According to WPCentral, WindowsPhone8 is already in testing. They’ve spotted some WindowsPhone8-running devices logged in a social app called “I’m a WP7!” which records and displays the percentage of different WP7 versions (and WP8 too, as it seems). The new OS, dubbed “Apollo” was scheduled for early 2013 but it might come sooner given that there are already running versions of it around.

Check out the full article on WPCentral.

One of the more recent hyped releases was Adobe’s new Photoshop CS6. There are some significant improvements (like the addition of a bunch of user-requested features), most notably the ability to search for layers, easier renaming of layers, dithered gradient layer styles, shape merging and a lot of other interesting additions. I could enlist and explain them but it’s been already done a bunch of times so instead I’m going to recommend a really good article that does exactly that. Grab a cup of coffee and read on: bjango.com/articles/photoshopcs6/

Lev and I decided it’s time to step it up so we’re going to a meetup in the UK called Glug (Notworking). It’s supposed to be a meeting of creative professionals from all kinds of industries wanting to share ideas and meet up with other likeminded individuals. Basically, it’s an excuse to go out drinking and networking with the creative minds in the London area.

Here’s the page of the event: http://www.glugevents.com/blogg/?p=3292

If anyone we know is going, let me know so that we’ll look for you at the event. If we don’t know you, even better as we like to network (or notwork, in this case).

See you there!

We created a small shopping list tool as we didn’t find one (not one!) that suited our own personal needs. Well, maybe Remember The Milk but that’s subscription based. In any case we thought it would be cool to have our own app for this and given that creating productivity apps is one of our favorite things, we took out the drawing board.

The main idea was that this app should be simple, as in really really simple. We focused on minimizing the number of taps a user has to do in order to add one new item to his shopping list (as that’s the most common task for these kinds of apps). It’s interesting to see that almost none of the existing apps takes this aspect seriously and even the best of them take two or three times more taps when compared to our own solution to quickly add a single item to the list. In any case, we’ll let you judge our efforts so head over to the Android store and search for EggList (we continued our tradition of naming our own apps with something bird related) or use this link: http://sza.bi/egglistandroid

Android tablet, iPhone and iPad versions coming soon!

A couple of screenshots:

Given that our professional lives have been revolving around Apple products for the past years it’s only fitting that I acknowledge the genius that was Steve Jobs (http://sza.bi/stevejobs) and that his contribution to mankind is truly unmeasurable. While we were constantly moaning about the rules he set for iOS developers or the constrains Apple devices had it’s only now that we’re truly scared that we’ll be left without more to come.  We’ll see if his innovative spirit will live on through the company culture he created and boy ,we surely hope that it does.

In any case the company that he’s build, the constant innovation and focus on things that really matter when creating all of the devices that Apple has become famous for are testimonials to the incredible mastermind this man was and his presence among us has definitely enriched and changed all of our lives forever.

Rest in piece, Steve Jobs.

I don’t want to kill the surprise so I’m still keeping the lid on our new product launch. We have a cool new video, a new website and obviously the iOS/Mac apps that are being prepped for production as we speak. Stay tuned and watch our twitter updates to make sure you don’t miss the launch!

It comes a time (every year) when the mobile professional feels like it’s time for a website makeover. This year, I’ve opted for a completely WordPress powered homepage (not just the blog… everything), with a sleek little theme I customized (themeforest.net rules). As part of my new year’s resolution, I’ve rethought my personal professional image, making it more consistent across different social/professional networking sites. I want this place to be my home on the interwebs as well as a showcase of the cool and exciting things we do here at Halcyon Mobile. You’ll find my aggregated tweets and blog posts here so if you’re interested in what I have to say feel free to sign up for my feeds.

If you want to handle both trackwheel and trackball click events at the same time without using the TrackWheelListener, you have two options:

• Build the app for 4.1 which will run on most BlackBerries but the navigationClick() won’t receive trackball events (that is, it will be useless on newer devices)
• Build the app for 4.2 and then you’ll lose a couple of devices (the old ones) but you’ll receive both trackball and trackwheel events

I guess you’ll have to have two binaries if you want to support the older devices as well (those who didn’t update their OSs).

Finally, after months of agony, Apple decided it’s time to move on and allowed our mobiPoke into the App Store.

Just a couple of hours ago we went live, both on mobipoke.com and halcyon.ro (brand new site design and content). You’ll find out there what our freshly baked product is all about.

If you have an iPhone/iPodTouch just search for mobiPoke in the App Store and download the Lite version or buy the Pro version (you should do the latter).

Enjoy!