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

Catching up with the iPhone Apps that I like

This is not an iPhone review website.

I just so happen to have an iPhone and am continously stunned about the functionality this crap battery life phone actually has.

On a side note ever since I dropped my 3G and O2 kindly issued me with a replacement 3GS my whole experience has heightened some what significantly. The ocassionaly crash due to lack of memory seems to be a thing of the past. I have noticed however the 3GS does seem to have a lot more operating memory to play with (usually over 110meg) compared to the 3G (sub 10meg).

Anyway onto the apps, Sorry there was a pause whilst I changed tracks on the amazing Spotify. Which still gives much pleasure around the house and out and about. BTW I have over 10 invites if anyone needs one, just drop me a line.

Anyway. So the apps.

First up "Ambience"

Wicked little app. Never thought it would give me so much pleasure. Its essentually a player of ambient sounds. These sounds are looped and of high quality. The app provides the ability to search, try and then download the sounds you like. Whereby you then listen to them, in my case docked into a simple JBL soundstage to give a fuller sound than the iPhones built in speaker. You can tweet or Facebook what you are listening to, as well as rate the sound you are listening to. You can even arrange a playlist of your fav ambient sounds.

Its well put together, looks great and does what it says on the tin.

Onto more sound with the next app "Deadmau5 Mix II"

So I am just discovering Deadmau5 on Spotify, and am liking the beats. Well the clever sods have hooked up with an iPhone developer and created (this is their 2nd one) a mini mixing desk to mix well over a dozen Deadmau5 tracks (or samples of their tracks) allowing to believe you are a DJ and mix their tracks together. Great fun. Could play all evening. The only con is that the app leaves you wanting more complete tracks. V.cool in my eyes.

Now we switch gears to astronomy apps. This was initially brought to my attention by my good friend Karen Mizen over at Creating Laughing Loving who spotted and article on one of the apps which made use of the new 3GS compass app. She said it sounded amazing. I tried to control my excitement as the chances of getting a 3GS were slim. Then I got a replacement phone which turned out to be a 3GS and it was not long before I looked at the augemented reality apps (another truely amazing use of a phone) and then onto the astronomy apps.

So which ones did I shoot for? Well the 3 main ones:-

Starmap Pro

Star Walk

Pocket Universe

So first up "Pocket Universe"

I personally like this one. It is extremely cheap and use the 3GS compass and GPS to show you what your are looking at in the sky as you hold the phone up. Albeit the screen is not showing the real sky night with the stars superimposed. But rather a fake skyline and sky with the stars and planets in the correct positions as you wave the phone around. Brilliant. This has the smallest collection of stars out of the 3 apps. But you are not going to exhuast it. This is the entry point app. It gives you pleasant bite sized chunks of info on what you are looking at.

Next up Star Walk

This was sold to me on the review text as someone in politics in America raved about this app.

This app is great for giving you information on stars, planets and galaxies. I have been push notified of new pictures of space stuff since the app has been on my phone. Very cool feature. You can time travel through the ages to see what stars would have been visable say 100 years ago etc. You can zoom into space (as you can to in Pocket Universe to be fair)

This app looks slick, polished and makes little beeps and buzzes as you press things. So all very star trek if you ask me. Geek kick.

The final is the daddy. Starmap Pro.

Be under no illusion if you are the slightest bit serious about this stuff this is the one to shoot for. The datasets that exisit in this app and the number of stars available vastly outweighs the others combined (I think). The pro version has features that are for real amateur astronomers, and their telescopes. I wont even try to explain half the functions. Hit their website and take a look for yourself.

Starmap Pro also takes advantage of the 3GS compass and shows the stars etc as you hold the phone up to the sky. A feature I still cannot get over. Love it.

I even stupidly lie in bed, start the app and hold the phone up to see what would I see if there was not ceiling above me, or the fact that it was not pissing down with rain.

Out of the 3. Starmap is the big daddy. I like Pocket Universe for its instant gratification. And Star Walk for its geeky coolness in looking like a cool app and making silly sci-fi sounds as you operate it.

Laters

R

Monday Morning

Its Monday and its half term here on the south coast.

Just thought I would jot down a few of my favourite iPhone apps. Its not many but to me they are worthy of appearing on my delightful Apple device (battery life grumble grumble)

1. Tweetie - Awesome Twitter Client. I just prefer this one to the others. They are all good but this one has the edge for me. It has a little bit more depth. It makes it very simple for me to write tweets on the go and see other peoples pofiles. I like the nearby feature too.
2. Weather Pro - Right lets get this straight, here in the UK the Met Office rule when it comes to weather. Although Weather Pro does not appear to take data from the Met office it appears to be most accurate out of all the weather apps. This was invaluable a couple of weeks ago when the UK had snow I was able to see the satellite and radar animations to determine what was going to happen. I checked the pressure and temp with a real weather station and they were pretty accurate.
3. Feeds - In the world of RSS readers on the iPhone there is a lot to choose from and it is extremely difficult. I have 4 currently and I watching them all carefully overtime to see which one is going leap in front. Feeds currently has some great functionality that provides full sync with Google Reader. Brilliant!!
4. Instapaper - Ahh man I am dead jealous of the developer for this very simple app who must have been following the KISS methodogy. What is even better is that both Tweetie and Feeds have functionality to clip to your Instapaper account for offline textual reading later on.Which is really handy when you are following 20 tech reporters who are all giving out URL's of articles to read, just simply hit the instapaper option and the pages is saved to your cloud account for reading later. This has been great when I am researching a company I have an interview with. If there is any last minute info I need I can use instapaper to give a nice iphone sized textual version of the the pages of their website. Couple that with the tilt scrolling which is soooooo cool.
5. Nuevasync - Although not an app it is allowing me to have my Google Calendar and Plaxo contacts sync'd wirelessly. Yes Google Sync is now out for the iPhone, in my opinion that still has some way to go before getting close to Nuevasync. Especially in the contact area where the fields are not replicating the Outlooks.

Look out for all of these in the iTunes app store

R