App Story
Vic Hudson
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06/19/14 • 35 min
Jim Biancolo, half of Raised Square, joins me to talk about creating their first app, Stand Up!, a work break timer for reminding us all that we need to occasionally get up from the desk and move around.
Raised Square was founded in 2014 by Mark and Jim, two guys who wanted a place to build things that they like to use.Mark, a self described Brit living in the USA, found computers so early in life he started on an Atari 800 XL. Later he went on to study them at University. He started working in tech after graduation and has spent most of his life building web stuff. He is now enjoying building stuff for the computers in our pockets and is a baseball and cycling enthusiast.
Jim found computers later in life, and spent the last 20 years making up for lost time. He's happy to pick up the UX end of things for Raised Square. In his spare time, he enjoy's watching movies, and carries a Netflix queue that's around three years deep. He is self described as just enough of a movie nerd to know he watches around 80 movies a year.
Stand Up! The Work Break Timer, because sadly we need reminding we should get up and move around.Stand Up! is a fun, flexible work break timer. By now you know that sitting down is slowly killing you, and Raised Square wants to help you live longer. It's as simple as standing up! It's also great for RSI sufferers, or anyone that needs to take regular breaks. Stand Up! is free and fully functional! It comes with one alert tone, and one In-App Purchase unlocks the rest. It is completely customizable to your work schedule so you can truly set it and forget it. You can also customize the color theme of the UI. The header shows you at a glance how you're doing, and how long to your next alert. You can even limit alerts to your office location so it doesn't bug you when you go out to lunch.
The Stand Up! and Raised Square story is closely intertwined, as their practice project turned into their business product.When Jim & Mark started, they were looking for a simple idea they could create relatively quickly to give themselves experience building for the App Store. When they couldn't find a work break reminder app that did everything they wanted, they decided that seemed like a good candidate. Initially thinking it would only take a few weeks to build something they'd be proud of, they ended up spending about a year perfecting it. In the course of the building the project they experienced lots of learning, lots of abandoned designs, and lots of life intervention (including Mark having a baby!), but in the end they created something they're very proud of, and are now focused on turning it into a sustainable business model.
Contact Links:- Stand Up! Website
- Jim Biancolo on Twitter
- Mark Wright on Twitter
- Vic on Twitter
- App Story on Twitter
If you're an indie developer and you'd like to tell your app's story on the show, click here.
If you are enjoying App Story, please consider reviewing/rating it in iTunes. I'd also love to hear your feedback and to know how you found the show. Please feel free to use the twitter links and let me know!
Thanks so much for your support!
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01/29/15 • 41 min
In App Story’s first ever Release Day Special, Marco Napoli joins me to talk about his brand new app Wants And Needs, an app dedicated to helping keep your life balanced and in perspective. We discuss the philosophy behind the app and go into some technical details of it’s implementation, as well as Marco’s thoughts on marketing and important strategies to succeed.
After years in the enterprise sector, Marco was enchanted by the iPhone and shifted to mobile development.Marco is the founder of Pixolini, Inc. an iOS, Web, Windows, Enterprise and Client Server Developer. He’s been passionate about computers and developing software his whole life. He spent a lot of time in the enterprise sector making things like banking and sales software before moving into the consumer space. He wrote first iPhone app in 2008. These days he is primarily focused on mobile app development especially iPhone, iPad, iOS Extensions and he’s already got things planned for the Watch. He confided in me his biggest development secret, he cannot code without caffeine. He loves Espresso, Cappuccino, Coffee and also Martial Arts.
If you only Want without Thanks, you will never be happy.We all consider the things we want (like a new car) and the things we need (like making the rent or mortgage payment). But how many of us think about what we already have? Are we grateful? Do we take what we have for granted? Do our Wants outweigh our Needs? Are our Needs overshadowing our Thanks? Wants and Needs app was designed with these questions in mind to help place your Life in Perspective.
Wants and Needs is a brand new app designed to organize personal goals, ambitions, and expressions of gratitude into three simple categories: Wants, Needs, and Thanks. The app not only gives users the ability to personalize their thoughts, but it also presents their custom data with graphic charts. These charts help the user visually understand if their life goals are in or out of balance. Life in Perspective.
