I recently was trying out different return keys (UIReturnKeyType) for the default keyboard in iOS 7, looking for a fitting text to display for calculating taxi fares from one location to another. Since the app is for the German market, I needed to find out the text translations in German. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find the translations anywhere, so I had to try out the different variations myself and see what translation appeared. In doing so I also noticed (or rather, my boss noticed) that the different return key styles don’t all have the same color. And of course, neither the texts nor the colors can be individually chosen. I decided to make some screenshots and collect details about the different texts and colors.

All of the button types are greyed out (with a grey text label) when no text has been entered.

When text has been entered, all buttons except for UIReturnKeyDefault and UIReturnKeyNext become blue (with a white text label).

Both UIReturnKeyDefault and UIReturnKeyNext are grey with a black text label when text has been entered.

Here’s the description for VideoExplorer I plan to use when it’s released on Cydia:

VideoExplorer can turn virtually any video on your iOS device into an audio ringtone, even videos you’ve recorded yourself with the standard camera app. It’s especially useful for converting videos from YouTube downloader apps (such as ProTuber from the App Store and MxTube or Universal Video Downloader from Cydia) into ringtones. In additional to ringtone and alert tones, you can also import videos to the Video app as movies, TV episodes or music videos, as well as into the iPod library or podcasts (all options with full meta-tag editing capabilities). VideoExplorer also allows you to easily open videos in other apps.
Videos can be found either in the apps tab (which lists the video files by app), or in the files tab (which filters out empty folders and non-video files to make it easier to find what you’re looking for). From there, you can send the videos to one of the many queues, for ringtones, music videos, and more. You can also queue a whole bunch of files at once–tap and hold to switch between single and multiple selection modes, or use the action button on the upper right. Once in the queue, you can then edit the file’s meta-tags (including the album artwork) by double-tapping on the file, before finally importing all the files by tapping on the import button.
VideoExplorer can also make use of the Gremlin framework, which allows imported music and videos to sync back to iTunes.
Please follow me on twitter (@comdorcet) to stay informed about feature updates, upcoming apps, and of course discounts and giveaways.

For the past few weeks I have been working on an app similar to AudioExplorer+ that works for any kind of video file iOS can play. This will enable everyone who uses a video download apps like MxTube from Cydia or ProTuber and MyTube from the Apple AppStore to do lots of cool stuff with the videos, like set them as ringtones or alert tones, add them to the iPod library or open them in other apps. You can even make audio ringtones of your own videos!

Here’s a sneak preview of the new app (ok, it’s just the splash screen, app icon and tab button icons):

One longtime user of AudioExplorer+ kindly offered a while ago to translate my app into his native tongue, Arabic. At the time I was too busy adding features and fixing bugs to set up my app for localized versions. The strings in Objective C code would need to be changed from

@"Hello, World"

to

NSLocalizedString(@"Hello, World", @"This is the computer saying hello to the world")

which is not necessarily a fun undertaking (even if you leave out the comment strings).

I was thinking of making an Mac App that would assist in changing normal Objective C strings to localizable strings, but never found enough time or energy to start this undertaking. And as I’ve never done any Mac programming, this is probably a good thing.

Luckily, thanks to StackOverflow, I found a very nice, free, open-source Xcode plugin that can help in the conversion:

https://github.com/nanaimostudio/Xcode-Quick-Localization

So now I’m finally found the tool I needed to help me make my app translatable.

To go along with the next version of AudioExplorer+ (1.5), I hope to offer several different languages: Arabic, Hebrew, German and Bahasa Melayu. If anyone else would like to volunteer to translate, please let me know! I’ll then promise free version of any future apps I release.

AE+ 1.5 will also add other new features, like the ability to add to alert tones and the audiobook libraries, and use the Gremlin plugin for imports of certain files.

The latest version of AE+ (1.2) has been uploaded to the BigBoss repo and will be available for download shortly. This version ads the ability to change ringtone names before importing them, by double-tapping on them in single-selection mode of the queue. In addition, adding/deleting from the queue has been sped up. Due to numerous internal changes, the cached search results will be deleted and a new audio file search will need be completed if upgrading from a previous version.
The next version of AE+ will build upon these changes, adding the ability to edit the id3 meta tags of files before importing them to the iPod library.
And thanks to The Amazing Audio Engine, a future version of AE+ will also have the ability to convert to numerous audio file formats. Unfortunately, the audio conversion won’t be added anytime soon.

