This seems to be the first post after almost two months of silent nothingness. There are some topics I’d like say something about without creating a seperate post for all of them, so here they go.

Software Challenge

Tomorrow is the big day! The finals are on, which means that the eight best teams (we’re #2) will compete against each other. It’ll be public in a big shopping mall in Kiel, so everybody can come and spectate the event. We submitted an update to our client just yesterday evening and are curious to see how it’ll work against our opponents.

Flash Summer Camp Berlin

flashcamp logo

Yup, I’m attending the Flash Summer Camp in Berlin (Germany) next Sunday! That’s a big thing for me, because I’v never been to any Flash conference / camp / meeting, so that’s my first time to see flash rockstars like Andre Michelle and Sven Claar live. To get to Berlin, I’ll have to go to Kiel by car, take the train to Hamburg, there I’ll hopefully meet some guys from the Flex User Group Hamburg (flexughh) and go with them to Berlin by train. I’m so excited!

SmoothDeck (Twitter Client)

Two months ago I posted about a twitter client I was working on. I was so deep in the project that I even created a twitter account (@SmoothDeck) and registered a domain (http://SmoothDeck.com) for it. But than the problems with memory became bigger and bigger and I stopped developing it more or less. On SmoothDeck.com there is an alpha version with some screenshots, if you’re intersted.

There are some reasons why I tried to make my own twitter client.

First, I don’t like the style of the existing ones. TweetDeck doesn’t contain a single color gradient I think and I don’t really like Seesmic as well. Tweetie and Nambu would be fine, but unfortunately they’re Mac-only.

Another reason is the url-lengthen feature. Since I used it in my own client, I can’t live without it anymore. Look at this screenshot of SmoothDeck.

smoothdeck-tooltip-screen
Those short URLs are so pointless, having access to the long URL right in you twitter client helps a lot. You now can see that it’s a gizmodo article and since most sites today are using search-friendly URLs for search optimization you get an overview of the content without clicking on the link.

The good news is that I haven’t totally given up the work on SmoothDeck. Maybe I’ll find more time in my summer hollidays, starting in six weeks.

Until then I plan to put my effort into smaller projects and experiments, so that this blog gets a bit more active. I’ve got some old stuff I’d like to publish here, too.

I’ve been doing very much AIR development in the last few weeks.
First I tried to create a simple twitter client, then I started to build a twitter desktop search app, but switched over to make a gmail notifier…
As the gmail notifier was almost finished I decided to put all my effort into a new project: a multi-column twitter client.
And there I am.

Twitter Client
The twitter client is pretty much like TweetDeck, but I’m trying to put a bit more smoothness into the user interface.
It supports multiple columns with the ability to group your twitter friends.
There will be a complex theme management with stuff like gradients and, of course, a theme builder.
So far the only big problem is the memory usage and I’m not quite sure how to fix that.
I think I’ll release a first alpha preview in the next few days, so stay tuned.

Software Challenge
Another very interesting project I’m involved in is the Software Challenge, a competition for german schools.
Each participating school team has to code a client that is able to play the game “High Voltage”.
These clients then have to compete against each other.
Currently the competition is in full activity, 15 out of 37 encounters are over.
And what should I say… our client is at #1 till the first day.
http://sc.gfxpro.eu/standings_15.html (Heinrich-Heine-Schule [HHSH] is our school)
One encounter consits of 6 matches. We have lost some matches already, but we’ve won all 15 encounters by now.
Today (yesterday actually) we had to fight against the second-placed team,
and we were extremely happy to see our client win 6:0 !
The code is written in Java, straightforward using SVN (thx to @iReemo).
You can see the replays of all matches on http://sc.gfxpro.eu/. (click on vs, then choose a gif link).

This is one example of us winnig today. We are the blue ones