riedel.wtf

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Real-Life M1 Pro Review from an App-Developer

These new M1 Pro MacBooks are INSANE! I received mine today and ran it through a series of tests of my everyday workflow—most importantly: unxipping Xcode. The results blew me away.

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How we used MagSafe fishing to find and recover an iPhone 12 Pro from the canal in Berlin

It‘s been a couple of days since a friend of mine dropped his iPhone 12 Pro into the canal in Kreuzberg, Berlin. News made it all around the world by now, being featured on all Apple News pages that exist: AppleInsider, 9to5Mac, The Loop, iPhone Ticker, iMore, Hi Tekno, Mac4Ever, Appgefahren, Macerkopf, MacTechNews, iDrop News, Engadget, 新浪网, 科技新報 TechNews, iXBT, … it doesn‘t stop. Apparently, this is the kind of news the world was waiting for.

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Setting up Philips’ Hue Wall Switch Module with HomeKit and Shortcuts Automation

Right now, I am mainly controlling my HomeKit devices using the Homie App in my Mac‘s Menu Bar. However, in more and more situations I would like to have a proper light switch integrated into my HomeKit setup: imagine guests are coming who don‘t know about the setup, or you just enter the room and would like to quickly turn on some lights without pulling out your phone. Plus adding sophisticated (but intuitive) Shortcut Automations (e.

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How to invent a new Emoji: The long story of my Polar Bear Emoji

As you might know, Polar Bears are my favorite animals. And for many years I was sad that there was no Polar Bear emoji at all. That was until I noticed how Emoji characters are created, and that basically any person can propose new characters to be added. Emoji symbols and even standard typed characters in different languages are standardized by the so-called Unicode Consortium, which ensures that all digital devices understand each other‘s symbols.

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Homie – Menu Bar App for HomeKit

I was super annoyed that I always had to open the HomeKit App on macOS in order to control my smart home devices. To solve this, I’ve built a little app called “Homie” for Big Sur that lives in the macOS menu bar.

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one sec – break your social media habits

“one sec” uses Shortcuts Automation to toggle a deep breath animation whenever you open one of the configured apps (Instagram, Twitter, YouTube…). This breaks unconcious social media habits and even helps long-term by adding more friction when opening these apps. Breaks unconcious social media habits Being forced to take a deep breath helps yourself to reflect on what you are currently doing on your phone – did you really want to open Instagram or was it muscle memory?

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KeyPad x QuickScreen: Remote-Control your iOS devices!

I‘ve recently discovered the App KeyPad which is available for free on the Mac AppStore. It basically pretends to be a bluetooth keyboard + trackpad for your iPhone or iPad and lets your remote-control your iOS device through that. The reason why it caught my attention is, it‘s a perfect compagnion for QuickScreen which mirrors your phone‘s screen quickly to your Mac. Remote-Controlling your iOS device with KeyPad The setup is simple: Install KeyPad from the Mac AppStore, and connect your phone to the newly created bluetooth endpoint.

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Setting up QuickScreen

QuickScreen mirrors your phone‘s screen quickly to your Mac. Even though the user interface is super-simple (and quick!), there are a couple of things you can try if your phone does not connect somehow: Launch QuickScreen on your Mac. Make sure your iPhone is connected with a lightning USB cable to your computer. Newer iPads are connected with a USB-C cable. Make sure that you allow your computer to access your phone (there might be a pop up on your phone to “trust this computer”).

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Tips and Tricks when Climbing with Apple Watch

Climbing is a great sport. And Apple Watch is a great fitness tracker. It even provides built-in capabilities to track climbing activities – even though this is only very basic and just provides duration, heart rate, and calories for each climbing workout: The right App for Climbing & Bouldering With the integrated workout app only providing very basic statistics I started to work on my own fitness tracking app “Redpoint” (free download) — specifically built for climbing.

