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

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.

While we’d never want one of our apps to be characterized as “cute,” Alphabet Morpher comes pretty close.  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.

Technorati Tags: iPhone, iPod Touch, Apple, mobile, Alphabet Morpher, TiltBall, TiltBallLite, Alphabet Morpher, Alphabet MorpherLite, iPunt, RingDance, RingDanceLite, Scoreloop

Image Credit:  Fast Company

In a past role, I spent time at both EA and Lucas Arts.  I’ve seen their production values.  EA will certainly raise the standards for games on the iPhone.  I just wonder whether there will still be a place for the humble efforts of small shops like ours.  If nothing else, as the Fast Company post suggests:

“…it’ll be harder for mom and pop games to get noticed…”

Is anyone else out there worried about how they’ll compete against the big game studios?

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…”

Counterfeit iPhone in China

I don’t know how I missed this.  Perhaps I’ve been too distracted by the bright and shiny “Droid” object.

According to a recent story in Fast Company,

“China Unicom will be running its own app store independent of Apple’s, so all the apps that western users have come to know and love won’t be available on the iPhone in China.“

That disappointing bit completely escaped me.  I wonder if this explains why we haven’t seen a single sale to China since the launch.  It certainly makes me much less interested in the iPhone roll-out to the Middle Kingdom.

Apparently, in China, it’s NOT “all about the apps.”

Image Credit:  iPhone Clone or Look-alike from China?

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