A couple weeks ago, Robert Scoble tweeted out a link to an interview with a couple entrepreneurs who did something I haven’t seen others perfect. They came up with a way to let anyone create an iPhone application without developer knowledge or a lot of cash. Of course, I was thrilled about the idea and a little apprehensive about the results, but I just had to try it out.
Their company, Genwi, recently launched iSites.us, a site that enables people to easily create an application for the iPhone and Android platforms with little effort, and little cash outlay. The whole process involves $25 (or $99 – see below), some image preparation, and about 10 to 15 minutes of your day. This is followed by a week or two of waiting, depending on demand.
Preparation and Planning
iSites offers a couple different pricing options. The more expensive option gives you full control over advertising, allowing you to have your own ads embedded in your app or none at all. The cheaper option (the one I chose) is $25 and includes their own ads in your application. The ads really aren’t in the way, so for me, this was not a problem. If you want your own ads, you’ll need to make sure you have an account with the ad network you choose, but either way, give it a little thought and determine what will work best for you and your budget.
Another thing you need to worry about is your brand management. Before starting, think about your application’s title and description as well as keywords. Additionally, there are a few images you have to have ahead of time. You need an icon, an iTunes display image, a banner and a splash screen image (see the iSites Learn More page to get a peek of the image size and file type requirements. It’s best to have these images all ready to go to streamline the creation process.
Finally, you should grab the category feeds for your blog or site so you can have categories in place when the app launches. The more frequent your content, the more categories you may want to have set up.
Creation and Approval
The creation process and completed application is better seen than described, so I’ve included a video showing the process. For the most part, it’s about 10 minutes of filling out web forms and uploading some images. After that, it’s just a game of waiting for an email announcing the completion of your application.
There may be the rare case in which your application is not approved. In this case, you’ll need to revise text, images, title, etc until it’s approved. When the whole process has been completed, you can just search for your app and download it.
Completed Application
Once completed, the application doesn’t have a lot of features, but it does have some of the important ones. When you start up the application, the first thing you see is the splash screen. I saw at least one other company creating iPhone apps while inserting their own brand here, so I really liked that iSites helps you insert your own branded spash screen here. The app then loads up to the Home screen which shows a listing of your recent posts with thumbnails where available. Each post can be selected to view and read. While reading a post, you can jump up or down a post, favorite it or share it via email, Facebook, or Twitter. The sharing options are a must for an application like this.
Over all, the application is really smooth and brings my blog to a whole new audience pretty seamlessly. Better still is the ability to manage it from the iSites web site control panel. From the control panel, I can change my images, description, etc. Additionally, I can add or change categories and other feeds. This really does feel like a pretty decent blend of control and simplicity.
Application Analytics
I love numbers. More than just any numbers, I love numbers that tell me people are reading what I write. Even before purchasing my app creation, I was a little excited about the prospect of seeing how many people downloaded my iJoeTech iPhone application. Once the app has hit the app store, you have analytics at your fingertips via the iSites web site control panel.
Amazingly, I had a nice bunch of downloads of my app before I even knew it was in the App Store. Pretty exciting. While it’s fun to watch, the numbers are important as a barometer for how your keywords and other criteria work to get someone to look at your app and then to download it.
What’s Missing?
I’m not sure if the analytics pages cover just the iPhone downloads or both iPhone and Android. I’d love to see analytics for both on the same graph. It would also be nice if the application had an option to open a post in Safari. Most of all, though, I’d love if there was some way for the application to hook into my WordPress and let the user submit a comment right from the app.
Conclusions
I’ve been wanting to create a JoeTech.com app for the iPhone for a while now and although I had seen other offerings, this one resonated with my mostly due to the ease of setup and the low cost. It truly is pretty amazing that I can give JoeTech.com readers a customized iPhone application so easily for only $25. I think every blog should have such an app and iSites.us is the place to get it done.
The other week, I was asked to review an iPhone app called Voice Keyboard. The application is a piano keyboard, but each key playes a sound recorded by you.
General use
The application functions like a normal piano keyboard. You have a range of keys that represent different notes like E, F, C, A, etc. As anyone could predict, the screen is presented in landscape mode to show all the keys and allow easier two-handed use. In the top left is a RECORD button. When you hit that button, it looks like the image above to indicate that it is recording. On my particular iphone, it seemed to take a second to get there. It’s not a problem if you time it out right, but if you don’t, you get extra silence at the beginning of your recorded audio and that can sound wrong when playing it via all the keyboard keys later. Once you’ve recorded the audio clip, you just play it back with the keys.
By default, the recorded audio is just being slowed down or sped up. The deeper notes take a lot longer to complete playing than the higher notes. I think it’s better for me this way because I like how the higher note sounds overlap the lower ones. You can modify this by hitting the TIMESHIFT button. This will make all the notes the same play length while maintaining the pitch variations. You can also change the playing time by turning off the sustain with the SUSTAIN button. With this turned off, the notes only play as long as you hold them. You can also save recorded audio tracks and load them back up later, looping or normalizing them.
Be creative and have fun
While there may be some practical uses for this application, it served mostly as comedic entertainment for me. Initially, it didn’t do that because I was just blurting out “Joe Tech” or “Test” into it. Then my wife and I collaborated and it got more creative with funny noises and song verses. Get another person in the room, hit record, you laugh, they laugh, stop recording, and then hit low keys randomly and then some high keys randomly. It’s magical. I promise.
At the end of the day, it’s definitely entertaining, but I don’t know if it’s really $3.99 entertaining. Perhaps if there was a more practical use or I saw myself using it frequently, it would be worth the sticker price. The $3.99 price is just not matched to this iPhone user’s current usage. With a small price drop, I could see it going a long way. Now if I could map a single sound to each key, that would be well worth the cost.
