Tag Archives: Software

Software

Translations

www.cut Icon
One of the nice things about Apple’s App Store for iOS devices is that it’s available in every country that has the iPhone. One of the unfortunate things is that the people in most of those countries don’t speak English as a first language and I, as a typical Englishman, know no other languages.

Then I heard about GetLocalization (whose name needs localising!), a site which allows you to “crowd-source” translations. I honestly don’t know if it will work but I thought it was a good idea and something worth trying and supporting.

To that end I have uploaded the text used in www.cut and added the languages that I think there would be the most benefit in having. I would be happy if people added others, especially if the suggestion came with some translations!

My guess is that I will need to change some of the text in the application itself. For example, one block looks like this: “%1$i character%2$@ remaining.” When viewed on the iPhone looks like either “100 characters remaining” or “1 character remaining” but I’m sure that form of pluralisation doesn’t work in most languages. Changing it is not a problem but I will need suggestions as to what the “generic” version should be. Or do I need two versions, one for singular and one for plural?

So far I have only added www.cut and I’m classifying it as an experiment, though if it works well I will likely use the same method for Yummy.

Thanks for your help.

Links

My delicious.com bookmarks for January 15th through January 18th

  • ‘should be cheaper than free’ – "I’m angry at the customers who send me nasty emails or reviews, threatening me with ‘telling Apple to remove it’ or rating it 1 star with a ’should be cheaper than free’ remark because after paying the ridiculously exorbitant 99c, they found it didn’t live up to expectations. "
  • Hurdie Ho! – Maybe you had to be there and read the copy of Your Sinclair that this was originally published in, but this still makes me laugh.
  • Museum looks at 2000-year history of the computer – The Computer History Museum was excellent even before this new exhibit. Recommended.
Software

www.cut 2.0

A new version of my handy URL shortening app for iPhone and iPod touch has just hit Apple’s App Store. Please go and download it — it’s free!

www.cut main screen

I’ve added to the services that were supported in the previous version and now www.cut supports nine shortening services:

Also new in version 2.0 is a “URL Scheme.” This is a technical name for something that’s very useful. Picture the scene: you’re in Safari and you want to send the current URL to www.cut. Previously you had to copy the URL to the clipboard and manually launch it. Now, all you need to do is add “wwwcut:” to the beginning of the URL and www.cut launches automatically.

For example, if you’re looking at “http://www.apple.com/”, you would edit the URL to be “wwwcut:http://www.apple.com/” and press “go.”

When I use www.cut, most of the time I’m going to send a link to Twitter or Facebook. So in this new version there is the option to do just that within www.cut. It’s available as an in-app-purchase and also removes the adverts.

Another change you might see is if you enter something that looks like a URL but, technically, isn’t one, www.cut will suggest a correction. Another example, say you enter “www.apple.com”. I know that’s what they put on the TV and posters, but it’s not really a URL. www.cut will ask if you really meant “http://www.apple.com”.

Unfortunately, URL shortening is a tough business and a couple of the services that were available in version 1.0 are no longer operating. This means that you can no longer use In the 2.0 release, tr.im or cli.gs. If you upgrade, www.cut will switch you back to using is.gd, but you can easily switch.

Links

My delicious.com bookmarks for October 17th through October 18th

Links

My delicious.com bookmarks for September 8th through September 10th