Category: Announcements

Presenting Toshl Limited Edition for Nokia N9 with MeeGo

The stage is set. The murmurs of an awaiting audience fill the ether. They know something is about to unveil itself, yet are unsure of what. Ever so infrequently they refresh their gaze of the stage with a stoic anticipation.

This stage is no ordinary stage. This audience is no ordinary audience. The stage faces no particular direction, it’s turned towards anyone who wishes to partake in it’s wonders. The audience floats around in perpetuity glancing now here, then there, looking for a stage of interest to focus their attention on.

Then it begins. The red velvet drapes slowly and smoothly slide away as if they were never there. In fact they never were. The smoke now filling the stage gets slightly confused by the sudden non-existence of the red velvet drapes behind of which it was supposed to emerge. To add insult to injury, the smoke realises it has sprained forth on a stage in the metaphoric cloud, making the point of smoke rather moot.

The star of the show appears, seemingly unfazed by this whole existentialist commotion. The enclouded audience gasps with bewilderment. Is it late? Is it part two? For the year is 2011, yet this black monolith appearing on stage looks exactly the same, but not quite, like the monolith of Space Odyssey 2001. It earns the “but not quite” distinction with it’s slender, curvy figure, perhaps reminiscing of the Kubrick’s monolith’s younger, more attractive days.

As if this wasn’t enough for an audience to take in and decipher in a day, the front of the monolith lights up with the power of an exploding supernova. The beam of light acquiesces to a bit of moderation, letting the title in the monolith’s center shine through. Nokia. The people of the cloud now watch with bemusement. They recognise the name of the dynasty, the monolith seems clearer now. But what is the purpose of all this?

Then another flood of light fills stage. This time the aim is clear. There is no more confusion, no more bewilderment as to the purpose of this thing. A wonderful sense of clarity about the present and the future fills the audience. They can feel their financial worries disappear, accounts getting sorted, budgets met and they can finally relax with a feeling of security and financial freedom.

The monolith shines brigthly: Toshl for Nokia N9

Nokia N9 monolith and Toshl

So, humanity, you’re welcome. ;) This heavenly duo of Toshl and Nokia N9 is so powerful, exclusive and unique that we have decided to limit its use to no more than 92 000 Nokia N9 devices. After a deep and thoughtful consultation with Stephen Elop we feel that is the only way we can prevent the breaking of space/time continuum. So happy users of the one and only MeeGo Nokia to reach the safe harbours of people’s pockets: download away. If you don’t download Toshl right now, we cant guarantee the safety of the space/time continuum later on.

Screenshots of the financial saviour’s goodness:
Toshl Finance on Nokia MeeGoToshl Finance on Nokia MeeGoToshl Finance on Nokia MeeGo

But here’s how the screenshots look in the Nokia Store. They seem to have a fetish for landscape screenshots, even-though N9 is mostly portrait oriented. The publishing process could be a bit more polished, like the surface of the N9 for example…
Toshl Finance on Nokia MeeGo

Written by Matic Bitenc

Posted in Announcements

Toshl for Nokia E6 Is Out and About

We have just released Toshl for Nokia E6. It follows the release of Toshl for other Symbian^3 phones a less than a month ago. We have adapted Toshl especially for E6, so it now looks great on the high-resolution widescreen display of the Nokia E6. The controls were another area of special attention as Toshl is now comfortable both with touch and keyboard controls.

Naturally it has all the cool features of the Toshl ecosystem like budgets, repeating expenses, export into a plethora of formats and sync to the web so you can organise your financial life from the comfort of a web browser set on toshl.com.

So all you Nokia E6 owners out there, give Toshl a spin and tell us how it feels.
Get Toshl for Nokia E6!

Nokia E6 budgets

Nokia E6 expense

Posted in Announcements

Sneak Peak of Toshl on Nokia N9 with MeeGo

From the depths of Toshl development facilities, here comes a video of Toshl running on an upcoming Nokia N9 smartphone running the MeeGo operating system. It’s such a top secret and bleeding edge technology that our hands couldn’t help but shake when recording. ;) Porting from Symbian is going surprisingly fast. Thanks to QT only a few graphics glitches needed to be taken care of.

