I spent most of this week updating the Crown “Colour Match” iPhone app that I’ve previously made a few small changes to (I had nothing to do with the original codebase on this app). There was a few false starts while I waited for the graphics for the app, there was a few issues getting them through in just the right formats for the low and high res iPhone screens, but once I’d got them I did manage to make some headway.

The other thing I did was to launch the new version of Bubblino & Friends. This new version offers some great new graphics, new animations and audio that has been created just for the app. I’m really happy with the app and have enjoyed using it to follow some hashtag searches myself but I have to say that sales have actually been quite low since it launched, lower than I’d like anyway. I think that it’s not clear to people why they need an iPhone app to help them use twitter’s search features. As I say I’ve enjoyed using it but, as ever, people are just never sure about putting down that 59p/99c for something they don’t know they need. Hashtags are in use so much though, from the Eurovision Song Contest Final today (#eurovision) to episodes of The Apprentice (#apprentice OR #theapprentice) people are hashtagging tweets all the time and I do hope this app will become a great way to consume these. I can think of a few things that could improve the experience including finding a way to see more of the tweet text (without, of course, hiding Bubblino away!) with one obvious thing being an iPad version. I’ll be listening carefully to any feedback I get and pushing updates out as soon as I can.

Finally, this week we held two of our Maker Night hacking evenings in the Art and Design Academy of Liverpool John Moores. With a 7-9pm session on Wednesday and a 6-10pm session on Friday we all made lots of progress on the various projects we’ve been working on. On Wednesday I got more involved in the Cupcake 3D printer we’ve been building so that I could spend Friday looking after it (as Ross Jones who has led the build so far couldn’t make it). Friday night’s event was actually part of a wider event going on in Liverpool called Light Night with events occurring all over the city. This was great as it meant we had lots of visitors coming down and finding out about what we were doing and looking at our mini-exhibition of hardware hacks (we had my location clock versions 1 & 2, Mycroft’s Radio, Bubblino and an Internet connected temperature guage). While it was great to tell the visitors about what we were up to it did delay my work on the 3D printer! We eventually got the final few bits done and everything wired up and managed to test the plastic extruder and the platform stepper motors that move everything around. While it was great to have some success I’m afraid the most we managed to “print” was things like this. Next month’s Maker Night should be great as finally the first real objects should be printed, just a shame I won’t be there to see them! If you’re interested in going, head over to the Maker Night website.