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EMOTION IN DREAMS

Many college professors like to bring in guest speakers whenever possible to give their students a fresh perspective. And online courses on Zoom have made the process much more speaker-friendly because it’s so convenient. Now, imagine if you could take that app to the next level – and call on experts from the past. (It’s possible to create with holograms and AI but is very expensive). Putting those limitations aside, let’s explore what Professor Smith, who teaches economics, can do to discuss the potential of cryptocurrency and its origins. His guest lecturer was none other than President Andrew Jackson, AKA Old Hickory, the 7th US president. I’m not going to get into some of the things about Jackson that were considered divisive, especially when viewed from the perspective of 2022. Instead, I’d like to discuss what we can learn from him about the decentralization of money. Surprisingly, his beliefs are actually playing out today in the growth and acceptance of cryptocurrency. Check out this class session: Smith reaches out to his students in a Zoom call. I’ve always been a believer in decentralizing money. I know that many people are more in favor of traditional ways of conducting transactions. But I’d like you to consider that it just might not make sense to have only one entity gain total control over your finances. Don’t you want more choices and flexibility? For these reasons, I’ve called on a guest from the past, who is joining our virtual session right now. President Jackson, can you hear us? Smith: Just a minute. My horse, Sam Patch, is making too much noise. Jackson: Sorry. When I signed up to bring you into the session, I didn’t realize the horse would be attending. I don’t think the college is going to pay for the extra costs of transporting the horse. Smith: The horse disappears from the frame. I apologize for that. I just sent Sam Patch back to the 1800s. As you know, I’m all about reducing costs and debts. I shut down the Second National Bank and redistributed the funds to state banks. I thought that was a good move. In fact, I’m the only president in history that ever managed to pay off the US national debt. I’m grateful, though, that you remember me whenever you see my face on a $20 bill, but I prefer crypto. Jackson: You people of the future really messed things up because the national debt is now more than $30 trillion. I can’t even imagine that amount. And it’s about $4 trillion higher than it was around this time in 2020. What’s going on? It would take too long to explain. However, I can assure you that some of your ideas about opposing the concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a few and giving more flexibility to the states are also getting traction in the form of cryptocurrency. Some people even call you the father of cryptocurrency because you believed in decentralization of money and ensuring privacy from government intrusion. Smith: I’ve been called a lot of things and that description sounds possible. I’ve read up a bit on what’s happened since I left your planet in 1845 to prepare for this class. You’ve moved to digital assets, like bitcoins and other types of cryptocurrencies such as stable coins. Just to be clear, though, let’s agree that stable coins are not what you used to pay for where your horses sleep. Anyway, I’m told that some people are saying that cryptocurrency is like the revival of the banknote and will transform how people purchase goods and services. I like that. Jackson: Tell us about the banknote. Smith: Well, states had their own private currencies to support transactions as they conducted business. When they issued banknotes, they no longer had to lug around as many heavy gold and silver coins. And they used those banknotes in their communities to conduct and grow local businesses. The notes were popular because they gave people freedom because they weren’t stuck with just a single issuer of currency. I think that freedom is one of the key reasons why many people in your time are attracted to cryptocurrency. Jackson: Yes, freedom is an important factor. Nearly 20 years after you died, the National Currency Act was passed as the government began centralizing banking again during the Civil War, a time of chaos. Smith: Centralization of money wouldn’t have happened if I was president. Jackson: It was a challenging time for state banks and most of them faded away. Eventually, the state banks came back by giving their customers more options. The last banknote was issued in 1929. Smith: But it sounds like cryptocurrency is more flexible than the banknote. I’ve even brushed up on the blockchain – that newfangled technology that uses computers to track transactions as they grow. And there’s no middleman involved. What will they think of next? Even electricity was in the infant stages during my time. Jackson: That’s right. There’s no middleman. Cryptocurrencies, as well as crypto tokens, ensure that assets are authentic and eliminate counterfeiting. Smith: That’s good because counterfeiters can be real troublemakers. By the way, I was surprised and pleased to learn that in Massachusetts the BerkeShares recently became the first blockchain local currency in the US. People use it to purchase items in their own town – and it’s now being done electronically. Jackson: We’ve come a long way but we can also learn from the past. Cryptocurrency and other digital assets are like the new banknote. But crypto is more effective, transparent, and has the potential to achieve a more sustainable future. Smith: So, I’ll accept the fact that society has advanced with all of this technology and that my principles have helped to start the whole cryptocurrency and digital asset trend. But I have to draw the line somewhere. I just don’t feel the same way about transportation. I don’t like the way cars and planes have taken the place of my beloved horse. But who am I to criticize progress? It’s time I joined him and headed back to the past. I’ve seen a lot and even dealt with bank wars, so I want to share some closing thoughts with you. Jackson: I’ve heard you like a good fight. Smith: Yeah, I’ve even been in duels, but that’s beside the point. And I’ve won several battles in the War of 1812. I think you’re headed in the right direction with crypto but be prepared for the battles. And get ready to fight. It’s worth the effort. Jackson:

