If you haven’t yet heard, the United States recently passed a national health care bill that, like all things American, is dripping with controversy. The entire process has been riddled with unanswered questions, and Americans are either extremely for it, or extremely against it. Arguments far and wide have been heard from both sides, and many Americans don’t really know what to believe about the whole situation.

What’s less controversial is that healthy living is beneficial to the well being of our lives. For those of you that own an iDevice, there are plenty of apps out there that assist in this process. From calorie counters to work out routines, there is something out there for every diet and exercise need. Unfortunately, there aren’t any apps that I know of that can make sense of the health care bill.

Read on for a few health and fitness apps that we like.
Continue reading Healthcare »

Mobile Orchard have posted the latest installment to their excellent iPhone Developer Podcast. This time they interview Mark Jardine and Paul Haddad of Tapbots. The 20 minute interview is available either through their podcast or directly on their site.

The interview covers a great deal including the inspiration behind Weightbot (iTunes Link), their Best App Ever award winning weight management app, and some interesting info on sales spikes due to blog mentions. The interview is in three parts: (1) the origins of the app, (2) creating custom UI controls and (3) promoting the app. The last part is virtually a step-by-step guide to successfully promoting an app. The timeline of the interview is below:

* 1:55 – Avoiding the mundane and the tedious in utility apps
* 2:20 – Inspiration from Wii Fit and Wall-E
* 3:20 – Creating utility that “do one thing really well and are fun to use”
* 4:50 – Communicating the design for implementation
* 7:00 – Programming custom UI controls
* 8:45 – Making the “flicking” behavior of a custom scroll-like view work properly
* 10:45 – Moving the bounds of a view to create the spinning/scrolling effect
* 14:00 – Pre-launch buzz
* 14:40 – TUAW picking up the pre-release screen shots
* 15:30 – Viral buzz from a demo video on YouTube
* 15:45 – Getting on Daring Fireball
* 17:15 – More sales on the weekend
* 17:30 – Big jump in sales from getting on Lifehacker
* 18:00 – Mac Rumors boost
* 18:10 – New Years resolution bump / importance of Europe and the UK
* 18:45 – Making a good amount of money even when not in the top-100

[via Mobile Orchard]