As a long time iDevBlogADay reader (and writer) I noticed that most game programming related posts revolve around Cocos2D. This comes at no surprise since indie game devs prefer simpler 2D games and Cocos2D is the perfect fit. However, there is another strong contender available – Unity 3, although a 3D gaming creation tool, it can be very well used for 2D games too (as the excellent article series from Tim Miller showed).

About Unity

At its core Unity is a game development tool. It is available for Mac and Windows. Using a single code basis, a game can be exported to various platforms including iOS, Android, PC, Mac, Web (also PS3, Xbox and Wii). The basic version is free of charge and allows the creation and royalty free distribution of PC, Mac and Web games. The iOS export component costs 400$ (other components are priced differently). There is also a “pro” version available for Unity itself and the iOS and Android components featuring some nice goodies like advanced audio filters using FMOD, advanced rendering techniques, profiler, custom splash screen and so on. The interesting thing about iOS export is that it creates an Xcode project that can be customized further. Here is a feature comparison:

• http://unity3d.com/unity/licenses

Unity’s core component is the interactive editor where game objects are placed and enriched with behaviour. This is one of the main differences between Unity and Cocos2D. Instead of writing long wounded code to build the game logic and object behaviour, you create small scripts (written in JavaScript, C# or Boo (Python dialect)) which deal with the attached object only. I find this a nice way to organize behaviour which goes well with the OOP way of thinking.

Overview

The base building blocks in Unity are “Game Objects”. In their most basic form these can be just flat planes with attached textures and an orthogonal camera pointed at them (think of a 2D side scroller). Game objects have a range of properties which can be accessed from the attached scripts and changed in the editor.

A game is divided in scenes and these can be seen as distinct levels. Using a “game manager” script, scenes can be loaded when specific events occur (like a figure hitting the end of the level and triggering loading the next level). The cool thing about Unity is the play function. While developing games you can start the game directly in Unity and see how it behaves. Even if it is an iOS game, the simulator is only concerned with the game view and works well for the purpose of play testing. What’s even cooler is the fact that object variables can be modiefied on the fly. Any object property (position, size, material, physics interaction, …) and variables exposed through scripts can be changed and the results are shown in real time.
Another nice touch are the “Maya Style” navigation controls. So if you are used to Maya (and Blender since it also supports Maya control scheme), you will feel right at home.

But game objects would be boring if there were no way of templating them. This is were prefabs come in. Simply put, prefabs are templates for game objects. They are very useful because any game object/prefab can be instantiated/destroyed through the attached scripts. Imagine an enemy type created as a prefab that is instantiated 100 times. One small change to the prefab and all enemyes adopt the change.

Unity also provides a powerful animation system. Common properties can be changed and animated using discrete points in time.

Unity features many more advanced components and materials. Lightning is a big topic and can be customized very much. Since we want to focus on 2D games first, I don’t have a deeper understanding in this area.

Another strength of Unity is its thorough documentation. Not only has every variable a code sample, but it is also provided in all supported languages (JavaScript, C# and Boo)!

Additions

Unity implements the “Asset Store” that looks and works exactly like the App Store. Plugins and addons can be purchased through it and added directly to your project. While learning Unity I found “2D Toolkit” to be quite useful for quick sprite animations.

Conclusion and Reading Tip

Unity is a great game development tool that basically comes at no cost. It can be used to quickly prototype game ideas using simple objects way before game designers start to think about the artistic style or even the story. There are many well known games on the App Store that use Unity (the most actual beeing Shadow Gun).
Since we have yet to publish our first Unity game, I am a bit concerned that the missing profiler will make it hard to stay below the 20 MB limit for OTA App Store downloads. Other than that I would recommend Unity to any developer looking to prototype and build games.

A very pragmatic book I worked with is “Unity 3 Blueprints” by Deep Pixel. You create four games from scratch (graphics are provided) and learn how everything fits together – especially the very powerful scripting system.

• http://www.deeppixel.com/unity3d-indie-developers-blueprints-book-training

That’s it for today’s post. Have fun with Unity (we do)

It is my turn again to write for my favourite iOS dev blog ring – iDevblogaday. Looking at our last post that is a month old and didn’t even relate to iOS development (the one before was from April) – you can be sure that much has happened since at Spielhaus. I will write about it – but not now. Now it is time for more pressing matters.
Confluence, my all-time favourite wiki software happens to unveil their next mega update on Monday September 12th, 2011 6AM PST. (and with mega update I mean like going from iOS4 to iOS5…)

Remember my old blog posts about Confluence? Well, forget everything I wrote and consider only this:

Confluence 4.0 is a freakingly awesome wiki package and you miss out big time if you skip it!

