Posts Tagged Euro Coins
Euro Coin Collection Update 1.1
Posted by Albegor in Euro Coin Collection, Mobile, Software on July 13, 2011
The first update of the app for Euro coins fans is available on the AppStore.
I couldn’t wait for it to be published since it corrects a bug that could crash the app when many different coins were added to a collection.
Thanks to Andrei from Estonia and Uwe from Germany for helping me track down the bug.
The new version also includes the second series design of belgian Euro coins, issued in 2008 in order to comply with the European Commission’s guidelines, as well as minor improvements and bug fixes.
Comments are good so far. Most of all, users like to view all the coins together.
Also, from app usage statistics it’s interesting to notice that the average session length is pretty high, 3 minutes, three times the average of the Reference category, which is 1 minute.
Now I’m listening to opinions and suggestions for the next versions, both from collectors and non-collectors.
Adding 2 Euro commemorative coins is already on top of the list: I’ll need some more work to virtually collect them all, but it’ll be worth it and they’ll have a dedicated album.
See you to the next update of Euro Coin Collection!
Euro Coin Collection APP 1.0 Released!
Posted by Albegor in Euro Coin Collection, Mobile, Software on June 23, 2011
Apple published Euro Coin Collection 1.0, my app about Euro coins!
I think that, even if it isn’t the first one, for any developer is always a particular joy seeing their application available virtually worldwide, at last after weeks or months of incubation in their development workstation and available only to a few volunteer testers.
For me it isn’t the first one about Euro coins: in 2003 I made a similar app for the Pocket PC platform, then become Windows Mobile.
The app got good press coverage, won some awards and after receiving one of them I was even invited to present it to the Netcafé program, my first time on TV I recall with pleasure, since I was so excited about it.
Back then, however, for as much original as it was, the app was targeted to a “niche into a niche”, that is collectors with a Pocket PC PDA… too few to create a critical mass.
It’s not a matter of Microsoft vs Apple, since I’m going to develop also a version for Windows Phone, other than the Android one.
It’s to say that today things are very different: there are social networks, smartphone penetration reached 35%, and most of all there’s the AppStore ecosystem.
The new app has been designed and coded from scratch, but it retains the same objective of the first one: making easy and funny discovering Euro coins with your mobile device, be it an iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad.
An objective not so easy to reach when you have to manage about 200 different coin designs of the 20 Euro area countries.
Actually the main feature distinguishing it from similar apps is the interactive album that allows you to view all the coins at a glance, each of them 1 swipe and 1 touch away to see its details.
The rest of the features are in the page dedicated to the app.
Now it’s the turn of who’ll download the app to tell what he or she thinks about it and suggest improvements for the next versions.
Hope you’ll like the Smiling Coin app!
Unique Forms of Continuity in Space
I was really curious to see it!
I’m talking about the famous sculpture by Umberto Boccioni represented on the italian 20 cents Euro coins, whose bronze reproduction is now exposed at Palazzo Reale in Milan in an exhibition curated by Laura Mattioli Rossi focused on the sculptural work of the futurist artist.
I managed to see all the artworks represented on the italian Euro coins, most of them this summer during the Vespatour: Castel del Monte near Bari on the 1 cent coins, the Mole Antonelliana in Turin on the 2 cents, the Colosseum on the 5 cents, the Birth of Venus in Florence on the 10 cents, the Marcus Aurelius’s equestrian statue in Rome on the 50 cents, while I “met”, so to say, the Vitruvian Man by Leonardo and Dante more than once during the tuscan part of the journey.
We have so many artworks in Italy and in my opinion they made the best choices for the coins designs. 🙂
The sculpture by Boccioni is really fascinating, starting from its name. It shows such a dynamism and fusion between the human body and the surrounding air, really unique to say the least!
Even the comment by the curator I listened through the audioguide was good.
Touristech 2006 and Veronafil
Two intense days made the weekend fly more swiftly than usual. On friday I attended the Touristech event in Villa Erba and I spent most of saturday in Verona at the Veronafil philately and numismatics fair.
Touristech is the first event organized by Wireless dedicated to new technologies and digital innovation at the service of the cultural entertainment and hospitality services for tourists. For this meeting they couldn’t choose a better location than the beautiful Villa Visconti, located in the Villa Erba park in Cernobbio. It has been a long time since I had the chance to walk in that park, although I’m often in Cernobbio, and I hadn’t remembered how pleasant and relaxing it is. In fact it was the first time I wasn’t tired when I went home after a day full of conference presentations instead of what usually happens after similar events organized in Milan.
