Logan Olson

A Hello World'esque application - the user presses a button to view his or her Latitude and Longitude coordinates.

Download as a .zip file

Next step is to figure out CoreGraphics and create some visuals outside of Interface Builder.

So this week, I was supposed to create an iPhone prototype that incorporates the ideas of space and place.

Idea:
When users twitter or take a photo, the picture or text would be tied to the GPS coordinates of its creation. Users could enter the app and see glowing nodes whose size and brightness would be relative to the user's proximity to the original location. Nodes would be created for not only the iPhone user but his or her friends' text/photos, as well.

Prototype:
My goal was to create a modifiable SQLite database that contained a user's notes and GPS coordinates (which were loaded on startup as opposed to pressing a button in the UI). I was also trying to figure out graphics that do not use the UI framework.

Execution:
I was working off of three separate examples:

1. My previous assignment for GPS
2. This tutorial for SQLite: http://icodeblog.com/2008/08/19/iphone-programming-tutorial-creating-a-todo-list-using-sqlite-part-1/
3. The Apple Dev Center's GLSprite example

Unfortunately, things didn't go as smoothly as planned. I didn't get so far as the graphics, getting stuck with the SQLite and GPS combination. Here is the botched project: Download file

Some of the questions I have after this endeavor:
1. What does the CLLocation's "(id) sender" refer to and how can I incorporate it into NSTimer?
2. Will NSNumber work for holding the GPS coords?
3. What sqlite3_column_* and bind_* type works for incorporating the GPS coordinates?
4. Is there a way to print to a console or something similar for debugging?

Per Rebecca's write-up, our goal was to create a digital prototype for a local news aggregator combining "citizen journalism" with more established news articles.

Here is a .zip of the Xcode project: Download file

Planned functionality that didn't make it in:
Ability to switch main view between articles and citizen sources
Color of UITableCell's to denote source (I settled w/ changing the text color)
Rolling text of alternate main view at bottom of main view
Detail view of a source just Google's the source's title (no real links)

Additionally functionality that would've been nice for the digital prototype:
Text that isn't hard-coded into an array but drawn from a webpage's content
Secondary line of text with different formatting (primary line would be first line of content, with second line being source)

After creating this prototype, the biggest addition needed was not foreseen in the write-up--how a user adds and manages the content received. There needs to be some way to rate feeds and individual pieces of content, as well as a way to connect stories together under one topic. Otherwise, a site manager or algorithm (?) would be responsible for parsing all of the data, which drops the site back into the moors of managed news content that we were trying to escape.

Taking this into consideration, I realized we'd need a back end to either host user content or at least a database of ratings and connections for the content out there (or a combination of the two). It almost seems worth making a website like this first and then porting it to the iPhone down the line.