*I am not affiliated with Atlassian – just pure enthusiasm!

What’s new and why it matters

I won’t bore you with reasons why you gain a tangible advantage when using wikis to manage your valuable knowledge. I wrote about it here  <- recommended short reading.

Editor

So if you got the point why a wiki is important, by now you should be using it on a daily basis. The good news is that the new Confluence update will improve greatly in this area. The biggest change is the editor. It’s time to sit down because this will hit you hard. They ditched the wiki markup! No more *bold* and h1. formatting! It is WYSIWYG all the way across the sky now. But it is even more awesome then before – because wiki markup is still there but with direct visual feedback. Check out the short video below:

Click here to view the embedded video.

How cool is this? You start typing the macro, hit enter and it automatically expands to the visual representation of the macro functionality!!!

I predict that the new editor is the single most important change to Confluence that will greatly boost wiki acceptance. New users will feel directly at home with the word processor like interface while seasoned users will create and edit pages even faster.
I am especially looking forward for the following improvements:

Tables

It is really easy to create tables in Confluence but it is far easier to use the drop-down and select the table size.

New Status Macro

This simple color coded buttons can be used to visualise the project status.

Expand Macro

Finally! They bundled it with Confluence. And with the new editor all you need is type {expand and hit enter to activate the macro. However I found that this is only half as cool as it could be. I have found no way how to get out of the expand macro body while typing the text that will be hidden. So I have to use the mouse to click outside the macro and resume writing. UPDATE: I have found that using simply pressing arrow down moves out of the expand box while editing. The other thing is that you can’t change the title of the expand text directly which defaults to “Click here to expand…”. You have to edit the macro and set the title :/ Or you simply write along using the expand macro syntax to set the title – this works too.

But hey – this is what Confluence 4.0.1 is for – Atlassian do you read me?

Tables and Images

I mentioned tables before but this one deserves more attention. You are now able to cut and paste images directly from the web into a table cell. The image will be automatically added as an attachment to your wiki page. Crazy stuff. It is so damn easy now to make those boring wiki pages more interesting. Plus you can resize the image to a predefined preset or enter the your own width. Copy & past cells as well as merging is available (and quite standard).

Mentions

The next big feature is about @mentions. If you are more than a one man show, collaboration is the ingredient that makes a product great. The problem with remote teams is that collaboration doesn’t really work that great because of our inherent human lazyness… One has to invest effort to notify others and keep the strings together while working with many people on the same thing.
Confluence allowes you to create networks inside the wiki by simply following other users (much like Twitter). With mentions all you need to do if you want to well… mention another user is write @username. The user/team mate will then get a new mail with a preview and a link to the content where you mentioned him.
This makes it easy to interact with other wiki contributors and also persuade the “silent readers” to actively work on wiki pages (and contribute knowledge).

Conclusion

If you want to see some of the devs who are working on Confluence – here is the “Confluence 4 – Behind the scenes” video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

So here it is, the next C4 (Confluence 4.0) update is due tomorrow. Plant C4 and BOOM!

• http://www.atlassian.com/c4

I will upgrade our Spielhaus wiki as fast as possible because I can’t wait to work with the new editor.
If you are not using a wiki, you should. It is really worth it. If you do – keep using it and make that next great iOS app already!

Big, Loud and Hollow

As usual the big names of the industry gather to woo for the attention of the masses. This is not new. However it was new to me how little things changed compared to last year. Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft had still huge booths (there was even a “dedicated waggle hall” as I call it where the younger did all sorts of stupid moves in front of the Wii, Playstation Move and Kinect). There were also the looters slendering about with huge bags where they could store all sorts of swag gathered from various booths. I managed to stay clear of those and not run around like a human advertising board although I had to refuse swag from some pretty hot booth babes.

