Mehmet Ali Ertürk » Istanbul

Istanbul is Ready For Sale on the App Store

admin — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 09:33:06 +0000

Yesterday, my new iPhone App (extended version of Istanbul Guide) has been approved for sale on the App Store. New App provides more and rich content with additional features such as public transportation lines (metro & trams for now) and weather information for Istanbul.

So far, your ideas helped me to improve the application to be more useful. Thank you for sharing your ideas with me. I’d be happy to see feedbacks.

First Impressions on Istanbul Guide

admin — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 03:13:50 +0000

A few days ago Apple approved my iPhone Application and Istanbul Guide is available to download for free on App Store since 14 January 2010. So far, feedbacks are positive and I’ve decided to go on and improve it, actually I’m going to put the things that I have removed and also, implement some new features.

The first app is developed to learn about platform and the application approval process which was a real pain. I’m hopping the next time, it will be easier to publish an app on app store.

I want to share some data about the app, despite it has been online for 6 days, the application is downloaded almost 1K, yes, almost 1000 times. Most of the downloads come from Turkey and followed by european countries like Denmark, Netherlands and those are followed by the US.

I want to thank everyone who downloaded the app.

Hello World on iPhone

admin — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 13:44:01 +0000

I have played most of the popular application development platforms available today from Microsoft’s .Net to open source platforms on unix/linux with python/php/java/c++ … etc. However, I couldn’t had a change to develop for Mac OS X platforms till having a Mac.

Spending a few weeks (not full time) for learning and developing for Mac OS X is enough and fun. Learning Obj-c is not a big issue but it takes some time to get familiar with the libraries and frameworks. I made my choice to build an iPhone application as a start point and made a simple hello iphone world application and called it “Istanbul Guide”.

Application contains some popular places in Istanbul for the tourists and also, provides some basic information like text, photo and the current distance about locations. As I said app is not a big deal (some screens shown below), wait for the killer ones …

Also working on a page to provide my iPhone App statuses.

Me, Myself and İstanbul

admin — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 15:38:06 +0000

Instead of sitting in front of my computer, I spent my last Saturday (that is yesterday) at Ortaköy with eating Kumpir and enjoying the spectacular view of İstanbul Bosphorus. To whom don’t know what a Kumpir is; made by potato and mixed with cheese and some stuff including mayonnaise …etc. This is what I ate yesterday:

And those who don’t know how the Bosphorus is seen at Ortaköy:

I know it is weird but this year I feel something wrong with this city and me. I never thought that I’d be living somewhere else until this year. I feel like this is the last year with İstanbul and I may not have a chance to return back. That’s why, I don’t want to miss this spring and summer in İstanbul. I’m going to try to enjoy İstanbul as much as I can.

Am I Depressed?

admin — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 10:07:36 +0000

One million dollar question, “Am I Depressed?” Last few days or weeks I’m not doing what I’m supposed to do, it is like my life is weird. Some facts;

I don’t want to go work
I don’t want to read anything
I want to blog but I don’t
I watch TV Shows whole night
I don’t want to go out. I’m living the most spectacular place in the world, in İstanbul
Listening Turkish songs (seems ok but my favorite Turkish singers are popular with their slow songs)
Lots of things that I wanted to do about my semantic web but I’m not doing

Strange thing is I used to love those things but I don’t want to do them now. I just stay at my room and my computer that is it.

I need to do something which will change my mood, if not I’ll be someone blogging about being overweight and obese …etc

I have two options to change my life; one is a new place, city, country and second one is an outdoor hobby.

Eid al-Adha

admin — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 22:16:27 +0000

After a long and tough journey I arrived my home yesterday. In normal conditions it takes 8 or 9 hours from Istanbul to Konya using a bus but ours broken down between Ankara and Bolu and it took 3 hours to get an aid to change the transportation vehicle. So, it took 12 hours. During 3 hours wait time, I got cold and barely getting better.

In my religion these days are called Eid al-Adha and whole week is officially holiday. I usually spent my time with my family in holidays and this is the main reason why I’ve traveled. Konya is one of the most facinating cities in Turkey and it is best known with Mevlana(k.s.). You can learn more about Mevlana(k.s.) and Konya using wikipedia or just I ask me

Eid Mubarek to all my brothers and sistes.

Living in Istanbul

admin — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 09:34:00 +0000

There is no doubt that I’m living in one of the most beautiful cities in the world, Istanbul.
It is the only city that straddles two continents. Living in such a unique city has
some outcomes like traffic, noise, pollution … etc. Let me tell you what happens if you’d like
to see 3 people in different district in the same city. Actually, it happens almost everyone who
live in this city. This situation is unique to Istanbul among 81 cities in Turkey.

I left home at 8:30 a.m. and I was at home at 5:00 p.m. I met 3 people and all over conversation
took one and half hours, remain part spent at traffic jam. I used 10 public transportation. It felt me like making a big journey, at the end I felt exhausted so I couldn’t blog it last night as I panned.

Even though this terrible situation, still I love Istanbul.

Istanbul

admin — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 17:45:00 +0000

I’m missing Istanbul even I’m turning back to night.