[13-03-2009] Meet the Developer - Ep 2 : Alfonso Presa - dev behind ThrottleLauncher

[PPCInformer]

We started a new section on our site called " Meet the Developer " and thought it would be a good idea to post it out here as well.


In the 1st Episode we chat with Jörg Michel , most of you guys would have come across some of the fantastic apps he was released for Windows Mobile like G-Alarm, G-Profile, G-Invaders, etc

In the 2nd Episode we chat with Alfonso Presa , who is the developer of Throttle Apps ( ThrottleLauncher, ThrottleLock , etc )


Meet the Developer - Ep 1 : Jörg Michel

Meet the Developer - Ep 2 : Alfonso Presa

[PPCInformer]

We had to chance to chat with Jörg Michel the developer of apps like G-Alarm, G-Profile, G-Invaders and more. Jörg has created some great apps with beautiful UI that is finger friendly too. You can find all his apps at his website http://ageye.de. I want to thank you for taking the time to chat with us here at 1800PocketPC.com. Well lets get in to it…

Tell us a bit about yourself
First of all: Hello to everyone who takes the time to read about my thoughts… It may not be worth it so please don’t blame me
My name is Jörg Michel, I’m currently living in Ulm/Germany but have grown up in the near of Oettingen/Bavaria where the good beer comes from (I really like it). I’m 24 years old and I’m currently studying medicine in my 10th of 12 terms.

Tell us a bit about your apps ?
My first apps were the games Caver and G-Invaders… Nothing much to say about them. These are very basic and poorly designed games with an online high score feature which is probably the best of it
G-Alarm is an alarm clock which has probably more features than any other alarm tool and is also one of the most reliable clocks. It still has some problems on old devices which quickly run out of memory but I’m currently developing a new graphic engine which hopefully improves the memory usage.
G-Watch should combine three different aims: a stopwatch, a countdown timer and a GPS tracking function. Of course you don’t need a GPS device or have to use the stopwatch if you just want to have a countdown timer in the kitchen.
G-Light can help you to decrease battery consumption by dimming the backlight according to the ambient light. Of course you need a supported device which owns a light sensor (HTC Diamond, Touch Pro, etc.)
G-Profile is my newest tool which can manage your device (e.g. set the volume and ring tones, turn on/off phone radio, wifi, or bluetooth, and so on) according to your needs. It can activate the profiles by time, when an appointment occurs, when you connect something to your device (e.g. headset, ac power), when your phone is in a specified cell and so on…


How did everything start?
Well, everything started by getting my new HTC Diamond some months ago (I think it was June 200 and looking for some tweaks and new software for it on xda-developers.com because I was disappointed by the performance and look&feel of the ROM (1.34?). I stumbled upon the sensor API of Koushik Dutta who is by the way one of the most important guys for Windows Mobile programming - he brought the access to the sensors which opened the doors for so many tools.
I remembered playing the game “Cave Run” lots of years ago on my Palm and I thought about extending the great accelerometer example of Koush to a “Cave Run” clone without even knowing how to program in C# or .NET Compact Framework…
As you may know I succeeded and Caver got soon playable. Afterwards I had lots of ideas for new games and G-Invaders was born.
After some weeks I thought of doing some serious stuff and started to develop G-Alarm because I was so disappointed by the Windows alarm clock and also a heavy sleeper…
It started really bad, lots of bugs (I just think of the severe bug where G-Alarm didn’t stop at the time change because of daylight saving) but it soon grew and now I’m pretty proud of it .

Whats WM device do you own and use?
I own an old HTC Prophet which I don’t use anymore and my HTC Diamond.

What sites do you usually hangout on?
My first site for PocketPC related topics was xda-dev and I still think it is a very good source for every owner of a PocketPC. But I really like other sites as PPC-Geeks as well and also write on the German forum www.handy-faq.de. And of course there is 1800PocketPC.com

How can we contact you ? ( twitter, facebook, etc )
I don’t twitter, facebook, myspace or whatever. I still don’t think that everything which is in the internet and gets widely used is a good invention - but that’s my own opinion…
You can contact me on my page (www.ageye.de), my forum or blog.

