The one responsible
This is Baran
He made me.
Nobody asked me.
One day he got bored and said “I’ll make an app”. He had no idea how. He poked at it, looked things up, started somewhere. There was no grand plan either — no ship-it-to-the-world, make-a-name ambition. He could, so he did. He didn’t exactly strain himself, which shows.
He wrote the app, built this site and drew me. On his own. No company behind him, no team, nobody funding it — just a computer left on at night.
So every one of my flaws traces back to a single address. Send your complaints there.
In his own words
Hello. I’m Baran. I’ve been around for twenty-five years.
I studied Ceramics and Glass at Hacettepe University’s Faculty of Fine Arts and graduated top of my year. Before that I spent two years studying philosophy at the same university. I’m now doing a master’s degree, again in Ceramics and Glass. What Çamur says above is true.
I’m not very good at sitting still. There is an urge in me to keep making things, to try new ones, to improve what already exists. This app is part of that — one of dozens of things I’ve made when I got bored. It will probably be the most visible one.
I had no grand plans at the start; I did not expect it to get this far. I just wanted to make an app, and I grew it by adding something to it every day. Once it reached where it is, I thought other people might get something out of it too, so I decided to publish it.
What I want is simple: to make good sources easier to reach. I added helper tools for the technical problems I kept seeing around me, and I want to add more over time. If I can move someone’s knowledge forward even a little, if I can add something to what they are able to do, I will be more than happy.
Transparency
The money question
I wanted to put this plainly.
Çamur is free, and it is staying free.
Around the time I was slowly coming round to the idea of turning the app from something personal into something published, people started suggesting I charge for it. That never sat right with me, not from the beginning; I could never accept showing a payment screen to someone who wanted to reach it. But the facts are still the facts.
This app cost me a good deal — developer accounts, research, trial and error, months of work. For it to keep going, income has to come from somewhere. So far that income has come from my family, and that is not likely to carry on. So I put ads in the app. I think it was the most sensible way.
I tried to do it in the least harmful way I could: the ads are non-personalised. No advertising profile is built for you, no system tracks you across apps, and nothing about your account or the work you make goes to the ad network. An ad is chosen by the context of the app, not by who you are.
To be completely straight: on Android your advertising ID does reach the ad network — not to target you, but so you don't see the same ad over and over, and to catch fraud. Non-personalised ads don't switch that off. It would have suited me to write otherwise. I didn't.
This earns less than personalised advertising would. Even so, that’s the trade I made: between an ad network that knows you and an app that doesn’t, I picked the second.
I am not hiding what does and does not reach the ad network — it is all written down:
Privacy Policy — Advertising
Terms of Use — Pricing and advertising
And finally: I don’t know either. I had nobody showing me the way, and I am not someone who has built and shipped dozens of apps before. I am bound to have got things wrong. If you tell me when you come across them, you will be helping me fix them.
This is a place where I chose to be good rather than selfish.
Just a kindness.
Let me ask for something in return, plainly: choose to be good too. That is worth more than any of it.
I hope you enjoy your time here.
Warmly,
Baran
Where to find him
baransahin.com
Instagram — @benbaran
camur@baransahin.com
Çamur’s own story lives on a separate page: About