One of the moderators didn’t forget to mention they shot some sequences of the Ocean Twelve Hollywood movie there. After all the benefits of the presence of George Clooney in his villa in Laglio seem to be much more valuable than the works by Luchino Visconti…
The presentations were all interesting, especially for the fact that the subject matter is the basis of a software project I’m working on together with the group of people I assembled at the beginning of this year. People make the difference in everything and this project is shaping up thanks to them . 🙂
I met Paolo Conti, a journalist of Il Sole 24 Ore, the brilliant moderator of the recent Mobile Force & Office Forum 2006 and we had the chance to talk about the project.
After a morning of presentations by representatives of the major players of the tourism market in Italy, such as Touring Club among the others, the event closed with a series case histories of mobile technology applied to outdoor journeys, such as the PDA guide they’re experimenting with at the Villa Reale Park of Monza and the PDA guide currently in use at the Swiss National Park.
Then I spent saturday among the numerous small stands of coins and stamp collectors setup in one of the huge exhibition halls of Verona Fiere. Should I mention this had something to do with the work behind the PC version of EcPc? 😉
My focus were Euro coins of course, and I had the chance to meet some users from the LaMoneta.it Italian forum, but unexpectedly I came back home with a surprise as much as precious: I managed to get the Green Vespa, the only Vespa model ever made for the famous Kinder surprise toys series!
I got to know of this particular toy since I read the book Vroom with a view by Peter Moore and I’ll certainly have another chance to write more about that. 😉
Euro Coins Pocket Collector VGA 1.5 Coming Soon and New Translations
Posted by Albegor in Euro Coins Pocket Collector, Mobile, Software on March 3, 2005
I’ve got a 5 cents Euro coin from Monaco in my collection. 🙂
I found it by chance the last summer and I think this remains the best way to find what you’re searching for because it’s easy to think Lady Luck kissed you for an instant. 😉
Collecting satisfactions apart, I dedicated only little time to marketing activities after the release of the new version of EcPc since I’m working on the VGA version since I’m going to bring it to the Cebit 2005 in a few days. I can only say that the coins look even better than the real ones with so much pixels available! 8)
In the meantime I’ve managed to propose an exclusive discount only for the subscribers of PPCThoughts.
I became a subscriber some months ago because I wanted to support what actually is my favorite website which keeps me daily updated about the mobile world, so I wanted to give something back to the community by offering to subscribers a 50% discount on the regular price of EcPc. Consider this another privilege of being a PPCThoughts subscriber. 😉
I’m adding a few new translations to EcPc, they are hungarian, greek and dutch, but I’ll wait to get at least a consistent part of the translation before adding them to the current list. The spanish one could benefit from some help, so you’ll be welcome if you want.
Netcafé Videos Now Online
Posted by Albegor in Euro Coins Pocket Collector, Mobile, Software on November 2, 2003
As promised the videos of the interview at Netcafé are now online.
I tried to compress them without altering their quality, so that you can also view Maria in all her beauty! 
Now I can concentrate on the last few steps before the release of the new version 1.2 of Ecpc, a release introducing some new features such as the Compare&Swap mode and of course the full german translation.
Is there something better than releasing the new version just after winning an award and a TV interview?
A friend had a very funny answer to this question, but it wouldn’t be too polite writing it here! 😉
Portugal 1 Euro coin Type 2 variant
Posted by Albegor in Euro Coins Pocket Collector, Mobile, Software on August 23, 2003
I’ve just discovered that the only two 1 Euro coins from Portugal in my collection are both Type 2 variants, since their edges have 3 x 28 stripes, instead of the regular 3 x 29.
In the picture below you can see the two portuguese Euros on the top and on the bottom, while the center Euro is austrian, which I’ve inserted between them to make the edge stripes comparison clear.
Just count the stripes! 😉
I put one of those Type 2 coins in my collection and the other one in the swap list, both lists in the Ecpc file format, of course.
Did I mention swap list files? There’s a surprise coming up in the next few days… 8)
Euro coins in The Pianist?
Posted by Albegor in Euro Coins Pocket Collector on August 19, 2003
In what’s becoming a sort of personal Blog I’d like to share with you a little funny thing.
I love watching DVDs on the PC, especially historic films, and while I was watching The Pianist by Roman Polanski I spotted a curious scene: here’s when the guy just asked Szpilman to stop playing the piano for a while because he’s checking the coins to see if they’re real or false by hearing their sound as they fall on the table… well, don’t they look like 50 cents Euro coins? 😉
Just joking, they’re some polish sloty coins I suppose, but… hey! That’s exactly the same procedure I used to record the sound effects for the coins in Ecpc!
By the way this is a film as much great as tragic, really worth to be seen until the last note accompanying the last line of the credits…