Are you going to list your apps on the WM MarketPlace ?
To be honest, I haven’t heard much about the new WM MarketPlace yet… Is it already available? If so, where can I access it?
If the conditions are good I will list my apps on it - for free, of course…

What are your thoughts on WM MarketPlace ?
As I said, I’m not an expert for MarketPlace related things but I’m not sure what to think about it, yet…
First of all: I don’t like Apple and its products. I think they have a bigger monopoly in many sections than Microsoft ever had but will never get accused. I think it is a cheek to sell music player at a really high charge without shipping the software or even an AC adapter. If Microsoft would only allow to play .wma files on Windows they would have to pay - Apple may force you without consequences to not use .wma files on their iPods…
As you can see I’m not a big fan of Apple, but the iPhone has brought some good and fresh ideas to the mobile world and I also like the idea to access the latest software on a marketplace.
I’m just curious if some big Windows Mobile software development companies can buy better search positions when you try to find e.g. an alarm clock. Microsoft would be stupid to list e.g. G-Alarm on the first place which is free when it could earn a commission for helping to sell commercial software.
So I’m looking forward on how it’s going to work. Hopefully my tools have a chance…

Any plans to expand to other platform like Android , iPhone ?
As you can read and see in my blog I’m currently working on a graphical interface which is completely independent of Windows Mobile’s controls and I have it nearly finished.
I don’t know how the mobile world will look like in a few years but I’m prepared to port my software to other platforms.

We know this is an ongoing project but how long did it take from the drawing board to your initial release of G-alarm ? What was your motivation to develop it ?
The main benefit for me (which may be a curse for the users) is the fact that I share my new tools and features immediately with the users. Of course there have occurred a lots of bugs but because of the great community helping me to find them and proposing new ideas especially G-Alarm could grow like hell.
So it takes only a few days from the idea to the first public release.
My motivation:
1. The built-in alarm clock didn’t satisfy me
2. I had a lot of time
3. I got really angry when trying to find a good alarm clock. There are so many software companies which just publish crap for a lots of dollars. There are only a few which create high quality, good looking and finger friendly tools (the number increases, thanks to the competitors). Besides the fact that I needed the help of the community, teasing other commercial software developers was a big argument for me to keep the software free

What are the future plan for your apps ?
I’ll release G-Watch 0.6 in the next few days which already uses my new graphical “engine”. Afterward I’ll create a new tool called G-Center (I’m not really happy with the name) which covers all installed ageye-tools (incl. export/import settings function) and maybe also be a customizable start center other apps as well.
After that I’ll probably come back to G-Profile or to G-Alarm. G-Profile definitely needs some new options (the so called “advanced profiles”) and G-Alarm needs the new engine…

What are some of your favorite apps ?
I’m using S2U2 and HomeScreen++ which also demonstrate that freeware may be better than any commercial tool. The Opera browser receives my biggest respect. It brought a quantum jump to Windows Mobile.

New WM devices have some amazing hardware like accelerometer which you have used very well in G-Alarm, its said Touch Pro 2 has a proximity sensor are you cooking up some ideas to exploit these ?
I think it’s a very good idea to have a proximity sensor. HTC’s approach with the light sensor to recognize when you have your phone put at your ear to turn off the backlight is somehow ridiculous…
I don’t have any ideas yet what to do with the proximity sensor - first of all I would need such a phone and users with ideas

When you consider the number of lines of code, which of your app is rated the highest and which one is the lowest?
Of course, I’m proud of G-Alarm. My download counter reached 450.000 downloads within about 6 months which is soooo awesome (of course you have to substract partial downloads, etc.).
The development of G-Alarm has driven me crazy a lot of times - Windows Mobile is such a ungrateful operating system (thanks to all the different vendors with their different opinions on how to customize Windows Mobile).
But now I’ll hope that especially G-Watch and G-Profile catch up… G-Light is somehow my stepchild. The idea has a great potential but I somehow lost the interest in it…

