The first few weeks, I somewhat asked myself: do we need a business plan? Well, that’s quite a tricky one. In my opinion: no. I would rather spend that time developing and thinking about new ideas than crunching numbers. It would be very boring to quote Moltke (“No battle plan ever survives contact with the enemy.”) Sure they do. Just keep it simple, stupid. I’m not really a big fan of “one line quotes to explain the world”. This is all a bit deeper than some guy saying what you think anyway. So the idea is this: we have a plan, we just don’t have a business plan. But don’t think of this as a straight line that you have to follow (and change every time you hit a rock..) but think of it as a tree, with many many branches – and hopefully not so many leaves. And there is no need to write it all down, you are a moving organism. And you’d better make use of that.

So, clearly this wasn’t something I wanted to do. And I didn’t. And so far, it worked quite well. However, in order to structure this a bit better, here are two lists.

A few things that worked out like planed:
1) No hiring. At least no full-time position. You have so much to do in the first year anyway, there really is no need to have someone you always have to look after. And we never needed to. Of course we could have, but I’d rather do another nightshift until then.
2) No Investors. Be it angels or VCs. Why? Ethics, I think. I would rather not eat for a week than begging someone for money in clothes I don’t usually wear. I think this is because of my age, but right now, I’m quite comfortable with that one.
3) Fuck off. I really don’t give a damn about being polite when I don’t want to. I really really don’t. I am like I am, and I think I’m alright that way. And boy do I think this world would be a better place if people would be honest.
4) Rock on. What does it mean? Have a big fucking party. This is not going to be another job. This company is 50% me. This is my life, my “soul”. There has never been a day I thought “oh my, I don’t wanna go to work” – of course there were, but not because of the job but because of the night before.
5) Partner. Ok, I didn’t plan this one, I just hoped that Stefan would be the guy that he turned out to be. I think working with someone you can trust 100% and be honest 100% is just as awesome as working on stuff you like. (Which doesn’t mean we never argue. The great thing is, that we both always think “it’s for partiql” and we would never quit).

But this was also a big awakening call. There are always things that don’t work as you might expect.
1) No clients. After Liip, I really was done with clients. I had seen so many things going south because there was some ridiculous nuthead on the client side, killing a generally good idea point blank. However, even in Switzerland, money doesn’t grow on trees. However, I think we should call us very lucky with the clients we had the chance to work with. We were also quite picky, maybe that helped a lot. (So, be picky, if we all educate the stupids, maybe they will learn one day.)
2) Work/Life balance. Oh my, was I wrong. I thought it would be possible to maintain a normal life while still giving all it needs at work. It sure wasn’t for me. I work 6 days a week, usually from 9am to 1am. Of course I take days and evenings off etc, but generally, this is how my weeks look. When you are working, head down, you are not getting out, no way. You’ll ditch friends, family and your girlfriend – to some extent. I haven’t seen my closest friends for 3 months, haven’t made it to bed at the same time with my then girlfriend for months, haven’t made it home for dinner, even almost missed my own birthday. Clearly something I underestimated.
3)  Money. Money runs out quicker than you think :) Ok, I made the “mistake” of using a lot while I was working for a startup before we launched partiql, which cost me a lot of what I had saved before. But a bit more wouldn’t have hurt anyone. Anyway, if I would do this again, I would make sure I had more money to start with. (Or get less picky, see above.)
4)  Chaos. This is a double sided one. We are both absolutely chaotic. And quite frankly, we like it. However, this world is not really made that way. And if the world would be foam, then Switzerland would be a solid block of concrete in that matter. There is no way in hell you could just sit in your garage and launch a small business. No, you’ll do tons of insurance, taxes, health care and what do I know sort of stuff. And it’s annoying and so not productive. At the moment, I think I would be better of by breaking my neck, money wise. But I’m actually not that sure for how long etc. and if they would actually pay. Next time I launch a startup, I think I wouldn’t necessarily do it in Switzerland. (However, I don’t know if it’s better somewhere else, but certainly cheaper, I guess).

So, this was a short essay into what you might expect if you are naive and launch your own company. However, I survived, I survived quite well and I learned a lot. I’d say: shut the old guys up, however keep them in mind to get a good laugh when something worked out in a way they would have never thought it would. This is your run, and you are free to go barefoot until you realize that you need running shoes to run better. At least by that time you know why you need them and what kind you need.

So, get it here: http://partiql.com/showtime and look for your country.

