Nick Reffitt

The rise of popularity in Apple’s mobile devices has in turn seen a rise in applications available on the platform. In July 2008 there were only 800 apps available for download compared to over 800,000 today, and yet the iOS 6 update which rolled out the current App Store interface demonstrated that they have made little effort in allowing their customers to easily find such a vast number of apps.

Apple feel that their consumers should only be exposed to a small number of apps, the upshot of this narrow-minded approach is that only 25 developers generate 50% of the entire App Store revenue. The only way to discover apps that don’t get featured is to search for the specific application name, using a search tool which is not intelligent enough to spot misspellings.

Discoverability. It’s a hot topic right now - gone were the days when an indie developer could create a simple game and naturally appear in the top charts, and in turn make a living from it. In order to generate any initial growth, particularly for an indie game developer, various and often controversial techniques are not only used, but have become commonplace such as mass paid downloads and bought positive reviews. This approach isn’t sexy, and as developers we certainly don’t want to butcher the beautiful products we create by using grey hat marketing.

Advertising companies such as FAAD, App-o-day, and App Gratis are cashing in on Apple’s discoverability shortcomings - new and useful apps simply don’t get seen by their customers. This has left a sour taste in Apple’s mouth which is clearly evident since App Gratis had their app pulled from the store. Contrary to what App Gratis’ CEO says, these business models do not improve the App Store for the consumer, instead the big budget companies force their sub-par featured products into the hands of customers that find them lacking, squashing the real innovators that have little-to-no budget to market their incredible apps.

These marketing companies also have a single point of failure, at any time Apple could decide to pull, for example, App-O-day from the App Store, as soon as that happens the business will rack up tremendous debts and fail. Relying on the co-operation of a gatekeeper is obviously a fragile business model, instead risk should be spread, but accomplishing this is hard.

At the end of the day, we are tip-toeing around, nobody really knows the rules.

If only Apple were consistent and efficient in enforcing and adhering to their own guidelines. In the past I have been the victim of Apple’s review team, each time I have submitted a new update or a completely fresh product I hold my breath and hope the application is approved. Reviews usually take about 10 days, and if an app is rejected then it could take substantially longer to fix just to please the reviewer.

The guidelines that Apple provide developers are simply that. Guidelines, and not strict rules. They are frequently misinterpreted by all parties and are constantly changing.

For me, all I want to do is create apps that genuine customers will love, why has Apple lost interest in supporting the wider developer community and turned their attention to the elite?

I have struggled with these constraints first-hand, and I believe a better discoverability platform is possible that isn’t intrusive to Apple’s approach, and benefits app developers that range from indie hobbyists to large corporations, but most significantly - consumers.

My company has decided to tackle this huge problem, we are calling the platform MORE - right now we are brainstorming ideas, and we would love your input. Please tweet or email us with any thoughts you may have.

If you are like us and believe app store discoverability could be greatly improved, sign up to morediscovery.com to get early access.

I have been a web designer from a young age, 13 to be exact, but it was only recently that I decided to take the dive into learning Objective-C, Cocoa, and creating iOS applications, in fact it’s only been since September. Today I have just submitted my very first app to Apple. Whilst I have always wanted to develop mobile apps, I was too engrossed in my freelance work to give it the time it deserves - until I was given a challenge.

I got an email from a long-time client of mine at the beginning of September. Someone who is incredibly driven and has had huge success with digital products from a remarkably young age - Ted Nash.

Ted felt that he wanted to bring his entrepreneurial visions to the next level, rebrand his company Venevi Enterprises to Liquid 5, and bring me in as co-founder and CTO. I couldn’t believe it at first, what a fantastic opportunity!

The plan was to focus entirely on developing iOS apps, at least for now, so without missing a beat I bought a couple of books and got my head down.

Time slips by when you don’t have a real goal, and a goal that other people are expecting you to make. This might not be the case for everyone, but to let someone down professionally is not an option for me - so I spent the remainder of my summer break from University with one clear objective; to learn enough to create an iOS app.

