partiql

Our little Showtime contest is over and we have a winner. The random number generator chose Claudio Schwarz (@purzlbaum) to be the winner of a movie night for two people.

Congratulations, we wish a lot of fun!

Meanwhile keep following us on Twitter, Facebook, Email or RSS and be among the first to know when we launch another contest.

Here at partiql, we like to experiment with different things. Today, we would like to try something new.

With our new app Showtime (App Store link) it’s way easier than ever before to find a good movie and the perfect place to watch it. And there are new, great movies playing in the cinema, like Toy Story 3, Knight and Day.. etc. but it’s kind of expensive these days.

We have a fine offer here for you! We would like to invite you and someone you like to the movie theatre, including coke/beer and popcorn. What we would like you to do, is a bit tricky. It’s unlike anything you have ever seen before… We would like you to help us.

To be honest, it’s actually pretty simple. You do anything to help us spread the word and you’ll get a chance to win 2  tickets to a movie of your choice, 2 x beer/coke and 2 x big popcorn portions. (And if you like, we would of course join you!)

Here is how: retweet this or/and like our facebook page & status or/and write a blog post (send a trackback or leave a comment here) or even a giant showtime graffiti on the swiss federal building and download one of our apps (optional but awesome, 3 of them are free).

This contest ends on August 17th, 00:00 GMT. And the winner will be notified shortly after that.

We are happy to announce a free version (or should we say multiple free versions) of Showtime. We have one for all countries we currently support in the pro version.
Of course these apps are free for you, but not free for us. That’s why we decided to go ad-supported this time.
Other than that, the pro and the free version don’t differ much. Except that it’s not all-countries-in-one. (And yes, there is a reasoning behind this).

We have some plans for the future of Showtime (as in new features) which will first come to the pro-version, but we’ll talk about that another day..
For now: enjoy the free Showtime version and leave a review, if you like it. (If not, send us even more feedback!)

And to our Swiss friends: It’s the perfect weather for an Open Air Cinema evening..

Check out http://partiql.com/showtime for more information.

Hi there – remember us? It’s the ones with the fancy cards and that mysterious iPhone app.

“Well.. we make it short today: We are sorry, but we are not releasing it – It’s just so nice, we want to be the only ones having it. kthxbye”

To be honest, this isn’t the truth – fortunately. The whole process took longer than anticipated. And in the end, we skipped 2 perfectly fine versions of the app, because it wasn’t quite ready yet.

But today, now and here, we proudly present Showtime. Designed to be the ultimate movie application, engineered to bring you to the movie you wanna watch – wherever that may be. After months of developing, prototyping, designing and field testing, we can now finally be sure, that you will like it. It’s the complete theater program for one week for all cities in Switzerland and Germany and most cities in the U.S. (just tell us if your favorite movie theater is missing). Once synchronized, your data is available offline. Besides what you expect from a theater-application (times..), it also features official movie trailers, ratings, movie information in up to 3 languages (English, German and French) and a very distinct and unique UI.

As mentioned, it’s currently available in the U.S., Switzerland and Germany respectively. This price is an introductory price, and since this project is an experiment for us, it’s likely to change some day, so you’d rather get it now. [AppStore Link]

Should you have any questions, there is an FAQ section in the App, otherwise, just drop us a line through the form in the app or an email, we are always happy about feedback – be it good or bad.

There is not much more to add, except that we think you will enjoy it, be it only for the design or the animations that we still enjoy after watching them about a thousand times.

And feel free to share and tweet and tell your friends if you like it.

Being the geeks we are, we decided today would be a great day to launch our pet project.

If you’ve ever had a pet project, you know the feeling of the launch and the very first release. It’s hard to describe, but part of it is uncertainty mixed with excitement that almost makes you pee your pants. So now here we are in fresh pants, ready to get a little party started.

Today, we would like to introduce partiql, who we are and why we do what we do.

Partiql is a little dream of us, and we are Marc Ammann (Code) and Stefan Sicher (Design) both from Switzerland. We started to work together on different projects a few years back at Marc’s former work place where Stefan worked as a freelance designer. One of those projects was GottaGo (a former No.1 app in the Swiss App Store for public transportation), which led to more iPhone projects for clients. After a while we started thinking about our own app ideas and how much fun it would be to work on them without the pressure of time and budgets. Usually, the details make the difference between something nice and something extraordinary, and that’s what we want to do. We now have the freedom to work until we’re satisfied with the product without compromising quality for tight deadlines

So where is that app?

As we said, we reserve the right to postpone a release until we feel it’s ready. Our initial version would be ready by now, but two weeks ago we discovered a little issue that bothered us enough to go back to the drawing board and get to the roots of the problem. Instead of going with a mediocre solution that would have done the job, we agreed that it would be best to get the job done right and postpone the release of our first app by a few weeks. We are now working on the latest details and changes, ironing out the last bugs before submitting it to the Appstore.

Meanwhile a little sneak preview. Can you guess what the app does?

Be sure to stay connected by subscribing to our RSS Feed, subscribing to the Newsletter or following us on Twitter. We’ll let you know when it’s released and will soon post another sneak preview (probably a video).

So let’s get it on. Welcome to a hike in our new little galaxy – just hold on to your towel and you will be alright. (Btw. if you haven’t read Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, you really should)