Evolving into ScoreAgent

The simplest of all of the Agents just received its first major update. I present ScoreAgent 2.0 — now available in the App Store.

“Woah, woah… ScoreAgent 2.0? Was there a ScoreAgent 1.0 for starters?”

Technically, yes. You might remember GameAgent, the simplest of all the Agent apps: it kept track of the individual score of up to six players. Well, long story short — I received what is probably the nicest cease and desist email from a lady at Aspyr, the company that owns the GameAgent trademark. I mention that it was a nice email since it simply asked me to change the app’s name — no legal threats were made — and I think I was even offered a job. So fair’s fair and I changed the name to ScoreAgent.

So beyond the name change, what else is new?

This 2.0 update had just been submitted to Apple still under the old name, but had to resubmit to change the name. So this isn’t an update just to change the name. If you take a closer look, you’ll see it looks new.

The biggest changes to this new version might not be apparent besides the visual overhaul; that’s good, since it means the simplification of the app worked. The app has been completely rewritten to be even simpler and easier to use from the beginning. But that idea wasn’t there at the beginning…

I had a bunch of new features in line for this new version, but all were scrapped since it added unnecessary bloat. Yes, you could say this app is now following Twitterrific’s philosophy of cutting all features not crucial to the app’s experience in order to favor simplicity. And what more is there to a game counter/manager than keeping track of scores? That’s why the virtual “dice” from the first version were removed for this one, as well as other widgets I had implemented, like a virtual coin toss, player randomizers, and what-not.

The end result is a lean app that will preoccupy the user’s mind with nothing beyond the ability to track of all the players’ scores.

The new ScoreAgent, also like the newest TipAgent, is exclusive to iOS 4, has fast app switching, and iPhone 4 support. Also, the best news? It is FREE (although technically I started giving out the old version for free once I had submitted this update). So if you find the idea of tracking the scores of all the players at some tabletop game, I hope you’ll give ScoreAgent a chance. And I do hope you enjoy its new-found simplicity.

[Click here to visit the app's homepage]

DeskAgent: now for iPhone and iPod touch

Today Apple approved DeskAgent 1.2, which is now a universal app in order to extend its functionality beyond the iPad. So if you already purchased DeskAgent and have either an iPhone or iPod touch, you can now run it without the need of buying a separate copy — just upgrade to the latest version.

For all new users, DeskAgent is available in the App Store still for $1.99. You can learn more about it in its official homepage here.

Also, I would like to thank Matt Moriarity, friend and developer of the Docket apps, for testing out DeskAgent in his iPod touch prior to release.

DeskAgent, now with weather

Just this week Apple finally approved the first major update to DeskAgent: version 1.1, with local weather support for current conditions.

This is a big victory for me because, if you’ve been following on DeskAgent’s development, the project got up to a rough start as it was rejected more than a couple of times for being “too widgety.” (Although those rejections were for the best, since DeskAgent was completely redesigned to have a more formal interface.) So you can understand the suspense this update generated while it was being reviewed: would the weather feature be deemed too widgety again? Fortunately, Apple didn’t think so this time.

The new weather feature uses the iPad’s location services alongside Yahoo’s weather APIs. It also has support for both Fahrenheit and Celsius, using the new settings found within the Settings app in the iPad. And yes, it seems to be working perfectly for international locations, as well.

The update is free to all existing customers, and the price will remain $1.99 for new ones.

[DeskAgent homepage]

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