I am a side-project enthusiast. It brings me a lot of joy to dive into new passion projects to learn and acquire new skills, explore a new field, or solve a personal problem. Besides that, it is simply exciting to start building something and see what happens. Looking back, it was my side projects that had a major impact on my career. Creativerly and my writing helped me land a couple of jobs, grow into those roles, and raise myself as a product designer to another level by delivering exceptional writing in remote and async working environments. Projects like Priductive showcased my interest in privacy-focused tools, and Velorino and Podium communicated that I am passion- and curiosity-driven.

Using your time more intentionally to create and build things can truly change your life.

Whenever I start to work on something new, it never happens with the intention of monetizing it. Although, I monetized some of my side projects, it always happened naturally at some point. It should not be your incentive to monetize your hobby. Instead, follow your curiosity, your passion, and just start creating.

Another great thing about side projects is that when you are working on or creating something, you can write about it, on your blog, and if you do not have a blog, well, before you start anything else, set up your blog, so you can write about your side projects. Put yourself out there, share what you are building, your learnings, your wins, and what has not worked out. Congrats, and just like that you started your next side project, a personal blog to publish your writing.

The reason I love to write about the things I am working on is that once I shared them publicly, I am motivated to continue working on and actually launching them. Besides that, writing about and sharing them publicly led to lovely connections, and new opportunities.

Therefore, I decided to write this post in order to share what I am working on right now on the side. Spoiler: it is a lot, however, I am not working on all of those projects simultaneously. Usually, I focus on one or two projects for a couple of weeks, and after that continuing with something else. I also love the fact that I have so many side projects to choose from. Boredom? Never heard of that.

Let us get into it.

philipptemmel.com

Well, obviously my personal website is a side project of mine. I have been working on it on and off for a couple of years now, and it is pure fun to work through different iterations, since it is a representation of myself. It is a playground, not only a portfolio, it is a place where I collect what sparks my curiosity, a living space, a reflection of who I am and what I care about. Besides Creativerly, my personal website is the longest ongoing side project I have been working on. The very first version went online 12 years ago, and since then it evolved into the playground it is today.

Some of the things I have planned for it next is revamping the "Stack" and "Playlist" pages, and gather their content on a new "Links" page, introduce a "Now" page, reworking the "About" page, as well as update a bunch of elements and components.

Creativerly

Creativerly is the internet corner where I unpack my musings, curate and write about noteworthy apps and software, and explore the latest trends in design and tech. It consists of a blog, and a weekly newsletter, which I have been writing consistently every single week since 2019. Over the years, it went through multiple iterations, I used loads of different platforms, until settling with Ghost, and most recently ditching the hassle of self-hosting it, and moving to managed hosting by MagicPages* (fully recommending this awesome service). Besides moving through multiple iterations for the website itself, the posts I wrote also changed. The newsletter is now much more focused and condensed, while I am spending most of my time writing long-form posts, deep dives, news, or special content series like Tiny macOS utility apps I love.

New signups for the newsletter have been stagnating for quite some time. One reason for that might be that people might be overwhelmed with all the newsletters landing in their inboxes, another one might be that all my newsletter issues are also available as blog posts online, which means you do not have to subscribe to the newsletter since you can als subscribe to Creativerly‘s RSS feed, and consume all posts in your preferred reading environment. Luckily, I stopped stressing myself when it comes to growth, and instead fully focused on writing. And funnily enough, as I wrote more posts, Creativerly organically gained more traction, as people started to share my posts, as well as SEO started to kick in.

My only plan with Creativerly right now is to keep going, keep writing, keep publishing, and simply keep having fun with the project.

Simple Software

I have this project in the pipeline for a while, probably for years, but this is the first time I am actually writing about it publicly. It has been sitting in my Mastodon bio since I created my account there, the website is actually online, but it is simply blank. The main idea behind Simple Software was to create a niche publication to publish thoughtful guides through the app ecosystem, carefully selecting apps that truly make a difference. Simple Software is not about quick and superficial reviews. I wanted to delve deep into the apps, their functionalities, design philosophy, and the workflows they give us access to. Beyond that, Simple Software champions apps that are lightweight, simple, and focused on doing what they are doing exceptionally well. Additionally, I wanted to prioritize apps created by independent developers and small teams of creative minds, pouring their passion in their work, since those are the people challenging the status quo set by big tech corporations.