7th US President Andrew Jackson's Thoughts on Cryptocurrency

Séptimo pensamiento del presidente de los Estados Unidos, Andrew Jackson, sobre las criptomonedas

Réflexions du 7e président américain Andrew Jackson sur la crypto-monnaie

क्रिप्टोक्यूरेंसी पर 7 वें अमेरिकी राष्ट्रपति एंड्रयू जैक्सन के विचार

第 7 代アメリカ大統領アンドリュー ジャクソンの暗号通貨に対する考え

Pensamentos do 7º presidente dos EUA, Andrew Jackson, sobre criptomoeda

Suy nghĩ của Tổng thống Hoa Kỳ thứ 7 Andrew Jackson về tiền điện tử

第七任美国总统安德鲁杰克逊对加密货币的思考

Introduction In this article, we take a look at the fun process of implementing location search by address in an iOS app. If you’re developing an app with maps or location-related functionality, this guide will help you get specific coordinates based on the address the user enters in the search bar. 1. Import into your file import CoreLocation import MapKit What is the difference between CoreLocation and MapKit? CoreLocation is the processing of location data. It uses all available device components, including cellular equipment, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS, barometer, and magnetometer. MapKit is all about visual operations such as map rendering, route directions, address finding, and user-friendly operations. Anyway, who wants to type in latitude instead of a readable address? 2. Properties that will be needed private lazy var completer = MKLocalSearchCompleter() private lazy var searchResults: [(title: String?, subtitle: String?, coordinate: CLLocationCoordinate2D?)] = [] private var searchCompletion: (([(title: String?, subtitle: String?, coordinate: CLLocationCoordinate2D?)]) -> Void)? private var userRegionCoordinate: CLLocationCoordinate2D? 3. Problem with geocodeAddressString from CLGeocoder At the beginning of development, I decided to use the geocodeAddressString method from CLGeocoder in the searchAddressesForText method. However, I ran into a certain problem. This method always returned only one address with coordinates, not providing a complete list of addresses to choose from. For example, in some countries, there may be many streets with the same name. If I passed such a string to the method, I received only one CLPlacemark representing a street in a random city. This limitation was not suitable for my application, so I needed to find an alternative solution. func searchAddressesForText(_ text: String, completion: @escaping ([String]) -> Void) {
        let region = CLCircularRegion(center: userRegionCoordinate, radius: 30000, identifier: "SearchRegion")
        
        let geocoder = CLGeocoder()
        geocoder.geocodeAddressString(text, in: region, completionHandler: { (placemarks, error) in
            var addresses: [String] = []
            if let placemarks = placemarks {
                for placemark in placemarks {
                    if let thoroughfare = placemark.thoroughfare, let subThoroughfare = placemark.subThoroughfare {
                        let address = "\(thoroughfare), \(subThoroughfare)"
                        addresses.append(address)
                    } else if let thoroughfare = placemark.thoroughfare {
                        let address = "\(thoroughfare)"
                        addresses.append(address)
                    }
                }
            }
            completion(addresses)
        })
    }
} 4. Using MKLocalSearchCompleter I later discovered that MKLocalSearchCompleter could solve this problem. It provides multiple addresses by closest match, allowing the user to select the correct address from the list. However, this solution has the disadvantage that it does not provide coordinates for each address. Instead, the user must select one of the addresses and then call the searchCoordinatesForAddress method to get the coordinates of the selected address. func searchAddressesForText(_ text: String,
                            completion: @escaping ([(title: String?,
                                                     subtitle: String?,
                                                     coordinate: CLLocationCoordinate2D?)]) -> Void) {
    completer.delegate = self
    completer.queryFragment = text
    
    if let userRegionCoordinate = self.userRegionCoordinate {
        let region = MKCoordinateRegion(center: userRegionCoordinate, latitudinalMeters: 5000, longitudinalMeters: 5000)
        completer.region = region
    }
    
    searchCompletion = completion
} To use MKLocalSearchCompleter, I have created an instance of MKLocalSearchCompleter and set up its delegate. I then set the search text and region to get the appropriate results. After updating the search results, I retrieve the address list and pass it to the completion unit for further processing or display. 5. MKLocalSearchCompleterDelegate To overcome the limitation of no coordinates for addresses obtained with MKLocalSearchCompleter, I used MKLocalSearchCompleter to get a list of addresses and then used MKLocalSearch to get the coordinates of the selected address. extension SomeViewController: MKLocalSearchCompleterDelegate {
    public func completerDidUpdateResults(_ completer: MKLocalSearchCompleter) {
        searchResults = completer.results.compactMap { result in
            let street = result.title
            let subtitle = result.subtitle
            let searchRequest = MKLocalSearch.Request(completion: result)
            let coordinate = searchRequest.region.center

