What have we been up to?

In the last post a new app was *hinted at*. Well the app has been submitted to the iTunes app store and now its time for some details.

The app is called "Picture Hype" and its a fun and easy way to create and share composite images, called Hypes, on your iPhone/iPod Touch. Hypes can contain text and images. You have the ability to move, zoom and rotate the text and images. Then you can save the new image to your photo library or e-mail it to your friends. (In the future we'll be able to send to Flickr and Facebook).

Here's a quick look at what you can do with Picture Hype:

This image took less than a minute to create with a single photo and three texts. It shows the ability to change font and color, as well as rotate and zoom of text.

You can see some more at the Picture Hype page.

Them Apples

Them Apples -- our free Apple guide (actual apples that you eat, not a consumer products company or a even a record company) is finally out!

It was out at midnight today and is in the reference section. You can find it here: Them Apples

Time for an update.

Wow, its been almost a month since my last blog post. We've been very busy around here. Here's a quick status:

1. PaintSwatches - Version 1.3 is alive and kicking on the iTunes store. Now in the copious spare time we have we're putting together a wish list for the next version

2. What If - We're working on some major changes including a vast improvement on the price slider concept and adding things like commission, etc... This is on the back burner at the moment as we have a couple of other projects that became more pressing.

3. Super Secret Stealth App -- This is the reason we haven't been blogging in a month -- Can't talk about this one yet -- but look for an update soon.

4. Less Secret Stealth App -- This is another one we CAN talk about -- just a little though (and maybe a quick screen cap) -- Basically this app is an Apple Reference (not Apple computer, but those shiny red things you used to give to your teachers to suck up). It'll be free and hopefully in Apple's hands by Monday.

Stand by for more images and updates. I'll try to post the final images from the "apples" app next week.

Sneak Peek: PaintSwatches 1.3

Next week we're submitting a new version of PaintSwatches to Apple. (Hopefully it doesn't take too long for them to release it -- 1.2.1 still isn't out -- it's been almost 2 weeks).

If I had to describe the new version of PaintSwatches in just one word it would be: PROJECTS.

Yes, Projects. We've made many Project improvements in the new version including a new Project screen that shows you a sampling of your Workspace colors. Here's how it looks:

The Project screen will display up to three distinct colors from the Workspace so you can quickly spy which project you are looking for.

We've also added the ability to Copy Projects, Rename them, Change the Palette Background Color and ....

Add your own custom image to the Workspace:

We're very excited about this release and are already thinking about the changes coming for 1.4 (think Complimentary, Split Complimentary, etc...). Stay tuned.

Paintswatches 1.2.1

In response to a couple of users who were experiencing some crashes in PaintSwatches, we investigated this issue. After rigorous testing we were able to find a bug and address the problem and submit a fix to Apple for approval. In addition, we would like to suggest that if anyone is having this problem please turn off you phone, wait twenty seconds and turn it back on. This will reset the phone, which is a computer, and will keep you from pulling your hair out until the fix is released by Apple. We look forward to getting on with the new features we have planned. Stay tuned for future posts which will tell you all about them.

Welcome California Paints

Over the weekend we released to Apple a new update of PaintSwatches that includes California Paints. We're very excited to have their colors on board! When the release comes out check out their line, they really have some beautiful colors.

What If 1.1 - Coming Soon

Its been a little busy around here. Working on improvements to PaintSwatches, working on improvements to What If, working on some new ideas, etc.... The culmination of all that work is that What If 1.1 has been sent to Apple yesterday morning. Its chock full of improvements, a custom key pad, a how to section with slides illustrating usage, and the ability to aggregate positions.

We also have some new improvements in the works, a much better price slider and a graph of price points for quick reference. Very exciting stuff.

We'll drop a post when the approval goes through.

PaintSwatches 1.1 -- It's out there

PaintSwatches 1.1 was released into the App Store yesterday. Unfortunately it took more than 16 hours for Apple to put it out once it was approved so we started on the bottom of the utilities page. It would have been nice to hang on the front of Utilities for a while so we'd get some exposure, but we have no control over that. I checked out the ColorSnap application (the Sherwin-Williams one) and noticed a very interesting thing. In reading the comments it seems like many people are after organization of their paint colors -- exactly what PaintSwatches does. If only there was a way to reach out to those people directly.... Anyways, for those of you who have downloaded PaintSwatches -- thanks and enjoy.

What If and DFUs

Well we got our first review from What If. The user (Ac1030) lambasted the app, not because it was bad or crashed, but because the user didn't understand how to use an iPhone. The user complained that you couldn't delete data. I don't want to harp on the person that wrote the review. But I wish that they had viewed the demo or at least contacted support for clarification. Anyone else who contacted us would know that we respond within hours, sometimes within minutes. A quick check would have explained to the user "swipe to delete". My feeling on bad reviews is if we deserve it fine, but if person is in the wrong they shouldn't be able to lambast you without at least a chance to retort. I think Apple needs to rework the system to allow the developer at least a chance to respond so that you don't lose sales because of one erroneous user.

PaintSwatches 1.1

An update to PaintSwatches has been submitted to the iTunes store. The update fixes a couple of issues:

• Notes are being saved properly
• A crash when selecting colors has been fixed

There is also a new feature we call "Snap Back" where when you select a color for a room and then go to select another color it takes you back to where you just where (including any search).

We were hoping to get a couple more color lines represented in this release, but we needed to get the bug fixes out. In the next version we plan to have at least two color lines added.

Announcing What If

We are pleased to announce the availability of our newest iPhone Application, What If. What If allows you to see how price changes can affect your stocks. Using a slider to move prices up and down you can see the gain or loss on a stock position.

You can find What If here.

Up on Youtube

After a lot (I mean a lot) of takes, we have a demo up on YouTube. If anyone is interested the demo was done on a Mac (well, duh!) using Screenflick; which is a really simple to use, inexpensive and works really well.

You can find our video here.

This Old House

PaintSwatches was featured in a blog posting from This Old House. We're very excited indeed.

So it begins...

Hello and welcome to our kick off post. If you haven't been to our website, check it out.

As of right now we have one app that has been approved and is on the iPhone App Store called PaintSwatches. It's our paint organization and management tool. We think it is really cool. You can arrange your colors by room, play with them in all sorts of different ways, e-mail them, etc... Very useful for designers, realtors and DIYers.

We have support for a number of paint manufacturers, mostly in the US, although requests have been made to support European colors, which we're looking into.

We'll have tips and tricks to follow along with details about our waiting to be approved second app.