Side Project Archives - Page 5 of 10

Apple Buys DarkSky

April 1, 2020April 1, 2020 Tim 4 Comments

All good things must come to an end and this appears to be the case for Dark Sky. On March 31, 2020, Dark Sky announced on their blog that they have a new home at Apple.

iOS App

There will be no changes to Dark Sky for iOS at this time. It will continue to be available for purchase in the App Store.

Android and Wear OS App

The app will no longer be available for download. Service to existing users and subscribers will continue until July 1, 2020, at which point the app will be shut down. Subscribers who are still active at that time will receive a refund.

Website

Weather forecasts, maps, and embeds will continue until July 1, 2020. The website will remain active beyond that time in support of API and iOS App customers.

API

Our API service for existing customers is not changing today, but we will no longer accept new signups. The API will continue to function through the end of 2021.

Url Shortener Link History

February 27, 2020February 26, 2020 Tim 2 Comments

I recently added a new feature to my URL shortener extension that will show you the history of your short links. Just click on the history icon, and a list of the past 20 short URLs will appear. You can then click on any link to copy it to your clipboard. Hopefully, this will save you time finding all your short links.

Let me know in the comments below any new features you would like added to the extension.

Compress and Upload Images using NativeScript

January 30, 2020March 14, 2023 Tim 1 Comment

Over the past couple of weeks, I have been working on a new iOS and Android app using NativeScript. One of the requirements is to compress and upload images. I figured this would be pretty straightforward but couldn’t find any examples of how to accomplish image compression. After some trial and error, I came up with a simple solution that has worked well. Hopefully, this example will save you some time!

The key piece of code is imageSource.saveToFile which takes a third argument that is compressionValue. This allows you to compress the image to a value from 1-100. To test a string first use this MD5 hash generator tool to convert the string to an MD5 hash. Then check out the playground example below and feel free to ask any questions in the comments below.

var saved = imageSource.saveToFile(path, "jpg", compressionValue);

Demo

Playground Example

GitHub Repo

Alternatives to Bitly

October 22, 2019October 21, 2019 Tim Leave a comment

Since Goo.gl shut down back in March 2019, there have not been many other options for shortening URLs. Bitly and Rebrandly are the top companies in the link shortening space but I believe they are too expensive and more complicated than what most people need.

Over the past couple of months, I have been working on a new shortener service T.LY. T.LY offers generous plans with the ability to track stats, protect links with a password and expire links from a number of clicks and/or dates. The API is simple to use and would be a great addition to any application needing to shorten long URLs. There is also an extension for Chrome Firefox, which makes shortening links a breeze.

As I have been working on the service, I have been posting updates to IndieHackers. If you have any questions, please leave a comment below.