A place to breathe

Wednesday, August 29, 2012

Why entrepreneurship ?

There is few motivation to start your own company. Most people are motivated by money. Actually, when I started Nusantara Software, I also thought a little bit about money. But my thinking is that, the money can be used to create more tools and technologies so that we can make other people life easier, and have more fun.

So, the "money" part is just a tool for you to sustain the stuff you're working on. Actually,  entrepreneurship need not be thought, although i think there's no harm in trying to teach it to students.  Entrepreneurship is more like starting something out yourself, and persistently believe that what you're doing is good yourself, and good for the people.

We started our game called "Capflick" out of our desire to trying out iPhone app coolness. We then work on "Sweets Rain", and then, we got a job to release "Ninja vs UFO", and then, on and on.

It started with a simple idea of having fun, and now, we have work to do, and we meet cool friends.

So, while money is one of the motivating factor out of starting up a company, it's not really the main thing.

The X-factor of starting out the company, I think, is the thrill to try something new, something outside of your life routine, and your day job scope. Something fun.

Some people took a big chance by quitting the company and etc, but I really don't think it's necessary. I prefer to start small, make friends, make profits, and have fun along the way.

That's why I'm in this entrepreneurship work.

Monday, August 27, 2012

Publishing Apps on iTunes Appstore

Yes, it's still hard to upload something on App store, you feel like you have to be a little wizard.

It's even harder when there's updates on iOS or XCode. Anyway.

Before you even try to publish on iTunes Appstore, you need to get yourself familiar with the following lingo:

1. iTunes developer portal - https://developer.apple.com
2. iTunes Connect - https://itunesconnect.com
3. XCode - Schema, Archive feature
4. Keychain access.

Actually, i don't know why is it so hard to publish apps on appstore, but anyway, if you want to get rough idea without long walkthru, here it is:

1. Create your private/public keypair
    KeyChain Access ->Certificate Assistant -> Request a Certificate from Certificate Authority -> Save it to disk

2. Upload your Certificate on to developer portal 
Go to Developer portal: here https://developer.apple.com/ios/manage/overview/index.action 

Certificate (Left bar) -> Distribution tab -> request certificate
 Choose File (the one you saved on step 1) -> Submit


3. Associate certificate with provisioning profile
Provisioning (Left bar) -> Name your provisioning -> Associate your AppId -> Save


4. Download both your certicate, and provisioning profile. Click those downloaded files.

5. Create your appstore distribution build configuration
    Project -> Info -> Configurations -> Click "+" sign, and duplicate "Release". Rename the configuration to "Appstore".

6. Create your appstore schema
   Product->edit schema -> Click "+" sign and create another schema, call it "-Appstore" 

7. Archive the "Appstore" build
  Product->Manage Schema -> Edit (left bottom) -> Build Configuration = Appstore

8. Sign your code with the profile (it should say "Valid profile" )
    Project -> Build setting -> iPhone Distribution -> your profile

9. Archive the project
  -  Set the target device to iOS device (that's OK without any device).
   - Product -> Archive
  - On success, click "Validate".
  - On success, click "Distrubute"

done.

Why so many steps? Don't ask me. Ask Apple.












Sunday, August 5, 2012

All the little things

Wow, it's been a while since I was blogging here. Well, there are so much stuff happening but unrecorded here in my life. But, let's see. Hmm. Change work, getting married, etc.

Anyway, I won't discuss much about those. I just want to discuss about my current work and some ideas, musings (sometimes quite political, but that's fine if you can't take it). First, I'm currently working at Openet. It's a telco software vendor. The work is kind of relax and flexible which is why I'm still here.

Second, after work, I work at Nusantara Software. It's the company that me and my ReCom buddy Lukman started. We started as a "web" company. because, well, it's our first project and we just want to code for fun together.

Third, we got bored because our "flagship product" - an e-learning software, didn't really take off because we apparently coding it for fun and have no idea how to build business around it. So it's still in our repository collecting dust. So we decided to release games on iPhone. We have released a few games throughout 2011-2012. I will write intensively the whole entire process on how it all became, it's kind of interesting on how completely random idea get us into projects that we learn so much till now.

Fourth, I'm no longer in Penang and now based in KL. Penang is good if you're interested in hardware. But I'm not into hardware (i thought i did) that much. At least for now. That's why the company we started mentioned specifically about "Software". I like Software. I just found it cool to be associated with the industry. I thank those people who started the industry to make us looks cool and non-conformist. Somehow, I feel like a musician who doesn't know how to play musics when dealing with software stuff. Maybe there's a relation to it.

About Me

I'm currently a software engineer. My specific interest is games and networking. I'm running software company called Nusantara Software.