Redeem Promo Codes – Do It The Easy Way

tap tap tap:

There’s a little-known iTunes Store URL that enables you to easily provide promo codes that can simply be clicked or tapped to be redeemed (replace “REPLACEWITHPROMOCODE” with the actual promo code):

https://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZFinance.woa/wa/freeProductCodeWizard?code=REPLACEWITHPROMOCODE

And the great thing is that these URLs work in both in iTunes on the user’s computers and on their iPhone/iPod touch devices. Help make life for people just a tad easier by using these links in the future.

I haven’t tested it yet, but this seems like a really great tip. Reviewers of your application(s) no longer have to go trough the – in my eyes too complicated – redeem process. Just click on a link and you’re ready to go.

Awesome.

Better Localization

Wil Shipley:

In this post I’m going to explain to you what internationalization and localization are, how Apple’s tools handle them by default, and the huge flaws in Apple’s approach. Then I’m going to provide you with the code and tools to do localization in a much, much easier way.

Both of these topics are often very painful and a lot of work if you don’t do it the right way. Shipley provides a nice solution. If someone will ask me about localization I’ll point him to this article and tell him it’s a must-read.

Cocoa and Objective-C Book

The book is called Cocoa and Objective-C: Up and Running. It's a ground-level introduction to everything you need to write Cocoa apps. I don't assume you know C or compilers, or anything other other how to use a Mac. It's available now from O'Reilly Rough Cuts. More content will be added before it goes into production later this year.

Scott Stevenson writes a book about Cocoa and Objective-C and I’m sure this will be a good one. You can take a look into the current version at O’Reilly’s Rough Cuts site (the book’s website is located at CocoaBook.com). The best thing is that a lot of tutorials will find its way back to Cocoa Dev Central, an excellent place to start learning everything about Cocoa.