iPhone Apps Finder reviews Clocks

iPhone Apps Finder have a nice review of clocks up <a href="http://www.iphoneappsfinder.com/productivity-apps/clocks/">here</a>. “A great way to turn your iPhone into an international alarm clock on the road.” 2010-01-26T20:34:00Z 20

January 2010

2010-01-26T20:36:02Z

Responding to requests from pilots and military personnel, we’ve included military time zones in the latest release of <a href="http://127.0.0.1:3000/home/clocks">Clocks</a>. Also included are named US time zones (Central, Eastern, etc), standard time zone abbreviations (e.g GMT, EST) and also support for UTC (or Zulu). A new local time zone is also included which will keep track of the local time no matter what time zone your device is set to. The full press release is <a href="http://www.prweb.com/releases/2010/01/prweb3464694.htm">here</a>. 2010-01-26T20:21:29Z 19

January 2010

Clocks 1.0.2 adds military time

2010-01-26T20:21:29Z

Since I’ve been working in a home office (actually a cottage in the garden) I’ve become much more aware of my time management habits, both good and bad. I’ve had to become far more disciplined with my work habits. Working in a typical corporate office (as a coder, anyway) much of your schedule is imposed on you from external sources. You have to turn up by a particular time, you need to be at your desk (or a meeting) throughout the day, you can’t leave until a certain time at the earliest etc etc. Working from a home office is a different proposition altogether, and you have to try and impose your desired work habits upon yourself. Towards this end I’ve been looking at certain ways to improve my productivity, and lately I’ve been playing with something called the Pomodoro Technique. Pomodoro is the name of a productivity improvement technique developed by an Italian chap called Francesco Cirilllo, originally using a tomato shaped kitchen timer (hence the name, Pomodoro is Italian for Tomato. I think.) It’s a pretty simple idea – break your work periods into 25 minute sessions with 5 minute breaks, with a longer 15 minute break after 4 periods, and you’ll get more done. Back when I used to work in London, I actually used a variation of this whenever I had some tedious job that I really didn’t want to code. You know the sort of thing, you’ve effectively figured it all out in your head, and the rest of the work is just a simple matter of programming. By starting a timer and committing to coding without any distractions for the next 40 minutes or whatever, I was able to plough through the tedious stuff in no time and get it out of the way. Anyway, so how did I find the Pomodoro technique? Well, really effective for certain tasks and a bit of a hindrance for others. It was great for jobs that weren’t really that interesting, or when I was struggling to get started on something. As part of my implementation I turned off lots of distractions (mail client, web browser, twitter client), and the mere act of working solidly for 25 minutes improved my concentration and helped me get through the to do list. 25 minutes was ideal for this because mentally it’s extremely easy to commit to concentrate on one thing only for that period, especially with a small break at the end. And for programmers the 5 minutes break is about right, because I found I didn’t lose my frame of reference much during that time. For some coding though, especially when I was in the zone and hacking away, I found it a hindrance. 25 minutes really isn’t long enough in this case, and often I found myself ignoring the timer and not stopping when I should. Would I have improved my productivity more If I’d have been stricter with myself in these periods? Possibly, but coding has it’s own natural breaks and I’ve found it’s best to recognise and use these when you’re working well. <h3>The verdict?</h3> Definitely a useful time management tool, especially as a way of dealing with procrastination. I’m certainly going to use Pomodoro with tasks I don’t enjoy as much, but perhaps customise it for longer periods when I’m coding. And I think you really need to manage your level of external interruption, otherwise it’s not going to help at all. Francesco has a whole <a href="http://www.pomodorotechnique.com/">website</a> dedicated to the technique and the pragmatic programmers have a <a href="http://pragprog.com/titles/snfocus/pomodoro-technique-illustrated">book</a> out about it as well. 2010-01-15T01:37:00Z 18

