Using Distant Suns 3 you can follow current weather patterns as if you were observing from thousands of miles up. Check out Cyclone Yasi as it is (was) prepares to slam against Australia.   And for you unlucky enough not to be in California (current temp, a bitter 58f. I think I should wear two t-shirts), here’s your storm system:

From time to time Distant Suns will alert you to upcoming events, such as eclipses or meteor showers. Some kind users were upset at getting these messages in the middle of the night and asked that I turn them off. These are called “Apple Push Notifications” and are not email based as some have thought. APNs were a major part of the iOS 3 upgrade and are widely used to alert users of things of interest. Every app that wants to use APN will ask...

Oh the horrors! From time to time I receive an email from someone saying that for this reason or that reason they have to give up their iPhone for Andriod, Palm, (blackberry), Symbian (??) and will really miss Distant Suns, cuz it doesn’t work on Android, Palm. (blackberrt) or Symbian (??) There are easy ways around that. Even though your iPhone won’t be able to make any more calls, doesn’t mean you can’t use as a glorified iPod/Touch. And you...

It looks as if iOS 4.2 aggravated the occasional problem with the compass getting stuck on North. That helped me track it down. It apparently wasn’t an iOS bug that I originally thought, but came as a result of something that was really badly documented in the way the magnetometer was being handled. And 4.2 made it more sensitive to that issue. My 3GS on 4.1 works fine, but my iPhone 4 on 4.2.1 was hit and miss when it came to aiming. But...

It seems as if the compass has gotten wonkier over the past few weeks. It was pretty stable for me at least until recently. I’ll hit the boards and see what the story is on this. Maybe a subtle mod in 4.2 perhaps.

…Or I have an awesome app! But now what?? Two years ago last month, I uploaded my first app to Apple for review. About 20 hours later I received that magical email saying “Your application has been approved for sale.” And the latest version of my once-Amiga/Mac/PC application was now available to millions of potential customers. And then I got my first sales, 8 downloads that day. Wow! So what is the actual process of finishing up your...