on creating apps

Final touches for DrinkControl beta release made in our open-air...

jkir — Wed, 09 May 2012 10:38:49 -0400

Final touches for DrinkControl beta release made in our open-air office

Online content research

pankiunpopi — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 14:52:00 -0500

I’ve been lucky lucky enough to do extensive travelling from my early twenties and this situation served as a launching pad to start travel writing. Researching the next destination is very inspiring to me and at some point I thought, “If I’m doing all this research for myself, I might as well share it with others”.

The following are some notes I’ve taken while working on the content research for Gayjin Travel Guides:

It is essential to get things down accurately and double-check the names and details such as locations of a place on the map. If you are not sure if the place is where you want to put it, do not include it. Recheck it. Google Maps Streetview option is very helpful.
All the written material has to be double read by the writer and then proofread by somebody else. Grammar check is compulsory.
The biggest challenge both during research and the writing process is clarity. It is easy to get lost in your notes, numerous browser tabs, what you actually want to say about the place you are about to describe, and how the result will be perceived by the reader.
If you are just starting on your own and do not have a publishing house contract, to make the ends meet you’ll have do other non-travel-related work. This tends to drain your creative resources. Take a break and energy will retun.

The most important thing for me is to keep travelling, writing and remain open to new experiences. I see travel writing and research as a liberation from the non-travel-related work before I’ll get back on the road again.

For the first time

jkir — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 10:37:00 -0400

Yesterday we got our first revenues from iAd network - 0.15 usd for the single click. Also this was the first day we have processed in-app purchase within our apps. What’s interesting - it was in-app purchase for disabling ads :)

Yesterday was the first day when DrinkControl Lite is in AppStore.

On App Store ratings for unpopular apps

jkir — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 05:55:02 -0400

One of the most surprising thing during last three months are ratings for DrinkControl - average ratings in most countries is more than 4.5 stars, all recent comments with feedback has 5 star rating. You can check them (we’ll update page time from time) in DrinkControl feedback page.

It is especially surprising seeing that even great, iconic apps receive quite large number of negative comments.

I think this is small bright side of being unpopular - only people that really need DrinkControl functionality has found the app. When people know what they want there is not a big surprise they are satisfied.

If the user has paid for popular app just because it is just popular, without some effort considering if app can be useful for him it may happen that a weeks later when asked for ratings he is not ready to give a great score.

Of course we putted great effort to make app description as concrete as we can and carefully selected screenshots for covering all aspects of the app. I suspect than another source of negative rating is under-describing and over-promising app features in App Store without showing all relevant app screens in app description.

DrinkControl version 1.2 is in App Store - customize drinks:...

jkir — Sat, 28 May 2011 07:21:05 -0400

DrinkControl version 1.2 is in App Store - customize drinks: hide unnecessary, add your favorites, reorder according to your preferences.

Why you should want to pay for apps

jkir — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 07:32:00 -0400

Why you should want to pay for apps:

One of the biggest misconceptions about free apps is that if the label in the App Store or on a website says ‘Free’ that there is no cost to you. There is always a cost. Sometimes that cost is up front and clear-cut. Sometimes however, especially in the case of apps that are offered without a price, the cost is hidden.

DrinkControl - one month in App Store

jkir — Sun, 10 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -0400

On March 8 we received email from Apple that DrinkControl is approved and is in processing for the App Store. After all those late nights and weekends for last half a year it was a great feeling seeing that our app is available across the world.

The idea of DrinkControl is very simple - it is an app for a moderate drinker. If you are interested in what is considered moderate alcohol consumption, or if you want to understand how much you are spending on alcohol, or you’d like to understand your drinking habits, then DrinkControl will be interesting to you. [iTunes link] ($1.99 until the end of April, $2.99 afterwards)

Now, after a full month in App Store the question is - how did it go?

First. We decided to give away DrinkControl for free to our friends and those people who has left their email on app’s landing page (that was online from February 22) and therefore for 13 and 14 of March made it free for everyone. We sent email to our friends, colleagues, our Facebook contacts and Twitter followers.

Second. We decided to set DrinkControl price $0.99 for March and $1.99 for April and only from May 1 app will get it’s regular price - $2.99.

Third. Unfortunately on March 13 we found critical bug in app related with daylight-saving time. That totally crushed our promotion plans for first month- instead of sending app press releases and materials we had to focus on fixing this bug and hoping that App Store review process for bugfix will be fast enough to make fix available before March 27 when most of our existing customers in Europe should adjust their clocks. Bugfix was available in App Store in March 24. Huh.

Fourth. As app has to be rated 17+ (because it contains references to alcohol), Apple does not provide promo codes (that allows to get app for free for person who has a code). Which means that a lot of review sites- big and small are not interested even look on DrinkControl.

