TOKYO (Tom Bluewater) – Although I admit that News isn’t a very popular category compared with Games and Productivity, it’s quite an accomplishment to me that another desktop application of mine, AllNews Desktop, joins the top league in the U.S. market. aClocks Desktop took a top slot soon after I submitted it to Mac App Store at the beginning of this year. So I now believe I know how I can get desktop applications chosen for top slots.   Continue reading →

TOKYO (Tom Bluewater) – The FontsView series is now more than 6 years old. FontsView is something that I frequently use to pick the best font family for a specific text string. Well, I’ve rewritten it in Swift from scratch. This new software submission to Mac App Store is called FontsView 4.   Continue reading →

TOKYO (Tom Bluewater) – Without a lot of introduction, let me announce that I just submitted a new desktop application to Mac App Store several minutes ago. This new submission is called Textician.

Textician is a simple desktop application that lets you turn a text string into an image with gradient colors. You have access to a built-in library of 140+ gradient color styles. All you have to do is (1) to enter a string in the input field, (2) to select a font family from a drop-down menu, (3) to select a gradient color style. Additionally, you have an option of applying or not applying the outer glow effect to the text image.   Continue reading →

TOKYO (Tom Bluewater) – I use the SQLite database to store every bit of user-defined information like window positions & sizes, checkbox status, the default open-folder & save-folder paths. So it’s very important for me to make sure that an application under development is writing to its database files. Although I have a desktop application called FireSQL 3, I don’t really need to edit database tables. All I need is something that allows me to view the database table content. And I keep using an old application called ViewSQL Pro. Although Mac App Store got rid of it a few years ago, it’s still robust enough to run under Sierra. Well, this ViewSQL guy is almost 7 years old! It’s time for a regime change. So what I need is something similar to FireSQL 3 that just lets me view the content of the SQLite database table. Voila! I submitted a new desktop application to Mac App Store. This new release is called FireSQLView.

FireSQLView works with an unencrypted SQLite multi-table database file and lets you view the content of a table you select. It reads pragma info on the database table you select. So you can of course see the data type of each table field. The most important feature of this application is the ability to view blob data as a picture. You must have a field with data sizes corresponding to a blob field, though.   Continue reading →

TOKYO (Tom Bluewater) – For the past several years, I’ve switched from one software development platform to another. I’ve written code in PHP, Visual Basic .Net, Objective-C and Swift. Switching from one development platform to another can be quite confusing, at least, to me. Maybe, I’m too old for that. It’s very important for me to store code snippets under different categories so that I can find and then retrieve them quickly whenever I need them. That’s why I’ve developed CodeBlue.

It’s been more than four years since I introduced the first version of CodeBlue. The first major overhaul was made about sixteen months. Yet, it still requires a major overhaul because it can act strangely under macOS 10.12 Sierra. More specifically, IKImageBrowser does not appear to work properly when one tries to create a code group. Well, finally… It was a long road because I dealt with a memory leak for a week. I submitted the second major overhaul to Mac App Store several minutes ago. The application name is of course CodeBlue 3.   Continue reading →