Rant-an-Plan!

It’s been a while - not for me, but for you. I prepared some blog posts, which are not yet done, or are not ready for an announcement yet. But this one is kind of a special one.. It’s about ranting and my plans..

Recent happenings made me write this one :) For a few years or so, there has been this tool called Twitter - very nice thing, if you use it right. Lately - for a few months or so? - I’ve come to use Twitter as an outlet for my work/life imbalance. And users and especially friends have noticed that.. I heard a few times now, that I sound arrogant, disrespectful and maybe a bit harsh. Fortunately, I know most of my followers and they know that I’m usually not arrogant and only sometimes disrespectful (e.g. wearing a T-Shirt at BoSW ;)). About the rest I really should not care, should I? Well, since I gained some publicity at Open Expo and at BoSW, you may find my tweets pretty quick. So, this is quite a new situation - people watching me. The problem is, they are not only watching me, they also identify me with the company I work for.

So, I think I need to explain myself for once and for all - I’m no man of bullshitbingo. I don’t think, light would have been that much of a success if it wouldn’t take the shortest path from A to B.
I like being honest, being direct and being precise. What I really really hate is feedback in the form of “well, I somehow really don’t like to look of that button in the sense of….” - WTF?! I really don’t want to being forced to parse your sentence and getting out the core essence. Could you please do that for me? And this is no wonderland. Don’t feel personally attacked if your code is crap. That happens.
Unfortunately, it happens to me more often than I’d wish :)
When I rant, I really don’t think I could do it so much better - about that I really don’t know - but I know that it is crap. Did you ever drive a Fiat? You somehow just know that it is crap, even if you couldn’t actually build a better one yourself.
It’s not that I’m arrogant - I would be if I take the nice way and not telling others the truth.

Why I really love twitter is the instant feedback. It’s the valve for so much - happiness, hate.. everything. And usually you twitter within the first 60 seconds of your thought. If someone wrote “Gosh, I hate GottaGo, it’s just sooo friggin slow” on Twitter - that would be the best feedback ever. It’s what someone really cares about - the first impression if you will.
Or even a less precise one: “Holy crap, which moron did that GottaGo thing?!” - Sounds personal, eh? Well, it is not. It is against the ideas and the code behind GottaGo, not against me. But I know instantly that something that I did really failed for that guy - again, an important first impression.
Catching that is so important for a developer. (Since it’s Twitter, you can respond!)

I’d really like to say “Sorry”, but I don’t see any reason. Usually, I mean what I tweet. I may think “why couldn’t I just wait a minute before I tweeted” but the core of what I mean is there - with emotions! When I say, “[Ubuntu] Linux developers seem to be a bunch of morons if they wonder why they don’t have a real user base”, then I most probably mean it that way. (This example is based on the Ubuntu redesign debate). I could write that sentence as “Linux developers may not doing the right thing when they think they know UI design better than a UI specialist”. How nice of me, right? Well, it’s not really my opinion. Because in my eyes, they are a bunch of.. They are sure not in a way of development and whatnot, but socially and user friendliness?
Blahblah.. what I want to say is: I mean what I say, it’s the most honest thing I can offer you. Deal with it and use it or stop writing software and making decisions.

Is it really necessary to be rude and do it in public? No. It’s just so convenient. And usually, I fight with a problem until I’m reeeeally pissed off. That’s the moment I twitter :) Why? Because I usually hate it so bad that I’d love to squeeze and punch someone really hard. And twitter gives me the same opportunity as we did in Kindergarten: pulling your pants down and tell others you have an ugly girlfriend!
Yes, I really need to grow up - one day. Until then, my idealism will hunt and bug you all. Until I’m dull and worn out, I will always be honest and direct - and I expect the same from you.

To the company: my company must hate me for my tweets - I would :) They really don’t have anything to do with this. And they are not really forbidding me to tweet.. And if you prefer a nice looking company, filled with ties and lies, you are probably better off without me.

If you still think that you can’t stand it anymore: please please please please unfollow me and we can go drink a beer or whatever. I really don’t mind someone not following me.

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Filed under: General, Information on June 23, 2009 at 11:06 pm by marc.
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BOSW, a big thank you and Open Source on the iPhone

Whew, those were a few interesting and pretty exhausting days.

Open Source on the iPhone @ OpenExpo

The first part of this article is about my morning of that fancy day. I had the really great opportunity to hold a talk at the OpenExpo in Berne. The talk was about Open Source Software on the iPhone and I think it went quite well. Had a few interesting Mails with questions and the crowds seemed to understand the issues and problems coming with Development and Deployment of Open Source Software.

