[SkypeOut Integration]

Tacts now makes it easy for you to use SkypeOut to call your contacts.  Tacts contact view now features a second page which provides a Skype button.  Pressing this button automatically launches Skype and calls your contact without having to copy/paste phone numbers.

What are the benefits for using Skype via Tacts？

1. Finding contacts is easier with Tacts compared to Skype.  So you can now use Tacts as an entry point for making Skype calls.
2. You can create “Skype favorites” in favorite list as a short cut for contacts you Skype often.

[MMS]

Tacts MMS button allows you to attach files easily by launching the native Message app.

You can also create “MMS favorite” in favorite list for quick access.

[New Icon Sets]

Tacts 1.4.2 also introduces four new sets of group icons.  You can purchase these icons via the app store or using virtual silver and gold currencies.  We hope these icon brings your groups to life!

Jack’s Beans

NiNi’s Cottage

Metal Icons

Tin Robots

Find your contact by Source

iPhone allows users to connect to and sync with external contact directories such as Google or MobileMe. Thus many users has contacts from different contact Sources in their address book.

If you sync with multiple address book Sources, most contact managers can only view one Source at a time or are not able to distinguish these Sources.

Tacts 1.4.0 creates a special group for each Source. Possible contact sources include: Exchange, MobileMe, LDAP, CardDAV or Local. Now with Tacts, you can quickly access and manage different contact Sources.

So what are those colored dots?

Within a group, each contact will have a colored dot in front of their name. The color represents which Source a contact is from. For example, yellow represent contacts from an Exchange Source.

Customizable sort index

You can now choose the language index type for sorting contacts. So if you are using English interface, but have many Japanese contacts, you can use the Kana+Roman index type to properly sort both Japanese and Western contact names.

Previously Tacts automatically determined which index is best for users by detecting the system language used. However, some users would like the option to configure the index to accommodate names from other languages as well.

Sort by Department
In addition to sorting by Name, Company, City and State, Tacts can now sort a group by Department. So now you can easily find your Sales or Finance contacts for company ABC.

✧ Tacts in-app store is opening!! （^ – ^ y）✧

Tacts 1.4.0 also launches an in-app store to help you access exciting new features and further customize Tacts to fit your needs.  The first in-app product is the T9 Keypad that allows you to dial number without exiting Tacts.  The T9 Keypad can also help you quickly find contacts by searching through names and phone numbers.

✧ Buy keypad and get summer icon free ✧

For a limited time, if you purchase Tacts T9 Keypad, we will also give you summer icons for free.  You will now have the perfect contact group icons for the summer.

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We hope you enjoy this new version of Tacts!

iOS Development: Getting Started

Starting from Scratch
If you are don’t have much programming background, we recommend learning to C language to start with.

Resources:
* C Programming Language
– classic text book to gain a solid background in C

Learning the Language: Objective-C
Once you have a good grasp of C, then you can learn the Objective-C the language used for iOS development. It is probably a good idea to also have some Object Oriented programing background before you begin.

Resources:
* Programming-Objective-C
– solid introduction to Objective-C
* Cocoa Programming for Mac OSX
– a good intro, but not all chapters are relevant to iPhone programming
* The Objective-C Programming Language
– Apple introduction to the language.
* Cocoa Dev Central
– concise short tutorials to Objective-C and Cocoa

Beginning iPhone Programming
Now start learning the basics of iOS development with these resources.

Resources:
* iPhone Programming
– not read yet, but on my wish list
* Beginning iPhone Development Exploring the SDK
– good intro and covers lots of detailed coverage for UI programming
– it lacks more in depth topics like Core Data, performance tuning, etc.
* iTunes University: Stanford iPhone programming videos
– great lessons and covers many topics

TAIPEI (December 30, 2010) – Just in time for the New Years, TernTek has released Tacts Mini that is capable of sending group SMS and Emails to your friends and family for the New Years. Tacts Mini is a free version of the Tacts contact manager for the iPhone. Tacts Mini comes with comprehensive group management features missing in the default Contacts app. Additionally, Tacts Mini also adds intelligence by dynamically generating a Top Contacts list that is based on call frequency, time and location.

Users requiring features such as Smart Groups, additional group icons and would like to disable ads, can upgrade to the full version of Tacts.

TernTek is an app developer based in Taiwan that is dedicated to bring it’s users the best iPhone contact manager experience.

TernTek would like to wish you Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays.  While we are enjoying this joyous season, we would also like to help make lives of the less fortunate a little better.

You can also help.  When you Gift Tacts to friends and family from Dec 9th to 30th, TernTek will donate 3 dollars per gift unit to charity.  You can also help us determine which charity receives the proceeds by voting here.

Finally we would like to thank all our customers and fans. May your holiday seasons be filled with joy and peace!

