1. My Überall Kongress Summary

    Der erste App Kongress Österreichs ist vorbei und hier jetzt mal meine Eindrücke der beiden Tage …

    MetaStadt Wien … huge … sehr geil, überhaupt das ganze Setting sehr schön gemacht und gut organisiert.

    Sebastian Heinzel - Tripwolf macht viele einzelne Apps um mehr Sichtbarkeit im Store zu erzeugen. Umstellung auf Inapp-Purchase hat einen gewaltigen Boost bei der Nutzung ausgelöst. Offline Maps sind Tripwolf Key-Feature. Nice Talk.

    Shpock nice Austrian Shopping App … Flohmarkt Online.

    Kein inkl. Mittagessen (just 4-EUR-Wraps und 4-EUR-Hotdogs) für 800-EUR Konferenz geht nicht.

    Einiges über Augmented Reality … immer noch nix Brauchbares … nur Theorie oder Spielereien. Ausnahme: Silhouette Virtual Mirror 

    Christoph Schmidt-Martensson von create.at über Gamification und Storytelling … mir wars a bissl zu viel “TamTam” und “Wir sind super!” … Trotzdem: Gamification funktioniert, Games sind die wichtigste Kategorie im Appstore. Präsentation ist wichtig und kann darüber entscheiden ob eine Zielgruppe eine App annimmt oder nicht. 

    Ein Showreel von Digital Kitchen … wirklich cool aber ich hab net verstanden was das mit Apps zu tun hat.

    Der ORF-Manola feiert die Second Screen Apps vom ORF für Ski-WM und Social Connect. Kann ich mir wirklich vorstellen das sowas gut angenommen wird auch wenn ichs selber noch nicht verwendet hab. Second Screen ist fürn ORF a großes Thema.

    Dieter Dahmen von ecx.io hat einen sehr inspirierenden und stressigen Vortrag über irgendwie alles gehalten: Alles wird schneller neu … dafür wird auch alles schneller alt.

    Am zweiten Tag war dann ein wenig netzwerken angesagt. Microsoft hat ganz wirklich ehrlich versprochen das es in Zukunft mehr Windows Mobile Phones geben wird.

    Martin Sprengseis von bluesource wollte mir NFC verkaufen wobei dann doch die Frage nicht beantwortet wurde … wozu? Aber solange Apple es nicht einbaut ist es sowieso tot … also mal 5S abwarten.

    Matthias Schodits von Sevenval hat dann noch versucht den Marketing-Menschen zu erklären was Responsive Design und Progressive Enhancement ist … was eigentlich nur schiefgehen kann. Sowas kann man halt net allgemein beschreiben das ein Nichttechniker das versteht.

    Danach CutOutCam vom Stephan Petzl gekauft nur weil er einer der wenigen war die konkrete Insights gezeigt hat. Für ihn hat das Free/Premium App Modell gut funktioniert … die InApp-Ads dafür überhaupt nicht. Ausserdem zählt er stark auf User-Feedback und -Engagement.

    In Erinnerung geblieben ist mir auch Fredrik Debong von mySugr, eine App für Diabetiker. Die machen sehr viel richtig: Mikro-Nische, Strong Community, Gamification und Quantify Yourself … alles in einer App vereint.

    Gute App Themen aktuell und für die nähere Zukunft gabs dann noch in der Podiums-Diskussion …

    * Quantify Yourself Apps
    * Games, Games, Games
    * Second Screen Apps
    * Health Apps

    Fazit und Wünsche: ÜBERALL Konferenz war okay … next time bitte mehr Fokus auf Inhalt, tiefe Insights, mehr Technik, weniger Agenturen, weniger Werbung, bessere Verpflegung, Cocktails können bleiben wie gehabt, waren super … Location auch super, Ticket Preis runter.

    — Fichtl

     

  2. Useful resources for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Rookies

    To become an SEO, you have to know the Basics of how Google is working, and how Google want, that your website is working. You do not need dirty tricks to stay on top of the search results. Dirty tricks will rather kick you out of the search index sooner or later.

    A lot of people have an wrong or even negative view on SEO. They think, the whole idea of SEO is to find ways or tricks to manipulate search result pages (SERPs) to rank with specific pages on the top of the SERPs.