Marco’s design process starts with how the user will use the app, and everything is completely designed around that perspective.About a year ago Marco was inspired to develop Wants and Needs to help place our Life in Perspective, by acknowledging our gratitude. He was sitting in Church listening to the Pastor's homily talking about the time he had to reflect on his life. It was like a lightbulb went on and Marco first envisioned Wants and Needs as an app.
He began mapping out the needs of the project in his mind. At this stage he was extremely focused on how the users will use the app. As he fleshed out the details mentally he pictured the flow of the app and then moved on to prototyping the storyboard. He then spent time playing with the storyboard on his device and refined the flow of the app and the User Experience. Next he knew an app like his absolutely had to sync between multiple devices. He then got to work on Core Data syncing, which was also beneficial as he needed it for the app’s Today View Widget, and will need it for his future plans for the app as well. Marco shared with me some of these future plans for the app, one of which will be an Watch app, and many others as well. I look forward to seeing where else he takes the app in the future.
Marco views the marketing so integral to an app’s success, that he starts that process almost before he’s even really started developing the app. He told me a lot of interesting pieces of his strategy during the interview. I personally believe a developer would do well to take notes from him. He certainly help me to realize some of my own marketing short comings.
Contact Links: Support Marco & the show by using this link to get Wants And Needs on the App Store: Additional links:If you're an indie developer and you'd like to tell your app's story on the show, click here.
Episode 12: Drafts With Greg Pierce
App Story
01/15/15 • 43 min
Greg Pierce joins me to talk about creating his app Drafts, iOS app extensibility and automation based on URL Schemes, creating the x-callback-url standard, and the future of iOS App and system extensibility.
Greg Pierce has been a leader in pushing the boundaries of automation on iOS.Greg Pierce was naturally very computer savvy. He grew up in a home with computers always present. He was frequently the ”go to guy” when people had computer problems. He was also into desktop publishing and automating the process, which led him into scripting and programming. This led to his unintentional entrance into the field of software development. In 2006 he founded Texas-based Agile Tortoise and entered the consulting market, while doing personal projects on the side. In recent years, he has primarily focused on developing his own independent iOS apps such as Drafts, Phraseology and Terminology.
Along the way, Greg and Marco Arment developed an idea for apps to better communicate with each other using a standard form for URL Schemes, providing a better user experience. This led Greg to author the x-callback-url spec, with his app, Terminology, and Marco’s then app, Instapaper, being the first to implement it. Greg has been a leader in pushing the boundaries of automation on iOS ever since, and x-callback-url is now widely adopted by both large and small players on the App Store.
Drafts, where text starts on iOS. Quickly capture text and send it almost anywhere!Drafts is the quick, easy way to capture and share text. In Drafts, text comes first – open the app and get a new, blank draft – ready to type. Don't get bogged down in a timeline to tweet or post to Facebook. Don't tap your way through multiple screens to get down an email or SMS. Don't navigate folders, create files and name them just to jot down a note or create a todo.
Extensive output options let you send text to Twitter, Facebook, Mail, Message, a Calendar event, quickly save (or prepend/append) to Dropbox, Google Drive or Evernote and much more. Advanced multi-step actions and Javascript integration can combine all of these options in a single tap and more. Drafts can make any workflow shine!
Drafts was born from a light bulb moment in Greg’s head.While composing an email to his wife one day, Greg decided he needed it to be a text message instead. The resulting frustration of changing the delivery method of that message caused a light bulb to come on in Greg’s head. There should be a simpler way to start with text on iOS and decide what to do with it later, from this idea came Drafts. The initial app just opened to a text box and let you choose from a few basic options for outputting the text. Over time Greg continued to iterate on the app and, using URL Schemes, he was able to begin adding more actions to Drafts. As URL Schemes became more popular, more apps began to support them and the actions available to a Drafts user really flourished. Savvy users could even craft their own actions. When Greg later authored the x-callback-url standard, people could then create very complex actions and workflows that incorporated multiple apps, each passing the input and output back to the source app or another app to manipulate it further. Today Greg continues to iterate Drafts, and maintains an ever growing directory of Drafts actions online.
