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Nun, Kevin und Alex erzählen von einem bewegenden Vortrag den man da auf Video anschauen kann, auf der TED-Webseite. Gut, Internet ist zwar langsam, aber ich schau mal rein. Also auf die Seite. Ui, da sind ja viele Videos, dann such ich mal. Wie lautete der Vortrag noch mal? “The morning of the stroke”. Gesucht, gefunden. Na ja, also streaming will ich das nicht, diggnation ist schon langsam genug. Also den iTunes-Podcast Download ausgewählt.

Etwas mehr als eine halbe Stunde später ist der 20 Minuten lange Video da. Dann mal los. Wow – ich war sofort gebannt von dem Vortrag. Faszinierend, humorvoll, spannend, ergreifend, bewegend … Schaut es euch an!

Das Internet ist langsam hab ich gesagt? Irgendwie ist das auf einmal nicht mehr so relevant…

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!

I would like to invite you to try it out, it is a free download from the iTunes AppStore. Write a review, discuss the future in a Google Group Discussion and be happy using it

All future information and posts will be found on our new webpage for any projects Alex and I are going to do: buzzworks.de. He wrote a very nice introduction on the buzzworks.de blog, you should definately check it out!

I hope you’ll enjoy WorldView as much as I do coding it and also enjoy buzzworks.de.
This blog is going to be more non-locations-worldview-development-specific related again in the future, hopefully it will still be interesting for you to stop by from time to time.

Say welcome to WorldView

WorldView has been written from scratch, allowing more speed and much more functionality. It is like the YouTube application for webcams. And it has just been sent to Apple in its first flavour, the free edition, providing you access to thousands of webcams using the gorgeous service of http://webcams.travel!

The application is now also hosted on a new domain: buzzworks.de. So go there and check it out. Let’s hope the app review process will not take very long. Go Apple Go!

Pssst … hey … coding on WorldView Live has already begun….

This video is showing the upcoming free version of my first iPhone App. It will be available in the AppStore as soon as a new name is found (Locations is sadly already taken by another app) and I am happy with the quality of the app. The app will be available in English, German and French. Webcam images are provided by the great http://webcams.travel/ web service!

Watch the video after the jump.

Once this version is release, I will begin developing a “Live Edition”, which will also enable you to see live images, video stream (M-JPEG) if available, add your own webcam URLs and hopefully many more features

This is just a small teaser, more to come…

Stay tuned…