Zhephree

Hey, everyone! Just wanted to give you guys a quick heads-up about my availability soon.

Since I have four apps out in the Catalog, I figured I should let my users know that I will most likely not be available to respond to tweets or e-mails over the next week and a half since I’m getting married next weekend.

I will absolutely respond to support requests via Twitter or email once I return from my break.

Here’s where you can get support:

foursquare: if there is a problem with the foursquare service (i.e., not connecting, wrong points, improper mayorship, etc) you can contact foursquare’s support (as you should always be doing in these cases) on Twitter at @4sqSupport or on their support site: http://support.foursquare.com/home. If you have problems with the foursquare app, you can use the in-app contact form to send me a message and I’ll get to it as soon as I start handling e-mail again.

growlr: As with foursquare, if you have problems with the Untappd service, you can contact Untappd via twitter: @untappd or their support site: http://help.untappd.com/ And if you have a problem with the app, shoot me a tweet at @zhephree and I’ll respond sometime after the 16th.

neato!: Shoot me a tweet at @zhephree or @neato_webos and I’ll respond sometime after the 16th.

incredible!: Shoot me a tweet @zhephree or @incrediblewebos and I’ll respond sometime after the 16th.

Just wanted everyone to know so you won’t freak out if I don’t respond in my usual timely manner.

Enjoy a Zhephree-less week!

After HP effectively killed webOS devices and made webOS’s future uncertain, they launched a “firesale” this weekend, pushing TouchPads out the door at $99. They’re sold out almost everywhere. This has lead to thousands of new webOS users itching to download apps. I figured it’d be cool to see what happened with my apps over the weekend.

foursquare
This is by far my most popular app and it continues to be so. In its heyday, about a year or so ago, it would average about 400 downloads per day. In the last 8-12 months, that number has steadily decreased to about 250 per day. Sunday saw 511 downloads, almost double my daily average. TouchPad users went from a handful, around a couple hundred, to over 1700 users checking-in on a TouchPad (including Friday, Saturday, and Sunday downloads). There are now 70% more TouchPad users than Veer users.

neato!
neato! has always had low, but very steady download numbers. Enough cover my monthly cellphone bill, with some spending cash after that. Sunday had a 70% uptick in sales from Saturday, which had a 10% increase from Friday, which also had a 10% increase from Thursday. neato! is a very niche app and it’s hard to explain it in text, so it doesn’t get the downloads it should. It’s also a phone-sized Mojo app, so it doesn’t get top billing like TouchPad-specific apps, making downloads less common on a TouchPad (it works perfectly though). There are now 4 times as many TouchPad users as Veer users, and by the end of the week, I suspect TouchPad users will overtake Pixi users, to put the TouchPad in the number two slot for neato!.

growlr
I don’t track individual downloads for growlr, but from total downloads, it looks like about an 8% increase in users, which is good for such a niche app.

This is all very encouraging to me, and has given me new energy to work on incredible! and get it out the door for the new users. The response from my beta testers has been overwhelmingly positive (with bug reports as well, naturally), so it feels good.

I encourage other webOS devs (even those that gave up) to look at their stats if they can and see how their apps are doing. It might be encouraging!

Just like foursquare, growlr for Untappd is also open source. It’s not as feature-rich as foursquare, but it does some stuff you might learn from, or if you want to make your own Untappd app, here’s some stuff to get you started.

growlr on GitHub

The time is coming near, webOS fans. The TouchPad is set to launch this summer and all rumors point to June-something. This means one thing:

I have to get off my ass and start coding for the TouchPad.

I’ve filled you all in on my development roadmap and I wanted to give an update since I’m at a turning point right now.

MOJO
I’ll give you some updates on my apps built on the Mojo (current) framework.

growlr
Version 0.7 of growlr was submitted to Palm this weekend, adding the ability to view the beers your friends are drinking and the ability to toast and comment on them. I expect it in the Catalog this week. This will be one of, if no the last update to growlr for a while. Don’t worry — it’ll make its way to the TouchPad.

