Philipp Schmid - posts tagged 'OpenResearch'

Apotheken app launched today!

Fri, 16 Apr 2010 16:50:18 GMT

Get the iPhone Apotheken (Pharmacies) App here: http://www.apoapp.at

Zimt – OpenResearch iPhone Library

Sat, 20 Feb 2010 17:01:26 GMT

We just started our own public iPhone library: http://github.com/openresearch/zimt

For now it includes:

ZTFakeLocationManager

CLLocationManager subclass that can read a list of waypoints from a file and simulate location updates. Meant to be used on simulator for testing. See samples/FakeLocation

ZTWebSocket

Probably the first WebSocket client implementation written in Objective-C

How to get the current iPhone Language Code

Mon, 11 Jan 2010 02:11:55 GMT

We are currently developing an iPhone App which requires localization support and I ran into an issue while trying to get currently set language.

Cocoa Touch has a class called NSLocale which let’s you query the language by writing the following code:

[NSLocale currentLocale] objectForKey:NSLocaleLanguageCode];

At least one would expect so, but it actually gives you the language of the region format you have configured in your settings.

For example:
If you have your iPhone language set to ‘English’, but your region format is set to ‘Germany’, the call will return ‘de’ instead of ‘en’.

What you really should call is:

[[NSLocale preferredLanguages] objectAtIndex:0]

Because this gives you not the language associated with the region, but the language the device is actually configured for.

Invoice App

Thu, 07 Jan 2010 00:27:31 GMT

I’m officially self-employed for about a year now and one of the duties that came along was creating invoices.

Not that I have to write lots of invoices, I usually create about one or two a month, so I’m not in the need of a sophisticated billing solution.

Still, being an internet geek, I started my search for the perfect invoicing tool that fits my needs.

Here are some of the sites I remember having tried back then:

I was really looking for a simple app, but then decided to stay with Free Agent, because they allowed me to import my bank statements and to be my own accountant.

I don’t remember why I didn’t choose Invoice Machine, as it looks really nice and simple to me now.

Anyway, as said, I went with Free Agent, and it is a very nice app, but there are two main problems I experienced which led to the app I’m going to talk about in a minute.

The first problem is, that while having all this data within Free Agent, I don’t have much of a clue about accounting and I have a real accountant anyway.
So the data on Free Agent wasn’t really correct and was redundant to the work done by my accountant.

The second reason why I quit Free Agent about two weeks ago, is that I’m now Co-Founder of another company where we need to write invoices as well and I didn’t want to pay another $20 a month just for invoicing.

While $40 dollars a month alone are not that much, it adds up with other subscriptions. There are the two Basecamp accounts, the flickr accounts, the ….. – do you get you I mean?

So at first I started creating invoices with Apple Pages, but it just doesn’t feel right to me. Maybe because you have to actually spend more time formatting than creating the content or because it’s a pain to share and store them – I don’t really know.

So about two weeks ago, we just started to build our own little invoice generator to fit exactly our needs and it took only a few days from start to finish.

Here is short feature list:

Built for us, but usable by everyone
See how your invoice looks like, while editing it
Upload your own invoice templates (with support for different languages)
Generate a PDF for sharing or printing
Track the payment state of your invoice (due, overdue, paid)
Manage your contacts (very, very simple) and see who owes you what
One account can be administrated by multiple users
A user can be associated with multiple accounts and we have an account switch bar like 37signals new launchbar
German and english localization
It’ s free

It’s called Invoice App and is a straight forward Rails application. We initially started it as a Rails 3.pre app for fun, but then switched back to the current stable to save some time and get it usable as fast as possible.

We plan to keep it as a free tool as long as hosting or support costs don’t become a significant factor.

Please give it a spin and send us your feedback to: feedback@invoiceapp.com

good apple push notification tutorial

Wed, 09 Dec 2009 21:58:52 GMT

http://blog.boxedice.com/2009/07/10/how-to-build-an-apple-push-notification-provider-server-tutorial

Billig Tanken is App Store #1 Free (in Austria)

Sun, 29 Nov 2009 23:43:09 GMT

“Billig tanken” aka “Benzin” 2.0 has been released

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 15:53:03 GMT

MeetMe for iPhone released as free Application

Thu, 08 Oct 2009 13:56:38 GMT

We have released MeetMe as a free application.

Get it on the App Store!

Benzin is the best selling App in Austria!

Sat, 19 Sep 2009 19:16:18 GMT

Get it at: http://www.benzinapp.at

App Store link: http://www.benzinapp.at/download

Benzin

Thu, 17 Sep 2009 08:11:36 GMT

Apple has just released our iPhone application Benzin to the App Store!

Benzin is basically a very nice interface to find the nearest and cheapest gas stations in Austria.
We used quite some tricks to speed it up and keep the over thousand gas stations browsable in a fast and convenient manner.

We support the following fuel types (in German): Diesel, Biodiesel, Benzin, Super, Super Plus, Super Ultimate and Erdgas.

Checkout our dedicated site at: http://www.benzinapp.at