ADGoT Just released SliderTwigz 3.1.1 with Game Center

Yep its true. Apple finally passed the iOS app SliderTwigz into the iTunes Store. Its another little step, and includes the Apple Game Center functionality to allow players to see their scores on the Game Center leaderboard. Well done to the ADGoT team, and thanks Apple. For more info check out the ADGoT blog.

Working Hard on ParentHelper

So here it is. I have been working with some friends to create a new app for the Apple iPhone platform.

Tricky, as there are, as Steve Jobs says hundreds of thousands of apps on the iTunes app store. Some of them brilliant, some are silly and funny, some of them get deleted within 5 minutes of being installed. And thats where we wanted to make a difference. We wanted to create an app with longevity.

So there is the problem, how do we write an app and stand out? We tried looking for niche market,which is very dificult considering the range of apps that exist. So we went back to grass roots and looked at what was common to all three of us and what we would all be passionate about.

We came up with some basic concepts for ParentHelper. What crystallised it for us was we watched a TV programme on British TV on Channel 4 called Dispatches. The programme highlighted that a disturbing amount of children were moving onto secondary school without the skills for basic arithmetic.

A quiz that the teachers gave kids and teachers was put onto the channel 4 website for us to try and see what results we got. They were disturbing both in the programme and for the adults that I knew in our local neighbourhood, who all took it that night and posted their results on Facebook.

Even I will freely admit that I had forgotten how to do long multiplication manually on a piece of paper, because I don't do it, I use a computer or a calculator and we seem to be accepting that as the norm and thus expecting our kids to think that is the norm. So the miss out the basic structure of how to do things on a piece of paper and understand what is really going on.

So we decided that our app should be a step by step interactive guide on how to do the arithmetic so that parents could help teach their children.

ParentHelper was born.

It has taken us a while to develop and get through the Apple review process. But we are there now a version that works and works with iOS4 and the iPhone 4 platform.

We have loads of ideas of extra functionality we want to see in the app.

Big thanks go to Matt over at matthewtakhar.co.uk and Andrew D for all the hard work.

We are hoping for great things not least because of the subject matter.

Anyway now back to playing Angry Birds and Plants vs Zombies