Klopfen is German for, amongst other things, “to tap”. The old German word for “to tap” is tippen, which is the root of the 16th century English tip, which meant “to give unexpectedly”.

What has this to do with software ? Or anything at all for that matter ? Well, tipping lies at the heart of a web app I built some time ago, adderuppa, a simple task timer.

Users are charged a flat monthly fee of £2.50 for unlimited use; that’s unlimited users, projects, and tasks. They are then encouraged to define the product’s value to them by setting their own monthly tariff over and above this rate, and varying it as and when circumstances dictate ( maybe a slow month, or during a two month vacation ).

Paying more than £2.50 is not mandatory. I see this as an experiment.

Klopfen is not about the mechanics of building a web app, of the many small incremental improvements that are made day on day, about marketing, interface design, any of those things that you would normally associate with a tech blog ( that can all be found here ).

It’s more about those thoughts and ideas processes, influences and occassional moments of ‘what if’ that pass through my head at inconvenient moments, the why.

It is also a great sounding word.