A while back my wife took pictures of family members and put them into a small photo album. Our son doesn’t see his extended family as much as we would like so from time to time we sit with him and browse the family photo album. This gives him a chance to learn the faces of his grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins. One day I was watching my wife and son browse the photo album and I thought, “There should be an app for that.” Thus the idea for Hey Peanut was born.

Hey Peanut is based on the family photo album but, as I said before, with a twist. The twist is the recorded voice message. Using an iPhone and Hey Peanut a parent takes a picture of a family member then records a voice message from the family member. For instance, I can use Hey Peanut to take a picture of my mother and record a personal message from her like, “Hi Rowan! It’s GranMom. I love you.” My son can then browse the pictures and listen to the messages at any time.

Hey Peanut is a bit more than just a photo browser. It includes colorful “photo mats” with various sounds effects to keep the toddle engaged. Originally I was thinking of making Hey Peanut more game-like but decided it was not necessary.

Development on Hey Peanut is nearing completion. A lot of time has been spent on making a photo browser slash library manager for the parents. This mimics the photo app to some degree. I had hope to use Three20’s photo viewer for this but I ran into problems so I had to write my own. Over the last few weeks I have taken my code and created a new open source photo browser project called KTPhotoBrowser. The latest code is available on GitHub. The open source project is still work in progress but it is useable. I plan to complete KTPhotoBrowser once Hey Peanut is released.

Meanwhile, if you are a parent with a little one between the ages of 1 and 3 and you think he or she would like to play with Hey Peanut then send me a message and join the beta testing team.

The sense of community combined with the unique structure of the conference made for a wonderful time. NSConference is different from other developer related conferences in that there are not multiple tracks during the day. Instead all the attendees, called delegates at NSConference, sit in the same room and listen to the same talks. The other difference is the 30 minute break between sessions. This combination makes for a great conference going experience.

Why does the combination work so well? As a delegate I didn’t have to run from room to room to hear different talks and to find a new seat. I’m able to leave my gear in one spot for the entire day, and because I don’t have to run room to room I can spend more time meeting and talking with other delegates. This is were the 30 minute breaks really help out.

At other conferences my chats between sessions are never long enough to really get to know other developers. The 30 minute breaks at NSConference gives you plenty of time to chat with folks you already know and to meet new ones. And because of this I actually met more people at NSConference then I have at the last 3 conferences I have attended.

And meeting other iPhone and Mac developers has never been so easy. I arrived in Atlanta late Saturday afternoon not knowing a single person. Within an hour and a half I was talking with other delegates, having beers, and sharing stories. I feel like I met close to 90 percent of all the delegates by the end of the conference, and I definitely formed new friendships with a good number of those that I met. As someone who works from home, making these connections and feeling apart of a community is very important to me. And this aspect alone makes attending NSConference worth well.

I haven’t said much about the session talks yet. And yes, the talks were great. I found every topic useful and informative. The speakers really know their stuff and I learned tons. If you are seeking knowledge in Mac and iPhone development than there is no better independent developer conference. But more important to me were the connections I made with others in the iPhone and Mac development community. And this includes getting to know the speakers as well.

There are many more good things I can say about NSConference. For instance, the party Monday night was a blast. Eating at the Silver Skillet each morning was a great way to start the day. Dinner and drinks each night with the delegates was so much fun. The only negative part of the conference for me were the lunches, though many folks told me the lunches were better than those offered at WWDC.

Lunches aside, NSConference is a must attend conference for all iPhone and Mac developers.

NSConference USA kicks off tomorrow with an iPhone developer workshop followed by 2 days of Mac developer talks and ending Wednesday with 2 additional workshops, one on concurrent programming and the other on insights from Matt “Legend” Gemmell. I’m excited about NSConference, not only for the talks but the chance to finally meet a number of people I follow on Twitter. Plus the conference will likely be the kick in the butt I need to get started on my first commercial Mac desktop app.

360iDev San Jose is April 11 through 14. What can I say about 360iDev that I haven’t already said. It’s a great conference. The last one in Denver was one of the best developer conferences I have ever attended. 360iDev San Jose will be a bit different for me though since I will be one of the speakers. My topic will be on using web services with your iPhone apps. Oh, and if you are planning to attend be sure to register here. You’re registration will help me win suite at the hotel.

And what better way to conclude the iPhone Mac Conference Tour 2010 then by attending Apple’s own Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC). I’ve never been. This will be my first WWDC. I really wanted to go last year but had a scheduling conflict. Not this year. I have blocked off the entire month of June until the WWDC dates are announced.

So that’s my conference tour for this year. I’m really looking forward to each conference. Speaking of, time to head down to the hotel lobby and meet some folks here for #nsconf.

I have a deal for you if you are one of those individuals looking for a cracked version of Killink CSV Editor. These are tough times and we all want to save a few dollars where we can. So my deal for you is this. Instead of downloading one of the cracked versions of Killink CSV Editor, which by the way comes from an untrusted source so BEWARE, I’ll give you 20% off the current price for a single user license. Just use the code UNCRACKME when placing your order. No strings attached. No passing of judgement. Just my way of helping you save a few dollars while at the same time encouraging the use a trusted version of Killink CSV Editor.

I also have a number of different distribution certificates for making adhoc and distribution builds for my iPhone apps and client apps. I use different keychains to manage the multiple certificates. Because of this I rely on bash scripts to make adhoc and distribution builds of the different iPhone apps that I am responsible for.

The latest Xcode beta release does not include iPhone OS SDK 2.2.1. Not really a big deal for me since the SDK is included in Xcode 3.2.1. However, to my surprise when I ran a script for a 2.2.1 app the build failed to find the 2.2.1 SDK. Turns out installing the latest beta release replaces the /usr/bin/xcodebuild command. Oh know! My build script no longer works for 2.2.1 apps.

Thanks to a tip from @joar_at_work on Twitter I was able to solve the problem. The magical command I needed was /usr/bin/xcode-select. This command allows you to change the Xcode directory used by xcodebuild. For instance, in my situation xcodebuild was looking at /Developer-3.2.2 which does not include iPhone OS SDK 2.2.1. By using xcode-select I was able to point xcodebuild to the /Developer directory.

Switching directories is simple with xcode-select. Just use the -switch option. For example: xcode-select -switch /Developer. This did the trick for me and my build scripts were once again working with the correct Xcode environment.

AppViz: AppViz is a brilliant piece of Mac software that allows iPhone developers to download and review their app sales. It also supports ranking and review downloads. AppViz sells for $29.95 (USD) and is well worth the price in my opinion.

AppDailySales: This is a python script that downloads daily sales reports. It’s open source and written by yours truly. I have the script setup to run daily on a server. This ensures I never miss a daily report even when I’m away from the computer for a few days.

AppSales Mobile: An open source iPhone application that is great for looking at daily sales when on the road.

Because it is such a good cause I decided to do something a little different. The original plan was to donate all proceeds from the sales on January 20. However, additional processing fees are taken out of each transaction – 30% to Apple and 15% to eSellerate. I decided I will donate the cost of the transaction fees myself.

Here is a breakdown of sales for the donation:

I rounded the grand total up to $150. The money has been donated to Doctors Without Borders as part of the emergency relief for Haiti.

Finally, I want to send a big THANKS for Justin Williams of Second Gear Software for coming up with the idea and Garrett Murray who built the Indie+Relief web site. Both individuals put a great deal of time and effort to make this event happen in just a matter of days.

In a nutshell, the app idea is a daycare cost calculator. The app will help parents calculate daycare costs and is ideal for parents who pay different amounts each month.