• Developer name: Nicolas Koenig
• Company Website
• Company Name:Toopia
• Apps at the App Store:3
• Location: The Netherlands, Europe

About Dev:

Tell us a little about you, and your current company.

I am Dad of a gorgeous little girl, and our second child is due soon! I started Toopia five years ago, offering webdesign and application development services for a number of companies and agencies. Toopia is a one-man company, yet I work closely together with many other professionals to be able to offer a complete package to our customers. My specialty is the technical realization in Ruby on Rails and XHTML/CSS. Together with marketing partner Hugo Lingeman I developed a super simple Content Management System, which is meant for users that have little or none computer experience, or ‘fear of computers’ altogether. We love the response that we get to that: “Well yes, if it is that simple, I can do it, too.”

About your background: What did you do before taking up iPhone development? 

The iPhone application development is a logical extension to my other work in design and build of websites and applications. 

About Work

What apps have you developed so far? Tell us about your apps/games in brief. 

Thermometer, telling you the temperature at your location. It is different than other weather applications, in that it gives you the temperature based on your current GPS location, rather than weather forecast on locations you select yourself. In just a couple of months the application reached 10,000 downloads.

2udoku - Multiplayer Sudoku: this application is another example where I have taken an existing application and took is a few steps further: by turning Sudoku into a competitive game when you play it together with someone else. Each of the players plays the same Sudoku and the challenge is to be the first one to complete it. A chat feature allows the competitors to communicate while playing. Naturally scores and rankings can be saved. There is a large number of high quality grids in different levels.

Météo des Plages: an application to check the weather conditions at French beaches.

How do you go from idea to app? What’s the process? 

The ideas come from many different angles: partly ‘just as an idea pops up’ but also surfing the iTunes Store and the web to see what opportunities I see. Then a rough sketch with paper and pencil to see what it could look like and whether I can turn the idea into a compelling application. If that all looks promising I start designing with Interface Builder and Photoshop. The interface then is the basis for a concise technical design. And from there on I start Xcoding.Then of course the launch of the App: submission to Apple, a website and some additional marketing and PR.

Any exciting stuff you are working on? Give our readers a hint of what to expect from you next.

For an American job site I am developing an app that will allow people to find full-time jobs and new freelance projects. An application to bring a French newspaper to the iPhone, development starts in September. An exciting new application is under development, which will add a new dimension to people partying. I can’t tell much about it at this stage, but will be happy to inform you once we get close to the launch date, which should be in just a couple of weeks time. A reservation app for the hospitality industry. This one I cannot disclose much about at this time either.

Question:Do you develop for other platforms? How do you compare the iPhone development platform with other platforms?

Currently I am only developing for the web and for iPhone. So far I see these two as the most important ones to reach large audiences. We are discussing development for other mobile devices with onepartner; however, at this point we strongly feel that most impact can be made with the iPhone. Moreover, the development for iPhone is relatively easy with the high quality tools that are available and the distribution via iTunesisa strong advantage of iPhone apps over the applications for other devices. On the other hand: standing out in the iTunes store with 65,000 other applications can be hard. And the review process at Apple is inconsistent, making the submission process frustrating at times.

Tell us something about how users are responding to your apps. What’s the most flattering comment or the weirdest you’ve received?

Initially there was a bug in the Thermometer. That of course brought negative comments. Luckily I was able to solve that quickly. Other comments I sometimes don’t understand: “I don’t like Sudoku” is one like that. I am puzzled why someone then buys the application. What I am proud of is that users are very positive about simplicity and design of the applications. Because that is what I put most effort into: hiding complexity from the user. But most flattering was that the Thermometer was voted a staff favorite by Apple France. 

About the App Store

Name two iPhone apps you consider are cool, excluding the apps you’ve developed. What makes these apps stand out?

Things and Tweetie: They are just the best in their category with a simple and very easy to use interface, great designs, just like their desktop versions. I wish I had made those…. 

Any message to your fellow developers? 

A few tips: check out the Human Interface Guidelines by Apple, and stick to them! Read ‘Getting Real’ by 37signals. Think user: keep it super simple. Your users will make up their minds about an application in just minutes. Losing them then, makes them loose you forever. Just putting your application in the iTunes Store will not be sufficient most of the time.

A great website to support your application of course is a must. The websites for the Thermometer and 2udoku got exposure for just the attractiveness of the site in itself! Then consider other marketing and promotion activities, including things like Twitter. For the new party application we will even do some offline marketing, believe it or not. Be quick to respond to questions and remarks. You can find me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/Toopia

Thanks Nicolas for your time