Promotional Videos for Our Apps

We're thinking about putting out a promo video for our first app that releases, you know, just to build up some hype. We figure that it worked well for that old board game called Crossfire, so it has to work for us too.

It's not easy to make a great promo video, but maybe we'll see some success. I'm only hoping that some day, our promo jingle will be as celebrated as this.

Movie Encoding

So I've been spending the last two hours learning how to encode videos better for the iPhone. You'd think that encoding for iPhones would be easy, but we've found some problems when preparing video for an iPhone app.

If you're looking to add video into your app, I really suggest FFMpegX. It has an unbelievable amount of settings and really gives you free range when it comes to encoding videos into whatever format with whatever specifications you want. This useful tool is available as shareware and I suggest that you check it out.

Cameron and Greco in Action

As a complete shock to everyone, YOU the followers of CollegeKidApp.com get the thrill of two amazing posts via Michael Phelps in the same day. Above are pictures of Cameron and Greco (refer to post directly below) in action. The two have been in the "filming room" creating pure video magic, for over 5 hours. Currently Cameron and Jeff are taping a consulting segment on how to use Twitter as a marketing source.

They have been working diligently even through my best efforts to distract them. At approximately 10 till three I received an e-mail from Apple, which I believed was in regards to our recently resubmitted application. In a moment of exhilaration I frantically began to bang on the window beckoning them to join me to read what I hoped would be terrific news. During all the excitement, Greco hit his head on a piece of lighting equipment, knocking it to the ground and breaking the bulb. As most reading this have yet to meet Greco I took a picture of the equipment in order to display the instant mold made of the top of his head. Unfortunately the e-mail was simply a notification from Apple relaying back that they had received our e-mail, and all the excitement simply lead to a trip to Menards for a replacement light bulb.

Hello World

With a lack of blogs the past couple days and Cameron busy taping a parent's Facebook video (I will let him share more on this later), and Jeff Lange working his 9-5 (BOOOOOO) CollegeKidApp is stuck with Michael Phelps's blogging abilities. This is my first blog ever, so mild criticisms would be much appreciated. On to the juice, I would like to start by sharing that CollegeKidApp has added a new member to it's all-star line-up, Jeff Greco, who will be the ruler of everything video in this orifice (an official title has not been given yet but it will be shortly). Jeff like all the other members of CollegeKidApp is a student at Valparaiso University. In other news, our resubmitted app (the top secret one) is still in review phase, along with How To Analyze Information, the app created for Herbert Meyer. This morning Cam and Greco (I will refer to him on a last name basis to limit confusion) went to Kinko's to get business cards printed for Cam's upcoming Vegas adventure. This normally would be a difficult and much more expensive process but with Jeff Lange's amazing artistic ability we were able to design our own business cards without outside help (hopefully Cameron will post screen shots of the business cards later in the day to share their awesomeness). We are currently beginning two application projects one which we will be following very closely over the next week and a half or so, the other being a pet project which we hope might grow into a very successful venture. The application we will be blogging about over the next couple weeks is an app which plays a video along with other subtle features. There will be many interesting and exciting things happening at CollegeKidApp.com in the next few weeks so gear up and join us for the ride. Good afternoon, and in case I don't post again good evening and good night.

USA Shocks Spain in the Confederations Cup!

Sorry for the lack of blog posts today but it's been a hectic 8 hours or so here at the CollegeKidApp compound. Mostly, because I've spent the last couple of hours watching the miracle on grass that was the US Men's National team upsetting Spain in the Confederations Cup. It was a huge game and if you didn't watch, check out the reply on ESPN 360 right here.

Cameron Talks with Mac 20 Questions

The latest podcast episode of Mac 20 Questions was just posted featuring Cameron and his favorite things about being a Macintosh user. If you've never checked out the podcast, we definitely suggest it because it brings a unique flair to Apple podcasts in focusing in the user and their personal experiences with a Mac as opposed to just recent news like many other podcasts. Definitely worth a listen, so check it out, I come on at the 5 minute mark.

Great Tool for Getting on the Same Page

We work on a lot of stuff that involves graphics, interfaces, and actual design work here at CollegeKidApp which makes for a great time because everyone on our team gets to pretend for a few minutes that we are part artist. We don't feel like we're horrible at art or design but we're definitely not experts by any stretch of the imagination. Design becomes an even more difficult task when you're working remotely from your home and you can't take a look at something in Photoshop and talk about it in person. To help out, we use an application called Skitch.

I've had this application for a while but we've never really started utilizing it for CollegeKidApp until recently. Skitch allows a user to take a screen shot and then make notes or drawings on the screen shot with ease. You can also save the shot in a variety of different formats (great for saving to the desktop and inserting into a blogpost or attaching to an e-mail) or even publish to a secret website which you need to be given the link to gain access (as example here). It's wonderful at putting together quick mocked up image to help get the point across when talking about design over IM. It's saved us tons of time when working to do artwork when working independantly and we hope it helps you as well. It's Mac only, so sorry if you're running a PC. If anyone knows similar software that is Windows compatible, send me an e-mail and I'll be sure to post a link to it as well.