Contact Links: Support Greg & the show by using this link to get Drafts and his other apps on the App Store:
Episode 11: Mingle With Sam Ghobril
App Story
12/11/14 • 30 min
Episode 10: avTag With Simon Wolf
App Story
11/27/14 • 41 min
06/05/14 • 35 min
Dean Murphy joins me to discuss creating math challenge game Number Tap. Relatively new to development, Dean used the Corona SDK to build the app and learn programming fundamentals.
Dean is a hobbyist developer from the North-East of England with dreams of going pro one day.Dean is a hobbyist developer from the North-East of England. He's been learning to program in his spare time for a couple of years. Professionally, Dean does server support & administration in the public sector, but he got started on this journey with only some basic web scripting experience. In his spare time, he now creates apps & games for himself and on a freelance basis to sharpen his programming skills, with a view to eventually change careers to developing full time.
Number Tap is a fun, quick paced, math game of racing against the clock to get answers right, and earn more time.Originally created by Dean as a fun way to encourage his nephew's studies in math, Number Tap is a fun, quick paced math game where you solve math questions that get increasingly harder to prevent the timer from running out. Number Tap is perfect for children to improve their math skills in a fun way. With Game Center Support they can even compete with online leaderboards and hunt for achievements. Number Tap's simple & quick gameplay is a great tool to train your brain with. By straying away from conventional multiple choice style quiz games, and no pause button, Number Tap offers a truly unique game play experience.
Number Tap is the third app, and first game Dean created.Dean had only been programming for 5 months when he first started this app. Coming from his server side and web backend experience, he created Number Tap by leveraging the Corona SDK, a 3rd party framework to create mobile apps for Android & iOS, with the Lua scripting language. He's since arranged to have it translated into several languages, and also ported Number Tap to Android only a few months after launching for iOS. Dean tells us some of the interesting challenges that porting the game to Android presented, especially with user expectations on certain hardware features. He also details some of his creative strategies in ensuring Number Tap always had accurate answers.
Contact Links: Support Dean & the show by using these links to get the Number Tap on the App Store: Additional links:If you're an indie developer and you'd like to tell your app's story on the show, click here.
If you are enjoying App Story, please consider reviewing/rating it in iTunes. I'd also love to hear your feedback and to know how you found the show. Please feel free to use the twitter links and let me know!
Thanks so much for your support!
Episode 7: Sunlit With Manton Reece
App Story
05/22/14 • 33 min
Manton Reece, iOS, Mac & web developer, as well as co-host of popular indie developer podcast, Core Intuition, joins me to talk about developing his photo sharing app/service, Sunlit.
Long time Mac, iOS & Web developer, Manton Reece is a man of many talents.Manton is a Mac, iOS, and web developer who has been building Mac software since the mid 90s. He works on e-textbook software for VitalSource, and also runs a little indie software company, Riverfold Software, with products like Tweet Library and Sunlit for iOS. He also created the Tweet Marker sync API, which could very likely be running the sync abilities for your favorite Twitter client. As if that's not enough, Manton is also co-host of popular indie dev podcast Core Intuition, with Daniel Jalkut. Core Intuition is one of my favorite podcasts, so having Manton on the show was a nice treat. Core Intuition is in my handful of podcasts that were an inspiration for this show.
Share more than just photos with Sunlit, because without a context, it's just a pile of photos.Sunlit is a great photo sharing app/service, based on the App.net platform. With Sunlit you share more than just photos. You can add text and location data, to provide a valuable context and really use your photos to tell a story, or take a trip down memory lane. Built on the powerful App.net platform, Sunlit even offers collaboration and shared story features built right in. Just point it at your App.net account and start uploading your favorite pictures. Add some text and location info and you've got a great story that's only a tap away from sharing with all your friends and family right on the web, via the Sunlit.io Website. You can also now use it with your Flickr account too. Download Sunlit now and try it out by creating one story for free. When you fall in love with it, the ability to create additional stories is just a simple in app purchase away.
