Notified Beta Update

I just uploaded a new beta of Notified which includes:

  • Changed “Auto Delete on Badge Reset” to “Auto Delete on “Application Launch”, changed the way it works to, hopefully, avoid lockups of devices.
  • Improved the Notification Bar plugin to honor the “Custom Icons” setting.

Please continue to report bugs.

Thanks.

Why isn’t Notified themeable

When Daniel and I started working on Notified, it supported themes, in fact, the first beta on M* had a pretty much complete theme support. What happened to that?

At an early stage of development, we realized that themes represented a big hit on the performance of the app, an app which was supposed to be quick and light.

Having theme support means having a lot more images in place, a lot more checks to see where to position everything, what colors to use, what font size, and many more things.

We decided to sacrifice customization in favor of performance, and I think it was the right choice.

We were able to focus on one simple but great design, standard enough to fit with most configurations, and simple enough to be really fast and light.

We’re really proud of how this turned out, and it’s not changing anytime soon, so don’t hold your breath for themes support on Notified.

"Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity."
– Seneca

Notified 2 Beta Update

I just uploaded an update to the Notified Beta Repo, most of the changelog is here. But a couple things I didn’t mentioned before were also added:

  • An option was added to delete all the notifications of an application when it’s badge reaches 0. It’s under “Auto Delete”, and it’s off by default
  • The API was improved, send me an email if you want a header with the current API. I’ll upload it to github when my computer stops being picky.

If you don’t know how to get the beta, go here.

Upcoming update for Notified 2 Beta

I’m almost done with a new update for the Notified 2 Beta, but since Safari decided it wouldn’t let me download properly the Linux image I needed to rebuild the repo index on a virtual machine, all I can give you right now is a change log:

  • iOS3 code was removed, reducing the file size of the dylib by ~17kb (almost 10%!)
  • Auto Delete is no longer a switch, but a menu with 3 options: none, single (deletes only the tapped notification) and group (deletes all notifications in the group of the tapped notification).
  • When custom icons are off, the header cells are a little smaller and the icon is now pixel perfect (29x29, I was stretching them to 32x32), you might realize how seriously we take the looks of Notified ;)
  • The “Show Old” button was improved: It now says “Show Older”, it has a new size, and a new pixel-perfect new blue button.
  • When custom icons were on, all applications would have the generic push icon, that was fixed and now they should show their custom icon.
  • A “Choose Gestures” option was added to the options, it let’s you choose which gestures should open Notified a little easier.
  • Statusbar icons were all removed except for the ‘!’, which was brought back. This is because the Statusbar icons package will be extended and offered as a separate package, probably free for Notified costumers.
  • I’m also looking into fixing the Default Alerts Blocker.

Hopefully, I’ll be able to get this update uploaded today (March 15).

The Future of Notified

You’ve seen Notified making progress lately, and I want to let you all know a few changes Notified will go through in the near future.

Rename

First of all, Notified Pro will be renamed to Notified 2, and in settings and everywhere you will see just “Notified” instead of “Notified Pro”, this looks better.

Notified 2 will not support iOS3.X.

As new features are added, and iOS private frameworks change, adding support for iOS3 is too complicated, and counter-productive for everybody: me, because I have to patch a lot of things; iOS3 users, because the app becomes more complex and their devices slow down, and iOS4 users, because they get an app with a lot of code that they’ll never use.

So what will happen.

  • I’m gonna make Notified 1.6 for iOS3. I’ll strip as much iOS4-specific code as I can, and I’m gonna make it free. It’ll be called Notified Pro Legacy or something like that.
  • I’m gonna continue development on Notified 2 for iOS4, stripping all the iOS3-specific code.

This will result in better performance for everybody, and hopefully will keep as much people happy as possible.

Notified Beta 2 is here

The Notified Beta 2 is finally ready.

Installing is as easy as adding the repo http://beta.notifiedapp.com to Cydia.

To provide feedback you can do it on MacThemes or iFans.

When providing feedback please provide all details you can. This includes device, OS, exactly what happened, and how to reproduce the crash/error.

Artificial Intelligence: My thoughts

This semester I’m taking a class called Artificial Intelligence; I hate it. I don’t like the way the professor teaches, and the way I see it, we’re not learning AI itself, we’re learning some algorithms to trick people to think a machine can be intelligent. Even worse, the book he’s using is in spanish, and when a book about something that’s supposed to be cutting edge has been translated, it means it’s at least a few years old.

That’s the end of my sad story, though, instead, I want to share the path I think AI should follow. Keep in mind that this is just my opinion, and can be horribly wrong.

Computers can’t think

A lot of people will tell you that computers can’t think, some of my professors have said that, they say that they can just process information, but, isn’t that what we, humans, do?

I think we’re glorifying ourselves when we say that no computer can do what a human brain can. I think it’s a really unfair comparison.

Unfair comparison

Why? We, as human beings, have had millions of years to evolve into what we are. We have extremely advanced “sensors”, and really powerful “processors”.

And even if we think that each one of us has learned all we know in our life, that’s not true. Each one of us carries the knowledge of probably thousands of generations of experience.

