Here is our new logo. We love it, how about you?

We hope you enjoy it!  All advertising proceeds are donated to ITGulfCoast and help fund several scholarships for area technology students.

Please let us know what you think!  We’re already thinking that the listing view needs to show dates and use smaller text so it doesn’t ellip…

Once approved, our application appeared on the 23rd page of the Arcade Games sub-category due to a release date of July 14th, which I felt was a little unfair.  I checked the iTunes Connect site on Tuesday and it had our release day grayed out (which meant no updates).  However, yesterday during the workshop I noticed that it was no longer grayed out, so this morning I updated both versions to tomorrow.  I was expecting everything to update overnight as it has so far and get us to the top of the listings.

Matt and I were slightly concerned about whether Apple would have a problem with this later-date change, and while I felt there would be no issues Matt was concerned of running afoul of Apple.  Lo and behold, iLostMyMarbles totally disappeared from the App Store this evening for a few hours!  This obviously put us into crisis mode, but we decided to see if everything would fix itself in the morning.

Luckily it re-appeared this evening as well, and with a new release date of the 3rd (which was our actual approval date).  Apple was apparently nice enough to set ours to the 3rd without even scolding us, but I can see how changing release dates like we did could be abused to keep Apps at the top of the “New & Noteworthy” listings.  I’m not sure they’ll be so understanding in the future!

The moral of the story is that you should set release dates well in the future, then reset them to your actual approval date once approved.  Live and learn!

• iPhone Dev Center
  • Roles and Teams
  • Tools and Support
  • Certificates (and their uses)
• iTunes Connect
  • App Submission
  • Sales Trends, Reports
  • Quick Contracts Overview
• AdMob Website
  • General overview
  • Analytics
• Objective C Intro
  • Brain melting syntax
  • New(er) dot property syntax
  • Message passing vs. method calls
• XCode Overview
  • Basic features
  • Work flow with XCode
  • Starting new projects
• Simulator Overview
  • Features and Differences
  • i386 vs. armv6/7 and libraries
  • Garbage collection and lack thereof
  • How to crash Simulator!
• Interface Builder
  • Integrated work flow, purpose
  • Connecting to code with IBOutlet, IBAction
  • How poorly it works on a small screen…
• ITGulfCoast App
  • Reviewed code and application startup process, chain of events
  • Added “already viewed” feature using sqlite database engine (thanks iLostMyMarbles code!)
  • Debugged new feature in Simulator and on device
• Instruments
  • Profiled iLostMyMarbles
    • Memory leaks
    • Rendering performance
    • File access

Obviously a jam-packed session, but we did manage to eat some pizza somwhere in there! (sorry it was so late in the session for those that had to leave early)

I’ve cleaned up the source code for the ITGulfCoast App (download), and will be making a few modifications today before submitting it to the App Store for approval.  Thanks again for your great suggestions and help!

I look forward to more workshops through ITGulfCoast, if you’re interested in giving one please get ahold of Maria Weisnicht.  She was instrumental in putting this all together, and we really appreciated her help!  Also thanks again to TechSoft, Inc. for providing our venue (which was awesome!).

So Apple sent out 300 copies of iLostMyMarbles yesterday, we’re apparently already in 29 countries around the world!  Our App appeared two weeks after we submitted it, so we got bubbled down on the lists (as in page 23 of the arcade sub-category).  We’ve done no advertising so far, and a reach like this is unheard of for such a small company.  Thanks Apple!  *wink*

We’re really excited, and have been keenly watching our ratings.  It seems the iTunes Store keeps multiple versions of our ratings, depending on how you reach the listing.  So far, depending on where you look, we’re “Unrated”, “3 1/2 stars” and “3 stars”.  Not too shabby for a first stab, especially when many of the well established Apps are rated much worse and iLostMyMarbles is so simple.  Time will tell, I hope everyone likes our stuff though!

Tonight is our iPhone Workshop, and I’m really excited to show people how it all works with real data.  Very glad we got into the store soon enough to have some stats!

We’ll be showing up on the App Store within the week, there’s typically a 1-4 day delay before they post and index new apps.  I’m guessing we’ll be live before the workshop, see you there!

I contacted the approval team last week to check up, and was not really expecting a response but they quickly let us know that we haven’t fallen through the cracks.  Unfortunately they can’t give us any sort of estimates or specifics, but it was nice to hear from them!  I’d like to meet some of those guys at some point, I’m sure they come up with great App ideas all the time.

This is two segments, and unfortunately is missing a couple of minutes between them where I reviewed some advertising providers.

The slides I used in the presentation are available here.

Date:
Wednesday, Aug. 5th 2009 from 6 to 9 PM
Location:
TechSoft Pensacola Offices
31 W. Garden Street, Suite 100
Pensacola, FL 32502 (map)
Contact:
Charles Armour
Tel: 850-324-0704
Email:  charles@wireheadlabs.com

Edit: We have limited seating, so please RSVP on EventsBot to secure a spot!

Charles Armour is director of Wirehead Labs, Inc., a Pensacola area mobile applications development company.  With over 5 years experience developing applications for platforms such as the iPhone, Windows Mobile, and BREW, Charles’ experience will help you get a jump start on your next mobile project.

Special thanks to TechSoft, Inc. for our venue, and ITGulfCoast for organizing this event.  Along with your support, companies and organizations like these are helping Pensacola become one of the fastest growing technology communities in the country!

Please RSVP as soon as possible!  Pizza and sodas will be provided free of charge, donations are welcome.  Participants are encouraged, but not required, to bring their own laptops and devices to this workshop.  Please sign up for the free iPhone Development Center, download and install XCode 3.2 (or higher), and configure your OSX based system prior to attending. Please note that the views, opinions, and content are solely those of Charles Armour and Wirehead Labs, Inc. and do not represent the views and opinions of TechSoft, Inc. nor ITGulfCoast.

Edit: If you missed the presentation, you can find the slides here (PDF).