Fifth. On April 4 thief broke inside Arts (who is making all XCode work) apartment and stole his MacBook and iPhone among other things. Thank’s God there is Dropbox for his personal data (still some photos was lost) and SubVersion repository in the network for all code of DrinkControl and other projects we are working on. Still a big loss both materially and mentally.

Numbers

1237 downloads (95,4% of these when DrinkControl was free)
605 updates (these are real users, still keeping app on their iPhones)
$59 in revenues

So it was a very hard, demanding month full of bad surprises and not very encouraging results. On the bright side- we launched (remember, version 1 is the loneliest number). We got real feedback. We learned what we have to improve in DrinkControl. We got good rating and some great reviews from users in AppStores across the world. We have ideas how to make DrinkControl more valuable for the user. We know what should we done next. Version 1.3 is on the way (it just will be more harder and slower than we expected).

DrinkControl is in AppStore!

jkir — Tue, 08 Mar 2011 00:00:00 -0500

DrinkControl is in AppStore!:

With introductory price $1,99 until the end of April!

Thank you!

jkir — Mon, 28 Feb 2011 17:46:00 -0500

Today we are submitting or DrinkControl app to App Store (fingers crossed!) and wanted to thank all people in software development community that helped us to get so far.

Our thanks to Alex Fajkowski from Apparent Logic for his OpenFlow library. Starting from early DrinkControl mockups we felt that CoverFlow-like interface is the right one for our app. Alex just made it much more easier for us and it worked like a charm! Thank you Alex!

Big thanks to Keith Lazuka from The Polypeptides for his excellent KAL library. If you want to implement iOS-like calendar in your application, KAL is the right choice! Thanks Keith!

Thanks for the contributors of core-plot : Cocoa plotting framework for Mac OS X and iOS. Charts on iPhone are much more easy with your framework!

Sharing to Facebook from DrinkControl is made using libraries and APIs from Facebook and YFrog. Thanks to developers of these libraries!

Almost ready

jkir — Sat, 26 Feb 2011 05:23:00 -0500

Almost ready

DrinkControl webpage launched

jkir — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 00:00:00 -0500

DrinkControl webpage launched:

We are week or so away from the moment we will submit DrinkControl to App Store. If you will leave your email address on the website, we promise you’ll get fair deal when DrinkControl lands in App Store.

Far, far away (on distributed teams)

jkir — Sat, 22 Jan 2011 05:35:00 -0500

During the last six months we are building DrinkControl app, it is more than clear that our productivity really suffers from distance in time and space. Happy Moments is team of four people. Two of us are living in Buenos Aires (Argentina), another two- in Riga (Latvia). That means 5 hours time difference in addition to 12 thousand kilometers.

For example, when i’m going to sleep, Arts (my partner in Buenos Aires) has just came into his productivity mood. When I need a quick answer to easy question, he is not online. When he’s simply having bad onda (wave) I cannot punch him in back and make it working other way. And so on.

If you are sitting together in one kitchen you constantly push each other forward, solve problems quickly, brainstorm and agree on solutions much more quickly when relying on online tools with huge time lags. My wild guess is that we have lost about 4-6 weeks (it means 1/6-1/4 total) of our pace because of being distributed.

I know that someone can point me to 37signals. Yes, i’m reading Signal vs Voice as well but look- they have practiced distributed teams for long, long time (it would be interesting how long did it take to work out collaboration “protocol” that really works for them), they have company culture built to solve this (taking on board only people with excellent writing skills), they even have created their own bundle of tools (for solving their communication challenges) now known as their core business.

During the last year we have tried various tools to compensate our distance and improve our collaboration. There is what more or less worked for us so far:

1) Gmail & chat (also a bit Google Calendar, Google Docs) - Google chat is heavily used in one-to-one communication as well as for our weekly chat-up progress/planning meetings.

2) Yammer - for sharing ideas, information or discussing (e.g. design decisions). We have used Google Wave initially for this and were quite upset when Google decided to abandon it.

3) Pivotal Tracker - our ultimate and one project management tool. Every app is separate project and every feature or piece of work is user story.

4) Internal Wiki (based on Trac) is used for new app ideas, storing documents/attachments/research results and links (still there is some confusions, what should go to Yammer and what should be published in wiki).

It would be great to have feedback from people with similar setup- how do you overcome distance and made it working? What tools are you using and how?

Endloop: $100K in 4 months: A niche app’s path to App Store success

jkir — Sun, 21 Nov 2010 11:27:00 -0500

Endloop: $100K in 4 months: A niche app’s path to App Store success:

Success is not a one day wonder. Good to remember when after 6 months of hard work you feel that almost nobody noticed your app.