HiveBrain Software

I am speaking again this year at the 360|iDev conference.  This conference was outstanding last year, and looks to be even better this year.  Matt Drance of Apple evangelist fame will be giving the keynote, and the sessions planned seem to cover an even wider range of iPhone development issues.  One thing I love about this conference is that unlike WWDC, the conference goes beyond technical sessions and focuses some energy on the business issues of iPhone app sales and promotion.  You don’t have to be a coder to learn a lot at the conference.  Some of the best marketing ideas I have used in the last year came out of the great discussions between sessions and in the evenings at the conference.

I hope to see you there.

KLIV, the news radio station in Silicon Valley, is featuring an interview with me today about iPhone development and the evolution of HiveBrain Software.  Many thanks to Jason Bennert at KLIV in the Silicon Valley for thinking of me for the interview.

Audio of the interview embedded below:

Things have been cooking lately deep within HiveBrain’s subterranean offices in Seattle.  Our latest iPhone application hit the App Store a couple days ago.  The app is called Beat Social Phobia with Andrew Johnson and extends our series of popular self-help applications.  If you haven’t tried one of the Andrew Johnson apps, you should.  The free version of Deep Relaxation is a great starter app.  These applications have exceeded both Andrew and my expectations in terms of popularity and positive feedback.  I get email messages daily from people that love the apps, and we have been fortunate enough to have almost entirely five star reviews on iTunes.

Andrew went back into the recording studio last week, and we should have some great new content going live in the next few months.

Getting back to HiveBrain’s roots, I am working on two new utility applications that I am very excited about.  One is an audio application that requires some fairly ambitious hooks into the iPhone’s audio libraries.  The second utility app should be ready in about a month, and is a narrowly focused application targetted toward a specific industry.  More on both of these apps soon.

I have been getting pretty exited for Apple’s World Wide Developers Conference next week. It will be my first time at the conference and there are a bunch of other developers that I have corresponded with over the last year that I am going to finally get to meet in person.

It turns out that TouchType is one of the icons featured on the big banner that hangs in the opening of the conference. If you look in the picture below, TouchType is the orange icon at the top of the “D” in WWDC.

If you are going to be at the conference, please look me up. The best way to connect with me will be through Twitter on my @hivebrain account. I will try to tweet and post often about goings on at the conference.  Hope to see you there.

Photo via: Adam Jackson

This app has been an ongoing project of mine for the last few months.  Making the application was easy compared to getting Apple to approve it.  After several rejections, today we finally threaded the needle of Apple’s review process and Photo Drop went live.
Photo Drop is a physics game that lets you choose your own picture to use as the background.  If you choose the right background picture from your photo library, it can be a lot of fun.  Many thanks to applications like Wobble for helping show us the way.

Video below.  You can find Photo Drop at on the App Store here.

This is my first real blog post since I left my job last month to start a software application studio.  As a bit of background, I have been a technology transactions attorney for the last seven years, living vicariously through my entrepreneur clients.  Since taking the leap into business myself, I have had my head down working on my next app.

Tonight that app went live on the app store.  Best of 101 Dog Tricks for the iPhone is a collaborative effort with well known dog trainer and showman Kyra Sundance.  The resulting application is a great way to teach your dog some basic commands.  The iPhone and iPod is the perfect vehicle for this content.  It has the best of a book and a DVD in one application that you can take with you to the park. For a walkthrough, check out the video demonstration below.

The application is available now on iTunes.

Alternate non-flash video link for readers on the iPhone or iPod: 101 Dog Tricks Demo

Today was a great day.  This morning I found out that Walt Mossberg at the Wall Street Journal mentioned TouchType in his Mossberg’s Mailbag column today.

Mid-day I wrapped up some remaining changes to a TouchType update that should be ready for submission soon.  The new version launches in Landscape mode and will have better save and load functionality, including browsing saved text and choosing where in your message you want to insert it.

In the afternoon, I headed to the Apple Store to pick up an adaptor for my MacBook, and found TouchType featured in their window and in-store display.  It was one of about 100 apps featured, but considering there are over 20k apps on the store, I felt pretty honored.

Tonight, I got word that the free version of Deep Relaxation with Andrew Johnson is going live tonight.  If you haven’t checked out the full version of the app, the free version is worth a download.  Grab a copy on your iPhone and listen to it while you are falling asleep.  I am hoping the free version will introduce a lot of people to Andrew.

It took an exceptional day to bring me back to the blog to post an update.  Lately I have been posting more on Twitter and less here on the site, so be sure to check the Twitter widget in the right sidebar of this page, or follow me @hivebrain.

Amazon released a Kindle application for the iPhone this evening.  It is a free download and syncs up with your existing Kindle account if you have one.  I downloaded the app and had access to all the books in my Kindle account within minutes.  The reading interface on the iPhone doesn’t have the flash of some other ebook readers for the phone, but the text is clear and easy to read.  Check it out on the app store.

Also, if you haven’t seen the new Kindle 2, it is a vast improvement over the original version.  It looks like it was designed by Apple, which I am guessing is not a coincidence.  Amazon wants people to realize that the Kindle is to books, what the iPod is to music.  The Kindle 2 feels more solid compared to the first gen version, which felt a little like an empty plastic case.  The buttons, which always seemed to get in the way on the first Kindle are flush with the device now and don’t get accidentally pressed anymore.

I am going to be speaking at the 360|iDev conference in San Jose next month.  The session topic is Legal Issues in iPhone Development.  I am hoping to spend some time teaching developers about the law, while learning from other participants and speakers about programming.   If you haven’t checked out the conference materials for 360|iDev, you can get the information here.

Based on the number of people jumping into iPhone development, I am guessing the conference is going to be bigger than anyone expects.  The conference is March 2-4, 2009.  Hope to see you there.

I have been experimenting over the last week with 2d physics on the iPhone.  The result is taking me away from my comfort zone of utilities and productivity apps, and into the world of casual gaming.  The app is simple, but takes advantage of some sophisticated physics computations and the iPhones accelerometer.  Should be wrapped up within the next week, and then I can say more.