Each colorful upper case alphabet letter from A to F smoothly morphs into its lowercase counterpart, creating a strong visual association for a child learning the alphabet.

Alphabet Morpher Lite is the free “trial” version of our popular Alphabet Morpher app.  The “lite” version also features Autoplay and a gives a good preview of the teaching and entertainment capabilities of the full version.

Technorati Tags: iPhone, iPod Touch, Apple, mobile, Alphabet Morpher Lite, Alphabet Morpher

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Alphabet Morpher, a new Education / Entertainment App from BluMtnWerx, Now Available on Apple’s App Store

Alphabet Morpher, an innovative tool for teaching the alphabet to preschoolers, is available for immediate download on Apple’s App Store.

Los Altos, CA — July 24, 2010 — BluMtnWerx, a developer of leading edge applications for mobile devices is pleased to announce that Alphabet Morpher, its first education/entertainment app, is now available for download from the App Store.

Alphabet Morpher is an innovative and extremely engaging iPhone™ / iPod touch™ app that teaches the alphabet while entertaining the preschool set.  Each colorful upper case alphabet letter from “A” to “Z” smoothly morphs into its lowercase counterpart, creating a strong visual association for a child learning the alphabet.  Familiarity with the letters is reinforced by an accompanying song and memorable image for each character.

“While we’d never want one of our apps to be characterized as ‘cute,’ Alphabet Morpher comes pretty close,” says Dean Stevens, founder of BluMtnWerx.  Mr. Stevens continues, “Autoplay mode allows you to entertain little learners for hours with minimal interaction, while the interactive mode really helps develop letter recognition and familiarity.  This is a powerful teaching tool targeted directly at those impressionable young minds.  It’s fun, it’s engaging, and it might even be (at least a tiny bit) good for the little folks.”

Alphabet Morpher is available on Apple’s iTunes App Store at:
        http://itunes.com/app/alphabetmorpher

The Alphabet Morpher web page is:
        http://www.blumtnwerx.com/AlphaMorph.html

About BluMtnWerx:

We believe that the nexus of interaction with computing is moving to the very edge of the network.  With this in mind, we assembled an elite team of engineers to develop applications at the edge.  We build software to bring the universe to you, wherever you are and whenever you want to connect.

We currently have a number of applications available on the Apple App Store, and several more in the pipeline.

For further information on BluMtnWerx, please visit our website. For direct inquires, please contact:

Dean Stevens, Founder
BluMtnWerx
408-461-9913

dean (at) blumtnwerx.com
http://www.blumtnwerx.com
http://www.blumtnwerx.com/blog

Technorati Tags:  iPhone, iPod Touch, Apple, mobile, Alphabet Morpher

The Wired story linked to above has the money quote:

“This scam was so effective that the applications regularly rose to the tops of charts. One, called ColorMagic, even made it into the Staff Favorites section of the store (which brings some doubt as to whether these are actually staff picks at all).”

It does indeed make me wonder how they go about identifying their “favorites.”

The cynic in me can’t help noticing that Molinker produced 1 app for every 5 units of the iPhone sold during the launch with China Unicom (we’re told that Apple yanked 1000 of Molinker’s apps).  Oh well, 1% fewer apps are out there competing for attention.

Q:  Why did Apple change their minds?

A:  Again, only Apple can tell you their exact reasons. In our conversation with them, they indicated that our blog post, linked across the web and seen by tens of thousands of readers, was a force for change here. As for other problems that don’t generate this much exposure and backlash? They may be less likely to be fixed, and that’s unfortunate.

I’m truly happy for Rogue Amoeba (previous slightly critical post notwithstanding), but I absolutely don’t believe that this indicates that Apple will go any easier on the rest of us.  These guys just made enough noise to force Apple to blink.  Most of us probably can’t accomplish that.

