Tales from the app development team at Steamclock.

Four years ago, we built a 3D map of the internet for Peer 1 Hosting. That was a really fun project – it’s not every day your app is featured on CNN. With over 100,000 downloads and an average rating of almost 5 stars, the Map of the Internet was one of the most-loved apps we’ve built. The visualization was used in various other mediums, including an exhibit at London’s Science Museum. It was really cool.

Building apps that reliably talk to Bluetooth hardware can be tricky. Apple’s Core Bluetooth APIs are pretty low level, and they offer enough flexibility to really make a mess if you’re not experienced with Bluetooth. We’ve built a lot of Bluetooth apps in recent years, ranging from medical apps to solar lighting apps, and learned a lot about what does and doesn’t work well with Core Bluetooth.

Last week at Google I/O, the Android team announced that Kotlin is now an officially supported language for Android development. This is good. Very good.

For years, the Association of Canadian Mountain Guides has run a service called the Mountain Conditions Report. The MCR started as a mailing list so professional guides can warn the world about hazardous mountain conditions before things get ugly. Some avalanche risk here, a bear sighting there – all in a day’s work as a mountain guide.

When I started Steamclock, I had a lot of experience being in offices, but no experience decorating one. For the first couple years, our walls were mostly bare. All our office said about us was: “we have an office”.

Conferences have long been a way Steamclock stays plugged in to the app design and development community. We’ve attended, volunteered for, sponsored, emceed, and spoken at over two dozen conferences since 2010. One of our goals this year was to spread that love by having everybody at Steamclock attend at least one conference in 2017.

One of the best parts about doing client work is that we get to learn about many businesses. Over the years we’ve worked with companies that sell magazines, security products, medical devices, clothing, and even lamps. As interesting as all of those domains are, we’ve found that we particularly enjoy working with Software as a Service companies.

Last year, we told the tale of the many issues we have with streaming and DRMed music on iOS in Party Monster and WeddingDJ. The core issue is that Apple’s AVFoundation APIs, the ones that allow you to build advanced audio apps, are not compatible with Apple Music and the various iTunes features that depend on The Cloud™.

This week, the folks at FiveThirtyEight, everybody’s favourite data-driven news site, put out a call for info about wedding playlists. They wanted brides, grooms, and DJs to share what’s going to be on their playlists in 2016. As it happens, we already know.

At Steamclock, like any other modern development studio, we use a variety of tools to do our work. As we grow and learn better ways to build great apps, we get to try out a variety of languages, frameworks, apps, and services. Recently we’ve had a few folks ask what tool we’re using for this or that, so I wanted to share some of what we use every day.