iPhone OS 2.2 is a really big update, not only about features, but mostly about performance and stability.

From my real usage, Safari does crash less. Before 2.2, the most unstable web app is Google Reader, it can crash at any time, since I use Google Reader a lot on iPhone, what a pain it was. Now things are much better. And all components has dependency on WebKit also got enhancements, like UITableView, if you have some UIImageView inside UITableViewCell, you’ll find it scrolls much more smoother on 2.2! So, iPhone OS 2.2 is strongly recommended for everyone from newbies to developers.

On feature side, the new Emoji feature is particularly interesting, though it meant to be Japanese users only, but you can turn it on easily with some small helper program in Cydia installer. I really wish the cuteness be part of the whole world, not only Japan.

These days I’ve been working on an easy solution for implementing full text search on iPhone, and finally I got it working.

There is UISearchBar in UIKit, but there isn’t anything easy in iPhone SDK to help you implementing a high performance data structure for indexing and searching. After some Google search, I found that SQLite has a very promising full text search component called FTS3, however, this component exists in SQLite code tree as a plug-in, so it’s not to be found in iPhone’s built-in SQLite support.

To integrate FTS3 plug-in into your iPhone app, you need to build your own SQLite. Fortunately there is a project named The SQLite Amalgamation, it makes the whole SQLite source tree into three files: two .h headers and one .c source file. So you can create a group in your project in Xcode named SQLite, and drag-n-copy these 3 files into this group. So you’re ready to compile your own SQLite for your iPhone app.

Next step is to turn on FTS3 in sqlite3.c, you need to add this line:

#define SQLITE_ENABLE_FTS3 1

Below this line:

#define SQLITE_AMALGAMATION 1

Be aware that sqlite3.c is a very huge file weighing 340K+, it may crash your Xcode. You may want to open it in vim.

Now you can click build and play with your own SQLite 3 with FTS3. For more information on how to use FTS3, please read the official documentation, it’s quite easy:

http://www.sqlite.org/cvstrac/wiki?p=FtsOne

Finally got the contract set up with Apple. So my little app appears to be “Ready for Sale” in iTunes Connect, but when I go to search it in App Store, no result matched.

It seems a lot developers are experiencing the same problem here:

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1607276&tstart=60

Is this related to a slow updating rate of search index of iTunes Store? I can’t get my app showing up in iTunes Link Maker either.

But it’s possible to reach the app detail page in iTunes via direct link:

http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=294454696

You can make your own direct link if you’re experiencing the same problem that app not showing up in search or link maker, just replace the id part in URL with your own app id, you can get it in app details in iTunes Connect.

IMHO, it does take too long time for solo developers on all those non-tech issues. You may not know that I planned to release my app in August! But now it’s November!

Anyway, perhaps what I’ve got is the best I can get, so now I can focus more on tech things to make my app more polished.

Update: AppShopper.com has a page for Gomoku now: http://appshopper.com/games/gomoku

(Thanks Robin Lu!)