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The development blawgh of Önders et Gonas

Monthly Archives: March 2009

Our Second App: iQüeüe

Önders et Gonas found themselves standing in a queue for an ATM. How long would this take? Subconsciously they both tried to calculate the remaining time in their heads by noticing when people left and how many people were left in the queue, but why use their genious brains for this mundane task?

Thus ÖeG stared long and hard into the eyes of Science and came up with the amazing iPhone application iQüeüe. It’s your weapon against the German synth machine that is society. Take some load off your mind while standing in line and use your brainpower for art, the craft where humans are still needed. Do it before it’s too late or ÖeG will soon find a way to replace you with an iPhone app too.

It’s $0.99 on the App Store and you can read some more about it here.

This app was previously known as Project Hollywood, maybe you remember reading the captivating Tale from the Wardrobe™ on the development of iQüeüe.

Advertisement

Gisele spotted doing some pro bono advertising work for Bang/Buck

Apparently she likes our app. Thanks to Jopsy Daisy for the tip.

Melissa and her furry friends

Due to the enormous response and success of Bang/Buck since its release, we will now award our loyal fans with a limited time offer. Bang/Buck will be sold for only $ 0.99 and we will high-five the first 100 buyers, if we meet them. So come on and join the carnage on pink friday!

Our First App

Where to begin? This week has been wild. Some of you may have noticed that our first application, previously known by the code name “Project Mustang”, now known far and wide under the real name “Bang/Buck”, has been accepted by Apple and is on sale at the App Store. If you haven’t bought it yet I suggest you do it before Jonas finds out. He has just had a half bottle of Lanson champagne and doesn’t look happy. Find it here.

The other app we sent in, Project Hollywood, was rejected under unclear circumstances. Anyway we fixed that today and resubmitted it so it will probably be ready pretty soon.

In a Tales from the Wardrobe fashion (also known as filling our corporate blog with everyday nonsense) I’m going to tell you about the lunch we cooked today here at the office. We call it Saumon de Moutard Poire Verts d’Emma avec Bière Rangés les Pommes de Terre. Pics will be up on Flickr soon. We enjoyed it with previously mentioned Lanson and it was delicious.

Anyway we’re writing this from SXSW. Just finished being on a panel about Apple’s new tablet (we know what they’re actually planning since we’re sleeping with some key people at Apple in Cupertino, so we had to keep our faces straight while discussing these stupid rumors with the other clowns in the panel, exhausting.) Last night we had some beer and watched the upcoming act Glasvegas, keep your eyes on them in 2009, will be the Next Big Thing™!

Tales from the Wardrobe: On Project Hollywood

In our ongoing series of Tales from the Wardrobe I feel like writing a couple more words on our recently-submitted-to-the-App Store app, Project Hollywood (not to be confused with the other Project Hollywood).

Project Hollywood is laid out a little bit like an experiment — how fast could ÖeG finish an iPhone application? It started on Friday night when we were sharing a bag-in-box of wine. In this intoxicated state we finished the rudimentary interface but got stuck developing the actual underlying algorithm, as it requires logical thinking and focus. Something we were short on at 6am and drunk out of our minds.

The next morning I woke up and was still a bit frustrated, so I sat down and thought it through in a more sober state. It was then very simple, but nevertheless I took it upon me to write a report about it in LaTeX. It will be available for download along with the app when it’s been approved by Apple. At first I thought I’d just write the explanation, as is the more conventional way, in the code comments, but Xcode doesn’t allow for rendering mathematical formulae in the source files (it should.) Later at the office that day we spent an hour or two adding some  animation to the interface.

On Sunday we didn’t spend any time on this project if I recall correctly, and then yesterday Jonas added some graphics and we tested it on the actual device and submitted it to the App Store. The resulting app may be a typical “ringtone app” in that it will be sold in the cheapest price range and have a very narrow focus, but we think it can be very useful (we’ve certainly wished we had it in the past – and so will you.)

Conclusion: we’re still awesome.

It’s boiling…

Yep, today we sent two of our premium apps to Apple for some kind of reviewing process.  And that means that they will say it’s awesome and release the beast soon. Oh yeah! One of the apps is Project Mustang, our first project and one that you have read a lot about here on the blog. It was battle tested last Wednesday, and after some small changes we decided that it was time to remove its chastity belt. The other app is a project that we named Project Hollywood.  It will be a life saver for many of you, and even though it’s premium, this one will be so cheap that even your mother can buy it.

Yeah, it’s been a pretty awesome day and on our flickr you can see some pictures. Since it was a Monday we drank a nice bottle of Duval-Leroy and listened to Glasvegas. We have some more projects in line for release, Jester and a new one we’re calling Project Charlie. We are super excited about these projects, and we’re sure that this month will be more legendary than SmartSVN’s support.