            //If you want to exclude any result
            let isRelevant = number != "find near me"
            guard isRelevant else {
                return nil
            }
            return (title: street, subtitle: number, coordinate: coordinate)
        }
        searchCompletion?(searchResults)
    }
    
    public func completer(_ completer: MKLocalSearchCompleter, didFailWithError error: Error) {
        searchResults = []
        searchCompletion?(searchResults)
    }
} 6. Getting coordinates The user is given a list of addresses obtained with MKLocalSearchCompleter and can select one of them. When the user selects an address, I pass it to the searchCoordinatesForAddress method to retrieve the corresponding coordinates using MKLocalSearch. In this way, I combine the advantages of both approaches and get the full functionality of location search by address. func searchCoordinatesForAddress(_ address: [(title: String?, subtitle: String?)],
                                 completion: @escaping ([(title: String?,
                                                          subtitle: String?,
                                                          coordinate: CLLocationCoordinate2D?)]?) -> Void) {
    let searchRequest = MKLocalSearch.Request()
    let entireAddress = address.title + " " + address.subtitle
    searchRequest.naturalLanguageQuery = entireAddress
    
    let search = MKLocalSearch(request: searchRequest)
    search.start { response, error in
        if let response = response,
            let firstPlacemark = response.mapItems.first?.placemark {
            let coordinate = firstPlacemark.coordinate
            completion(title: address.title, subtitle: address.subtitle, coordinate: coordinate)
        } else {
            completion(nil)
        }
    }
} 7. Cancel the search if it is no longer required For example, if the user has typed an address and decides to close the screen immediately. Or when entering each new character into searchBar in method: func searchBar(_ searchBar: UISearchBar, textDidChange searchText: String) You must cancel the search with this method. func cancelSearchAddresses() {
     if completer.isSearching {
         completer.cancel()
     }
} Conclusion In this article, we looked at the process of implementing location search functionality by address in an iOS application. We found a problem using the geocodeAddressString method from CLGeocoder, which returns only one address, and a solution to this problem using MKLocalSearchCompleter, which provides multiple addresses but no coordinates. We also looked at a combined approach which allows us to get both a list of addresses and the corresponding coordinates of the selected address. I hope this guide was useful for you and helped you solve the problem of finding a location by address in your iOS app. If you have any further questions, please feel free to ask. Also published . here

