There are so many websites out there who can calculate Currency Exchange Rates for you, e.g. Google Search, Bing Search or Yahoo Currency Converter. But what if you just want to have the exchange rate to use in your Desktop or Web Application? It would be kinda troublesome to extract the rate from one of the websites above, especially when they decide to change the layout of their HTML code.

That’s why I decided to create a very simple Currency Exchange Rates API. This API allows you to either get the conversion rate from US Dollar to your desired currency or can directly convert an entered value. The output is plain text, without HTML or XML attributes for easy access from all sources.

How does it work?

Just call the URL of the API with your desired exchange rate as parameter, e.g.

for Euro. This will return the exchange rate from USD to EUR:

Which currencies are supported?

All in all, 126 different currencies are supported. See a list of all supported currencies on the index page.

Are the values up-to-date?

The API updates itself once an hour, so the values you’re getting may be up to 1h old. This should be good enough since these values are for information purposes only.

How can I use the API on my website?

This example shows how to use the API to display 100$ in € (please replace the & stuff in the URL with a normal &, can’t display it correctly here):

How does the calculator work?

The calculator works almost the same way as the API itself. Call calculator.php with three parameters: original, target and value. original and target are ISO codes of the currency, and value is the amount of orignal currency to convert. The output is the corresponding amout of target currency.

How accurate are the values?

The acuracy of the exchange rates can’t be guaranteed. All values are for informational purposes only. See the footer of the index page for more information.

Mirrors (most recent list):

• http://www.multimolti.com/apps/currencyapi/index.php
• http://www.lennart-moltrecht.com/apps/currencyapi/
• http://tp1.com.ar/currency/
• http://www.sann-gmbh.com/currencyapi/

Please use multimolti.com or sann-gmbh.com since they’re the most stable ones!

Websites using the Currency Exchange Rates API:

• http://momento24.com/en/, “Currency” tab in the sidebar.
• More will hopefully follow soon!

If there are any questions about the API, bug reports or feature requests, please feel free to comment!

Today I uploaded the latest version of my MultiInput game “Airship Assault” which resolves most known bugs. It is the first game that uses my MultiInput library in order to support many players playing the same game on onecomputer with multiple mice connected to the computer.

Major changes:

• Mouse sensitivity can now be changed ingame
• Game Launcher added, checks whether XNA Framework 3.0 and .NET Framework 2.0 are installed before launching the game
• Optimized game file package
• Music file not needed to play the game, if missing, the game will just launch without music
• Source code optimized in many parts

Download Airship Assault 1.1!

I created a C# class that allows you to use more than one mouse in your XNA game. Of course this is also working with normal Windows applications, but I specially prepared it to work with XNA. This gives you new possibilities for multiplayer games on a single computer! Currently, it’s only working for mice, but I will add keyboard support soon.

Download MultiInput.dll Version 0.1

I also created a game demonstrating how to use this class and what multiple mice can be used for. I think there are many games that could make use of more than one mouse to enable a cool multiplayer mode. Currently the game is in Alpha stage and doesn’t have many features. It supports up to 6 players (if that many mice are plugged in) who have to stop zeppelins from reaching the other side of the screen by shooting them down. Although there isn’t much to do except shooting the zeppelins, it’s quite funny already.

UPDATE: NEW VERSION AVAILABLE: Download Airship Assault here!

Download MultiInput Sample Game Alpha Version 0.1

Download and install the necessary XNA Framework 3.0 here

Each crosshair can be controlled by one mouse/player. The number in brackets on the bottom is the amout of shots you’ve left in your magazine. Leftclick to shoot, rightclick to reload. When a zeppelin reaches the other side, you will lose a life.

I tested the game only with USB mice, they’re working fine, but it should also work with PS2 mice. If you encounter any errors, please tell me!

Continue reading…

In the last week, I created WortopiaBot which is a hack or cheat for all kind of multiplayer boggle games like Wortopia or WEBoggle. You can just start the program and wait a few seconds, then it will have solved the game and submit all possible words to the respective game server. Using the right word database, the accuracy can be up to 100%.

Download WortopiaBot 1.0 Perfect Edition

Download WortopiaBot 1.0 Perfect Edition source code

There are 2 versions of this bot, one is called “Perfect Edition” because it always reaches 100% if the program can access the right database. Before I found out that the original Wortopia database is available under open-source license, I used other databases that reached only around 80%. Thus I also created a “Learning Edition” that checks the words from last round and adds them to the database, in addition to the removal of wrong words. If the Learning Edition plays enough games, it should optimize its database  to the same accuracy of the Perfect Edition.

The Learning Edition will be available for download from SourceForge soon.

Continue reading…

FriendMap is my first Facebook Application. It creates a zoomable world map for all your friends. Now you can see who lives where, who moved currently and how big the distance between you and a friend actually is!

The application features complete profile integration with boxes, tabs and feed stories and fully supports the Facebook user interface with invitations, notifications and so on. Thus it feels as if it were part of Facebook and not an external application.

Go to the FriendMap Facebook Application

Continue reading…

Now that the results are out, I can upload my submission for the Bundeswettbewerb Informatik 2008, the German computing competition.

Download the Pizzaprofi application here!

Download the Pizzaprofi source code here!

This was the task:

Task 1: Pizzavision
Many people visiting a pizza restaurant enjoy to choose the ingredients of their pizza. It would be nice to see a preview of the created pizza on a computer screen. Every guest should be able to choose from 12 given ingredients. Always after adding or removing something, the image of the pizza should be regenerated.
The pizza images should avoid ordering mistakes, be a pleasure for the guest and encourage him to add more ingredients.

1. Realize such a system
2. Document the ordering procedure with the shown pizza images.

I created an application that has got an ingredients list on the right side and shows you a randomly generated image on the left. All the algorithms are based on an initial number that can be set in the bottom left hand corner. Thus you can regenerate every image exactly the way it was if you remember the number.

The application can also save the generated image and shows you the price of your current pizza configuration. It’s all in German since the competition is a German one.

You can find the complete documentation and explanation here.

Today I’ll show you how to get the source code of any game that’s made using C#, the .NET Framework and Microsoft’s XNA Framework. Basically, this will also work for all .NET Applications, but for XNA Games it’s more difficult, so I will explain it for XNA here.
I hope you understand and like it, if there are any issues, please comment to help me improving this tutorial!

Warning: You may violate copyright laws in your country if you try to obtain property (in this case source code) that you don’t own! Check your legal situation before following this tutorial! I won’t be responsible for any criminal offence done with the information provided!

Step-by-step tutorial to disassemble the game

Things you need

• An XNA-based game
• .NET Reflector
• Visual Studio 2005/2008
• XNA Game Studio 1.0/2.0/3.0

Decompiling the binary file

First of all, you need a really great tool called .NET Reflector. You can download it from the official website or from my server. The .NET Reflector can look inside .NET binaries (.exe and .dll files) and disassemble the code to any of these programming languages: IL, C#, Visual Basic, Delphi, MC++ and Chrome.

Continue reading…

Ever wanted to find out where MSN stores its contact database? Or Firefox saves your Cookies? Then Drivewatcher is the right tool for you!

It analyzes every change that’s made to any of your hard disk drives. All partitions are shown as tabs, and every tab shows the time, the file path and the operation done on the particular file.
Even if you don’t want to find out what an application is doing, you can just try it to see how many file operations are done by system processes you’ve never heard of. Just give it a try!

Drivewatcher 1.0 Download

Please comment if you like it or wish more features!