neato!
A new version of neato! — version 1.2 — is almost finished. I plan to submit this to Palm this week. It’ll add two new features: scheduling and card-only mode. Scheduling will allow you to have neato! launch and close at specific times so you don’t have to remember to open or close it. Useful if you only use neato! when you’re at work, so you could, say, have it launch at 8:30am and shut down at 4:45pm. Card-only mode will allow neato! to stay open and connected but without a dashboard icon. This will require a full card open, but won’t take up any screen real estate,  which is precious on the Pixi and Veer. I’ll also be adding support for Carbon, Spaz, and hopefully phnx Twitter apps. I am 90% certain this will be the final Mojo release of neato!. Oh, and a new browser extension will be launched with it, but I’m not saying which browser yet. neato! will probably make it to the TouchPad down the road, but it’s not a high priority.

foursquare
This is a tough one. It’s my biggest and most widely-used app. Version 2.6 just launched this week, adding the new leaderboard and some other stuff. I have one more maintenance release (read: bug fixes) I’m working on that’ll release soon, but that will be about all that happens now. Bug fixes, and minor tweaks or small feature additions. If enough people clamor for whatever awesome new stuff foursquare cooks up soon, I’ll add it in. Don’t worry — support won’t cease and I’ll pick up development on foursquare later this year to rebuild it in Enyo for future device support. I’ll always be your foursquare developer.

incredible!
The big one! This is a huge project, but it’s getting close to a beta launch. I’m hoping for a beta launch around early June (which is super soon). I want to have a full launch of the Mojo version shortly after. 

ENYO
I have some info about the Enyo/TouchPad versions of my apps.

I’ve prioritized all four of my apps for how they will come to the TouchPad. It’s sort of the reverse order they originally launched.

1. incredible!
   This will be my first TouchPad app. I want desperately to have it coincide with the TouchPad launch, but I don’t see it being spot on. However, I’m going to start working on it now, during the same time I’m developing the Mojo version. This way, it’ll be mostly done by the time the Mojo version launches and hopefully development will go speedier since some ideas and designs already happened. 
2. growlr
   While Untappd isn’t super-duper mainstream, I feel this will be a nice TouchPad app as people do drink beer at home, so the odds of checking-in to beers on a tablet are pretty good. Plus, it’s a 75% finished app on Mojo, so it’ll get completed on TouchPad.
3. foursquare
   I had trouble deciding between neato! and foursquare, but I think foursquare will be the biggest benefit. Plus, it’ll give me a chance to rewrite it, and it really needs it.
4. neato!
   With Touch-to-Share’s ability to move info from your phone to your tablet, device-to-device is handled natively. And, since Mojo won’t be killed off any time soon, neato! will still work on the TouchPad. In fact, I think its dashboard icon will be less intrusive on the TouchPad, so it’s not as high priority. It will be rewritten at some point, though.

So, what about time frames? I’d love to have incredible! out by July, but we’ll see how that goes. As for the other apps, the last chunk of the year is completely booked up for me between getting married and probably going back to school, so foursquare and neato! might not see rewrites until 2012. Unless Enyo is super fast to develop in. I dunno, haven’t started yet.

Remember, foursquare is open source, so if there’s a bug and you fix it, send me a pull request! It’d be a big help! It’s a free app, so it’s no big deal to me if you guys help out! Just send me a pull request and if I’m down with it, I’ll merge it with the master and submit it to Palm! It’s a good way to keep the app alive while I’m super swamped right now.

I was looking at all my various app stats and I thought I’d share them. Aside from my apps being open-source, I make my business open source (mostly).

neato!

Sales. neato! sales have been low, but steady. I expected a slight increase with the launch of the Veer the other day and I was mostly correct. I sold 4 times as many copies of the app on May 16 (the day after the Veer launch) as I did on May 15, but, given the low raw numbers, this isn’t significant so much as it sales coming out of a slump. A positive either way. The best sales day in the last 30 days was April 27th, for some reason.

Remedy. I’m planning an update to neato! very soon (bug fixes and a new feature). With it will come me pushing it more than I do. With the relatively small userbase on webOS, word of mouth isn’t enough and some sort of active push is needed. Maybe not for all apps, but definitely an app like neato! that has an ambiguous name and a feature set that seems pointless until you see it in action. I’m going to add a screencast video to the App Catalog listing and see if that helps.