Of course we have more features planed, especially for the pro version.
Enjoy it, and remember to leave a feedback or review! :)

I must admit tho, in the first week, my  impressions while commuting were a bit poorly because taking the iPad out of your bag in a swiss train is somewhat.. let’s just say not my style :) (It was mid April, no iPad here till end of May)
It was just the same at ETH. Everytime I took it out, I either ended up with hearing people whispering “Hey, isch das es iPad?” (en: Is that an iPad?) or coming over and asking me, if they may hold it for a while. (I guess that’s how mothers feel when everyone wants to hold their babies? – JUST DON’T FRIGGIN DROP IT!).

#1: ETH or less arrogant: University.

The iPad was announced during my last exam session – and I was eagerly waiting to give this thing a try since you read mostly PDFs at ETH. This is basically how it works here: Usually, you don’t have Podcasts, you sometimes get your “course book” on paper and most of the times you get the slides of every lecture online.
I currently have 5 courses, only one engineering course this semester. The rest is pretty much only “blah blah”. (no, that was not free choice) Which means: many many slides. So, sometimes I printed them out during the semester or I had to print them before the exams (double sided, 4 slides per side..). What happened now is that I read every single information of my courses on the iPad. It’s kind of paradox – I didn’t like to read the stuff on my laptop, which is why I printed it in the first place. But I really like reading all the slides and exercises on the iPad.

This reduced the weight I usually carry around quite a bit. And since I have a device with a screen I can actually read something for an hour I’m able to leave my laptop at home. (Except for the boring days). This also reduced the weight of course, but it’s not the key point. When I brought my laptop with me, I usually opened it – I tend to get bored very quickly. And when I opened it, I started working on some programming projects. As some may know, when I’m programming, then I don’t get much information of what’s happening around me – including a boring course. So, now I don’t have the laptop anymore, only my iPad. Now the thing is that I either read the slides on it – or browse the web for a while during which I’m actually able to multitask. And I really do feel the effect of paying attention during the lecture – I get tired.

But, there is always a downside, right? I’ll just put it straight out: FOR FUCKS SAKE, why can I not save my PDFs with safari? “Are _you_ nuts?”. This makes it so ridiculously annoying to read stuff on a “bad WiFi day”. There’s another thing – which is also the 3rd question every fellow student asks me: can you mark text. Short answer: not with Safari. I think there are Apps  out there that can save PDFs and mark text in them. But the hassle of searching for the PDF in Safari, copying the link into that app and saving it there – I’m not so sure about that experience. As a student, I really really miss these two things: 1) Saving my PDFs – I now have 2 screens full of links to PDFs and 2) Mark text in PDFs – and then generate an abstract of the PDF?

This might be ETH specific, but yes, we do not have the best WiFi infrastructure – and depending on where you are seated, you have very bad reception. The fact that the iPad’s WiFi reception is not really its strong suit doesn’t improve that either.

#1 Conclusion

A nice device for students. It’s very slim, quite light (if you are able to hold your arms out for a minute…..) and great for reading. It’s lacking some core features tho, like saving PDFs and marking text in a PDF. As a student, you need to be able to work with information – which you cannot out of the box. Given the high price tag, I wouldn’t really – and never have – recommend it to my fellow students just now. I don’t really know about the payed Apps, since I only use the free Apps, which are not really striking. Out of the box: not really, but if you can afford it: go for it! With the right Apps: go for it! Ah, yeah, and if you are looking for girls: the male/female ratio of people approaching me was 50/50 – My guess if you are a single and female with an iPad: make sure you have some spare time ;)

#2 Commuting

First: again, I don’t have a paid iTunes account, so I’m just using iBooks with Project Gutenberg. Alright, I put it out there – I sometimes read books ;) While commuting, I do 3 things in 99% of the cases: read/watch the news, read books and watch podcasts – the order reflects the precedence. As I said in the beginning, I wasn’t really into people talking to me during the train ride. But you get used to it a.k.a. you learn how to cut it short ;) The first few days were horrible with this thing. I usually commute when it’s bright outside, say: I’m not really the guy for 8AM lectures. Reading on this shiny glossy mirror in the train gave me one hell of a headache. You see short reflections of the sun, houses etc. all passing by. At some point I thought it was much worse than with my macbook pro. As usual, you don’t always get the window seats – which actually reduced this problem! If you are not sitting next to the window: way less reflections and sparks etc. I really started to like watching podcasts. Watching podcasts? Yeah, the iPad doesn’t perform very well in WiFi only mode in trains. Even if some trains have WiFi nowadays, I tend to miss those consequently. This bugged me for a while. I really liked the iPad experience of wired.com or cnn.com – and I wasn’t really unhappy with nzz.ch either. There was a solution to this: Android.