Integrating Address-Based Location Search in an IOS App: A Step-By-Step Guide

Surprisingly for myself, I realized that I have never implemented address autocompletion using only Apple technologies. Before, I had experience only with and even with the not-so-well-known European . I found it curious — to know how we can limit ourselves to using only SwiftUI and MapKit to solve a similar problem. Google Places SDK GeoDataHub MapKit Before starting let’s briefly describe MapKit — a powerful framework invented by Apple. : See documentation Display map or satellite imagery within your app, call out points of interest, and determine placemark information for map coordinates. The framework includes a bunch of useful things. I will list only what we are going to use: the Map itself ( for SwiftUI); — this model will allow showing a particular region on the map; — another model with coordinates and other data for showing on the map, and engine which we are going to use to get a list of completions from searchable address. To implement this we need to and where we can get results — possible addresses. MapView MKCoordinateRegion MKAnnotation MapMarker MKLocalSearch useMKLocalSearchCompleterDelegate MKLocalSearchCompleter Project Overview The completed task should look like this: We are not going to ask a user to get the current location of a device hence we will not touch configuration at all, I tried to simplify the project as much as possible. Let’s start with a couple of models. The goal is to see how many things we need to implement for this simple application. plist So the structure is the following, MVVM with two screens: Content and Map. Models Let’s start with a couple of models: and . Both should be conformed to protocol because we are going to use them in the collections. AddressResult Annotation Identifiable } struct AddressResult : Identifiable { let id = UUID () let title: String let subtitle: String }
} struct AnnotationItem : Identifiable { let id = UUID () let latitude: Double let longitude: Double var coordinate: CLLocationCoordinate2D { CLLocationCoordinate2D (latitude: latitude, longitude: longitude) model will be used in the list of results. collection we will set right in the Map component. But before dive in into this, let's set up our view models first. AddressResult AnnotationItem Content View Model Our iOS application is starting from because we are using SwiftUI, therefore, we need to prepare our first view model: . The will be observable because two things need to be published — the value from (searchable text) and results array of model. ContentView ContentViewModel ContentViewModel textfield AddressResult }() }
} class ContentViewModel : NSObject , ObservableObject { @Published private(set) var results: Array < AddressResult > = [] @Published var searchableText = "" private lazy var localSearchCompleter: MKLocalSearchCompleter = { let completer = MKLocalSearchCompleter () completer.delegate = self return completer func searchAddress ( _ searchableText : String ) { guard searchableText.isEmpty == false else { return } localSearchCompleter.queryFragment = searchableText Some of you can notice is not marked as . This is because this value is going to be bound. Also, as you can see, here is an . This completer will help to get results using . For that, we need to conform to the : searchableText private(set) initializedMKLocalSearchCompleter queryFragment MKLocalSearchCompleterDelegate }
        }
    } }
} extension ContentViewModel : MKLocalSearchCompleterDelegate { func completerDidUpdateResults ( _ completer : MKLocalSearchCompleter ) { Task { @MainActor in results = completer.results.map { AddressResult (title: $0 .title, subtitle: $0 .subtitle) func completer ( _ completer : MKLocalSearchCompleter , didFailWithError error : Error ) { print (error) We are not going to handle errors at this time, so let me skip this part, we can just print a message. The where results are set from the completer’s results. Since our results are published, so we need to the main thread to avoid this warning: methodcompleterDidUpdateResults [SwiftUI] Publishing changes from within view updates is not allowed, this will cause undefined behavior Map View Model The view models in this project are independent. We are going to observe them using . The is pretty simple: two published variables and one method: @StateObject MapViewModel )
                } }
        }
    }
} class MapViewModel : ObservableObject { @Published var region = MKCoordinateRegion () @Published private(set) var annotationItems: [ AnnotationItem ] = [] func getPlace ( from address : AddressResult ) { let request = MKLocalSearch . Request () let title = address.title let subTitle = address.subtitle request.naturalLanguageQuery = subTitle.contains(title) ? subTitle : title + ", " + subTitle Task { let response = try await MKLocalSearch (request: request).start() await MainActor .run { self .annotationItems = response.mapItems.map { AnnotationItem ( latitude: $0 .placemark.coordinate.latitude, longitude: $0 .placemark.coordinate.longitude self .region = response.boundingRegion Region value as will be bound with a view and collection will be used by the Map view itself. MKCoordinateRegion AnnotationItem The most interesting part is this method with the argument as . Briefly, this method converts our row address data into the coordinates using request! getPlace AddressResult MKLocalSearch Our address consists of a title and subtitle. In some cases, subtitle can contain the title, so we need to check first this part to prepare . Next, it is going to be a task with utility. From the response we need two things: collection and . From the first one, we will prepare collection. The second one will be a map region that encloses the returned search results. naturalLanguageQuery MKLocalSearch MapItem MKCoordinateRegion AnnotationItem Content View I really enjoy SwiftUI because you don’t need to spend so much time building user interfaces. It means you will spend really about 10 mins just to implement everything — 2 screens including a map. Our task is simple, we need to prepare just a with for query and a of results. Let’s take a look: NavigationView TextField List The first screen is when the app is just launched and the is immediately focused on appearing. Also, I couldn’t resist myself to add a clear button to the . So, let’s implement all these views. textfield TextField .padding()
                    .autocorrectionDisabled() .font(.title)
                    .onReceive( )
                    ) { } .overlay { .padding(.trailing) }
                    .onAppear { } .listRowBackground(backgroundColor)
                }
                .listStyle(.plain)
                .scrollContentBackground(.hidden)
            }
            .background(backgroundColor)
            .edgesIgnoringSafeArea(.bottom)
        }
    } } struct ContentView : View { @StateObject var viewModel: ContentViewModel @FocusState private var isFocusedTextField: Bool var body: some View { NavigationView { VStack (alignment: .leading, spacing: 0 ) { TextField ( "Type address" , text: $viewModel .searchableText) .focused( $isFocusedTextField ) viewModel. $searchableText .debounce( for: .seconds( 1 ), scheduler: DispatchQueue .main viewModel.searchAddress( $0 ) .background( Color . init (uiColor: .systemBackground)) ClearButton (text: $viewModel .searchableText) .padding(.top, 8 ) isFocusedTextField = true List ( self .viewModel.results) { address in AddressRow (address: address) var backgroundColor: Color = Color . init (uiColor: .systemGray6) I will not go through line by line because, in my opinion, this code is pretty simple. I just wanted to grab your attention on some parts. is used for focusing on appear. FocusState TextView On receiving value in , it’s needed to wait at least 1 second to get a searchable text except by querying each letter. TextView List view. I tested which works only in iOS16 — it helps to hide a content background. .scrollContentBackground(.hidden) Using in we can add our with bound searchable text (1. for checking if this text is not empty then the clear button will be rendered; 2. for clearing text from the component). overlay TextField ClearButton ClearButton } label: { }
                .foregroundColor(.secondary)
            } }
    }
} struct ClearButton : View { @Binding var text: String var body: some View { if text.isEmpty == false { HStack { Spacer () Button { text = "" Image (systemName: "multiply.circle.fill" ) .foregroundColor( Color (red: 0.7 , green: 0.7 , blue: 0.7 )) } else { EmptyView () The Address row is wrapped by with a destination in . NavigationLink MapView } label: { .font(.caption)
            }
        } }
} struct AddressRow : View { let address: AddressResult var body: some View { NavigationLink { MapView (address: address) VStack (alignment: .leading) { Text (address.title) Text (address.subtitle) .padding(.bottom, 2 ) Map View The second screen is a map itself and this view should show the correct location from the search result. It’s going to be only one view: Map View. As you remember method converts addresses into coordinates, so when the view appears we need to update the coordinates: region and annotation items. Eventually, in annotation content, we can prepare the . Map view configured with , , and arguments. When all data is ready in the view model, the Map view will be updated. As you can see argument applies a binding value. can be just identifiable with coordinate variable inside (latitude and longitude) — it’s used in item in closure. getPlace MapMarker coordinateRegion annotationItems annotationContent coordinateRegion annotationItems annotationContent } annotationItems: viewModel.annotationItems, }
        )
        .onAppear { }
        .edgesIgnoringSafeArea(.bottom)
    }
} struct MapView : View { @StateObject private var viewModel = MapViewModel () private let address: AddressResult init ( address : AddressResult ) { self .address = address var body: some View { Map ( coordinateRegion: $viewModel .region, annotationContent: { item in MapMarker (coordinate: item.coordinate) self .viewModel.getPlace(from: address) Btw, when you build the project you might see some SwiftUI warnings: which means you probably updated coordinates during view rendering. If you think that you did absolutely right, your states are updated from , so it can be an issue in Map inside. You can check about this issue by Donney Wals. Publishing changes from within view updates is not allowed…— onAppear this article Wrapping up Countless applications use Maps. But still few of them use a combination of SwiftUI and MapKit. I was curious to see what we can build if using only Apple technologies. How many lines of code are needed to implement this useful feature? Each year in WWDC you can notice that Apple engineers update MapKit rigorously adding new features especially if it comes to SwiftUI. I used only SwiftUI building Address with an autocompletion feature with Map because I truly believe that this framework is our closest future and UIKit soon will be secondary technology. Source Code GitHub: https://github.com/maxkalik/address-autocomplete-swiftui Don’t hesitate to follow me on . I appreciate any suggestions or comments regarding my research and articles. Want to Connect? Twitter Also Published Here