Are people still interested in reading about that? I am not sure. But what I am sure about is that I would love to write about those apps. Therefore, I set myself the goal to officially launch Simple Software in 2026, which should be doable.

Currently, I am using Publii for the website, which is an open-source static CMS with a nice macOS app to manage the site. The macOS app can sometimes be a bit finicky and buggy, and I had some issues when I moved the Publii installation to a cloud services in order to be able to manage the site from multiple computers. Therefore, I am still trying to figure out whether there could be also other setups that would work as streamlined as Publii.

Other things I still need to set up before launching Simple Software is a newsletter, as well as writing a couple of posts up-front, since I do not want to launch an empty website. So far, I have 63 apps in my backlog, plenty to choose from.

And as the word is now out about it, I am looking forward to letting you all know when Simple Software is live. In case you want to be among the first to be notified, you can sign up to my personal newsletter Datest, which brings me to the next thing I am working on ...

Datest

Just like Simple Software, Datest has been in my pipeline for years. Back when I launched my personal website I wanted to create a personal newsletter too. The idea was to write it casually, share updates about my site, my projects, and my writings, combined with fun and interesting stuff I stumbled across. While it attracted already a couple of subscribers, I have failed to this day to write the very first newsletter. When working on and managing so many different writing projects, I often reach the point where I simply start writing something, but then having a hard time to figure out for what project I am actually writing this new piece. Based on that, I simply have not figured out what exactly should go into Datest, although I had ideas for that when I initially set it up.

Neuland

As you probably know by now, I am passionate about writing, and equally passionate about building writing projects. Neuland is the one writing project that I am currently focusing on most. Usually, my writing projects are in English, but Neuland got initiated because I felt disconnected from writing in my first language, which is German. I built up a writing habit by building Creativerly, with the goal to become more proficient in writing in English. Now, I feel a similar urge when it comes to writing in German. Additionally, Neuland got born because I felt the need for an online magazine and a space that does not just report on what is happening, but asks: Why is this actually happening? Why do we stay on platforms that have long since become breeding grounds for hate, exploitation, and disinformation, just because “everyone else” does it too? Why do we accept efficiency as the highest value, even though it burns us out instead of setting us free? Why do we hand over our data to tech giants as if there were no alternatives? Why do we believe that the future will simply “happen” instead of actively shaping it ourselves?

Because it’s convenient.

Because we’re used to it.

Because we’ve forgotten that things could be different—and that we’re the ones who have to make them different. Neuland is a place for everyone who no longer wants to ignore these questions.

This is about technology that doesn’t just maximize profits, but empowers people. About design that doesn’t just make products look better, but helps shape society. About work that doesn’t exploit, but fulfills. About an open web that belongs to us, not to tech corporations. It’s about alternatives to the platforms that divide, monitor, and exploit us. It’s about the future we truly want, not the one being sold to us. We write about the systems that shape us and the people who are changing them. We question who benefits from the current order—and who pays the price. And we seek answers to the question: How can we do better?

Because one thing is clear:

The world isn’t shaped by those who shout “Disrupt!” the loudest.

But by those who ask the clearest questions, scrutinize the issues, and then take action. What makes Neuland so special? Criticism that doesn’t paralyze, but empowers; scrutiny that doesn’t breed cynicism, but enables action. It’s not about rejecting technology, power, or progress, but about harnessing their potential consciously, responsibly, and equitably.

Neuland was founded because these very questions should no longer be ignored. Because we’re missing a platform that doesn’t just celebrate the hype but questions it—and that doesn’t view technology, design, and progress as destiny, but as something we can shape. And above all: as something we should shape together.

Velorino

A couple of years ago, I got into road cycling, and since then it became my most favorite outdoor activity. Cycling on endless roads that cut through spacious fields of fresh green grass, feeling how my legs are getting tense when I am pushing myself uphill, and discovering landscapes that would otherwise be hidden from me, has been one of the best decision I have made in my life so far. The moment I hop on my bike, I am logging off from all the struggles going on in my life, and simply enjoy the moment.

