My old computer finally tanked.  I had used iWeb to setup my old site, and the files were all on the dead computer.  I was able to restore some of my files (Mission Critical), but my website was lost.  So, I gave up on hosting it through mobile me, and paid for some real hosting.  So here it is.  Hopefully I’ll update it a lot more frequently, and treat it better.

I realize that most of my products shortcomings are the support for them.  I really want to do better tutorials, and instructions.  In addition, I think the marketing material required for them would definitely improve sales.  I read through some of my descriptions on my apps, and looked over the support material, and realized I wouldn’t buy it.  Yet I have 4.5 stars on some of my apps, so once they are purchased, people like them… I need to put more effort forth towards getting people onboard.

I’ve got some really long term projects in the works.  I’m a bit tired of doing the conventional crap apps.  They sale well, and the offer a quick return, but I can do better.  My best app took over a year to write, and offers the best return rate on my effort.  Took me quite  while to realize it, but quality is held in higher regard than any other feature of all of the apps that are out there.

I still might do one or two, for the quick enjoyment… but my goals have changed.

I’ve had an amazing response to the development of Civil Engineering Calculations.  It started as a simple Vertical Curve Calculation tool, that has grown into multiple functions.  The responses I’ve gotten have helped my to be exposed to more specialties than my own, and has greatly aided my studies as I prepare for the P.E. exam this April.  Additionally, the feedback has been international, and has provided me an interesting perspective on the various Engineering practices around the globe.

When the iPad was announced, I decided that I was going to support it with Civil Calcs 2.0 without charging my existing customers anything.  So my next update will contain functionality for the iPad.  I hope to have it submitted to Apple prior to March 27th, as they have implied that it could become available for the iPad launch on April 3rd if I meet that deadline.  Some of the features will be rushed to meet that deadline, but I’ve got a lot of new features already polished for submission.

For Version 2.0 I’ve added:

1. •Ability to Size a Pipe based on all other inputs
2. •H:V Ratios implemented in all Slope field inputs
3. •Slide Ruler implemented in all Distance field inputs
4. •Toolbox. allows quick access to the Slide Ruler, H:V, and Level
5. •Additional Bug Fixes, and function enhancements

Moving forward I’ve had a number of requests, and I really want to implement all of them.  Some of them will take much longer to add than others, and that really is the only reason that I won’t include all of the recommendations immediately.  Some of them are listed here:

Graphic Representation of the Pipe’s wetted perimeter:  I’ve wanted to do this for some time, but anything graphical takes time to program correctly, and I’ve been more focused on other tasks.  Although this is near the top of my list of things to add next.

Traverse Input Modification:  I want to add the ability for curves, and for inputting bearings, not azimuths.  The current input is confusing, and takes some getting used to.  I’ve come up with a way that will make this much easier, and hope to have it finished soon.  The ability to input Horizontal Curves will build off of this, and is probably further out than the modified input.

Metric Ruler Addition:  The Slide Ruler currently only has 4 USCS scales.  I hope to add Metric rulers, and many other USCS scales.  The trick becomes the screen size and density for the iPad vs the iPhone/iPod Touch.  I’ve basically got to do everything 2 times, and so I’ve only finished 4 rulers.  I hope to have many more added soon.

Better Metric Support:  A lot of my customers are in Australia and Europe.  This isn’t something that I had anticipated, but I really intend on familiarizing myself with the calculation differences, and making those accommodations.  I think some of the functions work, but there is a lot of room for improvement here.

Pressurized Flow:  This is far from my specialty, but I have received some requests to add in some pressure pipe calculations, as well as headloss calcs.  I need to study this a lot more, but hope to add some of these calculations eventually as well.

Again, if you have any additional comments or thoughts on what could be added to help the Civil Engineering Community please let me know.

There has been much said about the iPad, and it’s capabilities or lack thereof.  My intent though is to try and identify the course which I plan to take with the products that I’ve developed, and continue to maintain.

I like many others downloaded the new SDK to play with the iPad emulator before the availability of the device is possible.  I launched my app, and was quite pained to see how my apps looked on the iPad.  So I started to retool Civil Calcs to Utilize more of the screen.  I started re-thinking about the types of people that might use it, and how effective of an engineering tool it could be.  I strongly doubt that there will be many people who jump to the iPad, especially engineers, but I thought I would start here, and see how things go.