January 2010

Time management strategies - Pomodoro Technique

2010-01-15T01:48:38Z

than bing all the time. I’ve been getting quite excited about the hopefully forthcoming Apple slate device for quite a while now, and frankly this weeks introduction of a HP tablet computer by <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvsboPUjrGc">monkey boy</a> has done nothing to dampen my enthusiasm. “Oh yeah, that looks cool! Wait, what, it runs Windows 7? Oh, Windows 7 with touch, oh, that’s okay then, I guess…” Fail. For God’s sake, show me something new, something innovative, something that makes me go “Wow!”. Show me something that’s not running Windows…. I have to agree with <a href="http://iphonedevelopment.blogspot.com/2010/01/ces-keynote.html">Jeff Lamarche</a> here, Microsoft needs to ditch Ballmer if they ever want to really get back in the game and not just try and wring their windows monopoly dry for every last penny. Seriously, If I was watching him introduce an awesome robot dog (for example ;-) ) that brings you beers, mows the lawn, licks it’s own genitals and then chases away those pesky kids throwing a tennis ball against your garage, all I’d be able to think about was his sweaty pits and imagining him throwing chairs out of windows. It’s obvious that Ballmer doesn’t love the technology just because it’s cool, but because it makes Microsoft money. And it shows. Microsoft have never been the coolest of tech companies – Steve Jobs famously said that his main issue with them was their lack of taste, but at least Bill Gates had the right sort of geeky excitement and vision required. Ballmer clearly doesn’t get it. Look, I’m happy to acknowledge that I’m not the hippest guy around either, but if I was going to pick someone to be in charge of the direction of any technology company, it’s gotta be someone that says something like “But wouldn’t it be cool if we could do XYZ as well”? And not “We bing all the time in my world”. Ballmer may bing all the time in his world, but in my world I’d rather stick needles into my eyes. 2010-01-10T03:15:05Z 17

January 2010

I'd rather stick needles in my eyes

2010-01-10T03:15:05Z

was that we didn’t really know what they wanted. Not really. Since releasing <a href="http://www.rosebraetechnology.com/home/clocks">Clocks</a> and Clocks Lite we’ve been receiving (inundated would be far too strong a word here, unfortunately) lots of requests to incorporate named time zones into the apps. When we were designing the apps, we thought about including these but ruled it out because we were worried that somebody would set a clock to, say, GMT for time in the UK and then wonder why it was wrong for half of the year when British cities went to BST. Much better, we reasoned, to restrict the choices to Cities and then things like daylight savings time would be seamless. Whoops, first lesson, you don’t really know what people are going to want. At least not until they tell you. Turns out, there’s 3 different set of requests that keep occurring 1) Named American time zones, like Eastern, Pacific, Central etc. Now I know any North Americans reading this may be shaking their heads wondering at our naevity in not including these in the first place, but honestly coming from a developer who’s lived most of his life in countries where there is only one time zone, having a named time zone for a whole region was a surprise. 2) People who needed to use universal time zones for their work, such as pilots, military personnel and even network comms people. Apparently at some places of work, “Zulu” time (UTC) is used to plan all activities, and local time only used to work out lunch breaks! 3) Some people send meeting requests and the like with times referenced with a zone. e.g 3pm(PST). All of these were somewhat of a surprise to us, as none of them had ever featured in our lives before. And bear in mind we’re a small team with family and friends flung to the far corners of the globe, and so thought we were familiar with time zone issues. Which brings up an important point, which is that you may not know what people want until you give them something else! This is certainly one of my main issues with the Appstore, which is (certainly now, anyway) geared up for apps which are complete from day 1. Personally, I much prefer to iterate continuously to improve quality over time, and this is also the best way IMHO to figure out what features your users actually need. Well, if we didn’t know as much as we thought at the start, at least we know a bit more now! Anyway, the latest update of Clocks was pushed to Apple today, and it contains the following: - Named time zone areas for North America (Pacific, Central etc) - All the main time zone code abbreviations (e.g GMT,PST,UTC) - Full set of military time zones (Alpha, Bravo, Zulu etc) specifically requested by a couple of our users. - Two new local time zones (Local and Juliet) which track the time zone of the iphone / ipod touch. If this changes, then the next time you open the app this will be reflected in the local time. If anyone does have any more requests for these apps, please let <a href="mailto:&#99;&#111;&#110;t&#97;&#99;&#116;&#64;ro&#115;&#101;&#98;&#114;&#97;e&#116;&#101;c&#104;&#110;&#111;&#108;o&#103;&#121;.&#99;&#111;&#109;">us</a> know. We won’t promise to implement them, but we always listen. And fingers crossed we don’t receive a ton of complaints come the Summer that GMT time isn’t correct for London… 2010-01-09T03:37:48Z 16