Stats. We’re coming up on 3000 unique downloads of neato!. For an app like neato!, this isn’t bad, but obviously I’d like more. Interesting tidbit, neato! users are good about upgrading and having the most current version of the app. 88% of users are on v1.0. I assume some of the ones not on the newest version have stopped using it altogether. Fun fact: 3 people have downloaded the app with a Veer.

foursquare
Downloads. Downloads for foursquare have been insanely consistent, fluctuating very seldom. I’m averaging about 250 downloads per day, which isn’t Earth-shattering, but on a smaller platform like webOS, that’s pretty good. Contrasting neato!’s slight influx after the Veer launch, foursquare has actually dropped as of yesterday, for the first time in a month. Still has good numbers, but it’s probably a temporary decline. The largest download day in the last 30 days was May 7th, with400 downloads, which was when I launched the Explore feature in the app.

Remedy. There’s not a whole lot I can do here. This is more on foursquare themselves, and not so much as promoting my app as it is them promoting the service. If people know about foursquare and want to use it, if they have a webOS device, they’ll search for it. I doubt many people come across the webOS app and go “What’s foursquare?” and download it. I suspect people seek it out. However, I notice that people DO download the app when it shows up in the “What’s New” section of the App Catalog. I have another update coming in a couple of weeks that will boost numbers again.

Stats. We’re very close to hitting 100,000 unique downloads. This is pretty awesome, considering we were at 85,000 last month. That’s 15,000 downloads in about 30 days, which is really nice, and double the average downloads on a normal month. Contrasting neato!’s 3 Veer downloads, foursquare has 85 Veer users, which is pretty decent. (Not to mention the 18 TouchPad users, even though it’s not out yet…) As for having the most recent version of the app, foursquare users aren’t so good at this with only 10% of users having v2.5. This is specially interesting because neato! has no automatic pop-up telling users of a new version, whereas foursquare does have a dialog that annoys you to upgrade on every launch. Not sure what conclusions I can draw from this of whether the dialog is helping or hurting. Maybe only 5% of users would download the updates if I didn’t. Also of note, there are ~8 million foursquare users worldwide. With these download numbers, webOS accounts for about 1.25% of foursquare users. This is low, low, low, but it’s consistent. When the webOS app first launch in 2009, we accounted for just under 1% of users, so while it’s a small increase, it’s an increase nonetheless. However, these numbers aren’t totally significant since total foursquare users includes SMS, mobile web, official and unofficial iPhone, Android, and BlackBerry apps, Windows Phone 7, Symbian, and more. I think an interesting metric would be comparing webOS numbers to WP7 or Symbian, or possibly even mobile web. It’s already known that webOS isn’t as big as iOS or Android, so comparing them at this stage isn’t so important.

growlr

Downloads. I don’t have full stats on growlr yet since I haven’t added Metrix to it yet, so these will not be as interesting. We’ve had less than 1000 downloads for growlr, but for a sub-1.0 app that isn’t feature-complete and has been available for about 6 weeks, that’s not so bad. Not to mention, Untappd is a very niche network and for that to succeed on a small platform like webOS at all is interesting. Add to it that I never promote the app and it makes sense.

Remedy. First and foremost, I need to finish the app and get it to v1.0. But, like foursquare, growlr kind of is reliant on Untappd’s overall popularity. However, I do think there’s some room for promotion to garner new users (for this and foursquare). Once I finish up incredible! I’ll be able to push my existing apps a little harder.

So, there you have it. Nothing monumental, nothing amazing, but nothing totally discouraging either. Hopefully this summer, I can make a bigger push on my apps and the TouchPad and Pre 3 launches this summer will hopefully provide an organic increase in app downloads/purchases.

I submitted growlr v0.6.0 last night. Some cool stuff, some boring stuff.

• I added in the ability to rate a beer when you check in, as well as view your ratings and the average ratings for beers. 
• You can now also view information about a brewery by tapping on the name of a brewery when you’re viewing a beer. 
• I’ve also added in the ability to share your check-in with Gowalla. You’ll need to connect your Gowalla account on the Untappd website first.
• I added a limited view of your own profile. Just shows your avatar and the number of beers you’ve drank, the number of unique beers you’ve drank, and the number of beers you’ve created. Nothing fantastic, but it’s a start.

What’s Next:

• I want to have more info on your profile. There’s only so much that’s available through the Untappd API, but there’s more than what I have.
• List of friends’ check-ins. Definitely want to add this in. From there, I’ll move to viewing check-ins, as well as toasting or commenting on check-ins.

That’s it for the time being as incredible! and foursquare (as well as two websites I’m working on) are taking up my development time as well. Hopefully growlr will be available in the catalog at some point today.