By the end of September, I had completed reading Big Nerd Ranch’s Objective-C book which is a fantastic introduction to the syntax, and gives you just enough to start on their iOS programming book. Ted told me that we were going to meet 3 investors to discuss the possibility of raising funding (I will write about this experience soon). The investors were wary of my technical ability, understandably so, and asked me how long it would take me to develop an app.

This was the question I was most nervous they would ask me about - I had no experience developing apps, and trying to estimate a delivery date on a project that could potentially be too complex for my current understanding of platform was frightening.

I thought 6 weeks sounded reasonable, but I essentially plucked the figure out of the air, I was still one-third of the way through my first iOS book! We ended the meeting on a high and everyone was feeling very excited about the opportunity.

With anything you learn quickly, mistakes will be made, but these mistakes will give you a better understanding of the language. Zed Shaw’s Learn C The Hard Way demonstrates this wonderfully. The series is designed specifically for you to break code, google the problem, dig through the documentation, and get a true understanding of the problem, and why the solution actually works.

Sites like StackOverflow.com not only have great answers to a problem, but have a great discussion on the matter. It is worth spending time reading the conversation to the problem you are trying to solve, so you can solidify your knowledge.

It’s easy to read a programming book from cover-to-cover, analyse the code, and not waste time writing it out. This is a toxic approach, often intermediate developers who have a good knowledge of a different language will do this, because they already have a grasp on the core concepts, but not of the syntax.

There’s only one way to learn syntax, and that’s to code it out yourself. Seriously - making a conscious effort to write out every line of code in the book will dramatically improve your memory of the syntax.

Finally, each new class or protocol you come across when reading an iOS book, look it up in the Apple documentation. This is fundamental to being a successful developer - if you learn how to browse the documentation efficiently, you will pick up the language in no time!

The best way to get solid experience with a language is to make something - don’t waste time pondering on ideas, just think of something small and simple. Sketch out how you think it should behave (I would recommend using the iPhone app POP to turn your lo-fi prototypes into an interface), then when you have soaked up enough of the basics, think about the frameworks your app might depend on.

Read the chapters on those frameworks first - chances are you won’t need to read everything in the book straight away. If you are under a tight deadline like I was, learn the fundamentals first, then focus on the core frameworks specifically required in your app.

Push yourself to create your first app. Stick to a deadline and don’t let it slip. Take yourself out of your comfort zone, because in all likelihood your ability to make it happen is far beyond your own expectations.

I was able to create an app in 6 weeks - from no working knowledge to a hunger and passion for the platform. I have thoroughly enjoyed pushing myself, and I urge you to do so too.

I promise you will surprise yourself.

This has only been tested on Ubuntu. Open up your terminal and type:

sudo apt-get install sshfs

This will install sshfs onto your system, for more info on sshfs see (http://fuse.sourceforge.net/sshfs.html). Now you need to get your user account the necessary access rights, to do this type:

sudo adduser nick fuse

Change ‘nick’ to your user name that you log into your OS. ‘fuse’ is the user group, in case you were wondering, this user group has pre-determined access rights which makes things easier. Once you have done that, log off and log back in, this ensures that you have the updated set of permissions.

Next you need to create a folder which will simulate whichever folder you wish to access remotely, for example your public_html folder. I created my folder in the home directory called ‘dev’, but you can call yours anything you like.

mkdir ~/dev

Now comes the tricky part, see the code below then I will explain it so you can customise the command in the way you need:

sshfs user@host:website1/public_html/ ~/dev

• User = the username you log into via SSH
• Host = the hostname of your server, for me, mine is similar to s123123.gridserver.com
• After the colon (:) you specify the folder which you want to access on your server, make sure you give the absolute path to the folder.
• After the space is the location of the folder you want to link to on your system, you need to change this to the folder you created earlier.

You will be prompted for a password, then that’s it! You can now open the project folder in Sublime Text 2 (or your favourite editor). The changes you make to the file will automatically update on your server.