Address Autocompletion Using SwiftUI and MapKit

What is the Open Startup movement? And is it a good thing? Declaring your company or product an Open is becoming increasingly popular, but what does this mean? Startup What is an Open Startup? The Open Startup trend is a transparency and openness movement seemingly initiated by , quickly adopted by , capitalised by , and recently popularised in the Indie Maker community by . Buffer Ghost Baremetrics Pieter Levels There’s no official definition yet, and the Oxford dictionary weren’t available for comment, so let’s write one; A product or company which operates in the open and shares their statistics publicly. All a company needs to declare themselves an Open Startup is to share their metrics such as revenue, users, and traffic. This is usually done on a dedicated page with lots of numbers and charts hopefully showcasing growth, and it can sometimes tells a story of the company (like ’s). Hacker Noon What are the benefits? The benefits of being an Open Startup are the subject of much debate. touches on some of the . This Twitter thread controversy We’re in a dystopian era in which horrible truths about companies profiting and growing in unethical ways are being reported every day. Many people believe that startups and products being transparent about how they make their money is a positive change, and one that is appreciated by customers. One positive result from these news stories is that indie development communities are growing. More products are being built by individuals and small companies who have lost trust in large corporate methodologies. Many of these are Open Startups and it’s encouraging to see a product flourish and grow from the idea to first sale, and show that success is possible as a solo indie maker without funding. It has been suggested that Open Startup pages are purely a marketing strategy and nothing more. This may have some grains of truth to it for some early stage startups or side projects. Sharing statistics via an open page or on Twitter does help with promotion and can increase traffic when metrics are shared. It depends on how you measure success, but for recently launched products the metrics don’t show enough data to determine sustained growth. If an Open Startup has low number of user, sales, or revenue it could have the complete opposite effect and serve as negative social proof, deterring new customers from signing up or purchasing. Marketing technique or not, launching a successful product is hard. Customers seeking transparency are on the rise, and having a measurement of success and growth is a big source of motivation and satisfaction for the makers or founders to keep working on their startup and providing new features for their loyal customers. Building in the open The majority of companies who have joined the Open Startup movement also share their development progress publicly. This is a good way to gain real-time feedback from existing users and potential customers, and means every part of their process is transparent. Let’s make 2019 the year for more Open Startups, privacy focussed products, and indie made solutions! 🎉 Open Startup pages Here’s a little list of beautiful Open Startup pages. Contact me if you’d like to be added! https://200wordsaday.com/open https://www.7go.pl/open https://andreyazimov.com https://blurt.app/open https://codewithhugo.com/open https://coinshilling.com/open https://www.failory.com/open https://gamequitters.com/open https://getmakerlog.com/open https://kanbanmail.app/open https://leavemealone.app/open https://nomadlist.com/open https://open.boxiqq.co https://www.placecard.me/dashboard https://remoteok.io/open https://santafy.me/#open https://simpleanalytics.io/open — this is more than an open page. This is an incredible story of growth, challenges, change, and accomplishments. https://www.startengine.com/hackernoon https://uptimebar.app/open About me I am an indie maker with my partner . If you enjoyed this content you can for more! If you’d like to see our products you can visit our website . James follow me https://squarecat.io Photo by Leyre Labarga on Unsplash

What does it mean to be an Open Startup?