As I mentioned last week, I’m working on a quick app for Untappd, called growlr. I didn’t quite make my goal of a weekend launch, but I did submit it to Palm last night, so it should be available today. 

First, you’ll need an Untappd account, which you can get from inside the app, or by visiting the Untappd website. On their website, you can login and link your Facebook, Twitter, and foursquare accounts to your Untappd account. This will allow you to share your beer checkins on Twitter and Facebook, as well as check-in to foursquare simultaneously.

After you’ve logged in, you’ll be able to search for a beer, or choose one you’ve recently checked-in to, or one that’s currently trending.

Once you’ve found the beer for which you’re looking, go ahead and tap it (ha!) to view some detailed info about the beer, such as the style of beer, the ABV (if available), how many times you’ve had it, and how popular the beer is.

From here you can check-in to the beer by tapping the button, which will bring you to this scene:

If you’re a foursquare user, this step will be very familiar to you. Simply enter in a comment about the beer, if you wish, then select where you’d like to share your check-in: Facebook or Twitter. You can optionally attach a venue to your Untappd check-in by tapping the “Add Your Location?” button. You don’t even have to be a foursquare user for this. If you aren’t a foursquare user, Untappd just associates the venue with your beer check-in, and this allows you to earn location-specific Untappd badges. If you are a foursquare user, you can toggle the Share with foursquare button to have Untappd check you in on foursquare as well. (You only need to share with foursquare on your first check-in to a location).

Once you’re all checked-in, Untappd will show you some info about your check-in, alert you to any Untappd badges you earned, and list 5 recommended beers to you. And, if you checked-in on foursquare, it’ll show you who the mayor of the venue is, if you stole the mayorship, how many days from the mayorship you are, how many points you’ve earned, and any foursquare badges you’ve earned.

This is only the beginning. Growlr will be a full Untappd client in the end, but for now, it’s focused on the check-in. I’ll add profile views, a feed of your friends’ check-ins, check-in comments, and everything else. I’ll keep you updated!

I like beer. I’ve got beer I love and beer I hate. Breweries that always delight me, and ones that always disappoint. I also love trying new beers and seeing what beer other people are drinking. And that’s where Untappd comes in. Untappd is the foursquare of beer — search for a beer, “check-in” to it to let your friends know what you’re having. After each check-in, Untappd recommends three other beers for you to try based on what you selected, what you’ve had before, and what your friends have had.

You can also rate beers, comment on them, and say where you’re drinking it (which will check you in to foursquare at the same time!). You earn badges for drinking at different places and drinking different beers, or drinking on certain days. Just like foursquare, only, with beer. 

So, if you’re a beer drinker, Untappd is essential. I’ve accepted friend requests from people I’ve never met just to see what beers they drink. I’ve been on the lookout for new brews ever since. 

Untappd launched as a web app — this allowed them to launch on all major smartphones (including webOS) quickly and cheaply, essential for a bootstrapped startup like themselves. They’ve recently launched an API to allow others to build off of their data, which is pretty awesome since I think they’re only 2 guys. I had the pleasure of meeting Greg Avola (one of the founders of Untappd) at the Palm Developer Day in NYC last year and we talked webOS and Untappd (and he was one of the first people to see incredible! in action, too). These are good guys, so, give Untappd a try!

Anyway, their API is pretty new, but already powerful. Remember that feature I said that let you say where you were drinking your beer? Well, it requires a mobile browser that supports geolocation, which, sadly, the webOS 1.4.5 web browser does not. This means the majority of webOS Untappd users can’t add their location to Untappd check-ins.

So, I took it upon myself to build one of the first native Untappd apps, and do it for webOS. This will allow fast loading (no waiting for the web) AND it’ll allow geolocation for venue adding. Plus, with foursquare opening up their venues API, things are easier than ever. 

The app? growlr. (As in “growler”, a type of beer bottle)

There’s your login screen. (minor spacing adjustments have already been made) 

So, what will growlr do? My plan for initial launch is for you to be able to search for a beer, view the beer and check-in to the beer (and attach your location). Future versions will add user profiles, your friends’ activity feeds, commenting, and more. But for now, I want to get the check-in function out because that’s the most important thing that I’m trying to improve upon (geolocation, anyway).

My aim is to launch by this weekend, so if you’re doing your St. Patrick’s Day celebrations this weekend instead of Thursday, you should be good to go!

BTW, speaking of this weekend and St. Patrick’s, check this out and maybe donate a few dollars!