Author: Andraž Logar

Toshl and WebOS

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In the light of pessimistic news around WebOS ecosystem, Toshl also decides to move on.

A few hours ago, HP announced that it is pretty much decapitating WebOS platform for mobile phone/tablet devices. This came as a shock to the whole WebOS developer community, known for its stubborn support of this revolutionary OS. The Toshl team was shocked as well.

Toshl, known for its cross platform support, has been developing a version for WebOS since first Palm Pre days. You can still see some screenshots of Toshl for WebOS around the internet, even though the version was never released. During our WebOS development struggle, we received fantastic support from some Palm and later on HP individuals like Ben Ritmeyer, Peter Helm, Adela Gildo-Mazzon, Sean Lindo and many others, and we think nothing but the best of these individuals. They were just awesome. But unfortunately the lack of HP properly backing up the platform finally put a stop to Toshl WebOS development, even though we spent a substantial amount of energy and financial resources on it.

From today on, Toshl WebOS development will no longer exist and Toshl WebOS version will not see a public release. We would like to thank Palm and HP for giving us fantastic support, we would like to thank WebOS community for providing extremely useful coding information and we would like to thank all the WebOS fans for sending us emails of encouragement. We are really sad to say goodbye to WebOS, not only due to once-promising platform facts, but also due to just personal love Toshl team had for this niche platform.

Toshl WebOS concept design

Posted in Announcements, Development

Woohooo, iPhone 1.6 and BlackBerry 1.6 out now!

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Seriously, after many months of designing, developing, testing, we finally released enormous, bigger than Beatles kind-of update of Toshl on iPhone, while developing the same version for BlackBerries from scratch, and also managing to freshen-up the web version with new sync API as well.

Yes, now we can go to bed. Almost. Let’s review the news first.

Starting with BlackBerry. First, we believe Toshl for BB’s is one of the most beautiful designs ever created for BB platform. This does not make us geniuses or an insane group of perfectionists, but it just shows how badly BB developers treat user experience and esthetics. Quite wrongly so. Blackberry users know why they use what they use. They know that RIM produces marvelous hardware and software, both completely focused on BB core functionality. And this quest to perfection makes BB truly unique. Indeed, iPhone, Android, WP7, Maemo, WebOS users can easily say that they are better at pretty much everything. Rightly so. But again, BB users know what they want and they are probably the most enthusiastic mobile phone users of them all (ok, apart from those carrying a n900 around).

Toshl Finance for Blackberry

And when we were creating Toshl for BB, we said: it needs to be the best financial tracking expense software for BlackBerry, it needs to look fantastic (given usability and OS expected behavior limitations) and it needs to follow those Toshl core values that we cherish so much. And here it is. One of the best looking BlackBerry apps, completely focused on one thing only: making your financial lives a bit more fun and a bit more care free. With all the functionality that you get on iPhone version, but with BlackBerry flavor. BB users will love it.
Toshl for BlackBerry is currently only available via toshl.com web site. We are waiting for Canadians to wake up and allow us to publish Toshl on App World, but until they do that, we will stay where we are. Please, download it and share the cirque with us. We are known to listen and react fast.

The iPhone version. Funny enough, iPhone is statistically not the most important platform for Toshl. Android and Nokia are. But this might change completely, since iPhone version is now completely redone, redesigned, with many more functions and usability tricks. We believe users will applaud the new version as much or even more as they did the 1.5 one, because it is bringing them multiple currency support, budgets, lock you data functionality, shake to add expense and much much more. Hit app store, read what’s new about it, download it (it is still free) and tell us what you think.

Toshl Finance for iOS

Web version. We call it 1.1. And it is even nicer than the old one. With more functionality as well, following the ones introduced to iPhone and BlackBerry Toshl versions. So, expect budgets and so on. And omg, those illustrations are awesome. We should put them on T-shirts asap! And we shall! Well, actually :)

Toshl Finance T-shirt

API version and cloud backup sync. New as well. Not that you are that interested in this, but it is much more secure, much more stable, is future compatible and optimized for family Toshl users, where more than one person uses Toshl account. If you are a developer, this API is still not public and we have still not decided to make it public. If you have any opinions about this, let us know!

And again, many many thanks to all the beta testers of iPhone, BlackBerry and Web Toshl updates. You are the best.

Now we can really go to bed, get some sleep.

written by Andraž Logar, Toshl product owner.

Posted in Announcements

Toshl on Windows phone 7 – not yet

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Mantra of being available on as many platforms as possible is still our focus. We consider Windows phone 7 platform as one of the core ecosystems of mobile smart phone market and this obviously brings us to a promise: yes, we are already developing Toshl for WP7 and yes, we will deliver it very soon.

Toshl designers, usability experts and also programmers are extremely enthusiastic about the platform. Overall design concept of user interface of Windows phone 7 is unique, beautiful, easy to use… well, it’s just awesome, no matter what MS haters think. Development tools are also there, are very polished (as you might expect from MS) and overall programing is fairly fast and efficient, as long as you stay in the given course of supported functionality and UI creation. Of course, database support is not the best, but with some brainpower even this can be resolved.

With all this in mind, Windows phone 7 platform is a perfect fit for Toshl and it’s core values: ease of use, nice to look at, stable and efficient. We believe that once we are publicly available, Toshl will be the best overall expense tracker on WP7 platform and people will not only love it, but they will actually use it. And that is the biggest overall goal of Toshl and it’s creators. By using Toshl, people actually start realizing where the money is going and eventually save some of the hard earned dineros for a higher cause.

Even though Toshl WP7 is in development already, we are still accepting new ideas on what would make your lives with Toshl easier. If you have any, we would be thrilled to hear them.
Check out the sneak peek:

Toshl Finance on Windows Phone 7 preview

written by Andraž Logar, Toshl product owner.

Posted in Announcements, Development