I fear you want to make an already very good product perfect

He is probably right with that, I do always find things I want to make better and better and better. So I have to try to stop myself doing that already.

Hey, but I have so many ideas and there are problems to solve, people are having issues!

Well, that said and reading some up to date reviews on the iTunes AppStore about WorldView Live made me rethink, at least.

During the last week I was working on lots of enhancements in the background of the app. We have a new eeasy to use support forum, a bugfix release was made available in a very short time and we’ve been also working on a new design for the website and a new app logo (which will be revealed later the next 2 weeks – and hey, both look sooooo great ).

Today I took another look at the current iTunes reviews and frankly said: it struck me!

I could try to go the easy way, just ignore, but that is not me, I care. But the hardest thing in this case is to understand WHY these people directly write a bad review on iTunes, but DO NOT read the text I provide in iTunes and DO NOT try to use the support forum or DO NOT ask in any other way. Because I do have NO way to react on iTunes. Ok, this is nothing I can blame the users for, that is clearly Apple’s fault. I know a lot of developers being very upset about the (new) voting system and also the way the reviews work. Hey Apple, why can’t I, as the developer, not even send these people a private note to get in touch with them!? I don’t need their email address, just a method of sending them an information. I am not even asking for writing a public comment to every single iTunes review – which reminds me of eBay where the seller even can do that!

Ok … calm down Andreas … But hey, I have a great team of people helping me on the app development part, which mostly is there since the beginning of the app. People around the world test sometimes every day a new version on more than a dozen devices and give me so valuable feedback. Thanks to Alex, Gavin, Rees, Ingo, Karim, Nareharo, Josef, Hervé and Kai!

But still, you never can be sure to find every problem that might occur. I was used to develop desktop and web applications for years and years, but hey, developing for such a device is so tricky. Even with the gorgeous APIs and development tools Apple provides. I would even say, developing a solid rocking app for a mobile device is more tricky then writing a desktop app!

So what is the conclusion? I will probably continue to implement my ideas into the app, and people will download it or even buy it. But on the other side, I will do my very best to make the app rock stable and fun to use and help everybody as good as I can who will use the support forum. The more tricky part for me will be: not to read the iTunes reviews any more, since this way no download numbers make it worth letting these few comments in there ruin my holidays!

Enjoy your holidays and already a happy new year to everybody out there!

(If you find grammar or other mistakes in the text above, I do not care, I am native german and I am allowed to do things wrong)

I got one week left before I will be abroad again for a week, and honestly: WorldView has to take a break now!

I did spend so much time working on WorldView the last months, weekends, sometimes even in the evenings after a long day at work. The success with the first release was tremendous: Number 1 in the download charts in Germany and Switzerland, Top 10 in lots of other countries. That gave a lot back.

The downsides also came, sometimes it is very hard to cope with unfair comments in iTunes, with postings about problems that e.g. the app is not working. That is already hard to get used to, even I should be used to it, since I did run (with a few friends) the biggest OS/2 website OS2.org for some years and make it grow. But the biggest point that made me sometimes pretty angry is, when people don’t come back to me with their issues so I can help. I have no way of contacting these people writing such things in iTunes myself. That hurts, since I do care.

So putting so much passion into such a project always has two sides. Both sides can help to grow personally. To learn. But now it is time to move on. WorldView will still grow, and I have lots of features planned, but I hopefully will not spend that much time on it any more, even with the non free version hopefully being out next week. I did put down my OS2.org hobby because it was consuming too much time (being one reason) and other things in life suffered, I don’t want this to happen with WorldView too.

There are some really nice people that helped me keep up with working on WorldView and I got to know many new people. Sandra, my girl-friend, surely to name first, but also thanks to Alex, Kai, Rees, Hervé Ingo, Josef, Hagen, Karim and Gavin for testing over and over and providing so much input! You all made me keep up! Let’s turn into the next, more calm phase now.

So doing something completely different now: putting WorldView aside!

Dann will ich aber auch mal nicht so sein, uns auf gehts, rein ins Getümmel!

In welchen Städten bist du schon gewesen?