January 2010

The first thing we learnt from our users

2010-01-09T03:37:48Z

I love this <a href="http://www.slashfilm.com/2009/12/17/watch-this-70-minute-video-review-of-star-wars-the-phantom-menace/">review</a> of the Phantom Menace. All those nebulous reasons why I’m not a fan of the film have been articulated, and more so. 2009-12-22T08:34:09Z 15

December 2009

The most fantastic film review I've ever seen

2009-12-22T08:34:09Z

Selling iPhone apps is a tough business, and is no doubt a problem even for talented developers. With 100,000+ apps (or whatever it is now, frankly it’s becoming meaningless) trying to make your product stand out has never been more difficult. Any sane development company have to ask themselves if it’s still worthwhile. So why should the indie developer persevere? It’s hard to get noticed, hard to come up with anything original, the competition is insane and only it’s going to get worse. Is iPhone development going to become like the music business or Hollywood, where for every success there’s hordes of frustrated but talented individuals who didn’t catch a break? This is why – from a Morgan Stanley <a href="http://go2.wordpress.com/?id=725X1342&site=goldenboat.wordpress.com&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.morganstanley.com%2Finstitutional%2Ftechresearch%2Fpdfs%2FMS_Economy_Internet_Trends_102009_FINAL.pdf">report</a> on internet trends. <img src="http://i691.photobucket.com/albums/vv277/RosebraeTech/picture-4.png" alt="" /> (via <a href="http://ow.ly/167ibu">Appy</a> – do go read the entire post, it’s a nice summary and a good read.) 2 Key points from the report 1) Mobile Internet Usage Is and Will Be Bigger than Most Think. 2) Apple Mobile Share Should Surprise on Upside Near-Term. And to this, I’d like to add this post about <a href="http://venturebeat.com/2009/12/06/the-ipod-touch-is-creating-the-iphone-users-of-tomorrow/">how the ipod touch is creating the iphone users of tomorrow.</a> Make no mistake, the pie is getting larger. Much larger. And while the App Store is still a hit based business, the sweet spot where a small development company can make a decent income is moving steadily down the rankings. And that’s got to be good for everybody. 2009-12-09T00:13:00Z 14

December 2009

Why keep developing for the iPhone?

2009-12-09T00:19:13Z

So after a week of being in the New and Noteworthy section, how did we do? <img src="http://i691.photobucket.com/albums/vv277/RosebraeTech/pastedGraphic.png" alt="" /> Pretty good (by our lowly standards), but generally we’re really happy with this week, for a couple of reasons. <h3>Recognition</h3> It’s just nice to be recognised by someone,somewhere, and it helps make all the effort worthwhile. Another side to this is the fact that the increased exposure brought our app to the attention of a few more people, who’ve written in with suggestions, comments and (occasionally) complaints. You don’t get that user interaction when you’re not selling anything, and it really does bring another dimension to the job of creating software <h3>More sales</h3> Need I say more. We would have loved to make the top 20 in US utilities (we got there in Canada and Mexico), but we stalled at 21, unfortunately. Still, all things considered it’s been a really exciting week for us at Rosebrae Technology, and we’ll be shuffling off to our caves presently to implement some of the features our new users have requested. Oh, and a big Thank You to anyone who bought the app. 2009-12-01T22:59:00Z 13

