Writing apps for your TV is cool but nothing compared to Your body API. Where is the iBody appstore? http://ping.fm/pDLLe

My sunshine swim was so lazy today that even the ducks were just floating backwards on the river current swim:10min bliss

Everyone should read this in full … http://ping.fm/xFTV9

Reading Steinbeck and thinking about this: “Storytelling is by far the most underrated skill in business” ~ Gary Vaynerchuck

Automating partitioning, sharding and failover with mongodb
http://ping.fm/HJ1TQ

I’ve been holding off posting this for two weeks now. A while ago I vowed to “Swim every day in open water, one year long, all year long”. Such a vow, even if it is made for charity, sounds hollow when uttered in the middle of a heat wave. And that’s exactly what we’ve had in the last two weeks over here in beautiful Lake Constance. So I sucked it up, kept silent about my motives & just went swimming. Every single day.

We’ve had a few days of bad weather now and water temperature has dropped to a level where wetsuits are allowed according to Olympic triathlon rules. The water feels colder. I kept swimming. I’m not even close to needing a wetsuit. So I don’t feel like a complete fool anymore now. Today I’m going to change my tune and explain exactly why I think trying to swim in open water every single day for a full year is an effort worth pursuing.

Reason 1: I’m doing it for charity.

The proceeds of my efforts will go to a good cause called “Charity Water” which vows to bring clean drinking water to developing countries. I think this is an important cause because I strongly believe that the only way forward for humanity is through education. And according to the venerate Dr. Maslow education is only possible when the most basic necessities are met. Chief among them is having access to clean, safe drinking water. In a developing country, just $20 can give one person clean water for 20 years. An average water project costs $5,000 and can serve 250 people with clean, safe water.

I’ve raised a little money from friends over the last few weeks. Some have already paid, some have promised to. If you’re in the latter category or simply if you are reading this & like my little scheme, grab your credit card and head over to http://www.mycharitywater.org/swimdays. Even a small donation like 20$ can make a big difference!

Reason 2: I’m doing it for myself.

I must admit that this is something I actually tried to do last year but I was too much of a pussy to complete so I chickened out somewhere in October, when water temperatures hit about 15 degrees. The combination of doing a startup that is all about self-motivation and my business partner Denis taking me on for a bet convinced me to try again this year.

Ever since I moved to Konstanz I have been fascinated by open water swimming. I always loved water & swimming but swimming in a lake opened up a new world to me. Suddenly swimming wasn’t about doing laps anymore, but was like it was meant to be: long stretches of paced out strokes, swimming at a rhythm that is simply impossible to emulate in a pool. I’m doing this challenge because I simply want to become a great open water swimmer.

I’ve seen a pretty decent improvement in swimming technique over the last two weeks. The first week was hard on my body. I was completely out of shape and succumbed to the pretty moronic idea of starting out with a rather long 1.5 hour swimming session against the current. My muscles were feeling sore and cramped out all week after that. But I sticked to the simple routine of swimming every single day, even if it was only for 10 minutes. After a week my body adapted and I finally didn’t look like a drowning monkey anymore. I hit read up a little on swimming & started working on technique. If you’re interested in open water swimming, bookmark this blog, I’ll be posting up some open water swimming tips soon.

Reason 3: I’m doing it for Quantter.

Quantter is all about numbers & tracking your efforts. I strongly believe in dogfooding your own product & so I’ve been using a prototype of the Quantter website to track my swimming. You can check my progress by simply following me on twitter: @francis_dierick. I’ll be posting my first results soon and of course the whole Quantter tracking tool will be available to the world.

I’m working on an exciting new project that isn’t directly related to iPhone/iPad so I’ll be toning down my posting on Fakepad a bit.

The AppStore has been good to me, especially after the NYT mention of Biblethumper. While I’ll be maintaining my existing apps, I expect the new project to take up most of my nighttime coding sessions.

A new app is on the horizon, but right now that looks to be 2-3 months in the future. In the meantime I’ll be writing a lot of Python infrastructure code. So expect me to get started writing about iPhone development again in a few weeks, but right now … radio silence …

Radio Picture by dsearls on Flickr.