“Presumably, such a check would be run at the beginning of the review process”

Any steps in the process that they can automate sound good to me.  I just wish that they would run this check in conjunction with submission (as they do for proper app signing).  Personally, I’d be thrilled if the whole process could be automated.  Unfortunately, software probably isn’t that great at finding objectionable content and trademark infringements.  At least this is a step in the right direction…

Airfoil Speakers Touch

I sighed when I read about Rogue Amoeba’s recent decision to place their iPhone development efforts on the far back burner.  Normally, I would have just written the story off as yet another developer in a (perhaps justified) snit. Then, I read Jeff LaMarche’s carefully written, and forcefully argued, defense of Apple’s actions in this situation.  My crude summary of Mr. LaMarche’s response is, “The rules were clear.  You broke them.  Stop whining.”

Then it got good.  Mike Ash (@mikeash), an engineer at Rogue Amoeba, tweeted his, less than pleased, response to Mr. LaMarche’s (@jeff_lamarche) post.  Through the 140 character at-a-shot dialog, Mr. Ash seems to assert that the images in question were served up from their desktop app, and pushed onto the phone.  The images are available to programs on the desktop and are permissible in desktop apps.  Thus, Mr. Ash argues that the iPhone app is just displaying an image, not unlike a browser.  Good point.

Does the computer on their iTunes Connect screenshot look suspiciously like an iMac?

Mike Ash Explains the Image Issue in Airfoil Speakers Touch

Here’s the bottom line for me.  It doesn’t matter what seems “right.”  It doesn’t matter what seems “fair.”  Apple has made it exceedingly clear through its actions that it owns the App Store.  It makes all of the rules and interprets / enforces them as it sees fit.  If developers don’t like it, they can follow Rogue Amoeba and the Facebook App guy out the door.  Apple has more than 100K apps in the store and they clearly don’t care about any specific individual developer (unless the individual can raise a big enough ripple, like Jason Snell at Macworld).  As they say, “There are a thousand other developers who will gladly take your place…”

As a result of our continuing efforts to enhance the experience, v1.0.1 now has its own Scoreloop leaderboard.  This app highlights the unique user interaction model of the iPhone™ / iPod touch™ platform — the accelerometer is your only control.  Tilting the device moves your ball so that you can guard your net, while trying to knock the other ball past the smart defender and into the opponent’s net.  The more you tilt, the faster your ball will move.  You have to be quick to score the highest possible number of points in thirty seconds, but now you’ll only be playing against others with the same time limitation.  TiltBallLite is more physically challenging than some of our other apps, but that’s part of the fun!

TiltBallLite fully supports the Scoreloop game network.  This means that you can play as part of a global community!  The competition and sense of community fostered by Scoreloop truly enhances the TiltBallLite experience.  Being able to compare scores, challenge other players and participate in the Scoreloop community make playing TiltBallLite even more compelling.  It’s hard to overstate the additional challenge and excitement that Scoreloop brings to our game.  When I’m trying to win a challenge, or get to the top of the high scores list, it really takes me to a whole new level!

Let’s see how many goals you can score with TiltBallLite v1.0.1!  As of this morning, “lawa” had scored 9 goals — very impressive!

Technorati Tags: iPhone, iPod Touch, Apple, mobile, TiltBall, TiltBallLite, iPuck, iPunt, RingDance, Scoreloop

What is so frustrating about this latest round of trivial rejections is that the app review “feedback” seems to always come on day 14 (at the earliest), and happens serially.  To give you an idea, we first submitted iCombat Lite update 1.1 on September 8th, 41 days ago!  After being rejected for an issue Apple reported with the code on September 22nd, and spending several days working on replicating the bug (which we never even managed to), we resubmitted the exact same keywords and code on September 28th.

On October 12th (14 days later) we received notice that the entire update would need to be resubmitted because of the “wii tank” keyword.  Had anything changed from the approved iCombat Paid version or the previously rejected lite version?  Nothing at all…and so we deleted the words, resubmitted and for the third time started another 14 day approval cycle.  All in all, if we are lucky we expect the iCombat Lite update to be approved on October 26th, just 48 days to get to market (42 if we subtract the days we took to work on the first rejection).