December 2009

How did we do - the New and Noteworthy effect

2009-12-01T23:02:41Z

Here at Rosebrae Technology it’s officially become We Love Apple week. Not only did they feature <a href="http://www.rosebraetechnology.com/home/clocks">Clocks</a> in their New and Noteworthy section, but they’ve just approved version 1.0.1 for sale in the Apple Store, despite a previous rejection for private api use. It also looks like they’re starting to <a href="http://apprejections.com/index.php/post/73">apply</a> some common sense to their rejections, (as <a href="http://www.rosebraetechnology.com/posts/10">we</a> and others have previously suggested), which is startlingly good news. So We Love Apple. Doesn’t everybody? And we’ve never said a cross word about them before, you hear? ;-) 2009-12-01T00:09:57Z 12

December 2009

We Love Apple Week

2009-12-01T00:09:57Z

Sales figures for <a href="http://www.rosebraetechnology.com/home/clocks">Clocks</a>. <img src="http://i691.photobucket.com/albums/vv277/RosebraeTech/ClocksNAN6days.png" alt="" /> Full update later. 2009-11-30T18:55:00Z 11

November 2009

All you need to know about being featured in the App Store's New and Noteworthy

2009-11-30T18:59:45Z

The much publicised issues with the app store have, of late, threatened to take the gloss off what is undoubtedly the jewel in Apple’s iPhone crown. Here’s a few suggestions from a developers perspective where things could be improved. <h3>1) Improve the consistency</h3> The same binary should able to pass through the approval process repeatedly with the same result every time. It’s not unusual for an application to be rejected for an issue that has already passed through a number of reviews. Our app <a href="http://www.rosebraetechnology.com/home/clocks">Clocks</a> recently had a bug fix rejected for an issue (a private api) present in the previous version. Whilst I have no complaint about our rejection, we see this sort of thing time and time again. If Apple cannot enforce consistency in it’s approval process, then they should scrap it. No sane company can afford to waste time and resources on updates which will get rejected simply because they have a different reviewer than previously. And as <a href="http://www.rogueamoeba.com/utm/2009/11/13/airfoil-speakers-touch-1-0-1-finally-ships">Rogue Amoebas’</a> case proved, some of these reasons for rejection can seem spurious at least. <h3>2) Add a dash of common sense</h3> In Rogue Amoebas’ case (and many others), by rejecting their bug fix Apple have not helped Rogue Amoeba, the users, or themselves. The “infringing” version was still out there available, the bug wasn’t fixed, and nothing was being improved. Instead of just rejecting the bug fix, accept it, but on condition that the developer submits an update to fix the “infringing” situation within 30 days, or their app gets pulled from sale. And although this doesn’t stop apps having spurious issues, it wouldn’t stop an essential bug fix getting to the people who matter. <h3>3) Let developers plan better</h3> As long as the rules surrounding things like rankings, featured apps and release publicity on the app store remain secret and subject to change at anytime, how can developers and publishers plan their releases and corrsponding marketing properly? Publish the rules and inform people in advance if they’re going to change. For instance whilst <a href="http://www.rosebraetechnology.com/home/clocks">Clocks</a> was released with a full feature set that we’re proud of, we did have further enhancements in mind for sometime later, which would have enabled us to take advantage of the previous publicity for app updates. Now, it’s looking like it’s much better to put everything in for version 1.0 to maximise impact. It’s not that I have a major issue with the change in rules per se (Although I do believe that if you want good software you should release early and interate), it’s just the lack of notice that rankles. It’s impossible to plan if the goalposts are always moving. <h3>4) Increase the transparency</h3> What’s happening with my app, has it been reviewed, when will we know, why is it taking so long …. These are all familiar questions to everybody who develops software for the app store at the moment. What is needed is a transparent process which informs developers about the what, when and who of the review process, and that should include appeals against rejections. Introduce a transparent ticketing system that provides genuinely useful information about what is happening with an app. <h3>5) Hurry it up</h3> Hire some more reviewers and hurry up each aspect of the process. And not just the reviews either, but things like responses to emails. Introduce some published targets (SLAs) regarding time to review an app, time to respond to queries and the appeals process. And stick to them. The App Store is a great place to do business still, but it needs a injection of professionalism in the way it interacts with its developers to keep people onside. As it is, you get the impression that too many developers are only staying because it’s the only game in town, and it won’t be like that forever. 2009-11-29T12:14:00Z 10