After toying with the idea for a while, Manton & Jonathan got serious about Sunlit and started it during a hackathon.Manton and his friend, Jonathan Hays, built Sunlit because they wanted a better way to share photos with friends and family. They had a desire to share more than just single photos like on Instagram. They wanted a way to share whole collections of photos, text, and check-in locations together, perfect for events or when traveling. After toying with the idea for a while they decided to get serious about it, and started creating the prototype during a hackathon. Overtime they continued to iterate and it evolved into the beautiful app and service you see today. They recently added Flickr support and are always on the lookout for new possibilities.
Contact Links: Support Manton & the show by using this link to get Sunlit & Manton's other app Tweet Library on the iOS App Store: Additional links:
05/08/14 • 41 min
Bill Burgess & Brandon Medenwald, two of the original founders of Simply Made Apps, join me to talk about creating Simple In/Out, and launching their company from it.
Bill & Brandon became friends on the golf course and discovered they had complimentary skill sets and a shared idea.Bill is a self taught iOS developer. He started toying with iOS development around the launch of iOS 3, and got serious with it when they had an idea for a service they wanted to create. Brandon comes from long established a web development background in a variety of languages. Since discovering Ruby On Rails, he is now primarily focused on Ruby. They met and became friends on the golf course. After playing several weekend games, they realized they had some complimentary skill sets. Together with another friend who was interested in Android development, they began looking for ideas they could work on together. Today when they are not discussing business plans with their laptops over beers they still enjoy golfing in their spare time.
Simple In/Out provides an excellent In/Out service with no manual action required by the users. The smart phones people already carry with them do all the checking in & out for them.Simple In/Out is a digital in/out board platform, on the web, with client applications for the major smart phone platforms. By utilizing geofences, and now also iBeacons on iOS 7, these client apps take care of all the checking in and out automatically. By utilizing the apps on smart phones and doing the checking in and out automatically the system is free from the common pitfalls and inaccuracies of most physical in/out boards. Simple In/Out is now deployed and used in a wide variety of profesional, non profit, and personal environments. If you have a need to track who is in and out of a given location at any given time, there is simply no better system. Checking in and out is just the tip of the iceberg with Simple In/Out. They also offer advanced reporting and even full screen web interfaces perfect for big screen integration to your office. They also have the Front Desk iPad app designed to sit in on a front desk or accessible area so users can quickly check themselves in or out as they come and go, as well as see who is in and out. It can even be configured as an iBeacon for the service.
Bill & Brandon's App Story tells how a few guys with an idea, and $100 each, built a set of apps, a service, an API enabled platform, and eventually a small business capable of providing a few jobs.Feeling frustration with the limitations of magnetic In/Out Boards, a system commonly used to track employees in and out of the office, and the then current software implementations, led them to decide to try and make the Simple In/Out service. Three guys each threw in $100 to launch the company and over a beer fueled weekend they put their noses to the grind stone to build their first prototype of the app and backing web service. The Simple In/Out app was born and Simply Made Apps grew with it. They stay on top of the changing tech landscape, and with tips and suggestions from a great user base, they continue to add new features when they fit the platform, while still maintaining it's core simplicity. They eventually became successful enough, that now they even provide a few jobs to their community in Fargo North Dakota. They grew all this from the original $300 personal investment with no external funding.
Contact Links: Support Simply Made Apps & the show by using this link to get Simple In/Out on the App Store:
04/24/14 • 27 min
Josh Garnham joins me to talk about his app Dringend. Dringend is an iOS development environment for the iPad, the lets you create, edit, build and run Xcode Projects right on your iPad.
Josh started out as a Mac developer, but eventually found he preferred developing for iOS.
Josh started to learn how to make Mac apps about 5 years ago from a simple book he quickly outgrew. He then continued by rolling up his sleeves and jumping right into the code, using StackOverflow as his go to place for questions along the way. After a few years developing for the Mac he decided to try out the iOS side of things. Josh told me he soon preferred developing for iOS and has continued to do so since. In his free time, he also enjoys the odd episode of Star Trek and Mythbusters as well as spending some time on a Flight Simulator.