Teaching About Twitter

We've been doing some consulting around NW Indiana (and I may get a little preview of the slides I use to teach Twitter, Facebook, and blogging up today if I get time) and I've been telling people about Twitter a lot. Mike joined Twitter when we started CollegeKidApp but still doesn't get the "big deal" about the service. I tried explaining it to him, but the tweeting, twiping, and twitting just didn't seem to click. Then I showed him this video and it all made sense. Check it out and let me know if it should become a standard part of our Twitter ciriculum.

Making an App Step 2 - Set Up Deliverables

For part one of this series on mocking up an application, click here.

Once you have a mock up image of your application, you have a road map for how you want to get to a final product. However, this map doesn't really have a specific route to take and developers may choose different paths. Obviously, like a road trip, you can't just magically warp to the finish line. However, if you could get to California from New York by a more northern route or a more southern route. That's not to say one way is better than another, they're just two different ways to travel.

So once we had our mock-up, we break up the team into jobs to insure that we each have different tasks that line up on some sort of schedule to help us reach our final goal. These jobs can vary from project to project depending on what exactly we need to get done. Here's a bit of insight into how we're breaking down responsibilities for How to Analyze Information.

• Mike is working on the actual coding for the application. He's getting the engine up and running and then building the code components you will use when you download the application.
• Jeff has been working on the various art we need. While this is an eReader and mostly text, we still need icons and art for the App Store. He's also working on design and text formatting.
• I've worked with app design, some text formatting, and along side Mike in trying to solve some problems we've had with code thus far.
  

While we each have specific jobs in the process, we tend to work hand in hand a lot. For instance, Mike may find a problem with the application and then all three of us will scour the internet looking for a solution to the problem, find a potential solution, and then go back to our individual projects.

While it seems simple, it's important to discuss plans of attack for each application so that all team members can stay busy and working towards a common goal.

Gone Fishing...

Sorry for the lack of posting today, taking (more or less) my first day away from CKA in about 3 weeks. We're going to be putting in a pretty big day of work tomorrow working to finish up an app and rework our rejected app, so I figured it would be a great idea to take a bit of a break.

We'll be back tomorrow with posts, no fear. In the meantime, feel free to check out our extensive archive full of great content from the last month or so.

iPhone Icon Photoshop Action

I use Adobe Photoshop all the time while doing graphical work for CollegeKidApp, and I often need to see if an icon will look good as a iPhone icon. I decided to make a Photoshop action that saves any picture as both icon formats needed to have a valid iPhone app;

57x57px 72ppi flattened no transparency RGB 24 bit PNG

and

512x512px 72ppi flattened no transparency RGB HQ JPEG

The first one is the icon for the iPhone home screen, and the second is for the app store. So install this Photoshop action to create both iPhone icon formats in about 2 seconds, no thinking required!

Click here to download the action

How to Subscribe to a Google Calendar with your iPhone 3.0

iPhone 3.0 released today and if you're checking out the new features, one of the things you may want to do is sync your Google Calendars with the built in calendar on the iPhone. If you're having some trouble, fear not my friend. Our very own Jeff Lange made a quick video blog to help you with your problems. Click here to check out his screen cast.

Rejected...

From ecstasy to anguish in about 5 seconds, that was the feeling that rushed through my body when I read an e-mail earlier today stating that our first app (that secret one we couldn't wait until we could show off) has been rejected and can't be accepted in its current fashion.

It may sound like bull coming out at a time of anger, but I'm more upset for everyone who can't use our app as opposed to ourselves for not getting approved. You're all missing out on something that would be rather useful in my opinion. Yeah, it won't change the world but it definitely will be a useful tool for many iPhone/iPod Touch users.

You can kick us down but we're not out, that I'll place as a guarantee. We'll re-think, re-build, re-submit and will see the success we want to see with this thing. If anything, I'm more stoked than ever about our projects and the work we are going to get done over the next two months,

While I'm at It...

Since I just posted one link to CollegeKidApp in the press, why not get immediately back to work and post another? I was on Rob Johnson in the Morning on KMPH in California about a week and a half ago talking about iPhone development and our project this summer with CollegeKidApp.com. Here's a link to the audio podcast in case you're interested. We talked a bit about getting started with development on the device and entrepreneurship as a college student. Definitely worth a listen if you love to hear my sexy voice and really, who doesn't love that?

More of CollegeKidApp in the Press

Just got the link to an interview I did with AppStoreInsider.com. A bunch of great questions about the our team and what we plan on doing after this summer experiment comes to a close. If you click through, you'll also be treated to an extremely sexy picture of Mike and I on a couch. Go on, you know you want to click.

Gold Medalist of the Day - June 16th

Ironically enough, this gold medal is awarded for fixing a problem which was caused by a previous gold medal. Yesterday, we gave Mike the gold medal for waking up (which is no small feat if you've ever met the guy) and included an embed of an Olympic theme. Well, that embed was causing all sorts of problems up in our grill and throwing the site out of wack when it came to alignment but I didn't have a clue that this was the cause.

