Making Splitwise Faster

(Updated 3AM) Splitwise just went through some “impromptu scheduled downtime” to make improvements to our server, and Splitwise is now way faster. We still are gathering data, but it seems to be about a factor of two more snappy. We apologize only giving a few minutes advance warning, but it’s so much snappier and it finished right on time! You’ll love it.

Thanks so much for bearing with our growing pains, and sorry to any users affected in the last hour or two. Technical details after the jump. Continue reading Making Splitwise Faster

The Real Story About Transferring Money

Hey Barbarians, get your damn hands off my money!

Ron Lieber wrote an article with a moving headline in the NYTimes on Friday: “Why It’s So Hard To Transfer Cash To Your Friends.” I am passionate about this issue – Splitwise’s mission is to reduce the awkwardness of sharing money. Stress about money poisons relationships and dealing with the logistics of repayment is one cause of stress. Let me elaborate on that story and give you Splitwise’s take. Continue reading The Real Story About Transferring Money

Roommate Tips, Part 5 of Infinity

Yes, “top lists” of hackneyed roommate advice are a dime a dozen. But I enjoyed the irreverent tone of this blog post from BestCollegesOnline, which helps manage expectations for roommates who are interested in weapons, illegal drugs, open relationships, and nudity.

My favorite pieces-of-actual-wisdom:

  • “Exchange emergency numbers before hand.” This is an-easy-to-forget piece of common sense.
  • “If someone makes your roommate uncomfortable, don’t invite them over.” Indeed.
  • “Settle up finances” and “pay bills on time.” What blog are you reading, again?
  • “Wear clothes in common areas.” I always struggle with this one…

Splitwise 1.6.1 for iPhone released

Hey Splitwise users! Version 1.6.1 of our iPhone app, which fixes the serious stability bug introduced in version 1.6, has just been released on the App Store. Download it now!

We at Splitwise would like to apologize again to anyone who experienced crashing issues with v1.6 (and to give a big thanks to those of you who helped us diagnose the problem!). Splitwise is going through big changes on the web and on mobile, and we’ve got some very exciting things to show you – soon 🙂

As always, feel free to ask us any questions via the comments below, or by emailing us at support@splitwise.com. Happy splitting!

– Ryan

Attention iPhone users: do not update to Splitwise v1.6 [UPDATE: fixed]

Hi Splitwise users,

On Friday afternoon we discovered a serious stability bug in the latest version of Splitwise for iOS (v1.6, posted to the App Store earlier that day). We have already submitted a bug-fix update to the App Store, which is currently awaiting approval. In the meantime, we strongly encourage that existing users do not upgrade to v1.6 until the bug-fix has been released. We’re very sorry for the inconvenience.

The bug affects users who upgrade from v1.5 to v1.6. Users who upgrade may experience crashes that make the app unusable. If you have already upgraded to v1.6, you should be able to fix these errors by un-installing and re-installing the app. This has been confirmed to work on multiple devices, but please comment below or email us at support@splitwise.com if you have further issues, and we’ll do our best to help you out.

Note that these crashes do not cause any data loss – all of your information is still safe in our databases, and available via our web interface at splitwise.com.

Updated: This has been resolved. See our follow up post.

-Jon

Developing Multi-Currency Support for iOS

Managing currencies in any language is not for the faint of heart. If you’ve been down this dark path, I’m sure you are familiar with the dearth of good recommendations for how to deal with this. Given our focus on group travel, managing different currencies is part of our nuts and bolts.

What follows is an iOS development blow-by-blow for multi-currency support. If you are a fellow developer, please enjoy! To celebrate our second geeky technical article, we’re kicking-off a new article category, “Dev Blog.” Continue reading Developing Multi-Currency Support for iOS

Court Allows Discrimination in Roommate Selection

One of my passions is to help people be fair to their roommates. But how fair are you required to be to your potential roommates? Roommate.com is a popular roommate finding site, which allows you to search for roommates based on sex, age, sexual orientation, and family status. Is this fair? The Fair Housing Council of San Fernando Valley thought not, and the case landed in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. Continue reading Court Allows Discrimination in Roommate Selection

Mystery solved! The secret of Excel curved line interpolation

Excel Interpolation: A Black Box No Longer

Have you ever wondered what formula Excel uses to make its “curved line” scatter plots? I have!

Admittedly, this sounds like an odd thing to wonder about. But it’s actually a super-practical question: what if you want to approximate an intermediate point along the curve you have just plotted? For some reason, Excel hides this formula from you, and according to my source post, Microsoft has left this formula a black-box and given users no access to it. WTF, mate. Continue reading Mystery solved! The secret of Excel curved line interpolation

Coming Soon: New iPhone App

5 months ago, we released our initial mobile apps for iPhone and Android. We’ve had great success with the apps and it’s long past time we updated them! I joined the team a month ago and started working on a new app for the iPhone – which is now waiting on approval from Apple and should be available some time next week.

Continue reading Coming Soon: New iPhone App