Write code, build it, and test run it right from the comfort of your favorite armchair, all on your iPad.
Dringend is an app development environment for the iPad. You can create and edit complete Xcode projects and source files right on your iPad. Dringend offers all the same project templates, color themes, and source code syntax highlights available in Xcode. Lastly, as if this wasn't already cool enough, Dringend uses Dropbox and a Mac on your network running the free companion app, The Constructor, to actually compile and test run the app right on the same iPad, using your developer account credentials.
Josh's App Story talks about how he was inspired to simply be able to make quick revisions to existing code, that grew to be so much more.
Josh told me Dringend began life simply as a code editor using Core Text at it’s roots, but over the time of development this changed to use TextKit (as of iOS 7). The ability to import and navigate Xcode projects was added along the way with all the other key features we see today including remote building (which in itself had many incarnations).
Contact Links:
Support Josh & the show by using this link to get Dringend on the App Store
Additional links:
- Don't forget to download The Constructor for your mac to enable building and running the projects on the device
- SquaredTiki on the web - Josh's Company website
If you're an indie developer and you'd like to tell your app's story on the show, click here.
If you are enjoying App Story, please consider reviewing/rating it in iTunes. I'd also love to hear your feedback and to know how you found the show. Please feel free to use the twitter links and let me know!
Thanks so much for your support!
04/10/14 • 43 min
Jared Sinclair Joins me to discuss his wildly popular RSS client Unread. Unread is one of my favorite apps and having Jared on the show was a real pleasure.
Jared Sinclair started learning app development while working as an ICU nurse.
Jared is an independent iOS app designer and developer. He's made several apps, including RSS reader Unread, and popular App.net client Riposte. He started developing as a hobby while working as an ICU nurse, and made his first app called Pill Boxie, a medication reminder. He was lucky enough to get noticed and featured by Apple and good things began to happen for him. Later during a family relocation he took the opportunity to try his hand at going indie and developing full time, which has been very successful for him. He currently lives in Bloomington, Indiana with his wife and son.
Unread makes reading your feeds delightful again.
Unread is a beautiful Post Google Reader RSS client. It offers support for many popular feed syncing services. Jared has sweated lots of details to come up with a beautifully designed, well performing reader app. With a goal of changing the way he used RSS from a simple triage for a read later list he never revisited, he created an app that makes reading a carefully curated list of feed articles right inside the app delightful again.
Jared's App Story details some of the challenges he overcame to present RSS in a modern way.
In his app story he tells us all about his clever efforts to get the main article list to display correctly and perform as the user would expect. He goes into great detail to explain some of the pitfalls and the clever solutions he came up with overcome them. He also goes into detail about his unique blend using both Core Data and SQLite to manage the data set for Unread. Leveraging each where applicable he was able to use them each where their strengths lie, and avoid the weaknesses they have that would have adverse performance impacts. He finishes by telling us how he abstracted the different sync services so adding and removing them as needed will be no sweat in the future.
Contact Links:
Support Jared & the show by using these links to get his apps on the App Store
Additional links:
SPONSORED BY: SQUARESPACE
Use the offercode MARS for 10% off your first purchase.
If you're an indie developer and you'd like to tell your app's story on the show, click here.
App Story is now a proud member of Fiat Lux.
Find more great shows like this at FiatLux.fm
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FAQ
How many episodes does App Story have?
App Story currently has 15 episodes available.
What topics does App Story cover?
The podcast is about How To, Podcasts, Technology and Education.
What is the most popular episode on App Story?
The episode title 'Episode 9: Stand Up! With Jim Biancolo' is the most popular.
What is the average episode length on App Story?
The average episode length on App Story is 35 minutes.
How often are episodes of App Story released?
Episodes of App Story are typically released every 14 days, 4 hours.
When was the first episode of App Story?
The first episode of App Story was released on Feb 6, 2014.
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