Luckily we have pretty much the multi-purpose Jeff Lange who can solve pretty much any problem you throw at the guy. In about three minutes, he diagnosed the problem and gave me a solution. Problem fixed, the site looks great, and Jeff is now awarded with our gold medal of the day.

SlideAWESOMES!

Been working over the last couple of days on slideshows to help explain Twitter, Facebook, and blogging for some consulting that I'll be doing soon. Putting together these things has really made me think, since I never really put down my knowledge or opinions of social networking on paper before. It's definitely been an experience I've enjoyed though. Social media is going to be the building blocks of successful marketing campaigns starting now and going into the future, so it's important that a business truly understands the ins and outs of what these services have to offer.

So far my slides have been getting rather in-depth and I think I'm only scratching the surface. There is so much to say or think about mediums such as Twitter and Facebook that I'm pretty sure I could talk all day about the possibilities in each service. More importantly though, I'm interested in what you think. Why do you like social networking? What place do you see for it in today's business world? What changes do companies need to make if their going to be successful? Where do we move in the future? Feel free to send you thoughts to Cameron@CollegeKidApp.com. I'd love to read your opinions and discuss this topic with anyone who has an idea as to what social networking should be in the business world.

Gold Medalist of the Day - June 15th

Just received an e-mail from Mike with the following quote, "i think starting work before 8 qualifies any objections??" I started to think of reasons why starting before 8AM wouldn't qualify for the medal, since it didn't seem like that great of an accomplishment. However, after a couple minutes or deep thought on the topic, my brain pretty much fried since it's only like 9AM and who really ever thinks before 9AM even? Made me figure that if Mike could type out a coherent e-mail before 8AM, he really deserves that gold medal. Congrats sir, here is your song for the day.

Coming Up This Week on CollegeKidApp!

Got an action packed super mega awesome week filled with explosions, fire, sweet jumps, and gigantic events which will make you go WOW! Alright, well maybe it's not that exciting, but it's definitely an extremely busy week none the less. Here's a little bit about what we have planned for the next 5 days.

• Finish our eReader, with blog posts on the process.
• Cameron will be doing some consulting on Facebook and Twitter on Tuesday.
• Mike will be at a conference and is working remotely, maybe we can get him to blog about working out of a hotel room?
• Some web design mock ups to work on, we'll most likely have a post on web design.
• We hope to have a release date and more information on that project we haven't been talking about, but that's up in the air.
• AND MUCH MUCH MORE! (caps make everything exciting!)

So be sure to come on back a couple times this week, we guarantee that we'll have some amazing blog posts for your viewing pleasure.

Our First App Has Been Submitted to the App Store!

We have a huge surprise! Our first application for the iPhone has been submitted for review into the iTunes App Store. Needless to say, we're rather stoked and can't wait for it to hopefully hit iPhones across the world.

This project is not the eReader we've written about here on the blog before. Instead it's another more secret project we've been working on for a while and just got the finishing touches on. It's an app we've been working on here and there for about 3 weeks and are really excited to share with you. It won't revolutionize the iPhone, but it will provide what we feel is a useful utility and worthy of the $0.99 we hope to gain with each purchase.

Mike and myself had some problems figuring out everything that needed to be done in order to finally get the application to the store. However after a bit of reading, we finally think the process is over. We'll have more info on the application and detailed coverage once we know our exact release date. We're super excited for you to see it, you have no clue!

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Metroid Prime Marathon Archive

I've archived the post from the Metroid Prime Marathon to this location, just to save space on the homepage for meaningful posting. Not that the marathon isn't meaningful, but it takes up a lot of space. If you want to read up about it, check out this link.

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Increasing Mike's Productivity 200%

Two monitors? Twice the AWESOME. Mike got his dual monitor setup on for some high productivity yesterday. Helped him make some good process on our eReader application as well. Using two monitors is great while you program because you can keep XCode open on one monitor while using another to look up resources online.

Reminder that we have our Metroid Marathon tonight. We'll be playing through Metroid Prime 1-3 in hopefully 30 hours or less. We'll have more information on the website later, so be sure to check it out.

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Making an App Step 1 - Mocking Up

As we start work on our eReader for Herbert Meyer and his essay How to Analyze Information, we'll have some inside posts as to what it's like to work on an iPhone application. Here's our first post on app production about mocking up your application before you begin work.

From what we've read about so far, it doesn't seem like all or even most indie developers go through a significant mock-up stage before beginning production. While we don't have a lot of experience and authority to tell those people that they are wrong, we do feel as if it is a big mistake to jump into a project without a fair amount of mock-up time first.

We typically spend a couple hours minimum on each mock-up we do, even if it's just for a test application. This does result in a lot of idle time sitting around a computer screen, but it saves a lot of time and heartache in the long run.

We use some iPhone stencils and applications like Photoshop to help put together our mock-ups. We go into pretty extensive detail and our mocks look a lot like a finished product. Here's an example mock we make up to use on our Twitter page. Again, none of this done on an actual iPhone.