Did you create all the graphics yourself or did someone help you with the look-and-feel of your application?
I’m a poor designer… a very poor designer… Daniel Bergmann (aka expo7) does all the graphics for me! He is a really great designer who creates so professional graphics that I could take a bow in front of him every single day…

A tip for everyone who is interested in programming for Windows Mobile:
I develop my tools with C# using .NET Compact Framework and some native C++ - I haven’t bought a book to learn it. All you need is an idea for a project, a good sample on how your desired language works (for me it was the sensor API of Koush) and time to try a lot of code until it works as it should. It is really easy! If you have an idea, try it!

It was great chatting with you Jörg, good luck with your studies and the WM development. Looking fwd for the new G-Watch and G-Center. May be some of our readers can suggest an alternate name for G-Center.. G-Pack ???? G-Alarm is definitely one of the best WM software out there and I am sure I am not the only one who thinks so.

[Noir]

this is a good idea
I wish it was a podcast too
ty for the news =)

[demonlordoftheround]

I love G-Alarm!

[InvincibleLiving]

+1 for all the g-apps!! that's some quality dev work there!

[PPCInformer]

hopefully in the future we can have the interviews as a Podcast

[InvincibleLiving]

that would be awesome...

[PPCInformer]

Today we chat to Alfonso Presa who has given us some great apps like ThrottleLauncher, ThrottleLock, etc. People who are in to customizing the look and feel of Windows Mobile would have definitely come across ThrottleLauncher. You can find all his apps on his website : throttlelauncher.com. Thanks for chatting with us mate.

Tell us a bit about yourself ?
I’m Alfonso Presa (aka. APBilbo) from Madrid, Spain. I’m 27 years old and I work on IT. Currently I’m on a project in a multinational bank working on web development over Fatwire.

Tell us a bit about Throttle Apps?
To be honest I never intended to start a “big” project like ThrottleApps… It most of happened on the run . It all started one day when I was trying to customize my Herald (around December 2007)… I was searching for the perfect freeware UI and I realized that there where lot’s of great apps out there but none of them was complete. rltoday was customizable but very hardly and themes where fixed to the point that you have to change the files to suit it to your needs, MortButtons was a perfect launcher but it was fixed to some buttons in a grid layout, the cube was very cool but very limited in space (only 9 contacts, only 9 apps, etc), HTC Home was good but functionality was fixed. I thought, hey I just want a simple kinetic scrolling row of icons… what a good chance to learn C#! Then I released a proof of concept app on XDA and people started asking for clocks, registry info, etc… An that’s how ThrottleLauncher was born .
About ThrottleLock, I seen someone’s post at XDA asking if it was possible to make something like the Android lock for Windows Mobile… I though… “Hey! that can be funny!!”… and there it is!

What mobile devices do you own and use?

All ThrottleApps where developed for my “little” Herald but I got an Omnia i900 recently. I always test my apps on both of them.

How can we contact you ? ( twitter, facebook, etc )
I’m not a fan of IM applications or social networks… I prefer forums and email (I feel I’m starting to get old… I’m sticked in the old technology). I’ve a facebook account though , but I just check it from time to time. You can always find me at my web’s forum…

Are you going to list your Apps on the WM MarketPlace ?
I will have to see which conditions does Microsoft offer in order to get your app listed. I don’t like how microsoft handle homebrew developments… if you want your software to be distributed without the user to get a warning about unknown software provided you have to send your app and pass through “Microsoft’s controls”… If that’s a precondition to get my apps published there I will definitely not do it…

What are your thoughts on WM MarketPlace ?
From the user’s point of view I think it’s a great idea to have a software catalog where you can access and download with just one click (just like linux systems has the apt catalog). Though I think this can kill the new developers creativity and will give Microsoft the complete control over WM software… If they don’t like it or if it’s against their policy they can remove it and no one will ever known of it’s existence… May be I’m a little bit paranoid here .

