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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.
Tags: 0.9.0, appstore, beer, bugs, iPhone, issues, objective-c, sdk, Transport

done.

 So much for tonight. Thanks Stefan :)

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Filed under: GottaGo, Information, Transport, iPhone on October 8, 2008 at 1:37 am by marc.
Tags: appstore, GottaGo, iPhone, objective-c, Transport

Alea iacta est.. almost.

Well.. Imagine.. You name your child “Bryan” and your wife/husband is from let’s say Iran.. To make your child getting the iranian passport, you’d have to name him/her “Ali” or something (this is actually true.).
Then  you know how I feel now :)

Imagine as well: You are Opel.. They made some not so good cars back then – they had a few bugs. Then they brought out some better cars (I heard so..) but now, nobody – except the few who are really interested in those things – buy Opel anymore. Why? Because they had a bad experience or missed something.

Recently I heard something like this from a former PHP programmer:
I gave him some piece of code.. like this: “$a = new foo_class(); $b = $a;” He was pretty upset that I was going to post him a code which included object copying – and that’s exactly what he hates about PHP. Well this might be true for PHP4 but not for PHP5..

What am I going to tell you.. Well, the recent numbers of “GottaGo” made me think. We had an enormous loss of users after the 2.1 update and those are not coming back – probably never. So even if those hardcore fans who sticked to “GottaGo” over the time have updated so far (we only have about 5% v.0.0.1 users) those who missed something in the first version are not comming back – and they are not trying it again. Sad but true :)
As mentioned in an earlier blogpost, I’m not quite happy with the name “GottaGo” anymore. And even less with the logo. (Not the design itself, which is great, but with the message it sends..)
Besides that, “GottaGo” plays only a siderole in the new version, which kinda makes it not being “GottaGo” anymore. Rather a Schedule/Timetable app based on GottaGo. (To talk a bit of the coding side: almost 75% of the code was rewritten for this release – and of course every pixel was redesigned..)

What I think is that “GottaGo” deserves a new release – with a new name. Unfortunatly I can’t go with a cool name – although there were a few very good suggestions – but all geek names again :)
This means, we are most probably going with “Transport” and some other minor changes.. I hope you don’t mind if I rename this and me being an attention whore – but I think those who supported me in this new release deserve it.. And I think those who are not happy with “SBB Fahrplan” deserve it as well.

Let’s see, how this pays out.. It might be a horribly wrong decision, but since it’s a free-time project, I can only learn. :)

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Filed under: General, GottaGo, Information on September 26, 2008 at 1:16 pm by marc.
Tags: apple, appstore, GottaGo, iPhone, naming, Transport

heissi Maroni! – marrons chauds! – marrone caldi! – hot chestnuts! GottaGo in the App Store

Here we go, after two weeks of waiting, Apple released our beloved GottaGo to App Store last night.
Get it here: liip.to/gottago or just update :)

I’ll keep you posted about further development and experiences with an  updated app vs. a new app.

I keep it short now – just enjoy.

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Filed under: GottaGo, Information, iPhone on September 24, 2008 at 11:25 am by marc.
Tags: annapurna, appstore, GottaGo, released

Time for big changes..

It’s been a while.. since my last blogpost. If you’ve read it, you know why.

No, there is no change on how codesofa is organized or what I do here.. Just big changes in GottaGo – don’t worry, it’s still free.

Let’s take a look back.. A month ago, I released GottaGo and it was a huge success. Even though I knew it was far from perfect – I was quite surprised :)

This gave me the chance to get a lot of feedback which resulted in a lot of thoughts. The biggest issue seemed to be the translations. As I mentioned in an earlier blogpost, this has been fixed – or is beeing fixed right now. Those are actually the easy parts of an update when you had success. Fixing the things the users complained about. Finding things the user will notice only when he sees it, is another thing :)

So another bunch of thoughts.. Soon it was clear – a big change was needed on how GottaGo works internally. Maybe I’ll find time in the future to write in detail about it – or let’s say as soon as Apple lifts the NDA.

I’m now just going through all the features we have now – to wet your tongue a bit ;)

• Live Search:Search through your contacts and stations as you type
• New Locator:Set your desired accuracy and start/stop it whenever you want.
• Setting your travel time:Set the time you want to arrive or travel from.
• Transparent offline mode:Load your old trips without any internet connection
• Station validation:You’ll be prompted, when your station was wrong
• Use addresses or locator for nearby searching:You can even set both to nearby and it will cross-connect them
• Keeps Application stateWherever  you close GottaGo, it will come back to that point
• Favorites with one value onlyDefine your favorites for your from only, or your to only or both
• Very nice UIA lot easier to read and find your way through

This is quite a bit, I’d say – And that’s why it took me so long.. Or let’s say “us”.

So, who is this “us”:

• Stefan Sicher – Had a lot of work, arguing with me about design, usability and the like. But every time he’s more or less excited again to provide me some fine art – Even if that means that he has to do the same view 10 times until it fits. (Like the places view..)
• The local.ch guys – Providing me an API which makes GottaGo so damn cool ;)
• The liip.ch guys – Providing me with time and a lot of support through testing and contacts.
• Memi Beltrame – Doing the translation for our “ragazzi”
• Joel Bez and Jakob Bohnacker – Doing the translations for our “amis”

Does the future look any bright? I hope so. Even though I don’t have any plans for further releases.. Just issue fixing probably.

I think we’ll start some new projects soon. I kinda need a change :) So don’t expect any big updates on GottaGo. Just as the rule no.1 in software engineering: ”Release often, release early”

If anyone’s interested in some new cool apps, just drop me a line :)

When does it come out? Somewhen in the next two weeks. Beta testing will end as of sunday evening, and I’ll release it to the AppStore by then. And then it’s up to Apple  :)

So here are just a few Screenshots and there is of course a video!

Here’s the video: http://couch.codesofa.com/static/ggo_010_streaming.mp4 (About 50mb, h.264)

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Filed under: GottaGo, Information, iPhone on September 11, 2008 at 8:17 pm by marc.
Tags: annapurna, appstore, GottaGo, iPhone, release

Whatever will be, will be..

Well.. Since you folks are really into changes these days, I’ll provide you with a little sneak-preview of what’s coming in the v0.1.0 – Annapurna release.

First off: Language support. GottaGo will be available in english, german, french and italian. And as you see: A totally new UI. (The green disappeared! ;))

Then we have had one request to include Cabs.. Well, since I don’t want to waste my time on cars, I asked the guys over at local to help me a bit here. Thanks to the help of Tobias Ebnöther and Joel Bez of the local.ch team at Liip, this works like a charm.

And last but certainly not least, we have autocompletion. That’s the reason why the UI changed so much..

 
These are just the most significant changes. There are way more changes that you will notice. (Like track number.. But there will be _no_ track number for Zurich HB since this information is not available to me. (Try it on sbb.ch).

However, I cannot tell you about the exact release date. I’m having some exams the next two weeks, so I won’t have time to work a lot on this, but since I canceled release 0.0.2 (Dhaulagiri), this one might come around that time..

I want to thank you all out there for giving me many flowers and a few complaints. Makes working on this a little easier :)

The last few days, I’ve been browsing through the AppStore and I think it’s pretty cool, that 2 of the top 3 apps are not games in Switzerland. And as of the time of writing, neither is the number 1 app. In a lot of other AppStores, the games lead the rankings :) This might also change in the swiss AppStore in a few hours, but it’s cool that it takes a while..

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Filed under: Information, Tech, iPhone on August 11, 2008 at 3:08 am by marc.
Tags: 0.0.2, appstore, GottaGo, iPhone, next-release, sdk