It may seem silly to go into such detail, but you can't even imagine the time it saves during the development process, even on super simple applications. When Mike goes to program, he has an image he can look at and follow for more or less all of the development process and we don't have to waste time discussing while he is coding. It also helps us to work remotely if need be, since Mike can work at his house or on his own and doesn't need a designer sitting next to him incase he has any questions.

Through our work the last month or so on test applications, we've found our mock-ups to be fairly indiciative of what our final product will look like. Obviously we see some changes as we go through the development process, which is entirely to be expected. It would be a bad practice if we were not to consider alternatives to the mock-up midway through the development process if Mike was to learn a new trick or find some design idea to be a huge headache.

So, moral of today's story? Mock up everything you plan on doing with iPhone development. Even if you work by yourself on every single aspect of the project, still go through the process of putting your thoughts onto paper in some fashion. Even if you just mock-up your application with a piece of paper and a pencil, it will be unbelievably helpful once you're mid-project and you want to look back and what you plan on creating. It also helps you map out your attack plan for development so that you don't get to the end of the project and realize you missed a key feature you wanted to implement as well.

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Gold Medalist of the Day - June 10th

Before you begin reading the rest of this post, I want you to scroll down the page and click the play button the embedded YouTube video. After you've done that, scroll back up and finish reading this post. Trust me, it's totally worth it.

We've decided to begin handing out a new daily award in honor of our good friend Michael Phelps. You know, the REAL Michael Phelps (the CollegeKidApp programmer, not the guy who was in the Olympics or something like that). This new award will be called the CollegeKidApp.com Gold Medalist of the Day and it's handed out to the person who goes above and beyond the call of duty to do something that would make Michael Phelps proud. Be it swimming fast, saving a kitten from a burning house, curing cancer, or eating an entire box of cereal in one sitting. Whatever it is, it needs to be outstanding if Michael Phelps is going to give it his gold seal of approval.

Today, I've been graciously awarded the first ever Michael Phelps Gold Medal of the Day for resurrecting an iPod Touch from the dead. While Mike has stressed often that we wouldn't have gotten into this whole mess had I not bricked the device in the first place, it's more important to note that I snapped victory from the jaws of a broken iPod defeat, much like Michael Phelps would. For this courageous action, I am now deserving of today's Gold Medal award.

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What is Mike Doing?

Just looked over and saw Mike checking out his phone. Taking a look at his face in this photo, what would you guess he is doing?

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Why Working For Yourself Rocks Reason #3 - Watching Blink-182 Videos Before Lunch

I'm not going to lie, I'm sure everyone takes a little bit of time out of their day to watch some of their favorite YouTube videos. However, how many people can blast Blink-182's performance from Jimmy Kimmel last night and make everyone in the room listen just by saying "watch this because I said so and I'm the boss...like a boss." Yeah that's right, nobody.

Now here's some YouTube embeds, so you all need to watch too. Beccause I said so and I'm the boss...like a boss.

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What is the "CollegeKidApp"?

Over the last couple of days, I've gotten a lot of questions that go along the lines of "what is it that you guys are doing?" People want to know "what is the CollegeKidApp?" I guess it's a fair question as we've been rather vague so far this summer in explaining what it is we're actually doing as a business. Hopefully I can answer some of those questions here.

If you've been checking out the site, you know that we started about a month ago on this journey of becoming an iPhone development team. We've been blogging about it, sharing our advertising stories, showing off example screen shots, posting links to interviews, but what have we really done as a development team? What projects are we working on and when will something be in the store?

Well, here's where we're at so far. Right now, we've got a couple apps that are in development, one of which I'm excited to share the first details of with you today. The other two are going to have to be kept under wraps, sorry :-(.

We started back in May with about 20 applications we would love to develop. After our "boot camp" week, we quickly learned what we were and weren't capable of when it comes to development. We would love to make a clone of Google Earth with our own maps that lets you see where gold is located and it would be super useful since people love gold, but we definitely could not make that app haha. We limited our list down to 3-5 projects we felt we were capable of this summer and got to work with sample code and product design.

Early into our development process and after our interview on KUSP, we were approached by a couple of different people who were looking to have applications developed. It wasn't originally a business idea we set forth with when we began the summer, but it seemed like a great idea. We talked with some people, discussed different concept applications, made some mock ups, worked out agreements, and we're off with our first project as developers.

So what is this first project which we're working on? Well, we've just started development on an electronic reader for an independent publisher and the author of a short essay on success skills. We've just finished up the agreement and hope to have the project done in the next two weeks.

For the near future, we'll be posting quick updates into our progress with the reader application as we push to get it into the iTunes App Store. We're super excited about having a product available and can't wait until we can finish it up so that you can download it. We have a lot of work over the next couple weeks, but we're ready to take it on.

Then what do we do after we finish this application? We'll have about 2 months of summer left and definitely will need something to occupy our time. Well, we first have one application which is our own idea which we're working to push into the store as well. We've actually got a decent amount of progress into it and we're not sure when exactly it will be available. It's kinda a side project that we're working on here and there as we learn more about what we need to know in order to finish it. After we get that out, we're also looking at other contracted projects through people who are looking to have apps made. To be honest, we're not entirely sure as to what our plan is for two weeks or so from now when we're done with these projects but we'll figure out when we get there.