After hacking around for a while with my ADP1, I found a tool called WiFi tethering. It basically turns your phone into a wireless access point. However, the battery drains very quickly. But hey, I could now read my news in the morning! I have to say, reading your daily newspaper on this thing: awesome. But publishers have some work to do. While I usually liked the web experience, I couldn’t find many native iPad applications that really caught my eye. If there is one, then probably the NYT – but I somehow enjoy their web experience a lot more. Wired is coming up with a really cool application. I’m really looking forward to it. I think I made a lot of “the suits” jealous when I was watching some video on wired.com after having finished reading the NZZ.. (You know the feeling when you know somebody is watching over your shoulder?). I must admit, I haven’t found the proper way of holding this thing, especially in trains. You don’t have the space to do the iPad sitting style besides the fact that this is a very uncomfortable position anyway.

Nonetheless, I enjoy reading my daily news on the iPad, while trying out different positions to hold it :)

Because the Android battery drains rather quickly, I usually read books on the way home. “The Time Machine” by H.G. Wells lately. I kind of had the same issues as with reading news in the beginning: reflections and holding. It’s easier to hold it if you are reading books, because you only have to tap the right side if you want to flip the page, which means you can hold it with your right hand or both hands. The bookstore is really nice – I love the concept of the in-app-bookstore. If only I had U.S. CreditCard. I don’t really know why this has to be all that difficult to just buy a friggin book. Probably different agreements with every country. “Kantoenligeist” as we call it.. Anyway. I like the main font, the others not so much. The screen is bright enough and you can change the brightness in the iBook app while reading. As long as there are no reflections from the sun or other light sources, you can read fairly well. I’d say for the passionate reader, this might not be the ultimate device, but for casual 1h a day readers like me, this thing does the trick fairly well. There is another questions/remark I get fairly often: Why didn’t they just use continuous scrolling with books. Yeah, well.. I tried that here: http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/35/pg35.html – Holy crap, that would be really really annoying. I think there is a reason why we use books with pages and not rolls of paper. Pages give you orientation and a sense of progress (how much is left?). Whereas scrolling is just annoying and you feel lost in a very very long piece of text. (It almost  takes your motivation away – for the casual reader that is.)

#2 Conclusion

Commuting with the iPad is difficult today – because everyone wants to touch it or talk to you. (Again, it’s End of April 2010, no iPad launch in Switzerland). Once this is resolved, I think I will use my iPad with much less worries :) I don’t see the WiFi only model as something a commuter would use here. If you are a really passionate book reader – not needing internet at all in the train, and thus only require WiFi, you may wanna opt for a Nuuk or Kindle. For the rest of us: I’m really looking forward to the 3G model. It’s very nice to use the device everywhere you can use your mobile phone and still be able to do most of the things on the web on a nice, larger screen. (Note: Videos on NZZ.ch do not belong the the 90% of the internet video you can watch on this device). Reading books for the not so picky people: nice. Not great tho, but nice. Watching podcasts – what shall I say? It’s just great. But they couldn’t do a lot of mistakes here either..

#3 One Last Thing

The battery life on this thing is just great. Especially for people like me who have to charge 3 device every day – I always forget one. So I’m really glad I can usually charge my iPad on Thursday and Sunday evening (not that it is empty by then, but just for safety).

This is it. For Students: very nice, lacks features. Buy it if you have the money. Commuters: really, wait for the 3G model. (Or buy an Android phone..).

As you may know by know, a few days ago, we announced partiql, a software company. And this is my story behind it, why it’s such a damn joyride :)

About 9 months ago, I sat in the sun, somewhere between San Jose and Palo Alto and had a nice sandwich, probably Subways. I remember that day pretty clearly, I almost got arrested at Google and Apple at the same day ;)

It was in situations like these when I dreamed of having my own company, getting up late in the morning, creative people around and work on things I like and only a few who I trust tell me what to do in certain situations. Why? I don’t know. Daydreaming perhaps. I just thought about making a living around the corner of LinkedIn, Radar Networks or Digg. It all felt so vibrant, so bold, so pumping. Back home, it was hard at first, realizing that the bank account probably wouldn’t allow an own startup right now.. Days went by, I started working at Memonic, got quite a good feeling of what it’s like to work with a startup. They always call(ed) it Roller Coaster, and that’s probably the right term for it. One day you are down, no users, no one cares about you. The other day you are featured on lifehacker.com. Yet when you have to explain the product to someone you suddenly realize that you haven’t done so much yet but yet you worked like crazy.. WTF? (That’s valid for everything I’ve ever done..) However, you get something back, that not everyone gets. You see something grow, something “getting born..”