P.S. I’ve been swimming a lot lately, which is at least tangentially related to my new project.

A few weeks ago there was a minor shitstorm brewing in the Huffington Post following some conservative politicians and bloggers spinning Apple’s rejection of ‘iSlam Muhammed’ into an ‘OMFG! Apple haz leftie bias’ thing.

That bugged me. A lot. I hate political spin. So I decided to give those royal douchebags Emery-Emery and Ari David a run for their money. I created a Muslim version of my BibleThumper app called QuranQuoter & sure enough, Apple accepted it! Isn’t that faptastic?

It’s in the AppStore, so if you’re a good atheist, go out & buy it now

Also, spread the message to your atheist friends & link up this blog entry. I have far less media power than the Breitbart gang so I can use all the help I can get!

Emery-Emery said in his video: “… Biblethumper is exactly the same as what I’ve made for the bible …” (paraphrased). No Merry Amy, it’s not! Exactly the same would be:

verses + book image + bookmarking function + mild description in AppStore

Instead you did:

verses + offensive cartoon + offensive AppStore description + offensive App name

Gee, who would have thought: respectful, polite criticism actually works, even in the AppStore!

Some peeps take offense at BibleThumper. Others at QuranQuoter. Holy Mary, I take offense at your comparison of Biblethumper with iSlam Muhammed: while my app is full of tongue-in-cheek humor, yours is full of offensive mockery.

While fighting religious fundamentalism of all stripes and colors is a good thing (TM), no battles were ever won by antagonizing religious folks.

To all my moderate muslim & christian friends: I love you, I really do. But when you go all fundie on me, I’ll ptero your ass.

To all crazy religious fun-tards reading this, I say: Stop !

(Thor’s) Hammer Time!

Bootstrapping is all the rage right now. The startup scene seems to be all about being ramen profitable, building micro-ISVs (that’s an indie for you macheads) & hawking minimum viable products. But there’s a fine line between living the startup life frugally and being a cheap bastard. Sometime in the last 9 months I must have unwittingly crossed that line, here’s my story.

I’m cheap. Yep. Dirtbag cheap. I’ve been in the iPhone OS development game for about 9 months now & I still don’t own an iPhone. I deployed most of my apps to the iTunes AppStore without testing them on a real device. I only bought my developer license on the eve of submitting my first apps to the AppStore. Then somewhere in December of last year I begrudgingly forked over 180 euros for an iPod Touch because I needed access to a device with an accelerometer. I even used AppViz* for free month after month because I was A) cheap and B) PayPal arbitrarily blocked my account (PayPal, you still owe me 70 euros, you scumbag!).

My motivation for entering the iPhone app building game was a mixture of boredom with web development, a pining for the good old C development days & observing how obviously insanely great Apple’s iPhone was. While I owned an Android G1, developing apps for it never crossed my mind: doing java development privately is not my idea of sexy.

So I set off building iPhone apps, doing what is only logical in Apple’s AppStore environment: building simple, low maintenance apps that don’t rely on server infrastructure or third-party libraries. The AppStore seems be built for bootstrappers: if you can code a small app that is all about ‘set & forget’, doesn’t get you kicked out of the AppStore & that is mildly viral you can easily set yourself up for some tasty passive income. So that explains the 250k+ apps!

And you can do all of that without actually owning an iPhone. Sure I got myself an iPod touch for debugging, but it has been actively collecting dust: I have an Android for my phone needs & a Macbook Pro for everything else.

While not being a real user is fine when all you’re doing is building simple apps, once you want to start building something more substantial, dogfooding becomes a must. I should have given up my obsession with bootstrapping and running a lean iPhone development operation months ago when I made the transfer from simple apps to ‘real’ development. Alas I did not: I only started using my iPad & iPod last week. Since then I’ve learned more about what it is like to be an iPhone OS consumer than in the last 6 months of iPhone development.

