I have spent the last couple of months working on a new app for the iPhone called Hey Peanut. Hey Peanut is a photo browser app with a twist for toddlers.

A while back my wife took pictures of family members and put them into a small photo album. Our son doesn’t see his extended family as much as we would like so from time to time we sit with him and browse the family photo album. This gives him a chance to learn the faces of his grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins. One day I was watching my wife and son browse the photo album and I thought, “There should be an app for that.” Thus the idea for Hey Peanut was born.

Hey Peanut is based on the family photo album but, as I said before, with a twist. The twist is the recorded voice message. Using an iPhone and Hey Peanut a parent takes a picture of a family member then records a voice message from the family member. For instance, I can use Hey Peanut to take a picture of my mother and record a personal message from her like, “Hi Rowan! It’s GranMom. I love you.” My son can then browse the pictures and listen to the messages at any time.

Hey Peanut is a bit more than just a photo browser. It includes colorful “photo mats” with various sounds effects to keep the toddle engaged. Originally I was thinking of making Hey Peanut more game-like but decided it was not necessary.

Development on Hey Peanut is nearing completion. A lot of time has been spent on making a photo browser slash library manager for the parents. This mimics the photo app to some degree. I had hope to use Three20’s photo viewer for this but I ran into problems so I had to write my own. Over the last few weeks I have taken my code and created a new open source photo browser project called KTPhotoBrowser. The latest code is available on GitHub. The open source project is still work in progress but it is useable. I plan to complete KTPhotoBrowser once Hey Peanut is released.

Meanwhile, if you are a parent with a little one between the ages of 1 and 3 and you think he or she would like to play with Hey Peanut then send me a message and join the beta testing team.

Today is the official start of what I am calling iPhone Mac Conference Tour 2010. Between now and June I will be attending 3 iPhone and Mac developer conferences. My tour beings with NSConference, which starts tomorrow, followed by 360iDev San Jose in April and wraps up in June with my first visit to WWDC.

NSConference USA kicks off tomorrow with an iPhone developer workshop followed by 2 days of Mac developer talks and ending Wednesday with 2 additional workshops, one on concurrent programming and the other on insights from Matt “Legend” Gemmell. I’m excited about NSConference, not only for the talks but the chance to finally meet a number of people I follow on Twitter. Plus the conference will likely be the kick in the butt I need to get started on my first commercial Mac desktop app.

360iDev San Jose is April 11 through 14. What can I say about 360iDev that I haven’t already said. It’s a great conference. The last one in Denver was one of the best developer conferences I have ever attended. 360iDev San Jose will be a bit different for me though since I will be one of the speakers. My topic will be on using web services with your iPhone apps. Oh, and if you are planning to attend be sure to register here. You’re registration will help me win suite at the hotel.

And what better way to conclude the iPhone Mac Conference Tour 2010 then by attending Apple’s own Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC). I’ve never been. This will be my first WWDC. I really wanted to go last year but had a scheduling conflict. Not this year. I have blocked off the entire month of June until the WWDC dates are announced.

So that’s my conference tour for this year. I’m really looking forward to each conference. Speaking of, time to head down to the hotel lobby and meet some folks here for #nsconf.

Recently I have seen an increase in the number of spam comments that make it past the spam filters I run on this site. This has become annoying so I decided to turn off comments by default. Sorry to those who might have real value to add as a comment.

The final sales numbers are in for White Peak Software. $150 was raised by our customers as part of Indie+Relief. A big THANKS to all who participated.

Because it is such a good cause I decided to do something a little different. The original plan was to donate all proceeds from the sales on January 20. However, additional processing fees are taken out of each transaction – 30% to Apple and 15% to eSellerate. I decided I will donate the cost of the transaction fees myself.

Here is a breakdown of sales for the donation:

I rounded the grand total up to $150. The money has been donated to Doctors Without Borders as part of the emergency relief for Haiti.

Finally, I want to send a big THANKS for Justin Williams of Second Gear Software for coming up with the idea and Garrett Murray who built the Indie+Relief web site. Both individuals put a great deal of time and effort to make this event happen in just a matter of days.

I’m exploring a new iPhone app idea and I need your help. I’m looking for parents who use day care services to answer this short survey. The feedback will help me decide what features to included as well as whether I should pursue the app idea.

In a nutshell, the app idea is a daycare cost calculator. The app will help parents calculate daycare costs and is ideal for parents who pay different amounts each month.

