An updated version of iAmPregnant iPhone app has been submitted to iTunes for approval.  The update is getting a full major uprev as I’ve implemented a few new features for the app and did a major interface overhaul.  What new features can you expect for the app?

1.  Tweet your pregnancy status right from the app.  The implementation was done using Matt Gemmell’s MGTwitterEngine class and also by using Ben Gottlieb’s Twitter package.  MGTwitterEngine is sufficient to implement the twitter functionality, but if you want the tweets to say “from <Your App>”, then you’ll need OAuth and Ben’s put together a nice package to take care of that.

2. Update Facebook status with your pregnancy progress right from the app.  This was done using FBConnect code which can be found from Facebook.  This implementation was not difficult this time around since my v2.0 app already connects with Facebook for photo uploads

3.  Random Did You Know pregnancy facts.  To increase the re-use factor, I wanted to add this in so that the expectant mom and dad’s may find some additional interest to load the app.  The random generation of this function was done using arc4random() C function.  Of course, to bound the random number you mod the number (%) with your desired max+1.  The list of random facts was stored in a plist which gets read in as an NSArray.  I’m sure you get the idea on how to put these two items together.  Somewhere down the road, I’m planning to localize the app into other languages but I’m not sure how the plists would work out as I’ve never localized an app before.

4.  Updated GUI.  The new GUI is full of visual goodness which I hope will entice the pregnant mom’s to consider our app instead.  The new GUI includes new layout, new icon buttons and an updated colour (I’m canadian eh!) theme to homogenize the whole app experience.  Something I found handy in regards to specify color in objective-C: If you want to specify a certain colour with UIColor using hex, add the following:

#define UIColorFromRGB(rgbValue) [UIColor \
colorWithRed:((float)((rgbValue & 0xFF0000) >> 16))/255.0 \
green:((float)((rgbValue & 0xFF00) >> 8))/255.0 \
blue:((float)(rgbValue & 0xFF))/255.0 alpha:1.0]

Then, to specify a colour using hex, it’s UIColorFromRGB(0×00bff3) where 0×00bff3 is your hex value

I found this somewhere on the web (Sorry can’t find you again but there’s plenty of references.  Here’s just another!)

4.  Name changes from iAmPregnant to iPreggo.  I changed the app name to iPreggo… well simply because it sounds more catchy.  I’ve been changing the app name after every major update.  Hopefully iPreggo is here to stay.

Putting together v3.0 has been a great experience and I hope existing and future users see the value of the app.  If you’re pregnant and don’t have it yet.  Check it out here!