One of the more crazy booths was the one for Battlefield 3 . They managed to squeeze a jet fighter into the hall

Sony with Uncharted 3 did even build a desert pavilion outside the main hall that featured real camels! Those crazy marketing folks…

The flops

I had made a small list of games beforehand that I look forward to and wanted to check out at gamescom. Firefall was rather disappointing. Overly colorful, overloaded with interface elements and events and overall not very interesting. The weapons were clumsy and the “jetpack” more like an addon for prolonged jumping.
The Secret World had a great trailer and knowing that it is made by Ragnar Tornquist (who created the insanely great “The Longest Journey” series) I expected a lot. Sadly this is just another MMO where you round around pointlessly accompanied by a story that tries to incorporate real world myths. It was not much the forced story that disappointed me, but rather the clumsy animations and the bleak graphics. Also the inclusion of zombies tells me that they were desperated to add something that could appeal to the masses (who doesen’t like zombies – bah…).
The last one was Skyrim. Yes right - The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim! And not because the game won’t be great (it will and I will have to manage to suspend my private life for a week or two when it comes out). But the fact that they let the people pile up in front of their booth for hours only to show a really old video and sell it as brand new and exclussive preview – did bug me. I would have bugged me even more if I wasn’t lucky to only wait for 1 minute before I could get to see the ‘brand new’ demo.

The Tops

I did catch an extremely short glimpse of Tribes: Ascend from Hi-Rez. And although those suckers didn’t have the time to show me the game (If you don’t have a press badge, you are a second class citizen – even on the trade visitor day at gamescom) – I still expect this game to excell.
A game that took me completely by surprise was Rayman Origins. It is a solid platformer with a hilarious art & style. Together with local co-op it has just the right mix of features and pretty to tickle my fancy.
The trailer alone is h.i.l.a.r.i.o.u.s.

Click here to view the embedded video.

You will notice that I picked a number of random games out of nowhere to pick on. However there are many other games that I look forward to and can’t wait until they are released:

• Torchlight 2
• Trine 2
• Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet (PC)
• Journey
• Hawken

If only free time were on sale on Steam once in a while…

As you can see the horizontal line has been lowered a little. Also the sun rays are less visible too. I already like the new design better than the old one. Hope you do too.

App Store Link – Today Todo

You can tell by now that I am a big fan of Atlassian’s wiki software Confluence. It turns out that a wiki is a valuable addition to our iOS business.
The next iteration is upon us and this update seems to be a big one. Here are the highlights that I predict to be very useful.

Sharing content

One of the big hurdles when introducing a new system is the level of involvement of other users. You could add the best tool in the world for the job and it will be useless if no one uses it.
As with wikis one can directly influence its acceptance through one tiny trick. Just don’t use email anymore to organize knowledge and to distribute content. Put everything in the wiki instead and send your colleagues a link to the wiki page.
Atlassian seems to have realized how important this is so they added a “share content” button on every wiki page. The minimalistic interface is very unobtrusive and visually pleasing.

Confluence sends an email to the contact provided and displays an optional note along with a shortlink to the wiki page.
But there is more to it. Since engagement is critical to the success of a newly introduced system (and its continuity), Confluence adds every contributor to a wiki page as a watcher. This means that you will never miss updates on the content (and discussions) you care about.

Drag & Drop

Finally – it’s back again. Well sort of. Confluence has been supporting drag&drop for attachments (just grab a file and drop it into the browser window while editing a page) for a while now. However the old implementation relied on Google Gears or a Firefox plugin. As a Mac/Safari user this wasn’t working for me. Now this feature returned for all HTML5 compliant browsers!
Check out the following short clip. It still amazes me how easy it is nowadays to add attachments to a page 

Click here to view the embedded video.

Tight Integration With Jira

As if my last post about a month ago wasn’t enough to demonstrate how awesome the integration between Jira and Confluence can be, Atlassian went even further. It is now possible to create Jira issues from within Confluence. But not only the big stars Confluence and Jira are involved. Every other Atlassian product seems to be able to integrate with Confluence and partially with Jira. This is great news for larger installations where project managers can now use an even more refined cockpit that pulls content from other sources. Adding the capability to create Jira issues from within Confluence is a big plus on the “make things even more simple” front.

On Demand Support

One feature that might make the life of an admin a lot easier is the inclusion of the Atlassian support tool, cleverly named “Hercules”. As part of the admin area it can be told to scan the server’s log file for problems and it automatically suggests solutions from the Atlassian support wiki. After a quick test it really doesn’t seem to be another hollow marketing promise that other products provide. It did even find two minor problems on my evaluation server.