    SEO is not a technic to manipulate search engines, it´s about how to provide a website:

    • that is technically alright,
    • fast,
    • crawlable for spiders,
    • useful for users,
    • and so on…

    … all kind of factors that are valuable to your website visitors.


    So for SEO trainees, I have collected a bunch of links you should pay attention to, when you want to start as an SEO.

    1. Webmaster Academy

    This is the point, where you should start learning how Google is working.
    To be honest, from a usability perspective this site is quite bad.

    http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/static.py?hl=en&page=checklist.cs&tab=1095579

    2. SEO Starter guide

    Great guide to learn SEO Basics, including best practices.

    Seo Starter Guide

    3. Google Webmaster Guidelines

    These guidelines have already partly advanced knowledge about how to optimize your website. I have to say again, that this site is horrible structured.

    http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35769

    4. Webmaster Central Blog

    This is the place, where webmasters get always the latest information about all they´ll need. You definitely should subscribe to their RSS feed. So you never will miss a blogpost.

    http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.co.at/

    5. Google Webmaster Help Forum

    To be honest, I have never took a closer look into it.

    http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!forum/webmasters

    I hope this small link collection can help you.

    — moreyh

    Further links:

  3. Mori - stuff & more: Überall App Congress in Wien - Meine Eindrücke →

    cmori:

    Als aller erstes möchte ich mich bei austrianstartups.com für das Ticket bedanken, dass ich bei deren Gewinnspiel gewonnen habe. Ansonsten wäre ich nicht beim Überall Congress gewesen, da € 790,- für ein 2-Tages-Ticket eindeutig zu viel ist.

    Jetzt zum Kongress selber, ein paar Facts:

    • …

  4. Mori - Privates & Co.: Kostenlose EBooks für alle. Ganz automatisch. →

    cmori:

    Für Facebook User habe ich eine Seite erstellt, die automatisch nachsieht ob es neue kostenlose Ebooks auf amazon.de gibt und postet diese dann automatisch auf dieser Facebook Seite.

    Geholfen hat mir dabei der Webservice zapier.com, und ein RSS Feed, den man direkt auf amazon im Bereich …

  5. Java 8 Almost Ready

    … Java 8 is almost feature complete now … release is in march 2014: 

    http://www.infoq.com/news/2013/06/jdk8-almost-feature-complete

  6. It’s all about the scale

    One of my daily tasks as a dev team leader is to read CVs (usually written in german). It’s really fun to  see the different styles of CVs people write and to find the important infos from a recruiter point … but today i want to say something about skill ratings.

    In the last month in many CVs are this nice skill ratings. Sometimes 1 to 5 stars or points for a specific skill, sometimes the scale goes from 1 to 10 or the applicant use a natural language rating like: “very good”, “good” (rarely “poor” :)). The skills reach from special programs like Eclipse or Photoshop to operating systems and programming languages and also soft skills.

    Usually the ratings are in the upper area … of course no one would say in a CV: “I’am a bad programmer” but the self-assessment of some guys is really funny sometimes. For the application it’s no problem per se, because i check the skills in the interview later and i mostly can guess the real rating by education and work experience.

    If i would write a CV for an application as java developer i would use for my self-assessment of my java skills following scale:

    1 Point
    I know what Java is, i can read most of the code, i know some backgrounds of history and the fields in software development where java is a good choice (or bad choice).

    2 Points
    I have a good understanding of object orientated programming, i know what is the current state of development and where it goes in future, i have developed some smaller projects or parts in it or i have learned it in a course.

    3 Points
    I can program projects that consists of more than 100 java classes. I have a deep understanding of oop (like patterns and most oop-features). I know some special features of Java like generics or threads. I know something about the most important fields for java development like web development, fat clients, network development, …

    4 Points
    I worked on mid-scale and large projects for some years. I know some Java frameworks or third party libraries like (Spring, JSF, …), I know what Java J2EE is and i have used it already. I can work within a team of some developers.

    5 Points
    I am solid in one of the large frameworks (Spring, Struts, …). I am solid in J2EE and used it some years. I worked on large projects in different fields (server, client, android). I know how to test a larger project and sometimes  do that for real. I already worked in larger teams on one piece of software.