Details:
1. TernTek will donate 3 dollars for each unit of Tacts that is purchased using iTunes “Gift This App” feature.
2. This event is independently sponsored by TernTek and is not endorsed by in any way by the charities listed below.

Charity Candidates:
1. World Vision http://www.worldvision.org.tw/
2. The Red Cross Society of The Republic of China http://web.redcross.org.tw/
3. UNICEF http://www.unicef.org/

Thanks to all who participated in this event. TernTek pledged to donate 3 dollars per gift unit to charity. We are happy to get 9 gift downloads during this event.

Most People would like TernTek to donate to World Vision. Thanks for your vote.

TernTek has donated NT2000 to World Vision. We hope our small donation can help make a difference in the lives of children in need.

Receipt

First we would like to thank all our user who provided valuable feedback to help improve Tacts. Here we would like to introduce some of highly anticipated features and fixes included in this latest release of Tacts.

1. More Cute Group Icons
Want to decorate Tacts to be more festive during the holiday season? We added 20 holiday icons and also a few more beverages to help you celebrate. Any icons that you would love to have added?

2. Japanese Kana, Chinese PinYin and ZhuYin Indexes
Most apps out there provide indexes that sorts Chinese characters by individual characters themselves. With thousands of unique characters, this solution will end up adding lots of table view sections with only a single contact. Tacts provides a better solution by sorting Chinese characters phonetically using systems that are well know by native users. We are dedicated to helping you find your contacts faster.

3. New Quick Access Buttons in Contact View
These are short cut buttons at the top of the contact view that allow you to quickly add favorites or modify group membership with a single tap.   If you need to quickly look up contact information to call using a landline or tell a friend, the new “Info” button will display detailed contact information.

4. Expanded Language Support
In addition to the previously supported English, Simplified and Traditional Chinese, Tacts now supports Japanese, Italian, Spanish, German and French and thus making Tacts even easier to use for more user worldwide.

5. Smart Groups can now also send group emails and SMS!

TernTek has also terminated a few annoying bugs.

External Contact Group Membership
* iOS4.2.1 users could not add contacts from external sources (Exchange and Google Sync) to iPhone’s native groups.
* Tacts is to our knowledge to first contact manager app to create a work-around for this issue.

Search Stability
* Search is no longer affected by low memory conditions and now consistent and stable.

Traditional Chinese Index Crash
* iOS4.2.1 Traditional Chinese users can now safely go to the end of the index safely.

Thats it for now, but do expect more features and improvements to Tacts in the future. Thanks to all our users’ positive and critical reviews. They are all invaluable to us. Remember that if you have an issue, please open a ticket with us so we can work closely with you to understand and resolve any issues.

Special thanks to 小編 and iapp for taking time to give their readers a such a detailed review of Tacts.  This is our first review in Chinese!

Here is the conclusion from this article:

“整理來說Tacts是一款不管在視覺上面(小編是買iPhone4黑色剛好)黑色調性搭配彩色的簡單圖示真的很漂亮，而智慧群組的多功能更是小編推薦的原因，貼心的喜好項目設定更是再次打中小編的心!

就在小編準備打滿分的時候，卻發現點選聯絡人進行通話結束後卻不是跳回Tacts，而是原來的通訊錄，讓整個UI流暢度扣了一些分數阿!

如果玩家的聯絡人需要好好的管理一下，那就請Tacts來協助你吧!”

Here is my best effort at translating this text ^^

“In summary, Tacts is an App that not only has a visual design, with a black theme matched with colorful and simple icons, that is really beautiful.  Also having multiple intelligent features is another reason for 小編’s recommendation.  The thoughtful Favorites configuration design has again struck (a chord with) 小編’s heart!

Just when 小編 was ready to reward a full score, he noticed that after calling a contact, iPhone did not reopen Tacts but returned to the built in Phone app.  This caused an interruption in the UI flow and thus reducing the score!

If you really need to organize your contacts, then let Tacts help you!”

It is unfortunate that iOS API does not allow Tacts to return after a phone call is made.  Once this feature is available in iOS, you can be sure we will add this capability.  For both email and text, Tacts does not exit allowing you to send subsequent messages out quickly.

Read the rest of the iapp review.

Christine Chan from AppAdvice was kind enough to review and share her insight and experience on using Tacts.  Here is a little excerpt from the article:

“Other than that one glaring problem of not being able to create groups or smart groups, I like the design of this app pretty well. It’s smooth and user-friendly, which are pretty big for iPhone app design. I also like that it will keep track for ‘Top Contacts’, which I don’t see too often. The fact that you can also add other contact details to the Favorites section (like SMS, email, addresses, etc) is a big plus.”

The problem mentioned is that Tacts had a placeholder that looked like entered text which causes some confusion.  We have submitted version 1.0.1 to Apple to resolve this visual cue flaw and hope to have it available in the next few days.

Read the rest of the: AppAdvice Review