The Little Things

There are of course many little things that have changed for the better. Here are those that catched my eye.

Language Selection

Upon login, Confluence allows the selection of the preferred language. This can be set at any time to a default value. Useful for those notorius “I need everything in my own language” folks 

Pretty Code Macro

For a technical oriented wiki like ours this is very useful. The code macro has been enhanced and displays pretty formatted code snippets (albeit without support for the Objective-c language – the default for Mac and iOS programming :sadpanda: )

Usability Improvements

There are small changes popping out here and there that improve the overall experience. Mind you these are subtle ones but nevertheless useful.

• The “Child page” button simply fans out on click instead of loading the whole page again.

• The upper navigation bar remains always on top when scrolling down.
• Many (or maybe even most) modal menues feature a context based help button that links directly to the specific topic in the official Confluence documentation – very useful when in doubt

Conclusion

As I am sure that I only scratched the surface, these are the features that I think will come in handy on a daily basis. There is surely more, especially for people who use Confluence differently. This might be the greatest strenght of Confluence – flexibility. You can do just about anything related to managing knowledge with it. We manage our iOS business – others use it as an intranet solution while others use it as a project documentation system for open source software.
What is your call?

Confluence 3.5

In this week’s post I will detail an idea for a small tool that tracks iOS sales as they happen. We are about to build such a tool and toyed with the idea to turn it into a service for other developers.

The Problem

Sales reports for iOS apps are provided by Apple. These are simple text files containing data about purchases, updates and refunds. The problem with these reports is that they are always provided a day later as they happen. Given the huge mass of App Store transactions this is understandable. However, the specific time for a purchase is not only a nice to have but can provide valuable insight.
Knowing from our own experience and hearing from other devs too, visibility is the usual problem in the App Store. Since there is no surefire way to improve it, we can tackle things that can be directly improved. Like finding the right target audience. If you build an app you should first find out who is your target audience. This way you can improve your app and adapt it to their needs. But finding the right target audience is very hard. Without studies, field tests, consumer reports it is guesswork at best. And these studies are hard to come by – especially when you just want to get to building this awesome app already
It is not too late to adjust your app to its users even after releasing it. And here is the crunch. You’ll want to have as much info about your users without compromising their privacy. Sure you could use something like Flurry. But their stats are not realtime – and I think that’s the valuable information you need.

Apptrack

We have thought about a tool that would provide anonymized realtime purchase stats for iOS apps. This tool would consist of a small library that needs to be added to your app as well as a web application. After starting the app for the first time right after the purchase, it gathers data and sends it to the remote web application. The code would only run on the first start (saving this info to NSUserDefaults is trivial). The data that is sent over is displayed in a useful manner that leads to valuable insights.
But what do you gain if you know when your app was purchased? Knowing the time alone, won’t do much good but combined with other stats it starts to become useful. After all as a developer you will want to know as much as possible about your users. This knowledge will help you shape your app for your target audience making it more useful for them. This ultimately leads to more app sales – if act on your insights.

Imagine the following scenario:
User X buys your system administration related app at 3am. Timezone is set to Europe/Berlin. Geoip lookup reveals that his purchase originated from Germany on a DE-CIX line. He has the latest available iOS firmware installed and his device and locale is set to EN. He also uses the latest iPhone model.
This is what I deduce from this info:

• User bought the app fairly late and as such he was probably looking for a specific solution (maybe an urgent problem)
• Since the ip originated from a backbone provider in Germany the user might be an admin who is working late from the server housing centre
• The latest firmware version and the latest iPhone model suggest that he is technically inclined
• Having the language set differently to his current location could mean that he is not a native speaker and/or (taking the other assumptions into account) used to English as the main lingo for tech content

So if you know that (many) stressed admins buy your app fairly late while working on a remote location – this ia a really good hint for the further development of your app. (like bumping up the price  – just kidding)

Besides useful insights about your users, there is some serious nerd potential in there. Just some ideas:

• Hook up a new purchase with push notifications that notify you, the developer, every time a purchase has been made (of course featuring a classy “cha ching” sound
• Build a “purchase-o-meter” on your site indicating the (crazy) amount of new sales due to a marketing event
• Build something similar to the “app wall” that Apple showcased on the last WWDC
• Change your desktop wallpaper dynamically depending on the amount of new sales (happy, sad, crazy…)
• Hook it up with your Twitter account

Conclusion and Request

I really like this idea and I am definitely looking forward to see it materialize. And here is my request. What do you think? Is it useful? Would you use it?Would you even pay for such a service? I am not talking big bucks since I don’t expect to strike it rich with such a service… It would be nice to know if others might find it useful so please comment.