    6 Points
    I can master all importent concepts of the language. I worked on mid-scale and large projects for more than 8 years. I can design a large java application (uml). I know many frameworks (and all important) and third party libs and used many of them already. I can work with a larger team and lead the other developers in topics like architecture, programming style and best practices.

    7 Points
    I use Java since the beginning (20 years) and never stopped using it. I know all the concepts and special features. I have developed small to huge Java projects: serverside stuff, applets, fat clients, … I have worked on a large Java related open source project like Tomcat, Maven, …

    8 Points
    I am one of the guys from the initial Java dev team at sun. I use Java since the beginning and never stopped using it. I wrote some good books about it.

    9 Points
    I am James Gosling.

     

    As you can see in my scale the 9, 8 are impossible (nearly) and the 7 is highly unlikely … so in a global view the best you can reach is a 6 and most good java devs are only 5 or 4. 

    So, if someone send me a CV with a 9 point Java rating in the future: Yes you can work for us Mr. Gosling.

    Where are you in this scale? How do you measure your knowledge?

  7. Firefox Australis is almost here

    image

    Mozilla is currently testing the new curvy tabs design from the firefox australis concept. 

    Grab your fresh UX copy at http://people.mozilla.org/~jwein/ux-nightly/

  8. Stop using Helvetica and/or Arial!

    “Arial and Helvetica are the default font stack for most browsers and for most of the websites. That’s bad, really really bad. Arial and Helvetica suck on web and for paragraphs of text - they are unreadable (as compared to many other typefaces created specifically for web). And Helvetica looks ugly without proper kerning and Arial is just an ugly bastard son of Helvetica.”

    See:

    http://www.64notes.com/design/stop-helvetica-arial/

  9. Full Stack Optimization?

    Full Stack Optimization?

  10. How Would My Office Benefit from NERF Guns?

    They write:

    ”Working in technology can be stressful, just like any other industry.  When we’ve hit the wall and we need to take a break shooting a NERF gun is a fun and harmless activity.  In our case this helps bring together Sales, Administration and Production teams that don’t interact with each other regularly.”

    See:

    http://www.foresitetech.com/blog/2012/09/06/nerf-guns/

  11. Java Developer for karriere.at

    Hey karriere.at is looking for an experienced java developer who extends our key components around job searching and indexing. Find all infos about benefits and requirements in our job ad …

    http://www.karriere.at/jobs/4053343 (in german)

  12. SEO vs. DEV

    … like banana vs. nerf gun.

  13. Chrome Racer - First try!

    Yesterday, Google has launched a new chrome experiment called racer, which is a multidevice racing game for up to five players/devices.

    It´s built on Google´s App Engine, Websockets, HTML5 Canvas and the javascript vector library paper.js.

    We definitely had to try it out this morning.

    Visit http://g.co/racer for further informations.

    btw: you need a fast mobile device. For example, on an iPhone 3GS it doesn´t work.

    image

  14. In folge auf unsere Softwarequalität-Frühstück: Frontend testing mit Sauce Labs. Tons of Browsers & Platforms. https://saucelabs.com

    In folge auf unsere Softwarequalität-Frühstück: Frontend testing mit Sauce Labs. Tons of Browsers & Platforms.

    https://saucelabs.com

  15. Blog Relaunch

    Last week we relaunched karriere.blog. The new wordpress theme is completely build from scratch. The most important change: every site is fully responsive and looks good on every device. 

    One of the new functions is “Blog-Alarm”. Here you can register for different categories, and you will receive an email everytime one of our authors writes an article in this category. 

    image

    Theme Details:

    • CSS with preprocessor LESS
    • Javascript AMD with curl.js
    • Custom infinte-scroll plugin. (not on mobile devices)

    Plugins:

    Caching:

    • W3 Total Cache

    SEO

    • All in One SEO Pack
    • SEO Friendly Images
    • Google XML Sitemaps

    Content:

    • NextGEN Gallery
    • Responsive Video Embeds
    • TablePress
    • Categories Images
    • Related Posts by Category