Over the past couple of months, I have been infactuated with the problem of education in schools, which I suppose was brought about by recent news reports from the media. There has been plenty of arguments on the matter, employers are claiming that young recruits do not possess basic English and Math skills, youth unemployment has risen to 1.027 million, and the jobs available are highly disproportionate to the number unemployed in total. What we don’t seem to have in Britain is a flourishing culture of business start-ups, which I find unbelievable.

Last weekend, I attended TeenWebConf - a conference packed full of aspiring young entrepreneurs and techies. I got the chance to talk to Emma Walker at lunch and discuss her new business idea. Aside from an overwhelming enthusiasm for business, her opinions and frustrations with schools are somewhat aligned to my own; we need to inspire young people to be more entrepreneurial. Emma is going into schools and offering:

“…one day business challenges within schools and colleges, with the aim of equipping students with the entrepreneurial skills…”

This is certainly a step in the right direction. My secondary school failed to equip me with these skills, and I don’t feel the syllabus can afford to ignore this fundamental problem: If students leave school at 16 or 18 years of age with no skills (and crucially no motivation) to form a startup, what chance do the younger generations have in this economic climate?

I propose we rethink the way education works in Britain. Much of my vision on the matter is shamelessly taken from Salman Khan’s TED talk, if you haven’t seen it before I strongly recommend you do. A typical classroom has 30 pupils roughly, all have come from different schools, exposed to various teaching practices whereby the pace naturally varies depending on the teacher. When a pupil starts secondary education, they are thrown into a new classroom, expected to respond to a new teaching style. The probability of the teacher engaging the student is too high, each student learns at a different pace, sometimes they need a concept reiterated to him/her, whereas the quick learners will grasp a concept quickly and wait for the rest of the class to catch up. What happens here is the teacher has to chose a group of students that go at a particular pace, and the rest get bored and lose out on valuable concepts that they struggle to grasp when they are assessed. Why is this archaic teaching strategy still being used? Surely the teachers must recognise this?

The alternative method of teaching is to flip the classroom using technology. Pupils learn concepts by watching video content online which is set as homework by the teacher, and the classroom time is used to go through homework. This approach allows struggling pupils to receive 100% of the teacher’s time within the hour slot, rather than 20% of their time in between the teacher explaining the concepts to the whole classroom. This to me sounds like a painfully obvious approach; younger generations will be able to unlock their potential, employers will feel highly satisfied with young recruits, and as a nation we would have a greater number of thinkers amongst us.

How do we force this change through the red tape and bureaucratic system disgracefully called compulsory education? In a world where technology is evolving at a fast pace, can compulsory education afford to slack behind? We should no longer tollerate such behaviour.

The past few days of blogging each day seems to have left a positive impact on my daily life already. Jotting everything down such as business ideas, opinions and observations, but most importantly the things that make me happy. It was last night that I showed my girlfriend the speech from Steve Jobs at Stanford University in 2005 where he explained how he asks himself every morning if he loved what he was doing that day, and if one too many days the answer wasn’t yes, he knew he needed to change something. 

Now I wouldn’t say I listen to ‘preaching’ from supposed industry leaders too often, and if I have, I’m skeptical of their beliefs, their attitude towards a particular problem, or when they introduce a new way of thinking. Much of this comes from the way I was brought up, where the saying “hope for the best, but expect the worst” comes to mind.

Steve Jobs is, without question, one of the greatest minds of our time. He has made a compelling impact on many lives across the world, and I would insist that you read up on him, or at the very least quickly watch a few videos on YouTube if you want to be inspired.

This brings me onto my first point, and that is clients. In the freelancing world, keeping your clients happy is all you work for - meeting deadlines on time or occasionally completing the project early for extra brownie points, maintaining good communication, showing them an interest in the project your working on and sometimes giving your opinion on how you could improve the project. These things would come naturally to the experienced freelancer, but when your are working with a difficult client, it is often very difficult to maintain the level of service you expect yourself, and others expect of you, to offer.

