Baby Connect Beta Testing User Group

We want to provide the best quality product as possible, and we need your help to improve Baby Connect.

We’re setting up today a new Beta Testing User Group. The goal of this group is to provide feedback on new versions before we release those versions to everybody.

How will it work

• A few days before submitting a new version to the AppStore, we will send it to you via email.

• You can install the application on your iPhone, iPod or iPad by dragging the Application Files on iTunes on your computer, then synchronizing your device with your computer.

• While using the new version, you can send us feedback about the new features and bugs you found.

• This program only works for the iPhone and iPad applications. It is not for the Web Application.

What’s in it for you

• We’ll send the version 1 or 2 weeks before submitting to the AppStore. Then it usually takes about one additional week of processing time before it is available for Download. So as a Beta user, you’ll have the bug fixes and the new features 2 weeks before everybody else.

• If you found a bug in the beta version, we can fix it and send you an update the next day. Bugs in the official version will take more time to be fixed (see above, we need at least 1 week to release a new version). If you’re not happy about the beta, you can also always go back to the previous official release from the AppStore.

• You will help improving the product quality. It is more efficient for us to solve design issues and bugs before the product is released, it means we can spend more time improving the product rather than handling support requests.

How can you sign-up

• Send us a Support Request email from the Application. We need to know what type of device you’re using (iPhone or iPad) and their Device IDs. The device ID is included at the bottom of the support email. The beta versions will only work on those devices.

• If you have a new phone after signing up, you need to send us the new device ID of your new phone so we can activate the application for it.

• Space is limited, we can only accommodate 40 beta users for the iPhone Application, and 40 for the iPad app.

• Send us an email if you stop using the product, or don’t want to be a member anymore so we can give your seat to somebody else.

Baby Connect for iPhone (1.9) and for iPad (1.4)

We’ve released today a new version of our applications with plenty of new features and bug fixes. Here are some highlights:

New Nursing Timer:

We received a lot of request to modify our nursing timer. We listened to you and we made several changes to it. It is now possible to record the nursing duration on each side with only one entry.

You can now start the timer for one side, then pause it and start a new timer for the other side. Both timers are accessible from the same page and its easy to switch from one side to the other side.

If you’re using the quick entry wheel picker instead of the timer, you can also specify the duration for each side as well as the last nursed side.

Disable the auto-lock on timer pages:

You know how the phone is going in auto-lock mode when it has been idle for too long. This is very useful to save batteries while you’re not using the phone. But sometimes it’s an annoyance, for instance when you’re nursing and you want to monitor the nursing duration. In this case, you’re usually too busy to keep tapping on the phone to make sure it doesn’t go in idle mode, or to unlock the phone.

So we’ve added a new preference settings which will disable the auto-lock mode when a timer page is open. When Disabled, the phone will not lock  as long as a timer page is open. If you leave the timer page, the phone will then lock as usual if idle for some time.

Custom colors:

For those who are tired of our default pink and blue color, you can now change thebackground color of the application. If you have several kids, you can even set a different color for each child.

To change color, go at the bottom of the child setting page.

Performance improvements:

You will probably not notice this on recent phones, mostly on 1st generation iPhones. Performance has been greatly improved when saving new entries and when synchronizing with Baby Connect.

This release also includes several bug fixes. Check out the release notes for more informations about it.

We’re continuing to work on Baby Connect to bring you new features and fixes.

New version – Baby Connect for iPhone 1.8.4, Baby Connect for iPad 1.3.4

This new version contains a few new features, and several bug fixes:

• New Feature: Growth percentile calculation can now be based on the World Health Organization (WHO) data for up to 5 years old. Go under settings / preferences to switch from CDC data. In addition, the percentile calculation with the US CDC data is now going up to 10 years old for Weight and Height.
• New Feature: Email charts. A new button at the bottom left of all charts allows you to email every charts, including growth and timeline graphs.
• New Feature: a new FAQ page is now accessible from the settings page.
• Fix: changing the sleep label with the wheel picker was not changing the text as expected
• Fix: the start page (timer or picker) for bottle, solid and pumping was previously based on the last Nursing page.
• Fix: Bottle quantity and content are incorrect when editing an existing bottle entry.
• Fix crash when tapping on the ‘recent entries’ content if no entry exists.
• Fix: bad inches display value for height entered with ft / inch unit.
• Fix: The App is now working behind China’s firewall.
• Fix (iPad only): opening the feed category in landscape mode now open on the last used sub-category (bottle, nursing, solid, pumping) instead of always opening on Bottle.

