Making money in the appstore

Posted August 31st, 2010 in iphone by Michael

Getting rich by writing an app for the iPhone and selling it in the appstore sounds very lucrative… however all those free (and most times useless) apps don’t make it easier to be successful. And in my opinion they destroy the business model, as free can’t pay any bills.

For example:

Pano’s not particularly cheap, at $3, but it can create some enormous, impressive panoramas right on your iPhone. (source)

Unfortunately lots of people I talk to think the same – “oh, this app is sooooo expensive, it costs 3 Euros!”. Come on, you paid at least 200 Euros for your iPhone and you pay about 20 Euros per month for a contract… and then you complain about 3 Euros for some useful software?

What bugs me even more is if these people are software developers who write software on their own! They know how much time it takes to write (bug free, nice and shiny) software, earn money by writing software and and still they complain if a developer wants to get 3 Euros for his software?

Wow.

Update 1: it seems iAd does not really solve the issue of the million apps in the appstore. $ 14,- per sale is not worth it.
Update 2: same problem on the iPad – just too many apps and too little showroom.
Update 3: make sure you don’t miss this comic!

(Image copyrighted by theoatmeal.com)

Working from home….

Posted August 31st, 2010 in fun by Michael

Oh yeah! This blog post perfectly describes the awesome and the horrible about working from home…. Especially the one on degration of social skills (click on the thumbnail to the right to see it larger) is super-funny and of course a bit true….

Don’t get me wrong, working from home is great (as you can see in the first “awesome” comics), that’s what friends usually notice first…. however I think it should be a good mix between being in the office (and hopefully meeting someone there!) and staying at home to focus on programming….

Be sure to check out the full comic, highly recommended!

(image source)

Zitat der Woche

Posted August 30th, 2010 in quote by Michael

Erst wenn die letzte Ölplattform versenkt und die letzte Tankstelle geschlossen ist, dann werdet ihr feststellen das man Nachts bei Greenpeace kein Bier kaufen kann.

Baumhausprinzip

Posted August 27th, 2010 in quote by Michael

Das sollten sich unsere Politiker hinter die Ohren schreiben:

haekelschwein: Fürs Internet sollte das Baumhaus-Prinzip gelten: Wer zu alt ist, um ohne Hilfe reinzukommen, soll uns darin auch keine Vorschriften machen.

(von german-bash.org)

Dojo and fixing bugs

Posted August 27th, 2010 in development by Michael

After complaining about Dojo taking so long fixing bugs I found another quite interesting bug report this morning:

Dojo Bug 7844:

  • Filed almost 2 years (!!!) ago
  • Filed against Dojo 1.2
  • Not fixed with the latest 1.5 release, but moved to 1.6 now

Yes, fixing the dojo.back in IE8 is definitely harder than the 1/2 line fix for 8546, but in the end dojo.back is “supported” since Dojo 1.0, so I’d expect that Dojo is tested against new browsers and bugs are fixed in a timely manner…

8 Jahre Shaolin-Tempel Austria

Posted August 26th, 2010 in kungfu by Michael

Am Donnerstag dem 2. September 2010 um 19 Uhr findet im Shaolin Tempel Austria unsere Geburtstagsfeier statt.

Wir zeigen eine großartige Shaolin Kung Fu & Tai Chi Vorführung und stellen die Weisheiten des Chan Buddhismus vor.

Der Tempel ist für alle Interessierten ab 18:00 geöffnet. Für Speis und Trank und gute Musik ist gesorgt. Auch unser berühmtes Shaolin Bier ist zur Feier lagernd.

Eintritt frei!

Amitabha!

Details auf www.shaolintempel.at.

Zitat der Woche

Posted August 23rd, 2010 in quote by Michael

Die Geschichte lehrt die Menschen, daß die Geschichte die Menschen nichts lehrt.

(Mahatma Gandhi, via m3)

Dojo 1.5 and open bugs…

Posted August 19th, 2010 in javascript by Michael

And the saga continues… I reported a Dojo bug about scheme-less URLs in March (filed against 1.4.2)… now the brand new 1.5 has been released and the (simple-to-fix bug)… was not fixed.

Why? Well, I don’t know. Maybe because they don’t care? The comment in bug 8546 is:

It’s been open for 18 months, and it was pointed out to me as a bug by a large user of Dojo and jQuery. They reported the issue to jQuery, and it was fixed in 2 weeks, and we’re going on 18 months.

Sorry dojo, speed-wise you already lost, no matter what you do!

Shifu Shi Yan Ming Documentation

Posted August 16th, 2010 in kungfu by Michael

Unfortunately just an excerpt, but nevertheless highly recommended… a documentation about our Shi-Gong:

More information on usashaolintemple.org.

A new gadget

Posted August 13th, 2010 in fun by Michael

After careful consideration I ordered it:

(from Geek And Poke)