I recently purchased Panic‘s Status Board app. Status Board is a bit like Dashboard, but for iPad. It comes with a few useful widgets (Panels) built in, and it also lets you write your own.

Here’s a Panel I wrote that displays the number of people who have subscribed to a Campaign Monitor list.

What’s Involved

The solution consists of 3 parts:

1. A Ruby script that accesses the Campaign Monitor API.
2. A Launch Agent that periodically runs that Ruby script.
3. Some HTML/JS for presenting the output of that script in Status Board.

Getting Started

Here’s a download containing everything you’re going to need.

First, install the createsend gem:

sudo gem install createsend

Next, move campaignmonitor.rb and campaignmonitor.html into ~/Dropbox/Public/statusboard. And ensure that the script is executable:

chmod +x ~/Dropbox/Public/statusboard/campaignmonitor.rb

The Launch Agent

Next, move com.bigbucketsoftware.campaignmonitor.plist into ~/Library/LaunchAgents.

You’ll need to configure the LaunchAgent/Script to point to your particular Campaign Monitor list, so open com.bigbucketsoftware.campaignmonitor.plist in your favorite text editor and replace API KEY GOES HERE with your Campaign Monitor API key and LIST ID GOES HERE with your ID of the list you want to track. You’ll also need to replace occurrences of USERNAME with your username.

To find your API key, log into Campaign Monitor and click Account Settings. To find a List’s ID, navigate to that list and click change name/type.

Hooking It All Up

Now it’s time to run the Launch Agent. From the ~/Library/LaunchAgents folder:

launchctl load com.bigbucketsoftware.campaignmonitor.plist
launchctl start com.bigbucketsoftware.campaignmonitor

Assuming that worked, the file campaignmonitor.txt should have appeared in ~/Dropbox/Public/statusboard. If it didn’t you may want to try opening Console.app and looking for clues.

Finally, you can add your new Panel to Status Board! From Finder, right-click ~/Dropbox/Public/statusboard/campaignmonitor.html and click Dropbox > Get Public Link. Once you’ve got that URL on your iPad, (by emailing it, iMessaging it, or just type it out really, really carefully,) open Status Board, drag a Do-It-Yourself panel onto the board, and point it to your URL. Good luck!

It’s one of those scratches an itch type apps. For me, it’s indispensable and I really hope a bunch of you are going to like it too.

For a while now, Neven and I have been working on our second project together. It’s called Space Age. You can follow along here and on Neven’s blog for more details as we reveal them. We’re also @spaceageapp on Twitter.

We’re a little while away yet, but if you’d like to be notified the minute the game hits the store, feel free to sign up for our email newsletter.

If you were at the XOXO Festival you might have already seen what we’re up to with this one, but if not, here’s a little something to whet your appetite.

We’ll be in touch!

Friday, September 14, 7 PM
Union/Pine, 525 SE Pine St, Portland, OR

If you’re finding yourself awake at night wondering just what it is that Neven Mrgan and I have been up to for the last year, then have I got some good news for you! The XOXO Festival will be happening in Portland on September 14, 2012. Neven and I will be at XOXO Arcade previewing the new game we’ve been working on. So come check it out!

Cop: “Do you kids know what time it is?”
Kid: “Well sir, it’s the first time I’ve felt like something is mine, like I have something to give.”
Cop: “Well where do you kids live?”
Kid: “Well sir, if you only knew what the answer is worth, been searching every corner of the earth.”

I can only assume the cops got right back into their patrol car and drove away as quickly as they could.

So you know iCloud? Well we’ve just gone and added it to The Incident. With The Incident 1.4, your progress is synced between your iOS devices. Unlock a level on your iPhone and it’ll be unlocked on your iPad. It’s just that simple.

Oh, but if it ever causes you grief and you find yourself cursing at your iOS device, “Where are my missing gems!?” maybe just give it a reboot. iCloud is still super new and Apple hasn’t quite got all the kinks out yet.

If you’re having trouble getting TV Forecast to sync across your iOS devices, here are some tips:

Make sure you’re using iOS 5 and that your iCloud account is setup.

For iCloud sync to work, your devices have to be updated to iOS 5. If you’re on iOS 5, you’ll notice an iCloud item in the Settings menu. Make sure that all of your devices are connected to the same iCloud account.

iPhone crashing on startup?

Some people have reported crashes or freezes on startup. If you’re getting this, try clearing the TV Forecast cloud data. You can do this from:

Settings > iCloud > Storage & Backup > Manage Storage > TV Forecast

From there, tap Edit and Delete All. You shouldn’t lose any data; the next time you launch TV Forecast, your forecast will be re-uploaded to the cloud.

iPad not syncing?

If your iPad is refusing to sync, try restarting it. Seriously, it works.

If you’re still having trouble, please send me a support email or tweet me.

With iCloud, your forecast is stored in the cloud and automatically pushed it to all of your devices.

Like the iPad version, the iPhone version now includes episode bookmarking and manual time zone adjustment. And for those of you with very large forecasts who have been having trouble with iOS 5.0, that’s fixed too.

So go get TV Forecast and TV Forecast HD and be sure to follow @tvforecastapp on Twitter for news and support.

Enjoy!

Update: If you’re having trouble getting iCloud working on TV Forecast HD, try restarting your iPad.