Fortunately, Apple hasn’t found any real “issues” with our code (they uncovered one case — in our very first app — where I followed instructions that we found on the Oolong site and linked to a “private” framework, even though we weren’t calling into it directly).  However, they did bust me for using the word “trial” — as in “free trial version of TiltBall” — in the description for TiltBallLite v1.0.  In my rush to edit the description, I failed to notice that I had also included “trial” in the keywords list.  Sure enough, another rejection.  Initial submission to final approval for TiltBallLite v1.0 was 40 days.  As the iCombat post asserts, uncertainties like this make it almost impossible to have any sort of plan for product introduction.  You have to just throw things out there, and hope…

The post continues.

Ignoring how illogical this last keyword rejection has been, the real damage of the current app approval process is that it has created a slow and arbitrary development environment that does nothing but discourage indie developers.  The biggest issues with this setup are:

[…] lists several issues […]

All of these factors serve to undermine developer confidence, reduce the quality of apps in the store, and ultimately choke app development activity.  Developers are already looking to other platforms and are limiting investment as the environment has simply become too unpredictable to work with.

Sadly, it’s not apparent to me that things are improving measurably, especially for free apps.

With v1.1, iPuckLite fully supports the Scoreloop game network.  This means that you can play as part of a global community!  You can compare your scores with other gamers worldwide and even challenge them directly.  You can challenge just about anyone, including your contacts and buddies on Facebook.  Tapping on a name in the high score list initiates a challenge against an existing player.  You can also create and accept anonymous challenges.  Scoreloop will ensure that you play against opponents with reasonably equivalent skill levels.

Scoreloop brings intense competition and a sense of community to iPuckLite.  Being able to compare scores, challenge other players and participate in the Scoreloop community make the game even more compelling.  See if you don’t get a little sweaty when you’re trying to smash a challenger, or finally work your way up to the top of the high scores list.

Changes in iPuckLite v1.1 include:

• iPuckLite now plays for 30 seconds, instead of playing to 7.  The side with the most points when the game timer expires is the winner.  Hopefully, this will encourage more aggressive play.  With iPuckLitev1.1, players are free to score as many points as they can before the clock runs out.
• The player’s actual score is reported to Scoreloop.  Players are no longer penalized for goals scored by the defender.  Run it up!

With this update, iPuckLite is even more of a kick.  We’ve opened the door to some really high scores.  Let’s see what you can do.

Technorati Tags: iPhone, iPod Touch, Apple, mobile, TiltBall, TiltBallLite, iPuck, iPuckLite, iPunt, RingDance, RingDanceLite, Scoreloop

Of course, iPuck v1.3 fully supports the Scoreloop game network.  This means that you can play as part of a global community!  You can compare your scores with other gamers worldwide and even challenge them directly.  You can challenge just about anyone, including your contacts and buddies on Facebook.  Tapping on a name in the high score list initiates a challenge against an existing player.  You can also create and accept anonymous challenges.  Scoreloop will ensure that you play against opponents with reasonably equivalent skill levels.

Scoreloop brings intense competition and a sense of community to iPuck.  Being able to compare scores, challenge other players and participate in the Scoreloop community make the game even more compelling.  When I know that I’m trying to win a challenge, or get to the top of the high scores list, it really raises the experience to a whole new level!

Changes in iPuck v1.3 include:

• iPuck now plays for 2 minutes and 30 seconds, instead of playing to 21.  The side with the most points when the game timer expires is the winner.  We made this change at player request to encourage more aggressive play.  With iPuckv1.3, players are free to score as many points as possible, within the allotted time.
• The player’s actual score is reported to Scoreloop.  Players are no longer penalized for goals scored by the defender.  Just win, baby!

With this update, iPuck becomes even more challenging.  We’re looking forward to seeing a bunch of new high scores posted!  For what it’s worth, my highest score during testing was 37.

Technorati Tags: iPhone, iPod Touch, Apple, mobile, TiltBall, TiltBallLite, iPuck, iPuckLite, iPunt, RingDance, RingDanceLite, Scoreloop