Marathon iPhone Ringtones

Marathon_logoI played so much multi-player marathon in the mid-late 90’s that I remember those maps as if I actually physically walked them.  Our version of the game was hyper.  We had our own custom physics with punch to fly and modified weapons that shot faster and had bigger clips. It was called Adrenaline. We played a lot of one against one games and team games.  I remember one map was called 101 Deaths Per Minute and it was no lie.  Especially with our Adrenaline physics.  So these sounds take me back.  Hearing them brings up memories of places I never actually were and of things I never actually did.

I tossed together a big batch of marathon ringtones.  It’s basically the full marathon game sound library converted to .m4r’s and zipped up.  Unzip them and drop them in to iTunes, from there copy or sync them to your phone, and they should be ready to use. Continue reading

Do app ads work?

I’m going to leave this here…

This is a click through report for an ad I bought from buy sell ads that appeared on toucharcade.com  The ad was on their home page in a side banner area and would show up for me about every 10 -15 page reloads.  I paid $275 for 100,000 impressions and right now the ad is still running with about 15k to go.  My game is 1.99 (1.40 revenue).  IF each click resulted in a buy (which is probably did not) did the ad work for me?  67 x 1.40 = $93

UPDATE inside…

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Posted in iOS

iApp Revenue Modeling (updated for 2013)

IMPORTANT UPDATE NOV 28, 2012

App Annie changed their url scheme today and these links no longer work to see revenue for a specific apple fiscal month.  Now each individual user or company has a id number that has to be embedded in the link.  In my opinion there’s no good reason for this or any security benefit as the links have always been contextual to the user who is logged in.  Me using these links shows my revenue only.  You using them shows your revenue only.  Since the link didn’t have anything to do with WHO we were and there was no user or company id in the url, there was no risk of seeing someone else’s revenue or someone seeing yours.  But today app annie changed their scheme and now to see my revenue for a date range there is a /number/ in the link, which I can only assume is my company id or my user id.  This really messes things up and I’m very bummed.

It means that I can’t provide generic links here that will work for everyone.  Your links are now different than mine as our /numbers/ are different.  I don’t see any advantage for anyone on this, but it’s the way it is today.

It’s a real shame that they’ve made these changes. This was the main way I used app annie: several times a month I would go to my blog here and click on the current fiscal month to see how I’m doing.  This allowed me to see my revenue long before apple sent out revenue reports.  And for a small company like mine, it is very helpful.  Unless they change it back I won’t be doing it this way, and I can’t provide generic links for you either.  I’ll have to make a private list of links that include my secret company id in them, probably paste them into Notes on my phone and use that to check things.  It’s a real bummer.

I’ve emailed Bertrand Schmitt at app annie who I’ve spoken to before and asked him to respond. He forwarded it to someone on his team to look into it.  I’ll update again here later to let you know what happens.

Original article:

If you’re like me and you rely on your iOS iApp revenue to pay the bills, it’s helpful to have an idea of how well you’re doing, how much revenue is coming in, and be able to calculate it before Apple releases the actual reports.

For the longest time I would sort of guess what my revenue would be each month.  I’d look at sales reports, guess a date range and hope that it was close. Somewhere in the middle of the month I’d start getting emails stating that financial reports are available per region.  Eventually all regions would be in and I’d finally have a good idea of what my next check would be.

But this month Apple is just now starting to release revenue reports for February, and I had a good idea of what my next check would be about a month ago.  Of course it’s not that complicated and I just needed to open my eyes and look for the answer. Continue reading

Posted in iOS

Awana Grand Prix 2012

Last year G and I built a car for the Awana Grand Prix.  It was a good bonding experience for us, which I think is the point.  I involved her in the process as much as I could.  It is supposed to be her car.  I did all the dangerous cutting work and she did most all the painting.  She also made most of the design decisions.  Overall I would say that it was a fair collaboration.  I also did the best I could to teach her the physics of how to make her car go fast, what kinds of things would slow her car down, and how to overcome them.

Gillian works on her awana grand prix car with a high speed dremel.

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R2D2 Dome Work

An R2D2 isn’t an R2D2 without the iconic dome.  Ours finally arrived before the new year.  In addition to being a very cool piece, it also represents a decent portion of work that needs to be done on the droid.  If you think about it, most of the personality and expression from R2D2 comes from his dome.  The eyes, the holo projectors, the lights, and the spinning around to “look” at things.

The dome comes in several pieces.  There is an outer dome, which has been laser cut for “easier” removal of all the panels, and an inner dome which comes uncut and must be manually cut if desired.  Eventually the two domes are bonded together to create the beveled look that is so familiar.

The R2D2 dome right out of the box.

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iPhone 4S

One of my facebook friends posted this on my wall:

4S, that’s it? 🙂 So, when can we expect iOS5 for iPad?

I responded on facebook and decided to also post a response here… Continue reading

Posted in iOS

R2 Ice Cube Trays

Wow.. R2D2 Ice Cube Trays.. but how well do they work?  Will they really look as great as this marketing picture?  Our baby shower is Saturday and my wife wanted to do a robot theme.  We have robot cupcake pops and other themed items, so I thought some robot ice would be good and maybe I could also use the trays to make some robot chocolates or some other candy.  I’ll make a bunch of ice ‘cubes’ during the week and later in the week make some candy. Continue reading

All is right in the world

Originally I received two lower arms instead of one of each.  Paul from Florida got two uppers.  So we cross shipped them and now we each have a complete set.  I also got a restraining bolt in the process.  Paul had an extra one and gave me a very good deal on it. Continue reading

Finally!! – The iPhone is allowed to control serial devices!

First a bit of history

It’s no secret that Apple keeps a tight reign on what they allow developers to do with their hardware.  I don’t necessarily disagree with this.  But it can be annoying when you want to do something special – like use the computing power of an iPod Touch as the brain for a robot.  Because that requires some way to interface the iHardware with all the robot sensors and motor controllers.  But my understanding when iOS4 came out was that you could communicate with outside devices via the 30-pin dock connector.  Yeah, not exactly.

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First part is in… and it’s not right :(

I want an all aluminum droid. You can build one out of any number of materials (wood, pvc, cardboard, styrene, resin) but none of that is appealing to me at all. But all metal means expensive, it means heavy, it means complicated… and it means waiting… possibly for y-e-a-r-s…

The first thing to know about R2 building is that aluminum parts are built in runs. Some brave builder will find about 40 other people who need the same aluminum part he needs, and will organize a part run.  The idea is that no one makes any money doing the run, costs are kept as low as possible, and by doing 40 pieces we all get a lower price. I’ve looked in to doing one off CNC parts and it’s crazy expensive and shops don’t want to touch it.  But much of the cost is in the setup, testing, and then turning the machine on to do a bunch of pieces.  When doing only one the overhead is too much.  All the parts are manufactured to a club spec so they should all fit together.  And these days people are doing “diet” parts where they drill away parts of the metal that aren’t seen in order to lower the weight as compared to producing a solid piece of aluminum.

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