Last week Airsource finally submitted an update to Optiscan, version 1.5. At long last, we’ve had some positive, direct communication with people at Apple, which leads us to believe that they will approve our update within the next week or so. This will allow us to return Optiscan to the App Store!

The new release will include automatic scanning. It will also fully support the iPhone 3GS and iPhone OS 3.0+, and incorporate various performance improvements that we’ve developed over the seven months since the 1.4 update. Most excitingly, the green light from Apple will open the way for us to commence further development of this product — watch this space!

Airsource are pleased to announce the release of Cellar, developed together with Glasshouse Apps, on the Apple App Store!

Cellar is designed to keep track of your wine, and remember what to buy next time you visit the store, thanks to the app’s unique ‘Garage’ feature.

Cellar is not just a list, it’s an actual Cellar! Using it is “almost as fun as drinking the wine you collect” – Michael Rose, tuaw.com. Cellar is a visual, editable, swipeable showcase. And when you have finished a bottle, if you would like to keep it for reference in the future, store it in the Garage where all your archived bottles are ordered by star rating, ready to be repurchased and moved back to the Cellar.

Organizing your wine collection has never been so much fun!

Now available at a release sale price of 99 cents on the App Store.

We have decided to remove version 1.4 of Optiscan from sale until Apple approve version 1.5, due to a bug which affects automatic scanning devices that have been upgraded to iPhone OS 3.0. The user experience using version 1.4 on iPhone OS 3.0 is not acceptable, and we don’t want to introduce new users to the application this way.

Hopefully Apple will approve version 1.5 soon, at which point we will return Optiscan to the App Store.

We still want to support our existing users. Owners of Optiscan with an urgent need to have the application working on iPhone OS 3.0 should contact us to explain their situation, using the problem reporting features of the application. Subject to workload, we may be able to assist.

To all our customers who have purchased Optiscan:

Version 1.4 of Optiscan, currently on the App Store, does not support automatic scanning on iPhone OS 3.0. We sent version 1.5, which fixes this problem and adds some new features, to Apple about three weeks ago, but it has not yet been approved for distribution. Apple have been extremely busy, but with the OS update expected out on Friday and no word on our update, we felt it was important to post a warning!

The application still functions correctly in all other respects. But, if the automatic scanning function is important to you, please delay updating to iPhone OS 3.0 until Apple publishes our more recent release.

Airsource are delighted to announce that Optishare is now available on the App Store.

What is Optishare? It’s a simple app that allows the creation of QR codes on any iPhone or iPod Touch, which can be scanned by any QR-enabled device, such as an iPhone using Optiscan, the fastest QR code scanner on the App Store.

• Share contacts, web addresses and text with other devices.
• Save specific QR codes for quick sharing — perfect for sharing your business card.
• Keeps a history of QR codes created and shared for easy recall.
• Optishare supports encoding to UTF-8, ISO-8859, and Shift-JIS.
• Select the contact details you want to send, to ensure the right people get the right information.

Optishare runs without a network connection, and keeps your data private. Why put up with anything less?

Optishare is available right now from the App Store.

Airsource was very pleased to see the contents (login required) of yesterday’s announcements about the new version of the iPhone SDK. Naturally we will be updating our existing applications to take advantage of the new features.

The update to Optiscan has been approved by Apple – get it on the App Store now! The update is free for all existing customers, and includes several bug fixes, including three which could causes the application to crash.

Wow. Obviously great espresso is at least partially responsible for Apple’s success with the iPhone – their staff have graciously awarded Barista “Pick of the Week”!

Read more here, and if you want to brush up on your espresso skills – go get Barista!

Your app is on the App Store, and you’ve just sorted out the translations for all the metadata. So you go upload them on iTunes Connect, and then obviously you check that they look right in iTunes, changing country to make sure each language looks right. English is unchanged and obviously looks okay. France – tick. Deutschland- tick. Nederland – Whoah! That’s not right. My Dutch isn’t that hot but I know it isn’t identical to English. Check the rest, and it turns out Japanese has the same problem.

Let’s back up a step. Firstly, we’re changing our region using the My Store setting at the bottom of the homepage of iTunes Store.

That’s what we do for all the regions – and French works. Why doesn’t Dutch? Why doesn’t Japanese? I’ve been struggling to figure out what these two languages – or at least regional App Stores – have in common. And I have no ideas. Answers on a postcard to…

However, it is possible to check the localizations for Dutch and Japanese. The answer can be found in an Apple Support article, which I’ve summarised here.

On a Mac

• In iTunes, select any regional store other than Nederlands
• Quit iTunes
• Go to System Preferences->International->Language and drag Nederlands up above English
• Quit System Preferences
• Run iTunes and select the Nederlands regional store.
• Find your app. If you correctly uploaded Dutch metadata to iTunes connect, then your app’s App Store page will now display in Dutch

On a PC

• Forget the Windows language settings. They aren’t used.
• In iTunes, select any regional store other than Nederlands
• Go to Edit->Preferences->General and select Dutch (Netherlands)
• Quit iTunes
• Run iTunes and select the Nederlands regional store.
• Find your app. If you correctly uploaded Dutch metadata to iTunes connect, then your app’s App Store page will now display in Dutch

The same principle works for Japanese.

The update to Optiscan has been approved by Apple – get it on the App Store now! The update is free for all existing customers, and includes several improvements such as better image processing, internationalisation, and bug fixes. Try it out!