Episode 6: Simple In/Out With Bill Burgess & Brandon Medenwald

Name: Goodpods
Rating: 4.8 (3721 reviews)

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:

Simple In/Out on the iOS App Store

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.

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.

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.

Contact Links:

Support Simply Made Apps & the show by using this link to get Simple In/Out on the App Store:

Simple In/Out on the iOS App Store

Previous Episode

Episode 5: Dringend With Josh Garnham

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

Dringend 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!

Next Episode

Episode 7: Sunlit With Manton Reece

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: