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Bitcoin is currently all the rage. The last few weeks saw an incredible rise in “value” (as seen by the exchange rate), a rise in problems (DDos against MtGox and Security Breaches at Instawallet and Bitcoin-Central) and loads of good and bad articles. Currently, the most important problem though, is another one. Hyperdeflation. The constant rise of the value of BTC vs “normal” currencies like EUR or USD makes it highly improbable, that people do anything else than hoard their coins. The reasoning is totally clear: The value of the BTC will be higher tomorrow than today, so it doesn’t make sense to use the BTC to actually buy anything. A currency that is not used to actually buy stuff is kind of useless (and not healthy for the whole ecosystem) ...

Incredible to not only see, but to work with Frank Doran Shihan, who is in Zurich the 25th time. It’s enlightening seeing a man that is 80 years old have so much energy and presence on the mat, with humour and joy. I have been to his seminars for 3 or 4 years now, and they are incredibly inspiring. Hopefully we will have the chance to have him as our guest for many more years to come. ...

It was Kickstarter payback day today (yet another one) and two black Pebbles arrived (I am still waiting for a red, a white and a gray one) First impressions (after half a day of wearing it): Bigger than expected Not as polished and small as an Apple product, but not bad - not bad at all - for an independent company The display is better than expected Communication with an iPhone 4 works relatively painless (seeing phone calls, messages and music control work) ...

Chengchen started his Mobino internship this week and he has been totally overwhelmed by all the information and complexity of the system he needs to learn. I believe that throwing him into the cold water head first is a good thing, and he has been holding up really nicely those last 3 days, helping with navigating while I was driving the pair programming. We will soon put him into the drivers seat as well. ...

Every Apple user will have met Skeumorphism - faux leather in the calendar, tape reels in the (old) Podcast iOS app etc. There is hope, that Jonny Ive will free OSX and iOS from the tired “trying to look like reality” look. The worst offenders in terms of skeumorphic interfaces however aren’t coming from Cupertino - there are legion of software producers that build interfaces that mimic “reality” down to the shadows on the knobs. Check out these samples: ...

We had released the first (of many) updates to our Mobino iOS app over a month ago, but got shot down by the droids at Apple for using the word “beta” on our splash screen. The easy way - of course - would be just to scratch the Beta tag, but we spent quite a bit of time on again improving the user experience for signups, signing in with Facebook (in order to pre fill name and photograph) as well as dozens of other small enhancements to the general feel of the app. ...