The other day, I mentioned an iPhone application called FTP On The Go in my post about taking control of your iPhone’s files. When I needed help with that application, I send an email and got a reply from the application’s author within the hour. I like that kind of support, so when he offered up a copy of iCatchall for me to review, I accepted.
The idea of iCatchall came from seeing an iPhone app that included a flashlight. The thought was that someone might as well put together a bunch of these simple (but popular) applications in one complete package. That’s what they did, and in the last couple days, there was an update with even more stuff added. As of this writing, iCatchall includes file storage, a flashlight, an hourglass timer, a level, a lunar calendar, a massager, a ruler, a reminder, a tap counter, a tip calculator, a tip converter, a coin flipper, a rock/paper/scissors game, fireballs, a high-fiver, a kitchen sink game, poker chip stacking, tap dancing, and a bunch of sound effects. When I downloaded it, it was priced at only $0.99, which is a deal for all that stuff under one icon. The whole thing is split into three screens full of program icons, Tools and Utilities, Fun and Games, and Sound Effects. Getting from one to the other is as simple as sliding your finger from right to left.
Tools and Utilities
File Storage is one of the coolest parts of iCatchall because it fires up a web server on your iPhone that you can connect to from any web browser to upload or download files. When you connect, there’s also a version of the web page formatted for iPhones. It’s an easy way to share files over wifi with others.
The Level is actually a multilevel that lets you perfectly gauge how level any surface is.
The Tip Calculator figures out your tip amount based on the percentage you choose (it defaults to the standard 15%) and divides it by the number of people you specify to let you know exactly how much each person should pay.
The flashlight is a white screen that provides a good source of pure light from your iPhone. You can also tap and slide to change the color or hue of the light. Alternatively, it can be switched to “Moonlight” mode.
Measure is a simple on-screen ruler to help you measure items. Your choices are Inches or Centimeters.
Today’s Moon is a lunar calendar that simply shows you what phase the moon will be in today.
Hourglass Timer is a little hour glass that you set to count down. You can set it anywhere from 5 seconds all the way up to 59 minutes and 55 seconds. As you can see it shows digital sand falling through the glass. When the sand runs out, a buzzer sounds.
Forget something? Remember one thing is where you can type one thing to remember. Honestly, I can’t imagine ever really using this as it doesn’t actually remind me unless I remember to open it up and look.
The unit converter is another handy tool that I imagine I’ll use a lot. I had previously bookmarked a site that has all the conversions, but this will be much handier for cooking and it also covers length, speed, temperatures, and weights.
Tap Counter is just what it sounds like. It counts how many times you tap. Something fun to try would be to have a friend with an iPhone fire up the hourglass and you fire up the tap counter and see who can tap more in a given time amount.
Fun and Games
There’s enough lighters out there. iCatchall decided to go a different route and give us fire balls! Turn the phone and the orientation of the balls of fire changes with you smoothly.
Long day of playing on your iPhone? Need a massage? Like most phones, your iPhone has a vibrating motor and here, it has been tapped into for a simple massage application. With high, medium, or low, it aims to please.
This is another app I’ve seen before, but it’s all about the bundling. And, you can turn on “Mike’s hand” mode to flip the coin in his hand.
If you’re too predictable when you play Rock, Paper, Scissors, try going digital for a more random result. Maybe the next version will include an option for Rock, Paper, Scissors, Lizard, Spock and anyone who gets that reference has seen my new favorite TV show.
Another feature that is mostly useless, but kind of fun bundled in is the High Five app. Tap the icon and then quickly turn your iPhone to someone’s waiting hand. Don’t worry if you don’t connect. It comes with a sound to make you think you did.
Stack up some poker chips, but stack them neatly or they’ll fall. If you shake it, it will start over with new colors.
This game is a lot of fun. It’s great that Michael found a way to tie in a game that is named perfectly to claim that iCatchall includes even the kitchen sink.
Practice tap dancing on your phone, but please use your fingers, not your feet. Hey, if people will eat up an application to skateboard with your fingers, then why not?
Sound Effects No “catch all” application would be complete without some sound effects. For starters, I’m sure you can guess the sound effect staple of the App Store, the famous flatulence button. Hit it and you’ll be blushing in seconds. There’s also a rim shot button, you know, for when you just told a real knee-slapper. If you’ve just given a killer speech to an audience of one, you can help guide his or her reaction with the built-in studio audience (which is also a nice follow-up to the flatulence button). Another fun button is the “iHuh?” icon. Press it and your iPhone will give someone an audible “HUH?” to let them know that you clearly don’t understand. If you’re feeling adventurous, hit the “Music Video” button and see what happens. I won’t give away the surprise, so don’t ask. Finally, there’s a “Tell a Friend” icon to help you share the application with people.
Conclusions
One thing that is obvious without me having to point it out is that iCatchall includes a lot of features. Although it’s only $0.99, it’s still a paid application, so you have to hope you’ll get your money’s worth out of it, and that will always depend on the person buying. Several items included in iCatchall are useless to me, but amusing at the least. That said, the web based file management and sharing is pretty cool (and definitely useful), and I probably would have paid a couple bucks just for that. The tip calculator already came in handy today at lunch, the unit converter is handy to have around, and the kitchen sink game is unique and fun. Ultimately, I also think about the future of an application before purchasing because a single purchase includes everything added with each update. My advice is to buy it now, while it’s still a buck and enjoy all the updates that I’m sure will be added eventually.
