We have been hard at work on several new iOS medical apps.  We have strong partnerships with members in the medical community and feel that medical apps are a good focus for us.

We will be releasing another medical app very soon.  More information to come.

I have never used AdMob’s ad network.  I figured that having a free version of NightLife with ads would be a nice test.  Setup was very easy and ads showed up with no problems.  

The problem with AdMob like many other ad networks is that you only make money if someone clicks your ads.  So, you would have to have a large number of downloads for your app daily as well as a large number of users using your app daily.

Keep in mind that a large number of users using your app still does not mean they will click on an ad, it just increases the chances.

There are also times when ads are not served.  This basically means AdMob has no ads at that time to serve to your app.  A service like AdWirl may be better in that it pulls from several ad networks increasing your chance to receive an ad (still doesn’t guarantee that someone will click it though). 

Let’s face it, iOS is the hottest platform for mobile development to date.  The only problem I have with it is lack of garbage collection.  I come from a .NET programming background and garbage collection is your friend.  In iOS, you have to manage memory manually.  If you have no idea how to do this, there are several articles online explaining this.

Depending on your application, manual memory management can give you some headaches.  Some tips below are:

1. Use instance variables in your init methods only.
2. Use accessors everywhere possible (I prefer using the @property synthesized accessors).
3. Remember to release your instance variables in dealloc.
4. Set IBOutlets to nil in viewDidUnload.

I am sure there are some other best practices I am missing, but I welcome your comments below.

Quick tip!  When you submit your iOS apps to the App Store, keep the description vague.  Explain what the app does, but don’t go into great detail.  I once had an app rejected because the app approver didn’t really understand my description.  I then had to wait another week to get it approved (that was after I changed the description). Keep it vague, because after your app has been approved, you can go into iTunes Connect and change your description after the fact.

One of the many new features you can include in your apps is Retina Display support on iPhone 4.  It is really easy to do and I will explain below.

Pretend like you have an image in your app that is 40x50 pixels named image.png.  All you have to do is double the size of the image to 80x100 pixels and name the image image@2x.png.  Include both images in your app.  If someone is viewing your app on an older iPhone, the 40x50 image will load.  If they are viewing your app on an iPhone 4, the 80x100 image will load.

Keep in mind that your original image needs to be large and you can resize it smaller without the image becoming fuzzy.

I must be honest.  From the very start I didn’t understand the importance of Facebook, Twitter, and all the other social media outlets.  I could understand the importance of Facebook for connecting with friends and family, but Twitter baffled me.  Why would anyone want to be on Twitter?  Do I really care what a celebrity had for dinner or better yet do I care what some random person in Alabama had for dinner?  I still don’t really see the purpose of this for personal use, but the possibilities in business are there. 

We released our first iPhone app back in July of 2010.  We just knew that the downloads were going to go through the roof.  WRONG!  The idea of build it and they will come didn’t pan out.

The building of a community of users via Twitter and then being able to reach them with product news, updates, etc.  is very interesting.  The new site launched tonight and Twitter is right there on the homepage.

Going forward, we are pushing social media not only on our website but also in our mobile products.  We want feedback from our users to not only make our products better, but to keep the customers happy.

Please join us on Twitter and Tumblr for all the latest product news and updates.