to bundle it.

Update : Jul 28 9:15

We got another rejection of our suggested 9+ rating. 17+ Rating resubmitted.

Related Reading by Sean : http://guruhk.wordpress.com/2009/07/18/reading-3-0-相關事宜/

iPhone Edit Before Call 2.0 Release

Edit Before Call/SMS just released a free update for all 1.x customer. It is a major update of the app and it introduced a new function, “Rules”. You can preset rules to help you modify the phone number automatically. For example, rules can help you change the number from +852 12345678 to 12345678 with the option “Remove”. Beside of “Remove” option, you can also perform “Add” and “Replace”.

Originally this update was planned to release near Christmas, but my iMac suddenly out of order during in Dec, and a friendly comment from Doctor Mike. Sorry for the delay and I hope you all like the completely new version. And I would like to thanks all the friends they sent us comment, suggestion, and helps during the beta testing. Especially Jeff Carter, without his help the app can not reach the release status . Thank you very much.

“Edit Before Call” reads the phone numbers from your contacts list, and allows you to temporarily edit the number before making a call/send SMS. The saved number in your contacts will not be changed. It helps to keep your contacts list clean and easy to manage. Particularly for when you need to make a lot of long distance calls.

Features: - You can pre-set “Add”, “Remove” and “Replace” rules for different cases - ‘Recent Dialed’ List for you to have faster access to numbers you’ve dialed - ‘Favorites’ List to save your frequently used phone numbers - English, Traditional Chinese and Simplified Chinese interface

We hope the new upgraded version of “Edit Before Call” brings you more key features, that will make it easier and more convenient to use your phone.

iTunes Link

全新的”Edit Before Call” 2.0功能全面提昇，為你在撥打電話時先作暫時修改，例如加上字頭或替換某些數字等，撥打長途電話時尤其方便。

功能 - 新增”自定規則”功能，輕易在號碼上完成”新增”，”移除”或”替換”的動作。例如用替換功能可設定自動將”+825” 12345678變成”133” 12345678 - 撥出電話記錄，方便重撥電話 - 常用號碼列入，儲存你最常用的號碼 - 繁簡中文及英文介面

希望”Edit Before Call”的新功能可以為閣下提供更方便容易的使用體驗

iTunes Link

香港天氣所用的圖像

大家覺得HK Weather (香港天氣)的天氣圖示如何呢? 在Version 1.x 時HK Weather是沿用香港天文台的圖示的，圖示清楚而且直接從天文台拿來用，非常方便。不過，老實的說，天文台圖示的風格和iPhone真的不甚相襯，結果把心一橫，為HK Weather 2.0從新繪製所有圖示。

這些天氣變化的日子，你們也許發現幾個不常見的圖像了，但其實總共有多少個不同的圖示呢? 依照天文台的規格，共有25個不同狀態!! 在HK Weather 2.0設計下，每個狀態分別有詳細的大圖和較小的圖示，即變成總共50張圖!! 希望下次大家見到新出現的圖時會有點點驚喜，點點樂趣吧 ~

The User Reviews in Gohan

Sean的iPhone搵食軟件Gohan (iTunes link)大家也都聽說過吧 ! 還沒下載就快點試一試吧。

出街至今已經12日，我每天都會Check一Check各位食家朋友給餐廳食肆寫了甚麼評語，第一個感覺是:香港的變化真的很大!

我估計有一成的評語是”已結業”，”Closed”，”已改為XXX”。自己家住粉嶺，平時沒有留意，但看著Gohan的粉嶺result，就發覺，”e….好似無左喎，宜家做左果汁舖喇”。我想，下一個version的其中一個功能實在必需，變得太快了，我可不想去到才發現已經變成7-11。

另外，我發覺大家非常用心的寫評語，說真的，真的超過我原先所想，在mobile上輸入中文還是不及在電腦上般容易。

有幾個評語我特別記得。

例如: “普通快餐店一間，有齊唔健康的食物，味道ok，唔見得特別快。” – 笑了 “老闆佢好有性格，想開舖先會開舖。但係佢嘅腸粉由我小學到宜家中六，都頌係咁滑咁好味，唯一不同的只是老闆變老了…… 首推的是淨腸粉同埋三式辣（魚蛋 豬皮 腸粉）” – 他給我們分享了十年經驗呢 “士多啤利羅白糕好好食” – 真的有這樣的組合?

在Gohan下一個Version出街時，你們也可以用更方便的方法去看Review，十分有趣的。

Enjoy Roadmap

For those who are interested.

Enjoy 0.26 - Better handling of the location service - Improved presentation of showtime - Cinema List View, movies grouped by cinema Expected to come around early Dec

Status of feature in pending list - English version – Actually this function is designed from the beginnings, all data are prepared in both Tc and En. But due to limited time, it is now disabled and will release when the function of the app become stable. - Review and Rating – Only with UI on paper, and basic function implementing in server side.

Server status - Keep completing the cinema list. Now supported Broadway, GH, UA and AMC. You will see Grand Cinema and MCL very soon.

iPhone Edit Before SMS

New minor update of “iPhone Edit Before Call” released. And the name adjusted a little bit to “Edit Before Call/SMS” because you can now make changes on number before sending an SMS.

Changes in this update: - Edit Before SMS - Remember recent 3 prefix - Option to auto remove “+”

Next version is a major update, expected to come around Jan 09. Thank you for all the idea and feedback from all around the world.

Hungry? 肚餓咩?

Gohan This is version 1.0 of food search app for Hong Kong from my friend, Sean. I believe you will love his contribution to the iPhone Hong Kong User.