I once had a nice chat with Marc Liyanage about how long he will remain a Software Developer, because I was unsure if I wanted to do this all my life.. He said something like “writing software is one of the only things you can create something on your own out of nothing” – and this sentence has been in my head ever since.

So, this feeling of something getting alive… I tell you, it’s quite addictive. You not only get sick and tired of doing the same stuff over and over again, you also feel the need to create something from scratch every now and then. Having tabula rasa once in a while is a nice feeling. And this is why we and specifically I founded partiql.com.. Every day I come across technology I so desperately want to try out, be it at ETH (rarely) or by reading (often), that I would let everything else fall for the moment. “Es grausams ADHS Chind” (EN: “a terrible ADD child”) – as my girlfriend once noted :) Also, I have that inner desire to strive for perfection. And this doesn’t mainly mean the perfection you see, but the perfection I know. I think every developer knows what I’m talking about, that line of code that shouldn’t be there, that one element that wasn’t meant to be in that class.. (But of course also things that you might and will see..). Since Stefan is one of the best partners you can imagine to start up a company, it’s pretty easy for me to do a lot of refactoring and prototyping. Currently, we have a setup of 4-8 hosts, completely dynamic, running with some pretty fancy software like MongoDB and other software that even I wouldn’t recommend if we had 20 employees to feed (no offense, former employers). It’s those risks that make it so exciting. Will the API hold? Will the setup scale for real? Is the App really ready? Will we get a lot of one star rating because we didn’t live up to the expectations?

Can you feel it? I really cannot tell you to try it out, because it’s like publicly announcing that you should try cocaine or something.

Even the marketing. Both Stefan and I never did something like this before. Raising expectations before something’s finished? Not really our style. But, it’s like adding a bit of concrete into the water you are about to jump into from about 100m (300ft).

There are still many dreams to come. Like providing that space of creativity, sanctuary where other people can experience the same thing, but maybe with some help and a fallback option. Or going completely different ways with other style of applications, other devices.. Whatever will come, I’m excited as hell to be on this trip now.

Wanna know what it’s like? You hardly get any sleep, you are always nervous (“chribelig”) and yet you have that superhero feeling inside of you. A burning desire to tell everyone what you are doing yet you cannot tell anyone. Having good friends around you that help you, that wish you well but who’s expectations you have yet to meet. It feels like Stockholm Syndrome, it might torment you, but you still would never let go.

Thank you all for the great support so far and I really hope we can live up to the expectations we have set.

Future?
I don’t really know, where this is all going. For the time being, I will work on a handful very interesting projects – sorry, NDA here. In September, my ETH studies will continue after my 1 year absence. My interests have shifted a bit and my vision of where I want to go became clearer in this year – all in all, I don’t regret postponing my studies – but I’m eager to get going again.
Besides that, there will be some other announcement coming – sometimes around October – about projects and things like that. I hope you don’t mind me delaying everything – but the last few weeks/months were a bit tough.

Conclusion
1. I’m still coding – like crazy.
2. Thank you, Liip

So long, and thanks for all the fish!

I started off with making it a decorator.. After 20′ I had to give up, because it was just too complicated to decorate objects where you don’t really know what’s going on. So I had to subclass it – unfortunately, but anyway..

Let’s take a look at what you would probably like to have..

Client

UIAlertTableView *alert = [[UIAlertTableView alloc] initWithTitle:@"Select Option"
    message:@"select option or create one"
    delegate:self
    cancelButtonTitle:@"Cancel"
    otherButtonTitles:@"Create", nil];
alert.tableDelegate = self;
alert.dataSource = self;
alert.tableHeight = 120;

And this should be the result:

Alright, so, we just add a UITableView to the UIAlertView as a Subview, right? Hold on, Tiger :)
First of all, if we set the message to nil, we want to have this:

And if we rotate, we want to have the nice effects! Like this:

Rotate Animation

If you only want to grab the code without BlahBlah: UIAlertTableView on Bitbucket.org (btw. I switched to bitbucket.org – but that’s another story)

So, let’s look at the code a bit:

UIAlertTableView.h

#import <UIKit/UIKit.h>

@class UIAlertView;

@interface UIAlertTableView : UIAlertView {
	// The Alert View to decorate
	UIAlertView *alertView;

	// The Table View to display
	UITableView *tableView;

	// Height of the table
	int tableHeight;