Most of the time, I simply head out on a tour for fun and joy, but over the years I also realized that road cycling is great for endurance training. And therefore, I started to push myself a bit, heading out on longer tours. One of the most important things when it comes to long tours is fueling, i.e. drinking and eating to keep your body energized. When you are out on a long tour, you will probably run out of water (or drinks) and snacks. In Austria, we have a huge network of public water dispensers, however, finding their locations through apps like Apple Maps or Google Maps is hard, clunky, and often leads to wrong and misleading results. So, I thought that there needs to be an easier way to access the locations of all those public water dispensers, but after doing some research I only found some clunky web apps to access data from OpenStreetMap. Since all the data I needed was already available in OpenStreetMap, I had the idea to wrap that data into a native iOS app powered by MapKit, in order to check for important POIs while being out on a long tour.

Fast forward to today, and Velorino is live on the App Store. Over 2,000 POIs across all of Austria are accessible, so you can quickly navigate to the next water dispenser to refill your bottles, the next snack station to eat something, or the next self service bike station in order to fix small issues on your bike. What started as a fix for my personal problem, turned into a full-fledged app used by a couple of people who are also excited about road cycling. This is already motivation enough to keep going, maintaining, and improving the app. If you want to learn more about the app and the story behind it, you can check out another blog post I wrote recently, introducing Velorino to the world.

So, what is planned next? After releasing the app to the App Store and posting about it on social media, I received some messages regarding any plans to bring the app to Android too. At first, there were no plans, however, I am currently reconsidering this. Full disclaimer: I have a super basic understanding of SwiftUI, that combined with my Product Design expertise and the fast development of AI when it comes to inline suggestions, code completions, or simply using the chat sidebar of modern IDEs to ask questions, plan features, and figure out problems gave me the possibility to actually build my idea and turn it into a full-fledged app. So, there is the potential to deliver a similar experience for Android, however, my knowledge there is limited to design only, and I do not want to use LLMs to write entire chunks or in that case, the entire app for me, without understanding core principles.

Besides that, I am currently evaluating whether it is feasible to extend the supported POIs to Switzerland and Germany too, without compromising on the performance of the app. Additionally, as it is hard to validate every single POI I got from OpenStreetMap (I realized a couple of weeks ago, that a fire hydrant was marked as public water dispenser) I need to figure out a way to check whether the POIs I got for the specific categories I am supporting in Velorino, are actually the ones I want to present in the app. For this, I am relying on the growing Velorino community, so they send me feedback emails when they are out on a route and using Velorino.

Podium

Besides my passion for writing projects, my interest in road cycling opened up another field for me to explore and build stuff. Before I started working on Velorino, I had another idea for a cycling-focused iOS app. As I got more and more into road cycling, I also got interested in the professional scene, watching cycling events, following teams and riders, as well reading about new gear and tech. In order to stay up-to-date with the swift scene of road cycling, I was looking for an app that gave me the possibility to read cycling news, see all races that are happening throughout the year, and an overview of all teams and their riders in a single, neat interface. After doing loads of research, I again landed on "I should build this on my own".

The product of that became Podium, an app to keep up with the swift area of road cycling, racing event calendar, teams overview, racer insights, and a customizable feed to keep up with any news related to road cycling, including events, brands, gear, and more. While I put together the core structure of the app quite fast, I decided to spend some more time on building a solid architecture, leveraging Supabase in order to set up a backend that allows me to update events, teams, and riders without the need to ship an update to the App Store over and over again. I have a working MVP on my iPhone already, but the app still has some rough edges I need to work on before I am able to open up the TestFlight version.

Although I started to work on Podium before I had the idea for Velorino, I decided to focus on other stuff in the meantime, which is the reason Podium is still a work in progress.

Coming soon

It might look like a lot, but I simply enjoy to have options, multiple side-projects to choose from. It keeps me motivated to decide where I can spend my creative energy. Therefore, I always have a pipeline of various side-projects. And besides the ones I wrote about already, I have Oluus, Layra, and Elevia already lined up to be presented to the public soon.

I am looking forward to share more about those projects in the future.