The Slides are available here (english) while there is a video on youtube of the presentation here (english)

Best of Swiss Web

You may have heard about that event called “Best of Swiss Web” - if you don’t, look it up :) It’s an award for the “best” swiss Websites of the passed year.
Thanks to a wizard called Hannes, Liip decided to participate with GottaGo in this event (as well as with the RaiWeb project - which is however not part of this article), 2 categories - Technology Innovation, Public Affairs and was also nominated for the Master - which is the price of the prices.
The night then started not so bad - we won bronze, in “Public Affairs”. The night went on, nice food, a very nice white wine.. after that, “Technology Innovation” was on.. Bronze, Silver.. Silver for SBB and their app.. No word of GottaGo? The light turns up.. Gold! Short before the event I said: I don’t want to win the Master award, but the Technology Innovation award.
Later on, some glasses of wine later - an excellent red wine btw. - the Master was on. Number 1 again.. whooo!
Besides, Liip won 2x silver with the RaiWeb Project!
Now, enough of that. I just want to say “Thank you”, really really thank you for helping me, supporting me, criticising me, trying to buy me out of this project, pissing me off with lame comments, giving me a reason to work and last but not least - let me work. Thank you Liip for never telling me to get up early, never telling me to work afterhours but rather let me work afterhours and let me get up early or late or not getting up at all and of course, pay me enough money that I don’t have to work 100% :)
Thanks to all the Beta Testers who took time to help me improve this software. And then, there are two guys in particular, one, is my not-so-bossy-and-always-play-to-win-partial-boss Hannes Gassert who worked afterhours to kick out a bad ass presentation about GottaGo. The other is, who would have guessed, Stefan Sicher.. I know you don’t feel like you’ve done a lot, but you really made this project a success. A nice idea is nothing without the right presentation.
See here for some pictures, and here for some interviews from that evening. To that Microsoft guy who thought I would wear a suit next year: I wear T-Shirts with heart and soul. And this is why I’ll most probably never work for you :)

Stay tuned for some hot updates to come now..

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Filed under: GottaGo, Information, Transport, iPhone on April 4, 2009 at 11:14 pm by marc.
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Beer for Issue!

Hi there.. It’s been a while and I’m still pretty busy, but I feel like I have to write something this very sunny afternoon.
There are a lot of projects in the pipeline, a few will come out sooner or later :)
One project which is still making my head go up and down and left and right is Transport. I somehow managed to get on the shortlist of this years Best of Swiss Web. Besides that, I found a still secret partner for the work on Transport. There has been a lot of development, of which not all is on github yet - some parts are just not ready for open source deployment. (But they will be!)
Today, I want to talk about my beta testers - they are great. Most of them anyway :)

I’m facing two problems with them though. First, I don’t know all of them - which is unfortunate. There are some I just cannot meet because they live in the south of Uguhagdarbia (not quite..) but there are  others which live in the very same city - Zurich - and I still haven’t managed to meet them.

Second, some of them just want to have an application before everyone else does - (no offense guys..) - and what I want in return is feedback - and not always get it. However, there are some very serious beta testers and I really want to thank you :)

This night, I had an insanly great idea to solve both problems at once and actually solve a third problem: get more testers :)

So what is it about? There have been rumors, that Transport will be ready at the end of march, and so I will need testers in the next few weeks.
This is why I proudly announce the “Beer for Issue” program :) What is that? My idea is: If you sign up until the 20th of march on beta[AT]codesofa.com with your UDID, name and e-mail (see Apply for Beta) and you are among the first 70 to sign up, then you get into the “program”. After that, you will receive a copy of “Transport.app” Beta for the iPhone somewhen after the 20th.

`HOLY CRAP WHERE IS THAT BEER!` - yes, we are coming to it. After that, you will receive instructions of how to report bugs/issues/whatsoever to me :) Since I really appreciate your time and haven’t figured out a way to show that to you, I offer Beer. Free Beer actually. :) The exact rules have to be determined after the signup is completed, but I plan to give out a beer for every fibonacci number of issues you report, starting at 3.. As long as they are not a duplicate. With “improvement” requests, I’m not so sure yet. That will be a mater of personal oppinion, if they are great, I’ll buy you 2 beers, if they are ridiculous, you’ll have to buy me 4 to make me implement it ;)

Let’s make an example: You report 3 issues - get 1 beer, 4 issues - still only 1, 5 issues (2+3) - get 2 beers, 6 & 7 issues - 2 beers, 8 issues - 3 beers etc. Maybe there will be more beer - I don’t know yet :)

`IS HE INSANE?!` - No, not at all. This will force me to write good code, so I don’t have to buy a lot of beers and besides that, I get to know all of you :) It’s like a release party.. But more fun because everyone worked on it..