Posted in Announcements

Brand New Toshl For Android Right Around The Corner. Looking For Beta Testers!

Dear Android Toshl users,

it’s been a while, we know. There has been much postponing and we’re just itching to get that new Toshl Android app out ourselves. Out into the hands of the many people with Android devices wanting an easy way to track and manage their finances, but foremost our loyal users who have been waiting too long for an update. That day shall soon be upon us, we’re in the final stages of internal testing and we’re looking for beta testers.

If you would like to try out the new Toshl for Android before it’s publicly released and help us by reporting any bugs you might find, please send us an e-mail to info@toshl.com and tell us you would like to be a beta tester. Your testing will help us get the app out as glitch free as possible. We want everyone to have the best experience while getting their finances in shape.

The invitations to beta testers will be sent in the next few days.

We will reward the testers who help us the most with Toshl Pro discounts and some free Toshl Pro licenses! Please send us feedback about anything that doesn’t go as planned in the app.

What’s new in the Toshl Android app? It’s been completely rewritten and is finally on par with the rest of the Toshl apps, bringing the refreshed design, help of our Toshl creature & dog, budgets, repeating expenses, passcode locking and much more…

Toshl for Android Budgets Beta teaser

Written by Matic Bitenc

Posted in Announcements, Goodies

Beware Windows Phone Developers: A Generic Phone Image Can Get Your App Rejected (updated)

The Windows Phone Marketplace takes time to accept and reject your app based on their rules much like most other app stores on the mobile landscape. There have been many debates on the advantages and disadvantages of such an approach, but what we usually do agree upon in the community is that there is a need for consistency and rationality in enforcing those rules.

I’m writing this because just today an update of Toshl for Windows Phone 7 got rejected by the Marketplace staff. The reason: multiple iPhone references in the app. We all looked in confusion as none of us could recall any iPhone references in the app nor in the description. It was also only a minor update fixing a few bugs, so there were no UI changes where iPhone references could have crept in. Previous versions which were identical UI-wise got accepted without any problems.

To quote the rejection:

Requirements
If an application depicts any mobile or wired telephone, handheld PDA, or any other data and voice communicator, it must be either generic or a Windows Phone device

Comments
Your application failed the Marketplace prohibited application policy check. Please review the above policy, notes below (if applicable), update and re-submit your application.
It appears there are multiple reference to the iPhone in the application. Please modify so that the mobile device is a Windows Phone or a generic mobile device.

Searching through the app all we found that even remotely resembled an iPhone was an error image where the Toshl dog is holding a phone in his hand. While it’s true that there’s only one button under the screen, the shape could depict almost any touch-based phone. In other words, generic.

Here’s how the error image looked like:
v1

In the absence of a good feedback channel and in the quest for the quickest solution possible to get the fixes to Toshl users we decided to change the design to look more Windows Phone-ey:
v2

We’re waiting for the results of the second review process. To be honest this whole issue seems quite silly and unfounded. If only they paid this much critical attention to the apps with poor UIs and user experiences the Marketplace would be a lot nicer place. So, what’s your opinion, was the phone image generic enough or not? Do you think the Marketplace rules are too strict or inconsistent?

Update (26. 8. 2011)

We’ve posted about this problem to Microsoft’s Ben Riga on Twitter and he was quick with the response and letting the Marketplace team know about this issue.

Here’s the respose from the Marketplace team:
The device containing strong similarities to the iPhone was found on the page depicted on your blogpost. While it does have strong similarities, it is a generic device and thus should not have failed during certification. We apologize for that inconvenience as well as the lack of direct information in the test report. In the future, feel free to also submit support requests from your App Hub account and you can expect prompt responses from the support team.

So all is well that ends well I guess. It’s good to know that Microsoft is responsive about such issues. But in the vein of a never 100% satisfied person I have to add: If only they would add Slovenia to the list of countries from where developers could actually have their own accounts, our development lives would be much easier.

Written by Matic Bitenc

Posted in Announcements, Development