November 2009

5 Ways to fix the App Store

2009-11-29T12:16:24Z

We found out yesterday that <a href="http://www.rosebraetechnology.com/home/clocks">Clocks</a> was featured in the App Store New and Noteworthy section for the US, Canada and Mexico. Which was nice! The extra exposure had an immediate affect on sales, which had settled down to almost nothing previously. I thought I’d post the results of the first day here so that devs with lower sales volumes (like us!) could compare. These are the results after the first day or so being featured. <h3>Sales</h3> <img src="http://i691.photobucket.com/albums/vv277/RosebraeTech/ClocksNANfirstDay.png" alt="" /> As you can see the actual effect on sales was considerable, although this is obviously exacerbated by the low sales volumes previously. <h3>Ranking</h3> <img src="http://i691.photobucket.com/albums/vv277/RosebraeTech/ClocksNANRankingfirstDay.png" alt="" /> Ranking is similarly affected, and you can see how easy it is to break into the top 100 in utilties. At the time of writing, the app has now moved to utilities #33 in the US Store, we’re hopeful it can get into the top 20 and benefit from the increased exposure, but we’ll see…. We’ve no idea what made Apple feature the app, although presumably it was due to the 1.0.1 release working it’s way through the approval process. This might raise the prospect that if you think your app is good enough to get featured, then frequent updates might increase your chances. Anyway, we’re not complaining, it’s lovely to get featured and great to get some sales after all the dev effort. I’ll post some more updates as the week progresses. 2009-11-26T01:57:00Z 9

November 2009

Initial sales effects of New and Noteworthy section

2009-11-26T02:00:29Z

<a href="http://www.rosebraetechnology.com/home/clocks">Clocks</a> 1.0.1 has been moved from “Waiting for review” to “In review” so hopefully this will get approved soon. What’s new: <ul> <li>Fixed the “too many Clocks” bug</li> <li>Fixed a problem with the autolock timer not resetting when the app is interrupted</li> <li>Enabled landscape mode in the info screen (see below)</li> </ul> <img src="http://i691.photobucket.com/albums/vv277/RosebraeTech/Clocks101inreview.png" alt="" /> This is the second time this version has been through the approval process. Unfortunately last time we were refused for using a private api. We were using setOrientation on UIDevice to force the app into portrait mode, mainly because we felt that it looked better, without realising that this call was private. Sometimes as a programmer you just see a property on a class and think “Oh, I know I’ll just call set on that”, see if it works and if it does then forget about it. Obviously we need to more careful in the future. I can’t blame Apple for enforcing the no use of private apis, but frankly the proper way to enforce this is firstly via compiler warning and if devs ignore then that’s their problem. It would save time and hassle for all parties concerned, IMHO. Anyway, we just rejigged the app to handle the info screen ( and sub screens) in portrait or landscape, and to be honest I think it looks better now! Fingers crossed that it makes it through review this time. 2009-11-25T22:18:00Z 8

