Blog them all

My popular iPhone app Push is now available as a lite version : Push Lite. It’s free, has advertising, and is not limited in any way. If you need push notifications for RSS feeds, Twitter, Emails, Facebook, or if you want to use an API to send yourself notifications, this is it.

The original Push application has about 50,000 users, hopefully the lite version will boost it even more. Spread the words, and send me feedback.

What’s your thought about the raise of Android compared to the iPhone? They now sell 200K devices a day.

As a user, and as a developer? My feeling is users buying iPhones are more willing to buy applications on the appstore than Android users, which only buy… a phone. But I may be wrong.

As a user, I like the fact I’m connected all the time to IM like gtalk.

I had developed an iPhone application for the VU’ Agency, and it’s finally live on the AppStore. It’s available in French and English, and include more than 600 stories from the VU’ Agency. If you like photography or work as a photographer, this is probably a must have.

The application I’ve been working for the last months is now available on the appstore. Apple Push Notifications with a REST API for you, able to run any iphone applications, with Twitter plugin included, and GPush too.

All that for a very low amount. Let me know what you think.

Un ami de San Francisco passe me voir à Paris pour quelques semaines. Je cherche un contrat en data illimitée pour son iPhone (en fait le mien car il est desimlocké). Je passe voir la boutique SFR à côté de chez moi (rue du Faubourg saint Antoine) et après avoir attendu 20 bonnes minutes on me dit qu’ils ne l’ont pas, qu’ils ont un soucis informatique et que je dois aller à SFR Chatelet les Halles.

Le lendemain je vais à Chatelet, la première réponse agaçée de la vendeuse c’est qu’il faut aller dans une autre boutique (encore) car ils ont un problème informatique, mais quand elle me voit repartir ennuyé elle me rattrape pour m’indiquer que si j’ai une carte bleue je peux le faire moi-même sur la borne qui se trouve à 2 mêtres. Pourquoi ne pas l’avoir dit de suite? …

J’achete une SIM (20EUR), une carte 3 semaines iPhone (25EUR), j’appelle en ligne pour l’activer, on me dit que je recevrai un SMS sous quelques minutes. Deux heures après toujours rien reçu, la data ne fonctionne pas, j’appelle le service client qui me coûte de l’argent. On me dit qu’on a un soucis informatique mais qu’il faut attendre 24h.

Le lendemain (encore), je passe dans la première boutique (celle de la rue du Faubourg Saint Antoine), une femme qui se trouvait assise au fond du magasin à regarder son portable arrive très doucement (c’est le mois d’août…), me dit qu’elle revient de vacances et qu’elle n’a pas entendu parlé des recharges iPhone, qu’elle ne peut pas m’aider, mais que je peux appeler le service clientèle (ben voyons). Je demande si je peux appeler du magasin, car ça coûte à chaque appel, elle me répond que non.

Je sors, j’appelle le service clientèle que j’arrive à avoir au bout d’une 10aine d’essais, pendant lesquels je tombe sur des “tous nos techniciens sont occupés etc”. Ca se comprend, il est 11h du matin… Et le technicien me dit qu’il faut attendre 24h, ensuite 48h mais comme ça part du début de la carte SIM ce sera demain, et que je dois attendre.

Résultat ? Beaucoup de temps perdu, une recharge toujours pas prise en compte alors que le dernier technicien me dit l’avoir vu passer, des minutes du forfait déjà décomptés alors que c’est la faute de SFR. Y a pas à dire, le service SFR c’est vraiment du haut vol…

I will be at HAR2009 from Tuesday 11th to Monday 17th. I had few funny things in mind to do with iPhone development but I finally had no time to work on them. Therefore I’ll come empty hands, I’ve been too busy working on push notifications and other projects (36Pulp, and some iPhone apps).

If you happen to read this blog and be around, leave me a note here or on my twitter. I’ll publish pictures from HAR2009 on my flickr account.

So you wonder how to display an UIWebView the way Mail.app does for HTML emails ? Hold your breath, I’ve written a very simple code for you to do that. And it works just as nice as you could imagine. I’ve also made a short screencast for you to see it working.

Get the code on my github : UIWebView in UITableview.

So day 1 has started, I’ve submitted our iPhone application for push notifications on the Appstore. Lets sit and see how long it takes to get approved.

I had the chance to travel to California from last April to July. As any computer geek I had always dreamed about going to California, and mostly around Mountain View. Thanks for my friends, I had the chance to visit Google few times, Yahoo!, Six Apart, Google Android, Apple, some smaller private startups. I’ve got beers with the guys from GitHub (thanks Tom, it was nice meeting you), LightHouse, Twitter, LinkedIn, AfterShock (thanks James!). Orange Lab told me on Twitter I could call 1014 (A French phone number for customer support) to meet them (ahah). I’ve met many more people which I can’t list here, and I’ve also finally met Phil Jeudy (twitter).

I’ve attended the Rails Conf 2009 in Vegas, and the WWDC 09 in SF. The rails conference was very high level, Vegas had the cheapest hotels I could imagine for the room we got. On the other side the WWDC conferences were not as high level as I would imagine, but someone said 60% of the attendees never attended before. I would recommend going to both if it’s you work in those domains, meeting people in real is a big boost for your projects.

Something I did not have in mind, is the good general vibe you have in San Francisco. I had the chance to meet Shane Vitarana (blog), who published DrumKit on the Appstore (it’s featured in Apple ads, on Union Square on top of buildings, etc). He introduced me to many people, and we had a lot of fun together (I have to confess, I don’t go out much while I’m in Paris, but did almost every day in SF). Thanks Shane, you made my trip.

I’ve learned a lot being in San Francisco for that long, on iPhone projects as much as on Rails projects, and on web projects in general. If you work on ideas, make them happen in California. It won’t take longer than anywhere else, but the general impact might be much bigger for you. Raising funds is much easier too. I’ve met so many independent developers in San Francisco making lots of money (>$200K a year) without working much (but worked hard in the past, or had a good idea).

You have two kinds of people in San Francisco, the ones working 20 hours a day, or doing 2 hours commuting a day going from downtown to Mountain View and working for the big players. And you have the ones not working as much and enjoying life. I’d suggest going for the 2nd option if you plan to go to SF.

So would I go back to San Francisco ? Hell yeah ! But surprisingly I would go again not for work, but for the good vibe. Of course there are tons of IT companies there, and even the average level of software developers ain’t better than France (or other countries), you have way more people, way more companies. That operates like a magnet. At the end, you have way more projects happening there. San Francisco makes projects possible. My only concern is time does not run the same way in SF, and a one year stay would pass like a week in other cities.

See you soon San Francisco (my flickr California set).

While I worked on my apple push notification Ruby on Rails plugin, I wondered if it would make sense to create a service which allow independent developers to send notifications. Independent developer would not have to worry about sending those anymore, they would just call a XML/JSON friendly url with the message, etc, and the service would take care of the rest.

You’d setup your application once on the service, and then would have a specific url to call for sending notifications, or could use an HTML page to send them manually.

Would you use it, and if yes what feature would you look for? You can register for the service at Apple Push Notification online service.