The rules

Now, back to the “computers can’t ‘think’ the way humans do”: We’re not magical, we follow the same laws of physics that computers. Sure, our brain is extremely complex, but there’s no reason to believe it can’t be simulated because, like I said, it plays by the rules everything else in the universe does (or is supposed to).

We’re doing it wrong

I’m not saying the robots and other artificial agents that have been made aren’t impressive, but they are, after all, programmed to do something. Sure, they can, to a degree, take some decisions, but it’s all based on an algorithm they have coded.

How would I do it

I’ve been trying to find how humans process the information, and I’m pretty sure all we do is to try to fit certain situation into a pattern we are familiar with, and act according to the result of that pattern we know, for example:

Imagine a baby learning to walk, if he sees a shiny surface on his path, he will walk over it anyway. It’s quite possible that the baby will slip and fall, then he’ll “store” that pattern with that result: “Walking on a shiny surface made me fall”. Next time he sees a shiny surface, he’ll avoid it, because he knows he might fall.

That’s just a really silly example, because I’m sure we store way more advanced patterns. Also, several patterns can be stored for an experience, the baby might also realize that walking can make him hurt himself, and then he will stop doing it until he’s more confident.

Making it happen

I know that this sounds a lot easier than it’s in reality, and the current way Artificial Intelligence is studied/applied generates visible results faster. To implement what I’m saying you’d probably need to make a robot with only basic knowledge (what in living creatures would be instincts) and leave it in a warehouse for a few years, hoping it will learn to use it’s body parts, and to act to follow it’s instincts.

The end

If you have any comments, positive or negative, you can tweet me something, or send me an e-mail at me[at]epelaez.net.

Notified Beta 2 Coming Soon

The Notified Pro Beta 2 is coming along great.

The main difference you’ll see now is that you won’t see an icon on your homescreen anymore. Instead, all notifications will be handled ONLY in the drawer (I’m pretty sure you didn’t use the app to see the notifications, anyway), and all settings will be in the Settings.app.

Along with this came a redesign of the settings, too, I’ll walk you through the different sections of the new settings:

Default Alerts Blocker - This used to be called “Manage Alerts”, I think it’s more clear what it does now. Under this section you’ll have two switches, Lockscreen and Homescreen. When on, Apple’s default alerts (the blue ones), will be blocked in either the Lockscreen or the Homescreen. This doesn’t affect plugins.

Notification List - This group is for settings regarding the Notified window.

  • Notifications to Keep - This is a number between 0 and 100. When you close the drawer, older notifications will be deleted until it reaches that number.
  • Group By - This is a highly requested feature. This setting will let you choose how notifications are grouped, by date (default, the way they are grouped now), or by application, which means each application will have it’s one only group.
  • Live Pulldown - This is a switch to turn on/off the Live Pulldown. The Live Pulldown means that, when you start sliding your finger down the statusbar, the window follows the finger. The functionality might not make it to this beta, though. Temporary icon.
  • Ignored Applications - This is a list of applications which won’t be handled by Notified. When a notification arrives, it’s application will be checked against this list, and if it’s there, it won’t be logged, blocked, and it won’t be sent to plugins.

Notifications - These are settings related to the notifications (they could be grouped with the previous group, but it didn’t look good)

  • Custom Icons - Notified includes a few beautiful icons for a few apps, however, many apps get a generic one (still beautiful). When this switch is off, Notified will use the application’s icon instead. Temporary icon.
  • Show New Only - This is a cool new setting. When you open the notification list, if on, only unread notifications will be shown, and old notifications hidden. It will show a “Show all” button so you can show the rest of the notifications, too. This allows for more “live” notifications.
  • Auto Delete - Another new feature. When on, after you tap a notification to launch it’s application, said notification will be deleted from the notifications list.

Redirections - This hasn’t changed. It’s a list of rules to redirect some notifications to another application.

Statusbar Icons - This hasn’t changed either. It’s to turn off the Statusbar Icons.

I’m still coding some of the settings. Live Pulldown, Show New Only and Sort By aren’t working yet, follow me on Twitter to know when it’s ready.

We’re preparing a beta

After a while of being too busy to work on Notified, I was finally able to make some substantial progress on something I started and never finished.

The first feature you will see on the beta is that now, the notifications will carry the information they received and when the app is launched it will open with that information passed to it, that means that if you get an IM, your IM app will open in that conversation.

At first, that will happen only when you tap the notification, I’ll see if holding that information longer doesn’t cause any problems, and if it doesn’t, the information could be kept on the notifications list.

Another feature (you won’t see), it’s an under the hood improvement to the way the window is managed, this will help when adding live pull-down, which I’m working on (with help from Ryan Petrich, developer of Activator, since this requires some changes to Activator too).

I’m looking into adding some other features based on your feedback, too, and I’m also working with Daniel Zimmerman to get the mail notifications polished up and bug-free.

This beta will be held on MacThemes and I’ll announce via twitter when it’s available, so follow me. I still need to test a few things myself and improve the current plugins to handle the new notifications, but it shouldn’t take long.