So I’ve Moved my text fields over, and taken more of the screen to draw in the depiction of vertical curves, channels, and area shapes.  The added space made me realize that I could show much more information, including X,Y coordinates of the Points on the Area depiction, more detail for the side slope of channels, and more information for Vertical curves, and other elements as well.  K Value, for instance, didn’t really fit on the iPhone version, but I plan on adding it now.  So in addition to all of the features I was working on for version 1.6 I’ve now decided to try and prepare a universal binary for the iPad/iPhone hybrid app.

This will mean that my current customers will receive a free update, which will enable some really sweet things if they have an iPad.  If they don’t then they only get the other features that I’ve been working on.  But should they ever get an iPad, they’ll receive these things for free.  The trouble in this is that It will take me an obscene amount of time compared to the revenue that it will generate.  I really don’t see many of my customers switching immediately (if ever) to the iPad.  And yet for them I will be doing them a pointless favor….

For my other apps I plan on waiting.  I have no intentions of performing this favor for other apps, but I’m sure I will reconsider once more people demand it, based on the consumption of the iPad.  I would much rather re-write the app as a separate one for the iPad, so that customers who have an iPad, will have to pay an additional $0.99 for their iPad version.  This is largely because of the amount of features that I would add on the iPad version, and if I was to do this for free, then I’d just be wasting my efforts for the good of the world.  I’ve got to pay the mortgage, so for these customers I’m of the opinion that they can use the 2x mode on the iPad, or pay an additional $0.99 for the native version.

Hopefully though I don’t get too caught up in these updates, and trying to get things done before March, because I am taking the PE exam in April, and need to focus some of my efforts towards studying.  I justify the Civil Calcs re-write to be reviewing vertical curve calculations, drainage calculations, traverse refresher course, etc.  Hopefully my justification won’t bleed too much into my studies.

ast week I worked to perfect interpretation of the Fast Fourier Transform function, to determine and approximate the average pitch of sounds being observed in a room.  It involved stretching my mind to review the calculus courses I never took, and to understand programming concepts that I skipped in school.  Needless to say I’m proud of some of the formulas that I came up with.

So in simpler terms I believe I came up with a way to roughly figure out if a boy or a girl is talking.  I’m sure there are lots of factors as I study it more, but quick and dirty, and quite simple.  I submitted to apple, and I got a really quick turn around.  I submitted it on a Saturday, and on Monday morning around nine they began review.  And a little after one in the afternoon it was approved.

I thought about it, and did a search in the app store, and didn’t see any free Oscilloscopes, or decibel meters, so I threw one together for fun.  It’s mostly based on code provided by Apple, but one developer published Apple’s code outright, and is charging $1.00 for it.  So since there wasn’t a free one, I thought I’d throw it out there too.

Both apps ‘launched’ the same day, but at different price points.  The one that was $1.00 got a grand total of 9 downloads in the first three days (3, 5, 1).  And the free one got 1145 (178, 451, 516).  After looking at the numbers over the week, I decided to launch a second Cootie App and make it free.  This one currently has the same features, and those 9 people (3 of which I know personally) may be pretty mad at me… But I hope to make it up to them in adding features soon.

Pretty interesting metrics.  I’m glad I don’t do this full time, because the money behind any one of these things isn’t enough to keep my house cooled in the summer.  Thankfully engineering keeps me cool, while I spend my free time coming up with fun things like this.

Overall I’m glad I did it.  And the biggest reward was a personal e-mail from Bill Amend.

All of my apps did very well for christmas, but I found the iPhone version of Screen Cleaner to be the most interesting.  I’ve skewed the representation of the Blue Versus the Green, but both represent a just representation of the jump that took place on Christmas.  (I had to divide my downloads by a factor to get it proportional to my dividends.  I only wish the two numbers were equivalent)

My Daily Downloads of my Free App Have been extremely consistent over the month of December.  You can see the Saturday and Sunday Spikes for the first three weekends of the month very clearly.  The Pro Revenue sales have been a little less defined, but you can still see the trends.  On Christmas Day my daily downloads of the free version went from the average of 2,000 to 15,000.  It didn’t beat my launch peak (22,000) but it still went up by a multiple of 7+.  I’m fairly confident that this jump wasn’t seen across all apps, because my App Ranking went from 65 to 17 within the Free Utilities Category (USA).

But I keep waiting for the spike to start falling off, and expect it to any minute, yet it hasn’t.  My only conclusion is that the number of active users went up by at least a factor of 3.  I wouldn’t be foolish enough to think that all of those were new sales of devices, but a percentage of them must be.  I think that the re-gift + new purchases has reignited the number of users who are actively perusing the app store, and participating in the market that funds my development ventures.