This is what I learned by NOT being a cheap ass & forking over the cash for an iPad and some apps.

iOS consumers are committed to the platform

Once you start using iOS there’s no going back. Nothing ties you more to a platform than the cold hard cash you shelled out for apps. And don’t forget Apple already has you locked in through your music purchases. The size of Apple’s iTunes market makes that kind of lock-in actually more bearable for users because, hey, it’s not like Apple is going to disappear overnight and take all of your music & apps with them. Relying on that single company for your media consumption actually has an underestimated consumer advantage: FREE backups!

Out of pure laziness I actually lost all of my previous purchases & one simple email to Apple support made them pull some switch & voila! all of my content magically re-appeared in iTunes for download. The sheer size of Apple makes purchasing content in the AppStore a very re-assuring experience for the consumer.

With all of our bitching about Apple’s policies, we developers tend to forget that for plenty of consumers out there Apple’s offer is ‘good enough’. Normal people trust the Apple brand, don’t seem to mind the lock-in too much & will happily fork over a little cash to make Apple fulfill their media consumption desires. I didn’t understand Apple’s deal being ‘good’ enough’ for most people until I became an iOS-based media consumer myself.

So sure, while Android adoption may increase in absolute numbers & may dent Apple’s app sales, until someone comes with an all-encompassing ‘media consumption’ store my bet stays on Apple.

Apps appeals to your user’s inner packrat

This one only hit me after my first couple of purchases: iOS apps are as much about collectibles as they are about software. There’s something addictive about adding apps to your iOS devices. I’ve observed this in other people before, but never experienced the ‘collectioner’ feeling until I started buying my first apps. What you put on your iPhone is a conscious & often self-conscious choice. After all, what’s on your iPhone tells something about yourself. People write blog posts about what’s on their iPhone, upload pictures of their icon screens to Flickr.

I never quite understood the success of a silly app like Biblethumper until now: sure, the app is simple, but at least it’s fairly original & if you’re an atheist it’s something you’ll be proud of having on your iPhone.

So, do the iPhone apps you are building have collectible value? Do they possess the spit & polish of a quality app that your user will be proud to show off on their home screen? Do you appeal to your user’s inner packrat?

iOS is about revenge ON the nerds, not OF the nerds

There’s a clear distinction in company culture between Google & Apple. While Google is all about the hard sciences & engineer culture, Apple has always been an outlier in the technology sector because of its attention to the soft sciences. In the last 20 years or so, ever since the PC revolution, the nerds have pretty much ruled the world; simply because the pace of technological change has been unprecedented and geeks were the only ones who were able to stay on top of technological complexity. The user experience of most technology, and especially software, has been pretty abysmal: most people have grown accustomed having to rely on the nerd-next-door to maintain their computers.

Imagine the reaction when a company like Apple suddenly comes with devices like iPhones and iPads that don’t feel like computers, don’t require nearly as much maintenance & ‘Just work’. Or at least work enough. Imagine the reaction: “Hey, tech doesn’t need to be difficult. Those nerds have been fooling us all along. Screw them.”

So, what about that iPad your mother has bought behind your back, against your ‘expert advice’? Yep, that’s her “revenge ON the nerds” for 20 years of tech disservice.

• P.S. : The AppViz guys were kick-ass cool about my inability to pay with PayPal. They offered me a great deal and I’m now a legitimate user. Appviz rules!

• Nerd image Creative Commons by katybate on Flickr, Ramen image Creative Commons by jasonlam on Flickr

storyteller asked: thanks for your last post, I really enjoy all of it. best if it also payed the hard drinks but anyway, very happy that indie developers (indie as being able to ,respectfully, say and do whatever you want ) can make money and then share their thoughts on the process with us all.
I won't buy your app, but I'll definetly follow your tumblr :)

Thanks mate, I’ve been a bit lazy on the blog front since I’ve been travelling a lot. Glad you appreciate my style. Right now, iPhone dev is decidedly in the “It’s not a startup, it’s a hobby” camp for me but I’m having a blast developing apps for these amazing devices.

Actually the hardest thing for indie iphone devs is not the coding but promoting your work.