https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/2000/1*bhonbY4jHhFNGXzBkodmbw.png In my I talked about how you can quickly create a Siri Shortcut using NSUserActivity. NSUserActivity is great for scenarios where you want to open your app through . In more advanced scenario, where you want finer control over the Shortcuts experience it is recommended that you use . last post Shortcuts Intents In this post I will show you how you can get started with Intents and how you can setup intents definition file which serves as the blueprint for your Siri Shortcuts. What are Intents? Intents allows you to have finer control over Shortcuts. This means instead of Siri saying “ ” Your coffee has been ordered and it will arrive at a location Siri can say something more meaningful like “ ” Your cappuccino has been ordered and it will arrive at your office in 10 minutes Intents can also be used to create custom responses and even a custom user interface which will allow users to place their order without even opening the app. Don’t worry too much about custom user interface for intents for now, I will cover that in the next post. Defining your Intents: Intents are defined in an Intents definition file. Add a new file to your project and search for “intents” in the search bar. Select the “ ” as shown below: SiriKit Intent Definition File By default the Intents file is empty. Click on the “+” sign in the bottom which adds a new intent. Rename the intent to “ ” from its default name. OrderCoffee Intents definition file is divided into multiple sections. Let’s start with “ ” section at the top. This is where you define the name of your intent, description, category and the default image. Custom Intent Since, our app is responsible for ordering coffee that is why we selected the category as “ ”. The Confirmation checkmark is checked indicating that user confirmation is required in order to execute this intent. Order Next, we will setup the parameters for your intent. Parameters is the additional data you can pass to the intents. Parameters are also used by Siri when used with Siri Voice Shortcuts. We are using two parameters and . One important thing to notice is that the deliveryLocation is of type Location and not String. This means we can even use it to calculate the estimated time of arrival. coffeeName deliveryLocation You can also use your custom classes as Parameters. In those cases the Parameter type will be custom. Finally, we will set “ ”. Shortcut Types allows Siri to learn more about your Shortcut behaviors. Shortcut Types really depends on the app and should be defined in a way which makes sense. In our app we are defining two shortcut types so Siri can learn the behavior when coffee and location is available and also when the location is not available. Shortcut Types Go ahead and build your application. Behind the scenes Xcode will look at the Intents file and create a corresponding Swift class “ ”. In the next section we will learn how to donate our intents. OrderCoffeeIntent Donating Intents Finally, the time has come to donate our intents. We start by creating a placemark instance which represents, where the coffee needs to be delivered. This can be done by using the CLLocation and CLPlacemark classes as shown below: Next, we will create an instance of class, which was automatically generated by the Intents Definition File. OrderCoffeeIntent Finally, we will donate our intent using the INInteraction instance as shown below: That’s it! Next run the app and donate your intent. After you have donated the shortcut you should be able to see your donations under “ ” as shown below. Siri App Suggestions Nice! In the next post we will take our app to the next level by implementing a custom user interface for your shortcut. This will allow us to place an order for coffee without even opening the app. Mastering Siri Shortcuts for iOS If you have enjoyed this post and want to learn more about Siri Shortcuts then check out my 3+ hour Udemy course “ ”. The course goes into much more detail in how to create Siri Shortcuts using NSUserActivity, Intents, Custom Responses, Custom User Interface and much more. Mastering Siri Shortcuts in iOS _Streamline the things you do often with shortcuts_www.udemy.com Mastering Siri Shortcuts in iOS | Udemy