This is our last post for #iDevBlogADay for now (Miguel changed the rules for the better and added a rotation system). We will be on the waiting list again but this doesn’t mean that we’ll stop blogging. Grab the RSS feed to stay in touch.

See you.

With all these AAA titles coming out for the iOS platform (and elsewhere) there are still some games who pop out of nowhere and climb the charts in no time as if there is nothing easier in the world to accomplish. I have a theory about what makes these games special and I want to share it with you in this week’s post.

The Problem

It is my firm belief that games (or gaming) are an integral part of our human nature. Sadly, this part is largely overlooked by adults with mostly the young instinctively holding on to it. As Raph Koster puts it in his book A theory of Fun for Game Design, gaming is a form of learning (or training skills) in a risk free environment with the ultimate goal to improve our chances of survival thus rewarded with a powerful incentive – fun.
The problem is that it sucks to be young these days. When I look back at my childhood it makes me glad that the internet wasn’t mainstream, that computer games were still in the 16 bit era and that I spent most of my free time outside.
Fast forward 20 years and we have an oversupply of games. If I were a kid these days I’d be more than tempted to loose my soul on World of Warcraft and the likes.
Since I am not the only one to realize that gaming is such a powerful concept, the multimedia industry focuses on computer and console games turning it into a huge business. But something happened along the way. It seems to me that the crazy high public expectations and the fierce competition forced publishers and developers to take the safe route and produce games that are known to appeal to the masses. Suddenly most games are no more sparking with creativity but are rather high spec tech demos boasting of sophisticated graphics and dumbed down to “go there, do exactly that” affairs.
An example. I have played through the blockbuster title “Call of Duty Black Ops” a few weeks ago. Right now I can’t even remember the name of the main character anymore. Yet with Minecraft – a formerly small indie game started only by one guy alone – I can remember nearly every time a Creeper blasted my ass off while I was mining underground…
If you prefer a more graphical presentation of this idea, check out Ben Croshaw’s Zero Punctuation series. While brutally honest and really hilarious Ben points out exactly what’s wrong with today’s games – one fuc**** game at a time.

I think the reason so many big titles turn into hollow shells is because the mainstream focus slowly shifts away from a passive art of entertainment to a more interactive form. Through the unhomogenous demographics that denominates the broad target group for games, these titles have to settle on the lowest common denominator in terms of mass apeal.

It’s All about Limitations

And then there are games like Andreas Illiger’s Tiny Wings.

This game was released on February 18 and a few days later it ranks #1 in the US App Store. Why? How? I asked Andreas if he had any form of marketing in place or did other preparations. He didn’t do anything! Crazy isn’t it?
Not at all. Because based on my theory he used artificial constrains to greatly amplify creativity while keeping it simple. And simplicity is what I think most people crave these days. Given the multimedia overload that surrounds us each day, we still look for ways to be entertained. And when a game strikes the right balance between creativity and simplicity like Tiny Wings did, it appeals to many people. Like Angry Birds did – or Doodle Jump or Fruit Ninja.
It is important (at least for me) to identify “limitation” as a main stimulus for creativity. Because that’s a winning formula for us small indie developers. We have everything in place to create great games whithout big investments. All it takes is creativity and the right balance between simplicity and depth. Add to it some deliberately chosen constraints and it could lead to huge success (yes, the game Portal 2 is coming soon and I am using its lingo because I have played Portal 1 a few days ago and I am listening to its song Still Alive ALL_THE_TIME).
The game machanic of Tiny Wings is by no means shallow. It may appear simple but it is damn hard to master. I am playing this game for days now and I still can’t reach the friggin island 7 (which by now every 12 year old would master after a few hours….)!
So what do I base my theory on? If you want proof for my idea – take a look around you.

• Twitter – 140 character limitation and it became one of the most popular platforms ever.
• Apple – with its religious “keep it simple” mantra that made MP3 players dead simple and has a proven record for really easy to use interfaces.
• Google – with its minimalistic interface and “no frills” approach to searching content.
  I have intentionally chosen big names here because I still find it fascinating that the idea of simplicity is still at the core of such big businesses.