Ach, das sind schon einige. Ich versuchs mal: Freiburg, Basel, Zürich, Straßburg, Karlsruhe, Stuttgart, Trier, Friedrichshafen, Nürnberg, Regensburg, Frankfurt, Köln, Siegen, Wien. Hmm… das wars eigentlich schon im deutsch sprachigen Raum. Ok, Straßburg ist nicht deutsch sprachig. Ist ja ok. Aber mit Badisch als Sprache (Dialekt) kommt man da ja auch weit

Bin also noch nicht sooo weit rumgekommen, fehlen ja in Deutschland einige wichtigen Städte. Aber wie schaut es denn sonst so aus? Mal schauen: Prag, Brüssel, Venedig, Florenz, London, Aberdeen, Neu-Delhi, Bangalore, New York, Philadelphia, Little Rock, Dallas, Houston und Austin. Das reicht mal mit der stupiden Aufzählung.

Ich könnte eigentlich sagen, ich war in all diesen Städten, und doch war ich nicht dort. In manchen war ich meisst zum Arbeiten oder auf kurzer Stippvisite. In Trier war ich z.B. 6 Monate auf Praxissemester, aber so viel vom Ort habe ich da leider nicht gesehen. London habe ich sowohl privat als auch beruflich gesehen, wie auch Wien, da könnte ich schon mehr von erzählen Aber darum geht es ja nicht wirklich, oder doch?

Welche Stadt (nicht die, in der du wohnst!) gefällt dir am besten?

Freiburg! Nicht nur weil ich 30 km von Freiburg aufgewachsen bin, es bietet einfach von allem etwas. Von gemütlich, alt, ruhig und grün bis hin zu städtisch viel los und viel zu erleben. Man ist schnell in den Bergen und hat auch die Ebene. Frankreich und die Schweiz sind einen Katzensprung entfernt. Leider hat mich meine Arbeit von dort weg verschlagen. Jeder der in Freiburg wohnt und Stuttgart kennt, kann es nicht fassen dass ich dort weg bin.

Welche Stadt hat dir gar nicht gefallen?

Da muss ich leider Stuttgart nennen. Ich werd hier leider weder mit der Stadt noch mit den Leuten so richtig warm.

Welches ist dein Reisemittel um die Städte zu erreichen

Auto und Flugzeug. Mit der Bahn war ich bisher warum auch immer seltenst unterwegs.

Welche Stadt willst du unbedingt noch sehen?

Paris! So viele Leute schwärmen von dieser Stadt, und meine Freundin hat dort auch ein Jahr gelebt so dass ich sicher Paris auch etwas anders als ein üblicher Tourist kennenlernen könnte

Wer bekommt den Stock?

Das Stöckchen geb ich mal an nareharo weiter. Ein Berliner in Stuttgart, das muß einfach interessant sein was er zu berichten hat!

Don’t deliver something which is not finished. 

Anyway!

Wil, I love the current version, even I use it rarely (only have about 160 DVDs and 20 Books), but it is a wonderful designed and implemented tool. I even watched happily your speech at C4. I even started to collect some ideas for a iPhone client for DL2 as my next project after Locations. Well, until I saw this comment on twitter:

Maybe I’ll provide you my ideas once DL2 is out

BUT apparently, it seems my friend Alex did suffer even more than I did myself. Since I am writing the same question over and over again:

To get rid of my howling he wrote this to Wil:

All I can say is: I am sorry Alex! And I am sorry Wil. It shouldn’t have come so far. I regret getting on other peoples nerve and will promise not to do any more. Well … I will try at least

… to relocate.

Last month I moved to into my new kingdom! But this time, I didn’t move to another city. This is quite special, since I did relocate quite often. I really enjoyed my last flat, where I stayed for 2,5 years – which is actually a record for me But this is history, and here I am.

As everybody probably can guess, I am still not finished with moving in. Still having lots of cardboards around and even the furniture is not all here or in place. Hopefully everything will be finished soon this month. And then one day, I should play again a little more with this website, searching the net for curious and fun things and more. There are plenty ideas left – stay tuned!

Oh …. there is one more thing! My girl-friend and her dog are also with me. A new era is about to begin

What can you find in here? Let me explain it in some words.

The section “about” contains some personal information about me, my life, my friends and my hobbies. My private site. If you are interested in photos and pictures, then go to the section “pictures”. It contains pictures of places I went to.

Have fun watching around!

Andy

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