Getting Started with Siri Shortcuts in iOS 12 Using Intents

My latest updates and plans for taking my little SaaS app from $100/month to $1000/month. Welcome back! It’s been a little while! If you haven’t read you might want to go ahead and do that. Else, if you’re the impatient sort, the summary is that I’ve got a that made $100 in revenue this past October. part 1 of this series wedding place card website In this post I’m going to talk about my plans to grow it from $100/month to $1,000/month. Why $1000/month? Honestly, because anything higher than $1000 seems totally impossible at the moment. But also, if I want to get to $5,000/month — or whatever the amount is that I’d need to earn to live comfortably off of it — I’m going to have to get through $1,000 first. I find it to be quite a bit more manageable to think of the next target in front of me than to think about the one that’s a bit farther off. As I quoted in the last post: “The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.“ — Lao Tzu Like last time, while a lot of what follows is specific to my own product and product roadmap, I hope that anyone who aspires to launch — or has launched — a passive revenue-generating project can get value (and maybe some inspiration) from seeing my plans. Seeing others work public is one of my favorite ways to learn, and so I try to pay that forward as much as I can. So without further ado, here they are in all their glory! My grand plans to get from $100 to $1000/month: Ride Momentum Raise Prices Monetize my Free Tier Not too groundbreaking, is it? Nevertheless, that’s all I’m hoping it will take. If you’d like to know more details, keep reading. From $100/month to $300/month: Riding Momentum I originally had a section here talking about how I thought I wouldn’t have to do too much besides ride momentum and that would eventually double my revenue to $200/month. Here’s a quote from that never-published draft: I really hope I don’t jinx myself here, but I think I’ll be able to get to $200/month pretty easily and without making any significant changes to the site or my strategy. Of course, me being the unreliable, procrastinating person that I can sometimes be — especially when it comes to writing — I didn’t actually manage to publish that and now it’s already December. So what happened last month? Let’s see: Place Card Me’s first four months of revenue. If you can’t read the graph, revenue for November was just under $300 ($298.55, to be exact). And I didn’t change much at all on the site besides adding a bunch of seasonal designs. We’ll file this little publishing discrepancy under “good problems to have”. Anyways — while I’m thrilled about the month-on-month growth in this graph — I’m also trying to remain skeptical about the ceiling of my current approach which is why I haven’t made this milestone more than $300. The main reason for that skepticism is the fact that U.S. Thanksgiving (and to some extent Christmas) is bizarrely the . And, since Google remains — to an almost overwhelming degree — my biggest source of traffic, I expect to see a fairly significant drop off after the holidays. I believe I can recoup some of that traffic by continuing to improve the site’s SEO and word-of-mouth traffic, so am hoping to just sustain traffic at the current elevated search levels. busiest time of the year for place card searches New users by channel for Place Card Me, November 7–14, 2017. That big bar on top is the Googs The other source of my skepticism around organic search-based growth is that there are diminishing returns on the horizon. Once I rank #1 for “place cards” and just about every related term (which amazingly is ) I expect the growth from search to basically flatline. At that point I’ll have to find my next lever. not that far off Still, for as long as I continue to provide an awesome product — which my users consistently say I am — my search rankings for relevant terms should continue to be strong, and so I hope to be able to sustain this result. From $300/month to $600/month: Raising Prices Okay so let’s say I’ve exhausted the amount of organic traffic I’m able to get and — ignoring the fact that I could pursue other traction channels — I need to figure out a way to get more revenue out of my existing customer base. The lowest effort / highest opportunity lever I see here is to continue optimizing my prices. Place Card Me is currently well below market price for the value it is providing. Equivalent templates and don’t have a fraction of the convenience of my site. sell for $5–10 on Etsy A random assortment of Etsy listings for “place cards template”. Note the average prices. When I first launched the site I originally priced my templates in the $5–10 range and then slashed prices to try and prove that I was capable of getting any sales at all. Now that sales are starting to come in steadily I have the opportunity to start raising prices again and seeing how the numbers work out. In October and November I got my average sale price up from $1 to $2, and just this week I raised prices to where I expect the average sale to go up to $3+. Now — I don’t have a math degree but I’m pretty sure about this — if I can get the average sale price from $2 to $4 without reducing the number of sales, that should grow my monthly revenue from $300 to $600/month. If I can get the average sale price than $4 I can make sales and still double my revenue. higher fewer Again, given that $5 is still — in my very biased opinion, of course — a deal compared to what else is available in the market, I believe this should be readily achievable. great I plan to keep a close eye on the relationship between price and conversion rates over time and find the optimal prices — which are hopefully quite a bit higher than they are now. Example revenue maximizing chart assuming a linear relationship between price and number of sales. In this example the revenue-maximizing price would be $10. Supply and demand math gets a lot easier when your marginal cost is $0! From $600/month to $1000+/month: Monetizing the Free Tier Place Card Me is currently completely free to use if you don’t select a design, and the free tier has 100% of the same functionality and features as the paid tier. For every paid session on Place Card Me there are more than fifteen people that use the product for free. Providing a high-quality free tier has been an intentional strategy from day one. In these early days, I knew I wanted to create something as awesome as possible that anyone could use without paying, so that it would be more likely to gain traction and popularity. Among other reasons — the success of people using the site sends an important signal to Google that the product is solving their problem, and as a result causes it to rank well in search, which — as you’ve seen above — is critical to my current traction strategy. All that said, at some point when I’m confident in the site’s quality and rankings I can start playing with figuring out how to monetize the free tier. I’ve got a few possible ideas I’d like to play with in this space. These include, in no particular order: : Offering a coupon/discount to people who don’t purchase a template, and seeing if it can lead to increased upsells. Discounts : Adding a watermark to the back of every free card that just says “made with placecard.me” or something similar, and then charging a bit of money to remove it. Branding : Limiting the number of free cards you can make at a time and charging to remove this limitation. Volume Limitations : Charging to allow customization of fonts, colors, layouts, etc. Feature Limitations I’m not sure yet which of these I’ll end up trying — and it’s a bit challenging striking a balance between enabling monetization and keeping the free tier valuable so I want to roll this out carefully. However, if I can convince 10% of the current free users to pay the cost of a template that should be sufficient to double revenue again. From $1000/month to $5000 a month, and beyond Okay, if I’m being perfectly honest I still have absolutely no idea how I’m going to get to $5,000 a month. The above plan seems daunting enough and despite my communicated confidence, I really have no idea whether I’ll even be able to get to $300 repeatedly. To financial independence… and beyond! That said, the above pans out, and I’m able to get to, say $1000/month from the above channels and changes then hopefully, , the path to $5000 will be much more clear by then. if if hopefully There’s a huge number of ideas I have for growing things past $1k, some of which I think are decent, and most of which are probably terrible. At the moment I just think of these as “possible long term big things” — largely to be ignored until the changes in front of me are rolled out. Still, for completeness, here are some of those ideas, grouped into a few high-level buckets: This bucket is 100% focused on getting more visitors to the site, and would include things like rolling out affiliate programs or partnering with card designers and doing cross-promotions. Getting more traffic. Right now I only provide printable place cards. Should I offer ? Save the Dates and Invitations? A way to automatically assign your guests to tables? There are loads of possibilities. New (related) products. table numbers There are a few other ways I could monetize the site beyond selling templates, the most interesting one being providing a way to buy printed cards — likely by sending my users to a third party printer and taking a cut. There are probably a few other affiliate linking/advertising models I could try. New revenue streams. The core tech of “automatically putting a bunch of names on nice looking printed cards” has a few other use cases I could go after. Specifically, I’ve thought about rebranding/remarketing the site as a conference badge generator. Apparently — so it seems like an interesting avenue to pursue. New markets. you can make $70,000/month doing this Anyways, like I said already, these ideas are all far enough out that they’re mostly just pipe dreams at this stage. Who knows what the future holds in store! Still, I can’t help thinking — if I can successfully double revenue 8 times, surely I’ll be able to do it two or three more, no? Originally published at www.coryzue.com . If you’d like to find out whether this all works out or I fall flat on my face, you can subscribe below to get updated every time I write something new — including part 3 of this series, when it’s ready. Edit: Part 3 is now out! You can find it here . You can still subscribe if you want though. :) And if you’ve got any feedback or ideas on my plans I’d love to hear from you in the comments!