I’ve just submitted a new version of AE+ for updating to the BigBoss repo. Version 1.1.2 has these new features:

– Switch between multiple/single selection mode with a long tap on an audio file
– Ability to refresh files view listings

Plus a lot of changes in the background which will make it easier for me to release apps similar to AE+ in the future.
Unfortunately, editing file details before importing to ringtones/iTunes didn’t make it into this version. Here’s how NOT to ask me when it will be ready:

Still can edit song info or album art huh? Waste of my $5.00 smh how long do we have to wait sir?

Obviously, this is someone who, aside from not knowing about patience and politeness (not to mention the most basic of English grammar), lacks all knowledge of both economics and coding. A feature like this is not something that can be added in 5 minutes, and the little money that AE+ is bringing in barely covers the work I’ve been putting into this project since I started about a year ago. I suggested that if he wants this feature faster, he should donate some money to have this go higher on my priority list. I also offered him his $1.99 back (unsure of what currency smh is), but I haven’t heard back on either suggestion. Apparently the feature isn’t that valuable to him, but he does want to keep using AE+.

AudioExplorer+ 1.1.1 is currently in beta testing and will most likely be available in Cydia in the next few days. New features:

• Pull to refresh in the app view can refresh just a single app, so you don’t need to refresh all apps just to get new audio files from one app
• Refresh buttons combined to one button with two options (as before, full and partial search).

As you’ve probably noticed, I like to do a lot of small updates rather than a big update with a lot of changes. There are advantages and disadvantages to both methods, but I think multiple small updates are easier to manage in my case, with a relatively small user base (and on a platform where most users have the latest versions of the OS).

Most likely the next feature I will add will be a way to edit ringtone names (which will be a easy starting point for at least partial ID3 tag support with iTunes imports). I also need to set up AudioExplorer+ up so that translations to other languages are easy–Arabic, Chinese, French, German and Russian are the most likely candidates for initial translations.

From there, I plan on releasing more paid apps in Cydia with functionality similar to AudioExplorer+ (more details to come).

A few users have been reporting problems importing ringtones from AudioExplorer+, getting an “Unable to Download Ringtone” error message like the one below:

So far I haven’t been able to find out the problem here. Setting the iPhone in safe mode (i.e. with the SBSettings tweak, which is available for free in Cydia, as in this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FoSWAdfvmYQ. Note: Please place items in AudioExplorer+’s queue before entering safe mode) doesn’t always to help. If you’re having this problem, please look at the iOS log file when importing the ringtone (see this link to find out how to read the log file: http://superuser.com/questions/15855/iphone-log-reader) to see if anything is logged there from AudioExplorer+ that might pinpoint the problem.

I myself haven’t had this problem with ringtones (just occasionally with iTunes imports) and I think for most users both imports work fine.

Ringtones require conversion to AAC/m4r before importing, the conversion is handled by Michael Tyson’s TPAACAudioConverter library. I doubt the library is the problem, but it’s worth looking into, as the code is a bit old and may have problems with newer versions of iOS. A good way to test this would be to import a file that is already in the AAC format (i.e. files with the following extensions: “m4a”, “m4b”, “m4p”, “m4v”, “3gp”, “mp4”, “aac”) and see how the ringtone export works with that.

UPDATE: One user who was having this problem on iOS 6.1 solved it by “by updating to 6.1.2 and re jail breaking.”

AudioExplorer+ v1.0 is finally up for sale on Cydia for $1.99. Thanks to all the support from my beta-testers for finding and reporting bugs and other issues. Now that my Cydia vendor account is up and running, I hope to be adding new features to AudioExplorer+ very soon, provided no other bugs appear!

For more information, check out the description on BigBoss:

http://apt.thebigboss.org/onepackage.php?bundleid=net.erike.audioexplorerplus&db=

or go direct to Cydia (jailbroken iOS devices only):

cydia://package/net.erike.audioexplorerplus

As some beta testers had problems with the audio search in the previous beta version of AudioExplorer+ (0.4), I’m going to release a version with a minor change to the search process that will hopefully address the issue. I’ve also made major changes to the ringtone/iTunes import process, so that it’s now much faster.

In addition, I’ve got a new startup screen to match the new app icon:

I’ve also started a Google group to make it easier to manage the beta testing emails If you’d like to join, send an email to:

aeplus-beta-testing+subscribe@googlegroups.com