Hopefully that clarifies a bit as to who we are and what our goals are for the next 3 months. There is no "CollegeKidApp" necessarily and we're not just working on one project. CollegeKidApp is the name of our site as well as our business and we're working for the next three months to find ways in which we can be profitable while making iPhone software. We're hoping to make as many apps as possible in order to have the greatest chance of success and keep this project going for a long time.

So there you have it. We'll have posts up later this week which go into futher detail about the design of this new application we're working on. Don't forget we're also having our Metroid Marathon on Friday as well. Couple that in with all our in betweet work and it's going to be a busy couple of days.

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I Love When Stuff Breaks

Spending 2 hours of your morning trying to fix your iPod Touch after you broke it trying to install software is a great way to kick start your day. More musings to come later if this sync finally works and I have use of my near and dear iPod Touch once again.

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Thoughts on WWDC Keynote

Our team here at CollegeKidApp was formed a bit too early to consider attending WWDC, so I've been spending my entire afternoon watching from the comfort of home much like the entire internet. Given all the announcements today, I figured I would give a few comments on the keynote from a small iPhone developer's perspective.

• 40 million devices capable of using any application we develop is pretty impressive. To put that into a bit of perspective, we only need to sell a $0.99 app to 1% of potential users to sell about $400,000 worth of product. Huge potential for small developers like us.
• With 50,000 apps in the store already, I'm curious as to how Apple works to make the iTunes App Store more managable here in the next year or so. Obviously you're set if you make a great app that hits the top 100 apps or something like that, but what about those who develop for small niche categories? Maybe diversity category lists?
• Find My iPhone is just plain slick. I know it has nothing to do with app development, but I like the implementation.
  
• New 3.0 features are going to be amazing for applications. I don't think everyone quite comprehends how much better some of these small features will help out general app quality. Apple had quite a few developers give in-depth tech demos of their 3.0 apps and I think this was a great play to show off the new software. I really think this stuff will amaze people.
• iPhone 3GS and it's new features are impressive. Nothing mind blowing or unexpected, but enough to keep the device fresh and solid for the summer and fall. It isn't the "next generation" iPhone and I don't think timing was right for that anyways. That'll will be better suited for next summer when 1st gen iPhone users are ready to upgrade and get a new contract.
• Voice Control looks real neat. I know tons of devices have this. I just think that its work with things other then dialing contacts seems pretty sweet. Imagine asking your iPhone how far you've run so far and what your speed is while running. That kinda functionality just seems amazing to me.

That's about it for initial impressions. Maybe I'll come back later and write a little bit more indepth. If you have any questions about the new OS, feel free to e-mail me at Cameron@CollegeKidApp.com.

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Live Chat the WWDC Keynote!

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Sunday Is Our Day of Work

Most people chill out on Sunday, but our team just got out of bout 7 hours of solid straight meeting time. We can't complain though, we had a bunch of great discussion and have made huge strides in the progress of our team.

I know this last week had a lot of dumb "we can talk about it" posts and I apologize. This next week will more than make up for it, I promise. We've also got the Metroid Marathon on Friday, so definitely be ready to tune into that come this weekend. It's also WWDC and we'll have an Apple Keynote tomorrow, so I'll be posting about that.

Can't wait till tomorrow to kick off our best week yet. For now, I'm off to bed so I can get up to run in the morning haha.

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WE DID IT!! (For the Most Part)

I can't stress it enough, so I'll say it right now and hope that I get my point across rather simply; WE DID IT.

I know I'll sound like an idiot with this next paragraph or so, but to hell with it. You'll have to take my word for it, but under that big ol' box of gray to the left is a working demo of an application we've programmed for the iPhone running on a unit set up for debug. Due to some NDAs, we can't tell you what it is, we can't tell you if and when it will ever be released, we can't even tell you if it's awesome or not (but we made it, so it has to be, right?). You just have to trust me when I say it's there and working.

It's still a bit buggy and we have some work to do with it, but it runs. After a couple hours of playing around with settings, setting up test units, etc, we finally got it to launch and we can play around with it on a retail iPhone.

Sure, we've gotten apps up and running on the build in XCode Simulator, but this is the first time we've used an application that we've built on a physical iPhone. It's a unbelievably proud moments for us and we're extremely happy of our currently buggy program. It may have flaws, it may not even be completely finished, but it's ours and we love it.

So, sorry to bother you all with this super sappy blog post that pretty much says absolutely nothing to you. I'll apologize for this I guess. This is just an unbelievably big step for our team as we move forward and it builds up a bunch of excitement for the next two months or so. I don't think we'll be this happy again until we get something to go gold in the App Store.

Speaking of applications, I've been asked by a bunch of people in the last week or so about what exactly the "CollegeKidApp" is? What are our final plans for our application? I definitely understand that we've been a bit vague about this so far, so I hope to write a blog post either later tonight or tomorrow which goes into greater detail about this. I'll clarify right now in saying that the image above isn't our "CollegeKidApp" and we'll still be working on different stuff for the next two months.