Any plans to expand to other platform like Android , iPhone ?
Some time ago I started porting ThrottleLauncher to Android platform but I didn’t have too much time for it and that project is currently abandoned… Any way I like developing mobile apps and I don’t discard developing for those platforms someday if ever I get a device to test on . May be when 1.0 arrives… who knows .

How many hrs a week do you spend on WM development ?
Depends on the week… but it may be arround 20/30 hours… I also have to provide support and documentation for the apps .

How many hours have you put into ThrottleLauncher ?
Many many more than my girlfriend would have liked . It has been about a year and a half of work so I guess it may be arround 1200 hours.

You have made customization and skinning of your apps a high priority, how has the user response been ?
To be honest I expected more interest on my app from theme designers as ThrottleLauncher currently is capable of almost anything… though the lack of themes may also be my fault as there’s not too much documentation for ThrottleLauncher’s theme development. I’m working hard this days to write some tutorials that are available from my web. My target is to make ThrottleLauncher the first choice for theme designers when they have an idea… Then users will hopefully understand how powerfull ThrottleLauncher is . At this point I have to say that there are many great designers (like Rumball, Paul de Groot, Zoltair Wright, m.schmidler, blazingwolf and much more) that have helped me to turn ThrottleLauncher in what it is and are working to make it the best UI ever .

ThrottleStorage is a unique application , how was the user response to that ?
I think ThrottleStorage is a great tool that provides a functionality that Windows Mobile definitely lacks, specially with the small internal memory that devices currently have. As an app it’s not so appealing as ThrottleLauncher or ThrottleLock and users will use it when they need it. I think it’s a great tool for ROM cookers to include on their ROM’s.

What are some of your favorite apps ?
If I’ve to choose one, it will be TaskMgr without any doubt. None of my apps would have been possible without this little handy tool. Definitely a must have for every developer. Other apps I really like are MostScripts, S2U2 (but I use ThrottleLock… sorry a_C ), S2P and TouchCal.

What are your favorite development tools and Language?
For WM I use C# and C++ over VS2005 and I really like how flexible and simple things can become by using that app and that languages, though…. I think the most powerful and flexible language is Java (I use to develop using Eclipse platform). Also CVS/SVN is a must have in order to develop applications.

New WM devices come with better hardware like accelerometer , proximity sensor, etc are you cooking up some ideas to exploit these ?
ThrottleLauncher currently has support for accelerometer . I plan to release some updates of the themes that will allow users to choose this as an option so they can scroll rows just by changing the orientation of their devices. Note that this support is still experimental…

Have you worked on any commercial apps ?
No I’ve not .

The new version of ThrottleLauncher has a skin to mimic the iPhone, Android, Palm Pre and WM7 did you develop these yourself ?
I’m not a good designer so most of the graphics used on the themes are provided by other people. WM7 theme was almost 100% developed by Paul de Groot and I only made some tweaks over it. For the Palm Pre I’ve only made the layout as the icons where provided by Cpeacha. Android was enterily designed by me… but it doesn’t have too much built in graphics . iPhone icons where taken for several places arround XDA, the base of that theme was initially dones by Gullum and continued by Blazingwolf.

Throttle Launcher has grown to a fantastic UI for Windows Mobile users and is close to version 1.0 , what can we expect in the future?
I’m starting to work on a PC .NET application that will allow users to visually create themes for ThrottleLauncher. This way designers will find a lot more easy to implement their creation in ThrottleLauncher. Also I have to make some experiments on 3d effects by using the gsensor. Probably ThrottleLock will be the first to use this feature.




Fantastic, the PC application is sure to be a hit and with the documentation on skinning on the way I am sure more people will be creating new and exciting skins for your apps. ThrottleLauncher has definitely come a long way from when it was first released, congrats on that and good luck with the apps in the future. Once again thanks for chatting to us @ 1800PocketPC.com

[InvincibleLiving]

These are really great features! Keep it up!