New version – Baby Connect for iPhone (v1.8) and for iPad (v1.3)

Here are some of the new features in this version:

Timeline view

The new timeline view display a graph of entries by hour for the last days. You can tap on the legend to show or hide entries of each category.

On iPhone, tap on the timeline icon in the toolbar to access the timeline view.

On iPad, tapping inside the timeline will expand the view in full screen.

Notes

Notes can now be attached to any entry by tapping on the gray + button.

Improved Timers

Start time, end time and duration of a timer can now manually be set. The duration is automatically calculated if the start or end time is changing. The end time is also automatically adjusted if the duration is manually modified.

The Paused duration is now also correctly accounted for, and will be shown on the timer page.

The start and end time of an activity are now displayed in the list.

iOS4 and iPhone 4 support

Baby Connect now support fast app switching on iOS4, and will show sharp ‘retina display’ icons on the new iPhone 4.

Graphs and statistics for pumping

The graph shows the total volume, count, average duration, average volume and average interval between each pumping.

Synch Frequency

You can choose the synchronization frequency with a new preferences options.

- With ‘automatic’ frequency, the synchronization will happen on startup, after adding an entry and every 5 minutes.

- With ‘low’ frequency, the synchronization will happen on startup and every 10mn.

Easy customization

A new button at the bottom-right of most pages will allow you to easily add new labels in the picker view.

And more…

- a new graph for sleep, eat, nursing and diaper average intervals is available,

- you can set and modify the date and time of a message entry,

- weight, height and head size now have double-digits precision,

- performance improvements, up to 10x faster at the end of the month on 1st gen phones,

- you can set a child birth date in the future,

- the maximum duration for feed timers has been extended to 2h,

- numerous bug were also fixed in this version

Let us know what you think! and stay tuned for more improvements to Baby Connect.

For the latest news and activities about Baby Connect, follow us on Twitter and on Facebook.

New features on our Web Application

We’ve just published several improvements to http://baby-connect.com. Here is a quick summary:

New page Layout:

The first change is the new page layout. If you have several children, it is now much easier to select a child with the new tab selector which replaces the old drop down.

Custom Bottle Size:

When adding a new bottle entry, you can now choose any bottle size instead of being limited to the predefined choices.

Notes and message time:

You can now attach notes to any entry, and specify a date and time to a Message.

End time and duration:

You can now set the start time, end time and duration of an entry. Clicking on the ‘Add duration’ link at the top right of the popup will allow you to enter the end time or the duration of an entry. Changing either the start or end time will automatically adjust the duration. Changing the duration will automatically adjust the end time.

The start, end and duration of an entry are now displayed in the list.

This is valid for the Food, Bottle, Nursing, Sleep, Mood, Activity and Milestone categories.

Easier sleep session entry:

It’s now much easier to record a sleep session after it happened, by simply specifying an end time or a duration to the sleep popup. There is no need to start then stop a sleep session anymore.

These were some of your most requested features. The new iPhone (v1.8) and iPad (v1.3) applications released today also have plenty of new features and will work perfectly with the web application.

Introducing Baby Connect for iPad

We’re very happy to launch today Baby Connect for iPad, a re-design of our iPhone application for the iPad.

The iPad application contains all features of the iPhone/iPod touch application, but with a completely new user experience.

You can easily view from the home screen a summary and the detail for all entries for the day.

You can still quickly start/stop timers and easily save new entries.

The graphs look awesome on the big screen.

The iPad application also includes push notifications, emails, growth charts and filtered lists.

You can connect to the iPad application with your existing Baby Connect account. Entries can be created with your iPhone, iPod touch, your browser or your iPad. All entries will be automatically synchronized on each device.

You can download the application now on the AppStore.

Baby Connect for iPhone – new version 1.7

This new release includes several bug fixes, new features and terminology changes. Here are some highlights of our new features:

New bottle quantity entry:

This was the most requested feature. You can now enter any value for bottle intakes instead of the predefined values.

