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CodeCreek

In our previous post, we discussed AngleCam, and the selling of source code online. It turns out, there aren't really many places you can do so, and the couple of websites that do offer this capability have some restricting terms of service.

So, with this in mind, bizbizbuzz has decided to build an online marketplace for selling source code, that lives up to the ideals we thought we would find in other online services. Here's a list of our goals with CodeCreek:

Simple, and to the point. No ads.

Secure. All transactions done through Paypal.

Low Commission (10%, in comparison with commissions between 30% and > 50% for our competitors).

No obligation of exclusivity, again, in contrast with our competitors.

Now that all that is said, here's the link: http://codecreek.biz. It's still in the beta stages, so if you find any issue, feel free to contact us at contact@codecreek.biz. 

Additionally, any users how test the website during the beta period will have a 7% commission on sales !

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AngleCam: Selling Source Code

A couple of years ago, I developed AngleCam, an iPhone application that had, as its goal, redefining and facilitating trigonometry.

Instead of rewriting an entire description for you, let me copy / paste the one I had written when I submitted the app to the App Store:

What's so innovative about it? Well, if you've ever needed to calculate the value of an angle in a right triangle, you know how bothersome and repetitive it can be to do so using trigonometry. AngleCam takes care of that for you. And, while most applications make you input the values of the sides of a right triangle to calculate the values of the missing angles, AngleCam does all the work for you by simply using a picture of your angle. That's right – you don't have to know a single measure!  Here's what you do: Take a picture, and then select the three vertices of the triangle. Hit 'Calculate', and there you go, you're done. It's that simple.  AngleCam isn't only useful, it's superior to other apps in its field and here's why:  -It lets you calculate the value of angles in right triangles, without knowing a single measure, therefore succeeding in cases where it would be impossible to do so by hand.  -It does the math for you at blazing speeds, highly reducing the time necessary to calculate one of these angles.  -Indirectly, AngleCam lets you check if a triangle is right or not (indeed, if the triangle isn't right, AngleCam will notify you that it can't calculate the angle values).  -AngleCam doesn't only give you the value of angles in degrees, but also does so in radians.  AngleCam is adapted to every single device (excluding the iPad and the iPad 2), but remember, if your device doesn't have a camera, you can only calculate angles from pictures that are already saved to your iPod touch. Additionally (this is a basic rule of trigonometry) angles can only be calculated when the triangle they make up is a right one (meaning it has a 90° angle). Finally, AngleCam is quite precise, and if used correctly, will output a value for an angle that is 1/2 a degree close to the actual value. Most errors are due to bad usage, such as taking a photo of the triangle from too much of an angle (try to take photos parallel to the triangle), and not selecting the triangle's vertices accurately. 

Not only was the application interesting to the daily user, but it was a really cool proof of concept for the developer interested in new technologies: indeed, AngleCam, even though it is very simple, was new stuff, and still is.

But here was my problem: who wants to buy an application that does this? Not many people, it's a very small market.

So, after taking the app off the Store around a year ago, I just had the idea to try and sell the source code to an app developer, particular, or company that feels a need for such software. Everybody would win: I wouldn't have wasted my time, and as I said, it's actually a pretty awesome concept.

However, as I've just discovered, it turns out it's very hard to find good places to sell code. Most of the websites that offer similar transactions seem kinda fishy to me...

Well, anyway, if anyone is interested in AngleCam's Objective-C source code, feel free to visit http://bolzan.biz/contact to shoot me an email, and please make an offer !

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'I Have a Dream' – Skimmed. Aren't things so much clearer this way?! Cloud created using Skim, a Mac application.

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Skim: Development Progress (1.02-1.03)

We've been busy here at bizbizbuzz for the past two weeks, trying to satisfy every user's demands for updates, fixes, and new features in Skim.

We decided to prioritize on two issues first: bug fixes in the UI resizing code, and the option to customize your Skim Cloud's font and colors.

We rapidly were able to implement those two features, but once submitted to Apple, it was discovered there was one lingering bug in the resizing code. That bug has taken us a good two weeks to resolve !

