Saturday, January 8, 2011

@Apptidudes


That's us

Our growth as a presence on the internet is slowly but surely gaining momentum. Not that anyone is reading this besides Russell's roommate (Hi Jon). After reading Russell's post, I thought I'd give a little taste of my own incredulity following the release of our first app.

If you googled our name The "Apptidudes" two days ago, google would just show you results for our namesake, the word "aptitude". It changed your search results and assumed you were wrong when you typed it in.

Now, we're showing up on all of the android market indexes (androlib, androidzoom etc) and our twitter is the first search result. This is a great foundation we've laid in the event that we EVER EVER gain any sort of popularity on the internet. At the very least, I can navigate to most of our stuff relatively easily.

Right now we're trying to decide what the next step for us is in the app department. It's incredibly difficult to come up with an original idea (we probably won't) but it's also hard to come up with something that you want to do that may or may not find its way onto peoples phones. There are a few directions we could go at the moment, and we'll let you know when we know exactly what's going to happen. Whatever it is, we're going to do it well. I hope.

We like sports and we don't care who knows,

Jarvis


Wow.

So I'm up late and have nothing to do, so I'm going to give you all some updates on the app's progress at the moment.

So with being on the market for less than 2 days, we've already moved from the less than 50 downloads division to the 100-500 downloads division! Thats more than 50 downloads a day! The fact that within a short amount of time, over 100 people have been exposed to our app is crazy to me.

Not only did over 100 people download our free app (and counting!) but at the moment we've already had more buys on the paid app than I expected this early on. (Mainly because I expected zero people to buy it at this point). Buyers include people from USA, Germany, the UK, and Sweden. I guess The Apptidudes are officially internationally renown developers.... or something like that.

I appreciate everyone who is using and rating the app, especially if you were one of the few who spent money on it. Thanks for your support!

Does anyone even read this?

-Russell

Thursday, January 6, 2011

..and we're LIVE!


Scan this and download the app!

It's finally out there! Boy, did I never think I'd say that. The steps leading up to this release were starting to get frustrating and when I get frustrated I get anxious and s;rlha;ewrer;r. Needless to say, I'm incredibly pleased this project has come to a close.

It was an immense learning experience that, without the help of Russell, I don't think I'd have ever had the patience. The good thing is, now that the learning curve has been toppled, I WILL continue developing mobile applications. This isn't the last you've heard from us.

Convert! is a useful app, I think you'll find yourself powering it up more than you would have expected, I hope. I think i'm a bit biased.

Please scan this code, please download our app, please review it, please buy the full version..if you want. I really want to get this app out there. It's not original and it's not the best, but it's a heck-of-a-lot better than some of the crap that's currently on the market. I want to see something of our creation on the phones of more than just my closest amigos.

I love vanilla coke,

Jarvis


Tuesday, January 4, 2011

Convert It!

Here's the exceedingly bland application that we've been working on for the past week or so. It performs some useful unit and base conversions for you. This exists a lot already, an awful lot. I can assure you we didn't so much as acknowledge the competitions existence until we were almost done. I'm pleased with the result. It was a vehicle for practicing and learning the Android Platform. This was the first time either of us had done a project in Java also. So lots of learning was going on here, I promise you.

Here are some screen shots of the application. Comment as you wish, I still don't think anyone is reading this stuff.

*We can't really use the name Convert It...apparently it already exists. Oh well, we have a little time to figure out a new name.

Convert It!:
Title Screen
List of converter types
The Actual Converter
Preferences Screen

Click on the links above, they're images,

Jarvis

Other kids might spend their winter breaks differently...

Not us. Enter Russell and Jarvis, two totally regular guys who spend their free time doing constructive stuff. Both are freshman in college (Russell at Carnegie Mellon and Jarvis at Georgia Tech) and are pretty enthusiastic about programming.

I'm going to break from third person now, but we can pretend I didn't. Russell and I haven't had a lot of programming experience, but so far, we're big fans. We've always been computer people, but our somewhat lazy nature in the past has prevented us from pursuing any long term goals in the programming world until now. We'll be releasing our first android app in the very near future. This is the first, but most certainly not the last you'll hear from us in that department. I mean, we're calling ourselves the Apptidudes...sorry about that, I have an affinity for puns.

No one's ever going to read this blog, so I really have no idea why I'm writing it. Perhaps in the future we'll gain some sort of pseudo-popularity that will retroactively validate the existence of this blog. In reality, it exists because when I was registering for the Android Market, I didn't have anything to put in the website field.

Now I do. Enjoy,

Jarvis