List entries by Month

The list view is now organized by months, you can switch back the the previous daily view by tapping on the month, then choose the ‘By Day’ button.

Milestone List

The full milestone list is now viewable in a complete list, this list can also be emailed.

Baby Connect for iPhone – New version 1.6.2

We’ve been very busy adding new features to our iPhone application lately. The latest version 1.6.2 is now available for download and your most requested features are included in this release:

Offline entries:

You don’t need to be connected to the network to enter new activities anymore. When no connectivity is available, the entries will be saved on the iPhone, and will be synchronized with the Baby Connect server as soon as the network becomes available.

You can now record entries at any time, even if you’re using an iPod Touch and you’re out-of Wifi range, or if you’re using an iPhone in a dead spot. The synchronization will be automatically done at regular interval, you’ll be able to check the status of the last synchronization by tapping on the synchronize label on the toolbar.

Growth Tracking:

You can now track weight, height and head size under the Medical category. If you have specified your child birth date, we will display the percentile (using the US CDC data) to compare with other kids the same age and gender. The data can be displayed in a typical growth chart with the percentile comparison. A trend of the percentile value is also available.

Others new features:

• New charts with bottle count, average bottle size, the number of nursing and average nursing duration are now available in our chart section.
• Every authorized user can now edit or delete entries (only the creator was able to do it in previous releases).
• Start sleep entries are now included in the .csv export file
• Several bug fixes were also included in this release.

Let us know what you think about those new features. And as always, even more great updates are coming soon.

For the latest news and activities about Baby Connect, follow us on Twitter and on Facebook.

New version 1.6.1 of Baby Connect for iPhone

Yet another update with plenty of new features:

New Medical Category

This new category allows to track medicine, vaccine and others health-related events. Those categories are customizable, like all our other categories, and so you can add your own health event, medicine or vaccine.

Email summary

You can now send a formatted email containing all entries for the last 7 days, or for the last 30 days. This is in addition to the formatted email for the current day which is still available.

Export .csv file

It is now possible to export all data into a .csv file. You can open for instance this file in Excel to do your own custom charts and analysis. Export is disabled by default, and so you first need to enable it in the settings / preferences panel. Once enabled, a data.csv file will be attached to the formatted email whenever you’ll send this email, and will contains all data for the current day, week or month depending on the chosen option.

Use timer start time

By default, the recorded time of an entry is the end time of the activity (so usually when the entry is posted). It is now possible to use the starting time of the activity instead. For instance if a nursing session started at 10:10am and lasted 15mn, Baby Connect can record 10:10am (start time) instead of 10:25am (end time). This can be configured in the Settings / Preferences panel. This new option works for all entries with timer like feeding, nursing, sleeping, mood, activity, milestone.

Save photos to camera roll

This is another new option which needs to be enabled in the settings / preferences panel.

Sleep timers improvements

Baby Connect will now detect timer inconsistencies, and offers to adjust or clear a sleeping timer. This could happen for instance if you start a sleeping timer on your own iPhone when putting baby to bed at 10:00pm. Baby wakes up in the middle of the night at 2:30am. Your spouse wakes up for a feeding session, puts baby back to bed at 3:00am, and records new feeding, stop/start  sleeping entries on a different iPhone. When you’ll wake up baby after a good night sleep, the timer on your own iPhone will adjust to the 3:00am starting time and will record the correct exact duration, even if a different iPhone was used for the intermediate entries.

Changing a timer start time:

If you want to say that the baby really started sleeping, say, 10 minutes ago, you can now change the entry start time, and the timer will start at 10mn. This is valid for all timers, including nursing, activity, feeding, …

Each one of those features were asked by you. We listened. Enjoy them and send us more feedback.

About the downtime today

We’ve experienced a downtime today at 7:53AM (California time) for about 2 hours. During this downtime, it was not possible to access baby-connect.com, or post any entry from the iPhone application. The problem was an outage at the company hosting our servers, numerous other web sites were also impacted by it.

We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience caused by this downtime. Our top priority has always been to make sure the site is always up and running, so we were very disappointed to have experienced a problem like this. We’re now investigating alternatives to avoid this type of problem in the future.