November 2009

Clocks 1.0.1 in review

2009-11-26T01:59:29Z

The dust seems to be settling somewhat, and while there’s been no official announcement from Apple about upgrades to apps now longer appearing on the front page of iTunes, enough developers have been receiving emails from Apple support confirming it that we can now assume that it is so. So, how does this change the App Store landscape. Free to Pro In App upgrades are now much less attractive With the recent news that free apps could have In App purchases, lots of people had predicted that this would be the end of the lite version, and that you would be able to make one version of your app, with an In App option to upgrade to a pro version. Not any more, or at least not until Apple dicks around with the AppStore again. It’s like this – I make a restricted version of my app for free, with an In App option to upgrade. I only get one set of release marketing on the AppStore, and I get a load of poor reviews (free versions often get loads of bad reviews for the most spurious of reasons) which drag down my full version, because it’s essentially the same app. Or, I make a lite version and a full version. I then get two different sets of AppStore marketing and the only people who get to review my full version are the people who’ve paid for it. Of course, In App purchases are still going to be great for applications whose model supports it, such as new levels for games etc, but as a way of tying together a lite and pro version of an app, it’s nowhere near as attractive now. If we draw back a bit this might indicate that the App Store free lunch is over. I don’t mean for developers (for whom it’s been over for a while), but for users. Users have had it wonderfully good in the Appstore – pay peanuts for an app, which then just gets better and has more functionality added over time, all without paying a penny more. Not any more. Instead of free upgrades, developers will now look to follow <a href="http://theappleblog.com/2009/09/30/tweetie-2-the-complete-iphone-preview">tweetie</a> and others, and turn significant upgrades into new applications, simply because it’s going to be a lot harder to make it work economically otherwise. 2009-11-10T23:45:00Z 7

November 2009

In App Upgrade now less attractive

2009-11-10T23:46:13Z

I’ve been meaning to get a few tecchy posts up, but the ongoing shenanigans in the AppStore keep diverting me. Briefly, the lastest rumour mill is that any updates to an app now won’t get shown in the newly released section in iTunes. For anybody who doesn’t know, having your app appear in that section is one of the major ways that a new or updated application gets air time and free marketing on the AppStore. Since a large proportion of people find apps by browsing in the AppStore, this is a big deal. Of course, devs have been gaming this like crazy and many release frequent updates to their apps which contain little or no new functionality, just to keep getting the publicity. Not that I blame anybody for this – for an indie developer, getting any publicity for an iPhone app can be an uphill task without an advertising budget. I’m more concerned about what this says about Apple. Again. CAVEAT – At this point this is all still rumour, and it may be part of the ongoing <a href="http://theappencypress.com/2009/11/06/app-store-rankings-frozen-in-time/">issues</a> with the AppStore at the moment. That said, if this does mark a policy shift by Apple, it sucks. It sucks root. Why? Because it’s just another example of Apple having a hidden set of policies which developers then plan their entire release lifecycle around, only to have the rug yanked from under them once again because Cupertino decides to switch things around. More on this as we find out more, but I really hope this is just another glitch. 2009-11-07T06:01:00Z 6

November 2009

More shenanigans in the AppStore?

2009-11-07T06:04:09Z

When I check the App Store this morning I almost spat my tea all over the Mac. <a href="http://www.rosebraetechnology.com/home/clocks">Clocks</a> was ranked no.4 in the US Utility category. <img src="http://i691.photobucket.com/albums/vv277/RosebraeTech/appstore_glitch.png" alt="" /> Alas, it was not to be, turns out there was <a href="http://www.tuaw.com/2009/11/04/developers-report-a-moment-of-upside-down-app-rankings-now-retu/">some</a> <a href="http://www.ubergizmo.com/15/archives/2009/11/appstore_rankings_messed_up.html">sort</a> of glitch at Apple HQ. For a while, though, rumour was rife amongst developers that Apple had changed the rules and was employing some different algorithm when calculating the ranking system. That’s not good. Unfortunately, it speaks volumes about the lack of trust that now seems to exist between Apple and iPhone devs that anyone gave it any credence at all. So far, there hasn’t been any communication from Cupertino about what happened, so we’ll wait and see if any explanation is offered. Frankly if people have lost money (and they will have) then someone should be on the blower double quick wringing their hands in abject apology. Meanwhile we’ll see if this has any effect on <a href="http://www.rosebraetechnology.com/home/clocks">Clocks’</a> sales. 2009-11-05T22:23:00Z 5

