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iPhone Tech Talk Paris

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Last monday I went to the iPhone Tech Talk in Paris because it was a great opportunity for me to learn more on iPhone Development. At this event you had the possibility to follow different presentations at the same time so I had to make some difficult choices.

The most interesting presentation for me was the one about the UIWebView element and web content on the iPhone because I learned a lot of new stuff on webkit and cocoa tricks. Most of the other presentations discussed the same issues like memory management, testing and optimizing you app for a better performance. Some of the presentation where to technical for me but I tried to follow and learn as much as possible.


Besides the presentation you had also the option to take your app and go to the lab to get some advice from the Apple team. I went to one of them with my Keypoint iPhone app and got some really useful advice and apparently he liked my work on Keypoint and some other iPhone projects of mine.

So if you are into mobile and you are developing an iPhone app you should defiantly go to such events because you will get int touch with the right people and learn from their experiences in the field!

Go out and Gowalla !

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Gowalla is a free iPhone app that lets join a social location based ' game ' .
The goal of Gowalla is to create, found and sign in at spots on the go. While signing in you can earn items that you can collect or use to create new spots. You also get pins for completing goals and trips that where set up by the Gowalla team.

I think this is a really fun iPhone app because you can start creating your own spots and you can easily share them with friends. Another reason is
the game element behind Gowalla that makes it fun and challenging to use.

If you have an iPhone I advice you to try it because it makes boring trips a lot of fun ! You can find more information on Gowalla.com and download the iPhone app using this iTunes Link. 

BTW the iPhone app looks SWEET ;-)


Rebooting my blog

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Visual Designer is now more then 2 months live and you will have noticed that I don’t write a lot of posts. One of the main goals of this blog was to write more but I discovered that this blog isn’t the perfect tool for that. Otherwise I still want to share a lot with you but focusing to much on the writing part was the main reason that I didn’t post a lot.

After some thinking I decided to use my current blog more like a Posterous blog. If you are not familiar with Posterous you can visit their site and learn more about the concept. 
I will try to post more shorter posts about the things I want to share. If you like to learn more about a post you can still contact me and I will try to answer all your questions.

With these new changes I hope to really start sharing my ideas with the world by focussing less on writing and more on posting interesting stuff.

Designing the mobile metaphor

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Say what?

Designing the mobile metaphor is the title of my proposition for my final (school) project. In this proposition I had to write about what subject I wanted to pick, why I wanted that subject and a schedule for the rest of the year. Because my interests are mobile and design/interfaces I choice to write a proposition about designing a possible mobile metaphor that would make it easier for the users to interact with there touch phone.

My research question:


“ How can we improve the interaction between users and their phones by designing a mobile interface metaphor ”

How ?

To get where I want to be I will have to undergo a literature study and do research on the existing solutions. I know there are some great solutions but I don’t think we have to see them as the perfect way of using our phone. Otherwise I find seeing mobile as a limited environment is wrong and that it probably has to do with the lack of a good user interface.

More ?

Soon I will post more on info on the status of my final project and I am also working on a Posterous blog to post interesting bits around mobile design that I find on the web.

If you can understand ‘ Dutch ’ you can find my proposition on this link.


Update 02/11/2009

Because designing the mobile metaphor was a to large subject and the lack of time my docents advised me to change my proposition. Soon you will find here an update on what I will be doing the next months.


A sneak preview of keypoint

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Keypoint is getting ready to be the first app in the Appstore that lets you create and publish presentations on the iPhone. This preview of Keypoint is still a ruff version of what the final product should be like. Feel free to comment this post if you have any remarks or/and suggestions !

Keypoint goes Appstore

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" Keypoint was one of my first real iPhone (web)apps that started as just a fun project. "

Concept behind Keypoint

With Keypoint you can create presentations on the go, edit them by adding slides, view them on your phone and share or export them. The first three (beta) versions that came out where free to use and will stay free until the native app hits the appstore.

The story

Keypoint started as just a small fun project to learn to develop and design for a mobile platform but after appearing the first time on Apple.com I wanted to do more with it. So I kept on working on it when I had the time and tried to improve the user experience by making it look like a real native app. With Keypoint I wanted to prove that that a webapp can be as good as a native app or at least reach the same level of user experience.

What’s next ?

After the release of the latest Beta version of Keypoint I was not sure what to do with it and didn’t have the time to work on. But now Keypoint is back from the past and I am working on a native version. Because my knowledge of native iPhone development (Cocoa, ... ) was to limited to do this I choose to work with PhoneGap. If everything goes well and Apple likes my app it will appear in the Appstore at the end of september 2009.

More ?

If you want to try the latest web version of Keypoint you will need to visit Keypointapp.com on your iPhone or iPod Touch. If you don’t have an iPhone or iPod Touch you can always view an old walkthrough of the second Beta of Keypoint on this link.


A fresh new start

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A fresh new start

" Hello, my name is Bert Timmermans, a young Belgian internet addict and this is my new blog. You will soon find a lot of internet related posts here mostly based on my personal interest. So feel free to look around and contact me if you have any questions. "

Why a blog?

This blog was the result of one of my personal needs to spread more then only tweets and status messages. For me there where two important reasons to start this, first starting with improving my writing and second to share and discus my vision with others. So for me this blog is more a tool to express my thoughts and learn from others.

What will you find here?

Mainly you will find here articles about things like Web design, Web development, Mobile stuff and so on. In the near future there is a chance I will publish some tutorials about advanced CSS and HTML 5 techniques that I use in some of my personal projects. And if I have the need to write about other stuff you will find it here.


A piece of a bigger puzzle

This blog is just one of my ways to communicate with you and others, if you feel the need you can follow me or this blog on Twitter. If this is not enough you can always contact me by email and I will replay you as soon as possible. Because the internet is all about the social I would like it that you comment on my posts if you have some remarks on it.

Some details

While building this blog I made some choices like not supporting IE 6 and setting javascript as a basic need for visiting this website/blog. I made this decisions based on the people I wanted to reach and also because javascript is for me one of the basic needs for browsing the web. Just my way to make a difference and creating a better internet.


Socialmedia links

The links featured here are the links that are posted by me through the social web of Twitter and Facebook. Feel free to check them out and share them with some friends.