Getting back to games, this doesn’t mean that only indie titles are a guarantee for great gameplay and mass appeal. There are many big titles that did it right. I guess that can be attributed to some bright minds who were involved. As usual – the right mix of people under the right circumstances.
I have played a lot of games in my life. Screw Valve for making it so damn simple to buy them (through Steam). Here is a list of my all time favourite games – big and small:
Click to expand

Conclusion

It’s pretty obvious this time. Limitations are great. Creativity is great. Combine them, amplify them and run with it.

See you next time around.

PS

Oh, and one last thing. For all those whiners (including me) who cry “cruel world” when they have created some really ingenious iOS apps and complain that visibility is the problem for their missing success. Andreas landed with Tiny Birds at #1 with NO visibility when he launched the game. So much for the witty iOS marketers who all chew on the same old cow “visibility is everything”…

This week I’d like to show you how we manage feature requests for our apps with Jira. If you want to know why Jira is great, see my last post.

The Problem

Feedback is one of the most valuable things your users can offer you (after paying for your app of course). There is now way you – as a developer – can forsee all the features your app will need. What’s even better, through feedback you can get a good grasp on how your users are using your app and what they expect next to make it even better. Since those users are your perfect target group, what can be better then feedback from them?
It’s up to you to decide what to make of it, but receiving and managing feedback (or featured requests as a subset of the possible feedback types) is very valuable.
If you have done it right, feature requests will start to flow in. They may be submitted via email and if you don’t store it elsewhere, it will shortly mess-up your inbox. Worse yet, if it is not categorized, you’ll have a hard time to remember for which version (maybe you have an iPad and iPhone app) it was meant.

Feature Requests with Jira

As you may have noticed by now I am a big fan of Jira by Atlassian (and definitely not on their payroll – this is pure enthusiasm). Since we use Jira to track issues while developing our apps, what would make more sense than to store feature requests there? One possibility for such a setup would have been to configure our Jira installation for public access so that users could submit feature requests by themselves. We didn’t follow this approach because most users tend to give up on requests if the entry barrier is too high. Before using Jira, we had set-up an account with GetSatisfaction. However, the simple fact that users had to create an account there, led to very few requests. After providing a simple HTML form (and later even a “contact support” button from within the app) – feedback shot through the roof  (hat tip to Sarah for the great idea).
Right now our workflow consists of the following steps:

• Feature requests roll in via email
• I access Jira to see if there is already a similar request
  • If there is one, I comment on the issue with the text “+1″
  • If there is no request, I create a new issue with the type “Story”

As you can see, I have added a custom field for the issue type “Story” called “Feature requests”. Then I have setup Jira to count all comments on the issue to display the sum in that field.
The great thing about this setup is that the field “Feature requests” can be used to filter issues. So for example when planning updates for one of our apps I can create a quick custom search and filter for something like:
“show me all feature requests with the component “iPhone” and sort by “feature requests” count”

As soon as we decide to work on that feature, I create a sub-task for the “Story” issue and assign it to our huge pool of coders to work on (Trung or me).

Conclusion

Feature requests are valuable and usually hard to come by. If you make it easy for your users to submit feedback they will make use of it. You’d be surprised how many users are stunned by the fact that a human beeing responds to their requests. I guess our spoiled mass market mentality leads to the impression that companies employs vast numbers of automated support drones whose only purpose in life is to create canned responses to customer mails…
Storing your feature requests right next to your development issues is a clever idea that makes it easy when it comes to deciding what features to work on next.

As an iOS developer (and a tech nerd as per definition) you want to keep tabs on what’s going on in the tech world. Many of you surely have a list of preferred tech news sites you follow. In today’s post I want to show you a nifty tool that solves the problem of the information overload and omnipresent guilt when one fails to stay up to date with the latest news.

The Problem

This is easy to describe as I am sure that virtually anyone in our business is aware of it.
You want to follow as many news sites and blogs as possible. At first you create a sizeable collection of really useful and cool news sites and dump it into your feed reader. And here’s where the problem starts. As noble as your intention was to follow every news bit, the sheer mass makes it impossible. This is – if you want to get anything else done besides reading news all day. I don’t know about you, but I can’t stand to see this red bubble at the top right corner of an icon. This nagging feeling that there is something (presumably exciting and important) makes me want to open the feed reader and see what’s new. This positive feeling turns into ugly guilt when there are hundreds of unread items. And “mark all as read” is not a solution – but rather resignation.