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Getting Ready to Test Apps!

We've been working pretty hard here for about three weeks and we're getting really close to the point where we'll be able to see our hard work in action. Imagine you're an artist that's been painting in the dark for three weeks and you finally get to turn the lights on. Yeah, we're pretty much that excited.

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We're Official Developers (Finally!)

We haven't necessarily NOT been developers for the last couple weeks, but we finally got through the Apple developer process and are official. The process has taken a while, but not longer than expected from what we've read. None the less, we've been waiting in the queue for a while and were getting rather excited in anticipation of receiving a final go ahead.

So what makes us different now than we were a couple hours ago? Well now we're able to submit applications to the iTunes App Store, download the most up to date SDK, and a couple other cool things.

We're super pumped and one step closer to our goal for the summer!

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T-Shirts!

We're looking into possibly picking up some sweet t-shirts. It's something we've wanted to for the last couple weeks, frankly because t-shirts rock and are an absolute necessity for any successful business.

We're looking at using CustomInk.com as our t-shirt printer. They were suggested to us and their prices seem competitive. If you have any suggestions about t-shirt printing, feel free to drop me a line at Cameron@CollegeKidApp.com, I would love your opinions. Here's a mock up from CustomInk which we would really like to have as final shirts.

So far, me likey. Can't wait to be wearing something like that here, hopefully in the near future. What do you think about our color and choice of design?

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The Potential Gains and Perils of Social Media

Social media is a topic I hope to write a bit about this summer because I think it's something that's not talked about enough when developing a start-up. It's the latest trend in business because it has the potential to attract a LOT of new customers, yet everyone just seems to jump on the bandwagon with eyes set forth on potential success without taking five minutes to look at the possible downfalls that poorly organized social media efforts can bring to a company.

The topic is so expansive that one could easily write a book on the matter, so I'll refrain from covering the entire subject here. Today I'm only going to cover the problems with using too much social media.

Everyone thinks that social media is like a wardrobe and you can never have enough, right? It would be a delightful little comparison, but I think it would actually be more fair to connect social media with cake fed to guests at a party. Everyone loves cake and each person has a specific preference, chocolate cake with white frosting is like Facebook whereas confetti cake with sprinkles is like Twitter. It's most important to remember that some people like chocolate cake while others hate it. As a good host, you wouldn't force feed that chocolate cake to someone who hates it so why would you force Twitter down the throats of people who hate the service? Diversify yourself so that you can reach out to your potential market by being available on multiple services just like you would offer up a variety of cake types to make your guests happy.

You can also have too large a variety of cake all together. Maybe you bought a bit strawberry, coconut, chocolate, blueberry (do they even make that kind of cake?), and ice cream cake. Since you're diversifing yourself out with cake types, you can't nearly buy as much of each cake because you wouldn't be able to afford it. Pretend that your time on social media sites is like your money, since we know that time is essentially money. What use a Squidoo or YouTube account if you're not around to keep up with it and give attention to your potential visitors there? Your company may think it's hip to have a Twitter account because it's "all the rage with the kids" but let me tell you something. Those kids are way more hip and with it than you even know and you're doing nothing but hurting your reputation and brand by having a multitude of useless accounts with one update/tweet/post that says "checking out _____ social media site."

So what can you do and where's the balance? It's important to have a precense on sites like Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace but you need to know your limits. I'm not saying you shouldn't go out and try the latest social media trend when it hits next week, next month, or whenever. You just need to be capable of keeping up with the social world so that you can react and convert these new media interactions into profit for your company. Maybe it would be best to hire someone just to manage your social media accounts. Obviously it's a cost, but it might be dollars more well spent than wasted marketing on a billboard. The world is changing and if you can't react, you're not going to win.

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Why Working For Yourself Rocks Reason #2 - Learning New Skills

Sure, we're working on programs on an everyday basis for one of the most technical pieces of hardware on the planet. It's a pretty sweet gig and we're super smart, you know, making unbelievable applications using multi-touch, Cocoa, objective-c, NSLocalizedStrings, GPS locations, and tons of other technical stuff you mere mortals could never understand.

Thus, it should come as no surprise that I came into today with no idea as to how our dishwasher works. Let's be fair. This is a new dishwasher that hasn't been in our house too long. I've never used it before and when I'm at school, I have no need for a dishwasher other than a wet dish rag and soap.

Take a look at that picture there my friends. That is what may would consider to be the ultimate dishwashing and it was all done by yours truly. You've gotta learn how to work independently and take on new tasks. It's quality work like what you see above that separates the winners from the losers in life, so now you can see why I'm the most successful person I know.

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Typography...There's an App for That...Kinda

Here's a little insight into a little project I've been working on today. Figured I would take a little picture and talk more about the process of getting text on the iPhone.