For those interested in the technical aspect of things, here's the explanation: there was some strange bug in the code to resize the NSWindow, which was solved by resizing the content view as well: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/9204132/same-command-different-results-setframe-nsview

After much researching and coding, Skim version 1.02 has been submitted to Apple for review, and we'll keep this blog post updated with Apple's response.

Well, as soon as version 1.02 was done being coded, we started work on the next update ! 

For the moment, version 1.03 is comprised of collocations; the idea that frequent pairs of words are included in the cloud, not only single words.

The typical example we give for this is: 'Barack Obama' vs. 'Barack' + 'Obama'. This feature is almost done being implemented, and we'll ship it out as soon as possible !

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Python Project for the last two weeks: analyze Twitter's live stream and get tweets containing either 'Patriots' or 'Giants'. Then, determine if the tweet is geotagged or not; if so, place it on a map, save the map, and repeat operation. 

In the end, after about a week of data collection, I had ~1050 images saved. I created a time lapse of these images.

Blue dots represent the Patriots, red dots are for the Giants.

Watching in HD is recommended ;)

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Skim: Update List

We're going to make a list of the new features coming to Skim, so users can have an approximate idea of what our development is currently focused on, and where it might shift to in the future.

In the following list, features already added are crossed out, and the next features to be included in Skim are chronological in the list:

Customize fonts and colors of Skim Cloud. (v. 1.02).

Fix remaining issues in resizing of the UI. (v. 1.02).

Collocations and 2-grams (meaning words like 'Barack' and 'Obama' are recognized as one keyword, 'Barack Obama', by Skim. (coming in v. 1.03).

Fix issue when Wikipedia description fails. (v. undecided).

Voice control (v. undecided).

List of keywords and ranking in a table with export to text file option (v. undecided).

Option to add more stopwords.

We have a couple more, but it's no fun if there aren't any secrets, right? 

As usual, if you have any suggestions, please contact us !

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Skim is doing absolutely great in the Store ! If this keeps on going, Skim has a very bright future in front of it :)

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Skim: Users' Reactions

Since Skim's release in the end of January, we here at bizbizbuzz have been worried about the consumers' reception of our app. Thankfully, that didn't last long !

Indeed, not only do many of our users love the app, several of them have come forward and emailed us some suggestions for future updates. These ideas have been extremely constructive, and full of insight, to say the least. 

Furthermore, reactions on the Mac App Store have been very positive as well:

This is truly an amazing app. I love the fact that it can analyse enormous texts in seconds. I highly recommend this application to all users.  ★★★★★

And the great short and to the point review:

this app is amazing ★★★★★

Thank you to all our users for buying Skim, and if you have any suggestions or complaints, feel free to email us at bizbizbuzziphone AT gmail DOT com.

For users who don't have Skim yet, don't remember it's not too late ;)

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Skim: An Intelligent Tag Cloud

Skim is an awesome new Mac application that you create your own tag clouds from any source of text.

Be it an article, a speech, a poem, a book, anything, Skim will take it, analyze it seriously fast (up to ~50,000 words / second), and rapidly output a beautiful graph that gives you, faster than your eye can blink, an accurate representation of what your source is about.

Could you guess what this is a Skim of? If not, this is a representation of Martin Luther King's 'I Have a Dream' speech. Isn't it awesome ?!

But let's say you don't like the bright purple of the word 'ring'; what can you do about it? Well, thanks to Skim's new feature in version 1.02, you can customize your Skim Cloud and change the fonts and colors to whatever your creative mind can come up with !

               So, that's all cool and pretty, but what can you do once you have the actual Skim Cloud floating around on your screen? Well, you can now either save it to disk as an image file, to email to friends, upload on Internet, etc...

Or, for you social networking adepts, you can upload your cloud to Facebook, Twitter, or Tumblr, so that all your virtual friends can know what you're skimming about.

Best of all, this Skim Cloud is interactive, meaning you can click on each keyword to know more about it. Here's some stuff you can learn from clicking on an interesting word:

Get its Wikipedia description.

Get an image of it (from Wikipedia).

Get its number of occurrences in the source.

Get its ranking relative to other words in the source.

Get a list of sentences in which it appears.

Skim is available on the Mac App Store for 5$. Here's a link: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/skim/id495577927?mt=12