In short:

  • Write me an E-Mail with you iPhone/iPod UDID, your name and your e-mail address until march 20th, 2009 to beta[AT]codesofa.com
  • Report issues on “Transport” iPhone app.
  • Get paid in beer - and yes, for ladies there will be a special arrangement possible :)

Have fun.

btw.: There is some special ruling for the last testing-period testers, I will figure something out - but you’ll get more ;)

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Filed under: Information, Transport, iPhone on February 27, 2009 at 3:42 pm by marc.
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Use pastie.org with LaunchBar

Since a while, I’m having senile insomnia, so I thought, I should use it for good. One thing that always bugs me at work is the work with pastie (or any other paste-thing) because of the copy - paste - copy thing.
So I wrote a very little script to use it with LaunchBar.

What does it do? It takes your clipboard, pastes it to pastie and pastes the returned URL back into the clipboard..

Here is the script:

pastie.scpt

set pastieURL to "http://pastie.org/pastes"
try
set responseURL to (do shell script "curl http://pastie.caboo.se/pastes/create -H 'Expect:' -F 'paste[parser]=plaintext' -F 'paste[body]=" & (the clipboard) & "' -F 'paste[authorization]=burger' -s -L -o /dev/null -w '%{url_effective}'")
set the clipboard to responseURL
end try

Save this to “~/Library/Application Support/LaunchBar/Actions/” (works with LaunchBar 5) and it will detect it automatically. Type the name of your script and you’re done. So much for my insomnia :)

UPDATE: Just found out about Spark which let’s you define shortcuts for Apple Scripts - which is another nice way.

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Filed under: How-To, Tech on January 8, 2009 at 7:08 am by marc.
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For those who don’t use an RSS reader ;)

If  you read this post in your favorite news reader, then please open the page for once ;)

You may have noticed: The codesofa-design changed quite a lot. Thanks to a very unfair deal with Stefan, I was able to get this very awesome new design. (Unfair for him btw.)
So, why is this new design? It’s all about code. That’s why the layout changed from fixed to dynamic width. That means, that users/developers with 24″ screens will be able to read code much better.. And those with smaller screens will be able to read it in a slightly better way. That’s why there is also a code prettifyer..
For doing all of that and more, I switched to Wordpress - for now. I intended to switch to  Habari, but it didn’t quite give me the support I wanted for now.. So I chose Wordpress, because with Wordpress, you can export to anywhere :) But for now, I’m pretty happy with it, since there are a lot of features I really like. (Besides that Stefan was able to do the templates on his own, without me hacking the XSLs around ;))

You may have noticed, that your RSS reader double-posted the last 10 posts.. This is because of some fancy IDs I was too lazy to change. But all the permalinks, comments and RSS links are still the same. If you find a permalink which doesn’t work anymore, then please tell me.
There might also be some quirks here and there with older blog-posts - just drop me a line :)
I hope you like the new design, because I love it :) Thanks again, Stefan.

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Filed under: Information on November 9, 2008 at 3:21 pm by marc.

GottaGo takes a day off, or two..

As I promised yesterday on twitter and facebook, today is a fun day for GottaGo..
So why is that? GottaGo is retiring. But its younger brother, Transport is taking over the spot..

So this is the official announcement that GottaGo is renamed to Transport.

There is a new logo, a new name, but the App itself hasn’t changed much. We fixed a few issues and improved some minor things like the hitboxes for the Locate-Button and for the Date-Refresh-Button, as they are now a lot bigger.

But, this is again not the fun part :)
Ever since the NDA was in place, I tried to figure out how to get around it. I posted a tutorial about NSXMLParser, which was meant to help iPhone Developers because usually, you’d use DOMDoc and not SAX.

Through personal requests, I was also able to provide some bits and pieces of code because this was some kind of a request of a customer - where you’re allowed to talk about code :)
Now that the SDK has fallen, we have more or less a little greenhouse where we can play around in almost free nature.

A brief history of GottaGo/Transport: It started off as a free-time project and continued as such ever after. I started it to have an example of a real application to help other developers with their own problems. Usually, in books, they always write about your Car object, which has an ivar with wheels and such. Yeah, thanks, not really real-world :) So it’s always nice to look at real code which is used out there. 
To look at code, there really is no better way as to look at Free Open Source Software.

This is why I declare that GottaGo/Transport shall from now on be Open Source and distributed under a more or less GPL v.2 license. So everyone can create their own Transport App or learn from it or improve it. (The latter would be really nice!)

What does this mean? Not so much for the users, as they are only getting better software :) (Yes, I truly believe in FOSS)

For developers this means: Just drop me a line and help developing the best Transport Application for the iPhone there is. This also means that Android developers and iPhone developers in other countries can adapt Transport for their need and release an equally helpful App for their device and country.

For those who don’t really understand what I’m doing here: I give everyone the right to improve, copy and adapt my code.

The code is available on:
https://svn.liip.ch/repos/public/iphone/Transport

(more…)

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Filed under: GottaGo, Information, Transport, iPhone on October 31, 2008 at 2:00 pm by marc.
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