Version 2 Has Passed Review

Just got notified that version 2 of iStayHealthy has passed Apple's review and will be uploaded to iTunes. The new version should be available for download within the next 24 hours or so.

Version 2 submitted to Apple

After a final round of testing and a small glitch in the submission process, I managed to submit the latest version of iStayHealthy (version 2.0.0) to Apple. It is now waiting for review and I hope it will be approved (soon).

A summary of the changes and any new features

1. French, Spanish and German version added. 
2. The list of Anti-retroviral treatment has been cleaned up and made more consistent. Some images had to be replaced as they were outdated. Two new medications were added (edurant, complera) as they were approved by the US this year (2011). Triomune was taken off the list.
3. Clean-up of some terminologies.
4. For the English, Spanish and French version a link to POZ magazine has been added (see below). For the German version a link to Deutsche AIDS Hilfe has been provided.
5. The 'Charts' tab has a new button on the left side. Clicking this, users will be able to
• save/restore their data from their iOS device to their DropBox account
• e-mail their data to someone else
• send an e-mail to me with feedback/suggestions

POZ magazine is the leading magazine for people concerned about HIV, living with HIV, caring for people with HIV. It is published in the US - but has a much wider ranging audience.
After talking to POZ magazine, we agreed that it would be great if iStayHealthy could provide a link to POZ magazine - which has now been included with the latest version. 

Localisation for Version 2 Done

Had a Localisation Blitz on iStayHealthy version 2 this week. The German version is finished. Today I polished off the Spanish and French version. What's left is dotting the i's and crossing the t's and the new version is ready to go. Planned submission date Mon 12 Sep. Probably will take a few days before Apple add their seal of approval.

Luckily, Localisation/Internationalisation is straight-forward in iOS (and Android). So, the next thing is to add a few more languages. A friend of mine helped me with an Italian version. A Portuguese version is also planned. But I also think it would be useful to add Asian languages, in particular Japanese, Chinese, Korean.

I found a translation web-site that finally managed to produce some good results: http://mygengo.com/
For a reasonable fee you get a decent translation pretty quickly. Recommended.

What's in a Logo?

When I started the app my first draft included an icon with a simple red ribbon. Easy to recognise. HIV being sadly still as stigmatised as it is, some people were seriously concerned that it would identify them as HIV positive people by only looking at the phone.
Hence the logo I eventually published the app with.

However, this logo still contains the '+ve' at the bottom right corner. Small as it is - it may still cause concern (and indeed did in some users).

Therefore, the '+ve' text will disappear in version 2.0. I hope this will address the concerns.

iStayHealthy is approved DropBox App

I am now getting close to releasing iStayHealthy version 2. Just got words that DropBox approved it as a production app - which now allows me to distribute iStayHealthy as an iPhone/DropBox app.

This will allow users to backup/restore their data to and from DropBox with the new version of the app. Why DropBox and not iCloud?
Well - firstly, iCloud is not yet public (but it will be enabled in iStayHealthy once it is). And secondly, mobile users may not want to stay with Apple forever. What if they want to switch to another phone platform? Solutions like DropBox allows us to save data independent of what mobile device we use.

Some users also said they would like to send their results/data per e-mail. So I included this feature in version 2 as well. The data will be send as an attachment (in csv - i.e. comma separated values), which can be easily imported into programs such as Excel.

At this stage I am going through the translations for the language versions: French, Spanish, German and Italian. I haven't managed to get it translated into Portuguese yet.

Finally, I teamed up with POZ magazine . POZ magazine is the leading magazine for people living with HIV and they provide plenty of info and support.