	// Space the Table requires (incl. padding)
	int tableExtHeight;

	id dataSource;
	id tableDelegate;
}

@property (nonatomic, assign) id dataSource;
@property (nonatomic, assign) id tableDelegate;

@property (nonatomic, readonly) UITableView *tableView;
@property (nonatomic, assign) int tableHeight;

- (void)prepare;

@end

You see: we subclass UIAlertView, we have a UITableView, we have a delegate which needs to implement the protocol as well as a dataSource. Straight forward, I’d say…

Now, as for the implementation, one would think: just overload the “show” method and insert the TableView as a subview etc. Well, that works – NOT. First of all: you have to resize your AlertView, then you have to move the buttons down and then you have to place the tableView somewhere (esoteric?).
OkOk, just overwrite the drawRect then? You are getting closer!
But, first, let’s have a look at the prepare method.

UIAlertTableView.m:prepare

- (void)prepare {
	if (tableHeight == 0) {
		tableHeight = 150.0f;
	}

	// Calculate the TableViewHeight with padding
	tableExtHeight = tableHeight + 2 * kTablePadding;

	tableView = [[UITableView alloc] initWithFrame:CGRectZero style:UITableViewStylePlain];
	tableView.delegate = tableDelegate;
	tableView.dataSource = dataSource;	

	// Insert it as the first subview
	[self insertSubview:tableView atIndex:0];
}

This code creates the TableView but does not set a real frame yet. It sets the given DataSource and Delegate. To be totally correct, there should be a custom setTableDelegate / setDataSource method which changes them in the tableView – but this is left as an exercise to the reader :)
After the creation, we insert the tableView as the very first subview of the alertView – so we know where to find it again and that nothing is hidden because of the tableView.

Now comes the tricky part: drawing.
For that, we use a private API call to the AlertView, called layoutAnimated:(BOOL)animated.
We overload it in our custom subclass because the initial drawing and the drawing on setNeedsLayout goes through that method.
After that method is called, all the elements that belong to the AlertView (title, message, buttons …) are arranged, so we can use those values for our next computations.

So, this is how it goes:

UIAlertTableView.m:layoutAnimated

- (void)layoutAnimated:(BOOL)fp8 {
	[super layoutAnimated:fp8];
	[self setFrame:CGRectMake(self.frame.origin.x, self.frame.origin.y - tableExtHeight/2, self.frame.size.width, self.frame.size.height + tableExtHeight)];

	// We get the lowest non-control view (i.e. Labels) so we can place the table view just below
	UIView *lowestView = [self.subviews objectAtIndex:0];
	int i = 0;
	while (![[self.subviews objectAtIndex:i] isKindOfClass:[UIControl class]]) {
		UIView *v = [self.subviews objectAtIndex:i];
		if (lowestView.frame.origin.y + lowestView.frame.size.height < v.frame.origin.y + v.frame.size.height) {
			lowestView = v;
		}

		i++;
	}

	// TODO: calculate this value
	CGFloat tableWidth = 262.0f;

	tableView.frame = CGRectMake(11.0f, lowestView.frame.origin.y + lowestView.frame.size.height + 2 * kTablePadding, tableWidth, tableHeight);

	for (UIView *sv in self.subviews) {
		// Move all Controls down
		if ([sv isKindOfClass:[UIControl class]]) {
			sv.frame = CGRectMake(sv.frame.origin.x, sv.frame.origin.y + tableExtHeight, sv.frame.size.width, sv.frame.size.height);
		}
	}
}

Step by step: first, we call the superclass - so everything gets arranged.
Then, we set a new frame for the AlertView, which is the same frame + tableHeight + padding. But we also need to rearrange the frame - which is half of that additional height.
After that, we compute the lowest "sitting" normal view - no control object - in the alert view. We loop through it, until we find the first control element - which are usually the buttons, because they are added at the end. You could loop through all views and get the lowest from any non-UIControl objects. But this works :)
This position is used to place the TableView at the correct position - whether you have a message, a title or whatever there.. but it needs to be above the buttons - UI standards.
To be above the buttons, we need to rearrange the buttons, and this is what happens: all UIControl object in the AlertView are moved down by the size we added to the AlertView frame - the complete TableHeight. And this is it.
We resize the AlertView, calculate the position where the TableView is supposed to be inserted at and then move the buttons. If we rotate, this gets calculated again and nicely rearranged.

Note: you can apply the very same method for any other UIView object you want to insert into an UIAlertView.. Be it TextField or ImageView or whatever. (For textField, you should use their private APIs though)

Again, code is here: Code on Bitbucket.org

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.

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..

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 ;)

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.