Here is a little demo app of a text rendering engine Mike wrote up so that we couple play around with typography. Text is obviously a huge part of any application and we need to learn more about it if we're going to develop successful applications. If you take a look at the screen shot, you'll see us trying out different fonts out to learn more about spacing, rendering, etc.

All we needed for this test were a couple sentences, numbers, etc. We wanted to check out how different fonts looked when rendered on the iPhone screen, so we placed out about five or so different common types of font families just so we could see how they looked in action.

The great thing about the iPhone simulator is that we can check out all of these fonts in action to see exactly what they will look like when on the phone. We play around with them a bit, scroll down the page, and pretty much do anything we need to just to imagine what it will be like if this text was to go into an app and you were to read it on your device. You may think that font selection and placing is a less important part of application design, but for us it's incredibly important. In most applications, you need the font to gain understand and use the application. As a quick test right now, go check out some of your favorite websites that really capture your attention. Go check out some of the world's most popular websites like The New York Times, Digg, Facebook, Google, etc. Now perform a Google search for "worst websites" and do some browsing for a couple minutes. Just check out the difference in typography between the leaders and the losers. Obviously these are extreme examples, but they just go to show how important typography can be when developing any product, not just an iPhone application.

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Done with Radio, Now Onto Work

Just got off air with Rob Johnson a little while ago. We were able to talk about iPhone development, my history in it, and some funny app ideas he had. It was a great time and I am glad I got a chance to talk to him about our team. The interview should be podcasted and I'll definitely get a link up when I have a chance.

Off to real work now. Going to work on writing up some offers for jobs, finish up business cards, and possibly head to the bank in a little bit. I wrote a pretty nice summary of Google Analytics last night, so if you haven't checked that out then I encourage you to do so.

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Tune Into KMPH 840 AM in Modesto to Listen to Cameron!

I know that it's super early, but if you're checking this out, then tune into Cameron as he goes live on Rob Johnson in the Morning on KMPH 840 AM around 7:35am PST. If you're not located around Modesto, CA then you can listen online by clicking here. Should be a lot of fun and we hope to have a podcast sometime in the near future as well in case you can't listen live.

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Live Around Modesto, CA? Listen to Cameron Live on Radio!

If you're located anywhere close to Modesto then be sure to tune into Rob Johnson in the Morning on KMPH 840 AM tomorrow at 7:35am PST. It also appears like you can listen online by clicking here. I know it's super early, but I'll be on talking about CollegeKidApp.com, entrepreneurship, and iPhone application development. It should definitely be a great time. If you take a listen, give me an e-mail at Cameron@CollegeKidApp.com and let me know what you thought, just don't make fun of my voice too much haha.

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The Benefits of Empirical Evidence

As you've seen for the last 2-3 weeks or so, this blog has been an important part of who we are as a company. Not only is it a great journal for us, but it's also a way for us to give you an inside look into us and who we are as people.

Because our blog is our only connection to 99% of you, it's a necessity that we understand how you're interacting with our site on a day to day basis. We can talk to you through our blog posts, but you can't talk back to us about your reading habits unless you were to send us an e-mail every single time you check out the site (and how inconvenient would that be).

To give us a hand in gaining a better look at what our audience thinks of our blog posts, we use Google Analytics with the site to learn more information on specific parts of the site with regards to what was or was not popular.
The tool is extremely easy to use. All you need to do is a webmaster is include a bit of code into your site as directed by Google. After that, the site will begin tracking your visitors and their habits on the site. As you can see above, we had a peak in traffic after appearing on AppCraver which worked its way back down to normal until our steady increase last week or so.
You can gain an in-depth look as to what parts of the world your visitors are coming from. In CollegeKidApp so far, we've seen a lot of local traffic in Northwest Indiana as well as relatively strong traffic in California and New York. It's important to know your traffic, that way you can target your posts to your potential audience. If I know that most of our readers are within driving distance, I could set up a CollegeKidApp meet up or offer services in the area (such as we did with our consultation service) because I know local people are keeping up with the site.
Keeping up with traffic sources is another important tool in Google Analytics. As you can see, social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook help bring us a lot of people to the site. Not only do I know which sites the traffic is coming from, but what parts of those sites as well. For example, I know that more people visit this site through our CollegeKidApp Twitter account as opposed to my own personal account. Again, another key feature that helps me learn where our audience is coming from.
If you've ever done web design, you know or you've been taught that search engine traffic is HUGE. Each day, billions of searches are preformed on Google, Yahoo!, AOL, etc. If people are going to be searching for topics similar to what you provide on your site, why wouldn't you want those searches to direct potential viewers to your own webpage? Because this traffic is so lucrative, we've seen a whole career develop out of it with SEOs (search engine optimizers). We don't have enough money to hire an expert to help us with this, but we can see through Google Analytics what search terms are bringing users to our site. As you can see, Blender shows up pretty high in part to some posts which Jeff wrote about making our intro video through the program. Since people are coming here for that content, maybe we should work on writing more blog posts about it? Just one thought that can come out of using Google Analytics.
Now that I know where our traffic is coming from, what parts of our site are viewers checking out? The first entry there is our homepage, which makes sense because we're a blog. After that, you can see that our Metroid Marathon is an interesting subject to many people who check out the site. More information about our team, the site, and our projects follow up to round out the top 5 here as well. Again, these pages help me see what people are interested in so that we can write more of this content. We're not making money off ad revenue with this site, but if we were, this information would help us make posts which best gain page views and thus maximize ad revenue.