ÖeG presents: Telia NetID fix for Mac OS X

Tl;dr version:

On Mac OS X running on Intel there’s a bug with the Firefox plugin for Telia’s e-legitimation. Shit freezes and you’re out in the cold. Or so it seems. But things are not always what they seem. So keep hitting each key in your passphrase, and after 10-20 keypresses the plugin registers the key, and you move on to the next. Weird as hell but it works. Brought to you by ÖeG. Buy our apps.

Original Post:

This entry was supposed to be posted months ago, back when it was the hottest thing around, but common life and professional laziness laid its ugly body between it and cyberspace. But today I decided to revive it, so I opened a beer and just went crazy. So here it comes ladies and gentlemen:

Since the day we started our business some people have been asking us questions such as “When is project Mustang coming out”, “What is this wardrobe thingy” and “Which Kent song describes ÖeG the best”. But instead of answering theses questions I will provide you with a quick and neat fix for using Telia NetID with Mac Os X. First a little bit of history,

First I was afraid I was petrified…

Yeah, true story boys ‘n girls. Me and my gutwrenchingly attractive wingman decided, a while back, to start up our own firm. Some people do things like that with the intent to conquer the world, get really really rich or attract a lot of good looking specimens of the opposite sex. I really would like to lie a little and say that our goal is bigger than that. It is to give the men and women (And, as our social skills evolve, also other animals. Both big and small ones) of our beautiful planet a better user experience when using their mobile appliances. Since me and Önders live in Sweden, you can’t just go out in the street, pull out one of those Dirty Harry-esque guns and declare “I’m Jonas, and from this day on I have my own firm!”. No no, as our society evolved from hunter-gatherers to become what it is today, it adopted bureaucracy. That means forms. Lots of forms. And a line where you have to sign your name. When starting a business in sweden you have to fill in some forms and send these by regular mail to two agencies, Bolagsverket and Skatteverket. Sounds quite simple, right? Well, ladies and gentlemen, let me introduce you to the World Wide Web. As mankind got more and more used to paying bills, booking flights and ordering late-night entertainment with just a couple of clicks on the Web, someone thought “Hey guys, maybe we should construct a way to identify ourselves online. We can call it Telia e-legitimation and come on boys, why don’t we make it run terrible on Mac OS while we are at it”. Thanks to this smart, but not so awesome guy, it is possible to sign contracts with your computer. Sounds absolutely fantastic, right? Wrong! Enter the fucked up world of fucked upness.

The Problem

First you have to download the program, and its plugins to all the various browsers that are out there….oh no, that’s right. It only works on IE and Firefox…. noo that’s right! It only works on IE and Firefox running in Windows! Isn’t that great? Hey, why would anyone else want to use it? Of course you are able to install it if you are running MacOS. It even let you install its Firefox plugin. But when you’re sitting by the computer with a big smile, and that crazy Glasvegas song (Stabbed) on highest volume, and decide that it’s time to sign a document you’ve been working on forever the god of awesomness turns into a fucktard. You’re not able to enter anything and firefox freezes like that guy from The day after tomorrow. Yep, Screwed is the name of you and your future. Or…? No, fuck no! Bang the drums and unzip that flight suit, ÖeG has the solution!

The Solution

A person with more time, talent and less beer would take som nifty screenshots to illustrate the solution, but that’s not the way I live my life. One of the best writers of modern poetry, mr Fred Durst, said it best back in the day when music still was cool “It’s a fucked up world, what a fucked up place, Everybody’s judged by their fucked up face” and this has nothing to do with our fix for the problem. Just general rambling and space whoring. So to give it to you the quick way: just type man! Hit those keys as if you are Muhammed Ali and they want to draft you to kill vietnamese babies. Oh, and you better be the Muhammed Ali of today, cause you have to press every key multiple times, until a small black dot appears in the field where your security code is required. There you have it. The badass ÖeG sewn fix is to hit each key until something happens, and then move on to the next one. This procedure may remind some sickos of group masturbation, but it works, oh fuckin a it does. I have no idea what I just wrote, and it doesn’t make any sense to me either, but I guess Önders will clean up this mess tonight. Until then you can ask questions in the comments, or not.Maybe it’s best not to do that. A picture would be nice now..

Oh, btw; we are still fawkin awesome.

Finally!

A milestone has been reached! Finally after over a month of e-mailing, sending faxes and general confusion we’re now accepted into the iPhone Developer Program. That means we can now debug our programs on the actual device instead of the simulator, and we can submit applications to the App Store.

Tomorrow I’m going to take Project Mustang through some battletesting in the field. Of course you’ll be the first to know when it’s available for download if you keep reading this blog!