User feedback in iTunes for Labor Mate is typically good. Most user rate Labor Mate with 4 and 5 stars. But every now and then a bad review comes in. A bad review is expected from time to time. After all the app isn’t for everyone. Still, there are times when I’m confused by user feedback. Take for example this feedback from Whidbey Island Filkin-in-Law:

“This works great for false labor; I used it every night for a week – sometimes for three hours at a time and I thought it would be neat to mail the info to our midwife. However, when my labor actually started and my water broke two days ago, I thought of this AP and how it would be the last thing I’d do @ 3 min apart & how my review might say: if you’re using this, it is false labor…”

I admit I would not expect my wife to use Labor Mate while she is having contractions. That’s why I tell people Labor Mate is typically used by the expecting mom’s birthing partner, be it her husband, boyfriend, life partner, a friend, and so on. A mom-to-be has too much going on to worry about timing contractions. Let someone else do it. (Though there is nothing wrong with a single mom timing her own contractions. Everyone’s experience is different.)

So while I agree with Whidbey Island Filkin-in-Law that the last thing a woman would want to do when contractions are 3 minutes apart is to touch a start and stop button on an iPhone, I don’t understand the 1-star rating. Whidbey Island Filkin-in-Law used the app every night for a week up to 3 hours at a time. She obviously found value in the app and yet she rated it with a single star.

Reviews like this one aways leave me scratching my head and wondering.

I will be donating all proceeds from White Peak Software product sales on Wednesday, January 20, 2010, as part of the Indie+Relief program. The proceeds will be donated to Doctors Without Borders to assist with their efforts in Haiti.

How can you help?

You can help by purchasing one of our products: Labor Mate, Killink CSV Editor, or SMTP Diagnostics. Don’t have a need for one of our products? Then visit the Indie+Relief website for a list of other independent software companies participating in this Haiti relief program.

Get great software and help with efforts in Haiti at the same time.

Over the last few months I have been inspired by different iPhone developer community events including 360iDev and DrinksOnTap. So much so I have decided to start my own monthly event for Boston area iPhone developers.

The opportunity to meet fellow iPhone developers and form new friendships is very exciting to me and it motivates me to do more with White Peak Software. Working from home is a wonderful perk of being an indie developer but it can be lonely at times. Meetup events, conferences, and so on are great ways for me to feel connected. And it gives my wife a needed break from my geek talk, which she doesn’t always understand but always happily smiles and acts like she is interested.

The Boston area has a number of meetup events but it is not always possible for me to get into Boston. And let’s face it. MBTA ain’t the MTA. I missed the 10:40 pm train to Salem at the last event I attended in Cambridge. This meant waiting until the 12:10 am train. I finally got home at 1 am.

So what’s a North Shore iPhone developer who can’t always make it into Boston to do? Start a monthly gathering in the North Shore of course.

Over the New Year’s weekend I tweeted about a new group I’m creating called NSiPhoneDevs. The NS prefix is a fun play on the prefix for many of the foundation classes from Apple, but the NS prefix also stands for “North Shore”. The North Shore iPhone Developers or NSiPhoneDevs for short.

I’m still working out the details including the exact location. What I do know is the events will be held in downtown Salem, the events will be monthly, and the first event will be this spring. Stay tune for more NSiPhoneDevs news from the official website (http://nsiphonedevs.org/) or follow @NSiPhoneDevs on Twitter.

Earlier today I mentioned being selected as a speaker at 360iDev San Jose in April. But before I fly out to San Jose, I fly down to Atlanta for NSConference. I’m looking forward to attending this event. For those wondering about NSConference, check out this promo video.

Yesterday I was having a very good day but around 5:45 pm my day got even better. I received an email from the fine folks at 360iDev that my topic “Building Web Service Powered iPhone Apps” has been selected. Yep, that’s right folks. I will be speaking at the upcoming 360iDev San Jose (April 11-14).

I’m very excited about this opportunity for a number of reasons. First and foremost, speaking at the conference gives me a chance to share what I have learned over the recents months about leveraging web services within iPhone applications. I have worked with web services in some form for over a decade now so it’s only natural that I would gravitate towards using them in iPhone applications. I also plan to blog more on the topic as I prepare my materials for the conference.

Another reason I’m excited about speaking at 360iDev this spring is I get to attend the conference. I was on the fence about going. I’m already registered for NSConference 2010 USA and I plan to attend this year’s WWDC. I actually was planning to email John at 360iDev to ask if there are plans for another event later in the year. 360iDev Denver was such an incredible experience I knew I didn’t want to go the entire year without attending at least one event. But before I got the chance to ask about another event this year I received the email accepting me as a speaker. This of course made my decision easy. Heck yeah I’m going in April!

And the final reason I’m excited about this opportunity, 360iDev events are the best. Granted I have attended only 1 and that was last fall, but it was by far the best developer conference I have attended in recent years. And definitely one of the top conferences I have ever attended. I posted my comments about 360iDev Denver back in October so I will not repeat myself here. What I will say, though, is if you are an iPhone developer then you should attend 360iDev San Jose. I guarantee you will pick up a trick or two or twelve and best of all you will get to meet other awesome iPhone developers.