My opinion on this is you should give your time to the clients you love to work for, and avoid putting difficult clients in front of your good ones. Michael Bierut, a world-class designer from Pentagram, made a speech entirely on the subject of clients back in January 2010. If you do a great job for a bad client who has put enormous pressure on you over the past couple of months, meeting tight deadlines, constantly revising your mock-ups, and not paying their invoices for months on end, the chances are he or she will have friends and colleagues which form similar characteristics, word of mouth will spread, and before you know it, your working with another bad client.

On the flip side, you could have one great client, and I mean a truly great client. You will know them when you find them - every time you get an e-mail from them you get excited, relaxed, and generally happy, you may even have a phone call with them where you an lay back into your chair and feel very at ease with conversing over their plans for an upcoming project. Those sorts of clients are a freelancer’s dream, and they make your life substantially happier. You will even work harder and go that extra mile just to make sure that the service you offer them is done to perfection in every sense of the word, and you won’t feel that the time and effort you have given that client has been tiresome. If this is the case, surely you must think to yourself “why can’t it always be this good?”.

All I can say is that you have to be confident enough to say no when a project doesn’t meet your expectations, don’t be taken advantage of; your professional skills are worth a lot more than you think, and remember to preference your time for good clients rather than bad ones.

Another thing that I have learned over the years is to focus your business on one particular skill, for example I have done plenty of jobs from complete backend development to print work, but I have always seen my web design and user interface design skills as my “bread-and-butter” of my buiness, the cash cow, the one that keeps the a good momentum of cash flow.

This doesn’t mean to say you can’t learn new things, even if they have no relevance to your current working skill set. For example I regularly read Hacker News which is packed full of programming-related articles, even though I spend most of my time in Photoshop.

I often read up on conflicting opinions on whether it is better to be a specialist or a jack-of-all-trades. My opinion is that it depends on you as an individual, but it is easier to market yourself as one skill, and this also works best if your main marketing technique is through word-of-mouth because you will be known as the “guy who can do X”. Find out what you love doing most because like minded individuals, which includes clients, will admire your work and hire you. From then on, sky is the limit, and the more you can offer your existing clients, the more valuable you will be.

Welcome and thank you for checking out my blog. I should probably introduce myself, but that would bore you to high heaven and my approach to practically everything in life is let’s get right to it, so I won’t disappoint you early on.

I’m a regular guy living in a small village in Surrey. I want to reach out to like-minded individuals who have the flavour for business, but have delayed their ambitions to ‘get out there and make it’ to pursue a degree or another avenue of education. This is my story of how I tackle both. Yes both. I can already sense your skeptisism, but I thrive off of words “it will never work” as it drives me to prove you wrong :)

Recently I came across a discussion on Hacker News on how to be a faster writer, I often glance over articles on the homepage simply because the fabulous community that resides there will naturally upvote awesome articles. From what I gathered, many contributors praise the website 750words. The idea behind this website is very simple - dump your brain onto paper each day and aim to write 750 words.

I could instantly see the benefits of this, and I’m not easily swindled into changing my daily routine, because I feel it works pretty well so far, however it is designed to give you clarity in your thoughts, put your ideas down on paper for future use and plan the rest of your day out so you can utilize your time in a more constructive manner. 

I also recently wrote a very generic article for an iOS related blog. This was my very first guest article that I have ever written, and I was so excited to see it go live on someone else’s blog. In essence, that has prompted me to try out my own blog.

I will try my upmost to avoid rants, preaching and boring discussions. My intentions of this journal are to:

• Inspire my fellow generation and start their own business
• Share my experiences of juggling studies with freelancing
• To publish my short term goals and financials
• Give my opinion on all sorts, I will keep it light and positive
• Motivate me so I don’t slack off, so your support will be very appreciated!

Hopefully I’ve summed up the blog well enough, feel free to add me on Twitter if my daily rants interest you :)

The first post is planned to be published this Sunday which should cover the past week, a quick overview on the business I run, and my preparation for University.