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Processing for iOS Education Challenge 2019

Submit your coolest projects, stories, and course material around Processing for iOS! I’ve started my app “Processing for iOS” as a little side-project in 2011. I wanted to have my processing sketches always with me to show my friends or to code on the go on my iPod Touch. At some point, I figured out that other people were also interested in using my app, so I decided to upload it to the AppStore in 2012.

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Introducing Redpoint — The first Apple Watch Bouldering Fitness Tracker

Today I am publishing a new app on the AppStore: This time I combined two of my passions: My passion for climbing & bouldering and my passion for iOS development. Redpoint Redpoint is a fitness tracker for bouldering and climbing that uses the built-in sensors form the Apple Watch. While I developed this app I discovered how amazing and well-thought watchOS and the actual Apple Watch hardware already are – providing computing power for real-time machine learning analysis of accelerometer and gyroscope samples, the heart rate and the barometer.

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SPD Hackathon: How we Accidentally Dethroned the German Chancellor #Schulzzug

In Germany’s 2017 national election it really looks like Martin Schulz (SPD, Gottkanzler) has the momentum to beat Angela Merkel. Germany’s social democratic party (SPD) was able to start a positive hype around their candidate Martin Schulz that had its origins in the Internet; organically. Thousands of memes were shared online, like the Schulz-Train – promoting the values of Martin Schulz and the SPD: A strong Europe for a bright future for all EU citizens.

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funk Hackathon Mainz: WorldWide Protest

At this year’s Funk Hackathon in Mainz we developed a platform to organise and participate in protests all around the world. This platform helps to strengthen the democracy we live in by bringing together organisers and participants for protests against right-wing ideology, nationalism or for animal’s rights. In the last couple years, young people have often been accused of not being political. A generation where political activism equals clicktivism or slacktivism that remains digital, but fails to show visible dissatisfaction with policies on the streets.

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Hackathon Stuttgart 2016: Hacking a street-sweeper: SuperMarioKehrt

This year’s Hackathon Stuttgart took place in the beautiful Römercastel location in Bad Cannstatt. This is a huge building with plenty of places to work and sleep at night. This hackathon is organized by logicline. The Idea When it comes to hackathons I am always a fan of crazy projects you wouldn’t or cannot do at home. In this case we were interested in Car2Go and Kärcher (which is a German company producing machines and equipment for cleaning) – both provided interesting hardware for the event.

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Ferienakademie 2016: Drones taking over Sarntal

Ferienakademie is a voluntary holiday academy organized by three Universities from southern Germany: Freie Friedrich-Alexander University of Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU), Technical University of Munich (TUM) and University of Stuttgart. It takes place in Sarntal, which is a beautiful high valley near to Bozen in Italy. This year I participated in Bernd Brügge’s and Daniel Siewiorek’s course “Cyber Physical Systems”. We built a system which can help workers in extreme environments to minimize risks and to identify hazards earlier.

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WWDC 2016 — Apple Scholarship

It was a great and exhausting week at Apple’s World Wide Developers Conference (WWDC) in San Francisco during the last days – with the scholarship orientation on Sunday, the big keynote on Monday and labs during the week. We got lots of questions answered during the week in the labs and met old friends from 2013, 2014 and 2015 again. Thanks for the great week and see you next year!

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Satellite-based terrain visualization for environmental monitoring and presentation of relevant observations

STUPRO is a University software project we have been working on during the last year. This project is part of the Bachelor program “Software Engineering” at University of Stuttgart. The Team Our team consisted of Adrian Zeyfang, André Wruszczak, Jan Machnik, Jan Tagscherer, Jonas Auer, Karl-Heinz Theil, Larissa Laich, Marcel Warbeck, Paul Dieterich, Tobias Beeh and me: The Project During the project we developed “Kronos“, which is an extension on top of the open-source project Paraview.

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Apple Tech Talks in Berlin: All about Apple TV

Apple’s TechTalks in Berlin were a great opportunity to meet many WWDC friends from San Francisco again. The talks itself covered different important topics regarding AppleTV and tvOS app development.