November 2009

App Store glitches and folorn hope

2009-11-05T22:24:24Z

Full press release is <a href="http://prmac.com/release-id-8416.htm">here</a> 2009-11-05T21:48:00Z 4

November 2009

Rosebrae Technology Releases Clocks - Multi Time Zone Alarm Clock 1.0

2009-11-05T22:26:30Z

Clocks has just been released to the App Store. No problems with review, thankfully, but I’m busily now putting all the marketing in place. Iphone development certainly has stretched my skill set ;-) App Store link is <a href="http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=336093936&mt=8">here</a> 2009-11-04T06:09:00Z 3

November 2009

Clocks is released!

2009-11-04T23:44:43Z

We’ve just submitted <a href="/home/clocks">Clocks</a>, our multi time zone alarm clock to the app store. Fingers are now firmly crossed! Clocks basically grew out of the work we we’re doing for the job timer app. Basically, once you’ve gone to the trouble of creating a nice looking updating LCD display, it seemed a shame not to use it. I’d already considered creating a Rosebrae version of the bedside clock that’s popular on the app store, but it was the specific need to have multiple time zones available at a glance that gave me the idea. With family in at least 3 widely differing time zones now, I wanted something to help me keep track of their time, and I thought a fusion of that with a bedside clock app might be an idea. Certainly it’s an app that I use everyday and every night. 2009-10-18T20:23:00Z 2

October 2009

Clocks submitted to the App Store!

2009-11-04T23:43:53Z

Sent this out a while ago, but have recorded here for posterity. Press Release: iPhone Developer denies being a 4 (Munter). FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Sep 24, 2009 Auckland, New Zealand – Andy Griffiths, lead developer of the new iPhone application iRateEm has denied that he is the fat bloke seen in the applications screen shots and that he rates a 4 (Munter). Despite being short enough to be cast as an extra in Snow White and weighing over 85kg, the NZ based Brit stated "There’s no way I’m a 4, that’s so unfair. I’m at least a 6 (Not Bad) or a 7 (I would). The new application, iRateEm, was released earlier this week and is designed to allow users to take pictures of people they see on a night out and pass them around their mates, taking turns to score their attractiveness. The loser is the player whose score is the furthest from the group average. Although the game has received criticism from some quarters for encouraging a shallow view of people based on physical attractiveness, Griffiths is unrepentant. “If it’s shallow to want to take a picture of a perfect stranger and immediately subject them to a judgement by my pissed up mates based on how big their booty is, then I hold my hand up and admit to being shallow. In reality iRateEm was actually conceived as a means of fostering better communications between the sexes and promoting peace and harmony for all, and there aren’t many better ways of doing that than passing around a picture of your mate Daves’ mum, who’s at least an 8 (Oh Yeah)” Whilst the application has been praised for being well designed and written, there is strong competition from within the iTunes AppStore. Griffiths, however, is bullish. “You’ve got to be joking, have you seen our main competitors developer? He’d be lucky to rate a 3 (Moooose) and quite frankly I have him down as a 2 (Double Bagger). Don’t tell me that a bloke with a face like a bulldog chewing a wasp is going beat us!” iRateEms’ features: - Take pictures of people you like (or not!) - Use existing pictures from your photo collection - Save collections of pictures as sets for future use - Customise text descriptions of each score and an insult for the loser Pricing & Availability iRateEm is available for purchase for US $1.99 on the <a href="http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=326412894&mt=8" title="iTunes Link">iPhone App Store</a> Update: This was picked by <a href="http://krapps.com/2009/09/25/irateem-iphone-app/">Krapps</a> 2009-10-15T04:07:00Z 1

October 2009

My First Press Release!

2009-11-04T06:45:57Z