Fever

Fever is a personal recommendation engine by Shaun Inman . It is a web application that you have to install and run on your own Linux based server.
The way it works is pretty clever. At first you subscribe to as many feeds as you like – the more the better. Then there are three important categories: Hot, Kindling and Sparks.

Kindling contains the feeds that you absolutely want to follow – the essential ones. Sparks contains everything else like big aggregating news sites and generally news sites that have a high throughput. Finally Hot is the category you will want to use most of the time. This is where Fever ranks the most important news based on their importance. This is determined by the their re-linking and the amount of discussion they generated. Fever uses the feeds from the Sparks category to generate the rankings in the Hot category. A nice touch is the temperature based theme. It is related to the human body temperature.

You can set the time period in the Hot category if you want to catch-up with older news. Fever is very keyboard friendly. There is rarely a need to use the mouse.

Conclusion

Fever is perfect suited if you want to stay up to date without having to scan hundreds of headlines. Since it works on feeds you subscribed to generate the ranking in the Hot category, it is your very own personal recommendation engine. So less time spent on reading news means more time for coding

What Was

Last year was very interesting for us. We have released three new apps and a ton of updates for Today Todo. Together with some apps for clients we worked to professionalize our iOS business. We have experimented quite a bit with new apps, marketing, new frameworks and so on. The most important change however was to dedicate more and more time to iOS development. We have reduced our day jobs to a minimum and don’t have to strain our free time that much any more (ok, I am sure that someboday at home disagrees here  ).
One interesting experience we made throughout the year relates to handling cooperation requests. We have been approached several times by other interested parties about cooperations for iOS apps. Basically this cooperation means that they bring in the ideas and we do the developing and then split the revenue. I am still not sure what to think about it. For one, ideas are the core of every product and without them nothing would be created. On the other hand ideas are worthless without their implementation.
It’s not that we don’t have our own ideas – on the contrary. How many times did I spent hours over hours with Trung enthusiastically talking about great new apps. The mighty “ideas” wiki page (and sub pages) clocks at around 70 entries. Not all of these ideas are good or even doable, but let it be only 10% of them and we have another year worth of work before us.

What Will Be

Our spring agenda contains many cleaning tasks. Our greatest objective is to finish projects that we have started before, so we can focus on new things. There are two cooperations (where both sides do the coding) of which one will feature a simultaneous iOS/Android release. We are doing the iOS part of course.
The former cooperation involves a new iPad browser app. Yes I know, not another browser app, rather one with a cool twist. A sort of “snapshot the information on this page for later use and for categorizing” kind of browser app. It seems my inclination towards managing information tends to somehow find its way in most things I lay my hands upon 
And then there is Today Todo. We decided to create a dedicated iPad app as well as implementing data synchronisation and release it with a big marketing bam, get rich and slurp martinis for the rest of our lives – or not.
The iPad app is almost done and we are making good progress with synching. As a little follow-up to the last post here’s what we have chosen.
After spending some time with other apps to see how they implemented sync, I think we now have a good understanding of this topic. We went for Dropbox and have chosen a file based approach (the hard way). Since there is no server logic, everything is handled by the app. Data is exchanged over a secure connection in JSON format. Each new todo is saved as a text file and in a specific directory (one directory per device). Merging changes from other Today Todo sync clients involves adding and deleting those text files to all other client directories.
We have big plans for Today Todo. A natural extension will be a dedicated Mac client. Since we are avid Today Todo users ourselves, there is no one who feel the pain of a missing desktop client like we do. This is up next with high priority.
Appart from apps, we have many game prototypes created in the course of last year. Sadly many of them remain only that – prototypes and will never reach the App Store. One big road block we have when working on games are graphics. It is unbelievely hard to find a good and reliable designer. It’s a pitty because two of our friends are really talented but unreliable (you know who you are!). If you by chance know somebody who fits the bill – please lead them our way.
With sounds however we have found a perfect match. Emmett Cooke is young, talented and pretty darn fast with everything sound related. So there is hope, at least on the audio front.

This is the status update for Spielhaus. Still haven’t decided what to write about next week, but I am sure that the muse will eventually come to me soon.