The Long Road to Passive Income Part 2: Getting from $100 to $1000 in Monthly Revenue

I just made my first dollar on my SaaS app and it only took 200 Hours and $110 This morning, I woke up to something very surprising in my inbox: Mixed in with the standard “Someone’s getting placecards!” emails that I get pretty regularly was an email I had only ever seen before in testing. Holy smokes, someone paid! Literally — like the cliche — as I was sleeping. I just made my first $1 of SaaS revenue. If you read you’ll understand why I was surprised. Place Card Me, my , had not generated a single sale until last night. some of my other writing printable place card site As this is a major milestone for me I thought it was a good time to take a deep dive into what it took it took to achieve it. I’m hoping this will help others looking to start SaaS products get a sense of what they might go through. That said, you’ll be smarter and more successful than I was. That probably won’t be too hard. hopefully So what went into making $1? Mostly, time. How much time exactly? As of this writing, just under , or about 5 working weeks and a day, spread out over just about five months. 210 hours If you’re doing math at home that comes out to an hourly wage of just under . It’s a good thing I’ve been enjoying this process! Not exactly something I’ll be able to give up my day job for at this rate. half a cent per hour Here’s how that time broke down week by week: All time reports courtesy of the wonderful app Toggl You can see a big ramp up after I validate the idea and build out the MVP. Then it drops for a few weeks while I ran some experiments with ads, ramps back up as I built out the ability to buy templates on the site and did a second marketing push, and then finally winds down into a pretty steady maintenance period where I’m spending an average of about 4 hours a week keeping the lights on and making little adjustments. I imagine this last phase will continue indefinitely. Product versus Traction Another interesting thing to look at is the split between work — building the site and making it better — versus work — trying to get it out into the world. product traction I read in that a typical business should be splitting its time about 50/50 between product and traction, and since then I’ve tried to keep that approximate ratio. Traction Here’s the current breakdown of those 210 hours: Product (111 hours) vs Traction (98 hours) We can also look at the efforts on these two things individually over time. Efforts on Product Efforts on Traction You can see things start with traction efforts during the idea validation phase, followed by a big product push as I build out the landing page and MVP, traction taking over as I try to market it, and again, finally landing on a pretty even 50/50 distribution in maintenance mode. The 50/50 split in the maintenance phase has been pretty deliberate (and hard, sometimes, since it’s so much more fun to work on the product). What about Money? Of course the other input besides time is money. Here’s what I’ve spent on this project so far. It’s actually quite simple: The bad news is that I’ve still got quite a long way to go before I recoup my financial investment made. The good news is that most of that money was on , and ads used as validation tests I haven’t spent a single dollar on this project in the month leading up to my first sale. And I’m now the proud owner of a brand new paper cutter! So there’s that. You might be wondering where my server costs are, and I’ll admit that I’m cheating a bit on that one. I host all of my projects on the same server — one that I’ve been paying for for more than five years — so I’m not including that in the budget for this project specifically. In reality I should probably include a portion of those costs here. SaaS Ain’t Easy When I set out to try and a lot of people warned me that it would be harder than I expected. Boy were they right. make money by building something on the internet If I knew then that I would go on to spend 200 hours on this project in order to lose $110, would I still do it? Absolutely. Let’s be clear — I’d probably pick a totally different product to work on. Hopefully one that had more of a chance of generating real revenue. I’d also probably target an industry that I understood better instead of weddings. I’ve never been the type of person who learns well by being told things — much better to figure these things out for myself — and thankfully I had the time, skills, and support system to make that happen. But I don’t think I would have truly been able to know those things without having gone through this effort. Now I know infinitely more about what it looks like to build a revenue-generating SaaS product from scratch (spoiler alert: it’s a lot of work!). And therefore I should be able to say with confidence that if I ever have to do this again I’ll be able to be much smarter about it, which hopefully also means more successful. In theory I also now have a sustainable engine with Place Card Me that will — fingers crossed — generate more revenue with much less investment required on my part moving forwards, and may even one day turn profitable. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have 1/6th of a meatball sub to buy with my hard-earned SaaS cash. 💰💰💰 Originally published August 24, 2017 at www.coryzue.com .

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