I hope you enjoyed this little look into Google Analytics. The content I covered is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Google's free website analyzation tool. Hopefully I can write up a post in a couple weeks detailing some of the more complex features available through the service. If you're a webmaster and you don't have this or something like it running on your site, I highly suggest that you check it out. Have any questions about Google Analytics? Send me an e-mail to Cameron@CollegeKidApp.com and I'll get back to you as soon as possible.

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Getting Down to Business (Cards)

During our meetings last week, we decided that it was of the utmost importance to get some business cards and maybe even t-shirts printed up for our team. We're looking to attend some iPhone developer meetups in Chicago later this summer, are always on the look out for potential consulting clients, and figured it would be a great idea just to have a couple business cards on hand "just in case."

I've been working on cards this morning and this is what I've come up with so far. If you have an opinion, let me know what you think. This isn't final and I've cropped it a bit so that my phone number isn't visible (sorry haha. If you want to call me that bad, drop me an e-mail and I'll consider giving it to you?).
After mocking up some images, I've spent the last hour or so looking for local printing companies to do the job. Whenever you do a job like this, even though it may be a small quantity (we're only looking for about 100 each), contact a couple different companies for quotes. You may think that you're getting a great price only to find that a company down the street can do it for 10% cheaper. I know that's a simple business practice, but it's a lifesaver for small teams like us who need to pinch every penny.

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More Coverage of CollegeKidApp.com

Just got a link to the latest episode of The Apple Juice Show with host George Drage where I was interviewed about CollegeKidApp.com. It's a pretty good interview and we talk a lot about the history of CKA and when we decided to come together and start up this project.

Also found out that I'm going to be on Rob Johnson in the Morning this Thursday at 7:35am PST on KMPH 840 AM in Modesto, California to talk about CollegeKidApp. If you're in the Modesto area, be sure to take a listen in.

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All Work and No Play Makes Cameron a Happy Guy

Sorry for the lack of blog posts as of late, I've really been trying my best to get some great content spat out over the last couple days but I've just been too busy working. Just when I get my inbox cleared out, I've got a couple more big e-mail that come in. Everytime we fix one problem, three more arise.

I can't complain though, we've had nothing but good problems and I'm learning the importance of busting your butt when working for yourself. I'm a huge fan of Gary Vaynerchuk and I think I'm finally understanding what he means when he says you have to "Crush It."

Rest easy, the great posts will come eventually (maybe even tonight). But for now, I'm back to checking e-mail and hustling, hustling, hustling.

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Discuss the Nintendo Press Conference with Us!

Went For a Run, Now Nintendo (with Some Work on the Side)

Been an amazing morning so far. I woke up kinda early and went for a run with my friend Avril, which was pretty much the first run I've gone on in about a year. I feel great right now, but we'll see how I feel in a couple hours when the hurt sets in. I'll be sure to keep you all updated.

For those of you into gaming, it's no big surprise that E3 is in full swing here over the next couple of days. I'm super pumped for the Nintendo conference coming up here in a couple minutes and will definitely be trying to tweet about it from my account here if you're looking to follow from work.

Got some more blogging to come later today. If you're wondering about the layout I showed off yesterday, that may be pushed back a couple days. We found a couple errors we've got to fix before we go live.

Now, I'm off to watch some guy try to beat the world record in Donkey Kong.

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Sitting at My Desk...Like a Boss

Been busy working on CollegeKidApp since this morning...like a boss. The last couple hours have been spent mocking up some potential apps, writing e-mails, and working with Mike on our CollegeKidApp App. He's about done, but has a picture problem he just can't find the solution to. He's searching the internet and working with Jeff to fix the problem and hopefully will find something out here soon.

It's been a rainy Monday here in Northwest Indiana. Kinda makes sitting inside a bit easier when you look out and see pouring rain and soggy ground.

It was a busy last week at CollegeKidApp, so if you're just checking in for the first time in a whole I highy suggest that you check out there posts. Mike Phelps hates his life. Mike and I are interviewed by KUSP in Santa Cruz, CA. Jeff makes a sweet intro in Blender. And we have a survey we would love for you to take to help us learn more about general iPhone opinions.

Busy, busy week coming up here at CollegeKidApp so be sure to check in often.

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New Blog Layout!

I've talked about our new layout and Jeff threw up a teaser image yesterday. Well, we're working on the process of converting over now and I figured I would send a link to a preview so that everyone can see how the site may look in the near future.

We're not sure exactly when this will go live. It may be today or tomorrow, since we have some bugs to fix up. Take everything on this test blog with a grain of salt because we're looking for errors to fix before we eventually go gold.

Here's a link. Feel free to give us some feedback so that we can hear what you think about this possible change before we make it.

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