Lawrence Ingraham’s Blog

Probably the most popular podcast for Mac and Apple news is MacBreak Weekly. Hosted by Leo Laporte and routinely featuring Alex Lindsay, Scott Bourne and Andy Ihnatko, MBW does a weekly segment called “Pick of the Week.” This is where each person chooses an app, website or hardware they’re excited about. My iPhone app Zoo Sounds was one of the lucky ones that got picked.

Zoo Sounds is my first attempt at iPhone development. It’s a very simple game designed for parents to play with their kids. A picture of a zoo animal is displayed which makes the sounds of the animal when tapped. There’s 12 animals in total as well as a mode showing four animals per screen. It’s a very niche app, designed for kids ages 1 to 3, selling for $.99 in the App Store.

Finding a Needle in a Haystack

Life is tough for a new app developer trying to name for himself. The App Store is overflowing with content, of all levels of quality. Trying to get noticed is more difficult that the actual development of the app. I had a website up promoting the app and had an open beta during development. Soon as it was released, I sent out a few dozen promo codes to people I follow on Twitter I know have kids and could appreciate it. Posted it to Digg and Stumbleupon and started running AdWords ads. Anything to drum up some buzz.

Zoo Sounds hit the App Store the evening of Saturday May 2nd. The first full day of sales I sold 17 copies, which was more than I expected. The second day, Monday, I sold 11 copies and figured sales would slowly drop down to 5 or so over the next week. My sales unexpectedly went up on Tuesday, selling another 17 copies. It wasn’t until I listened to MBW the next day that I realized Zoo Sounds was Alex’s pick.

Pick of the Week = Explosive Growth

The episode of MBW was recorded live Tuesday evening and hit the web Wednesday morning. Sales ramped up the rest of the week capping at 102 copies sold on Friday. Zoo Sounds made it as high as the 18th Top Paid Kids Game in the US App Store. I sold over 400 copies in the first week of release. This is all thanks to Alex and the rest of the guys at MBW.

Of course that growth wasn’t sustainable. Sales dropped 15% or so every day. It’s currently one of the top paid kids games, but who knows for how long. By comparison, my second app Farm Sounds, which I actually think is better, started with the same launch numbers but has stuck around 5 copies a day.

While I was selling 100 apps a day, I was sitting stable at 18th Top Paid Kids Game. As of this writing I’m selling 25 apps a day and floating around 50th. Those guys higher than 10th must be selling at least 150 a day, and I’m sure this is a slow category. Someone’s getting rich.

Website Statistics

Since I’m a web developer, naturally I’m extremely interested in how the site has performed. The launch day website traffic was busy because of my promotional efforts, but I expected a bigger bump from MBW. Course they didn’t mention the website, but I always Google something before I buy it.

It’s really difficult to determine how many sales I received from the website, but I know through LinkShare I sent 112 customers to iTunes but sold only 20 copies. That works out to only 5% of sales coming directly from the website. I can only assume people are buying apps directly from their iPhones so they don’t have to sync to install.

What’s strange to me is I haven’t seen any relation between web traffic and sales. My web traffic hit its high the day of launch, when I promoted the hell out of it. It again reached that high after MBW hit iTunes, but has stayed pretty consistent the last few weeks while sales have dropped.

As a reminder to all you SEO guys out there, exact match domain names are super important. They never said the url tantrumapps.com during the podcast, but 57% of my traffic comes from visitors typing in the url.

I got 13% of my website traffic in the first week from wiki.twit.tv, one of the nice perks of getting picked. It’s a nofollow link, and the traffic has definitely died down since the podcast hit, but it’s good quality traffic.

Closing Thoughts

I hope you enjoyed this read. Not a lot of people have the unique perspective I do, so naturally I wanted to share with the rest of the community. Please let me know what you think in the comments, or you can find me on twitter if you want to talk directly.

Update May 26th, 2009

Yesterday we sold our 1000th app; 928 Zoo Sounds and 88 Farm Sounds. Works out to 24 days of sales to reach the 1000 mark, average of 42 apps a day. Course I can’t see reaching 2000 within the same amount of time, but it sure was a fun ride.

Check out all my apps on iTunes

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I’ve always wanted to know how to write apps for the Mac. I’ve bought a few books over the years and created a bunch of Hello World apps, but never made anything worth sharing with anyone. I just always lost my motivation after the first chapter, never had a clear direction on what to build I guess.

Now that I have a daughter, I see things differently. Most relevant was the battle parents go through trying to keep their kids busy while waiting for dinner/checkout/changes/etc. You run out of things to distract them really fast, and to fix that you bring around a bag full of toys to keep them entertained. I figured, I’ve got my iPhone here, why not use it to distract her?

That’s when it clicked, I can make apps for my kids to play! Sure she can’t really hold the iPhone properly, and she’s not really able to swipe or pinch, but she can tap. I know what she can do, and I bet there’s a lot of kids her age with parents who would love these apps as well. There’s my motivation, keep making apps for my daughter and if she gets bored, make another. So I started a company developing iPhone games for kids, called Tantrum Apps.

The first app I’ve released is called Zoo Sounds. There’s 12 zoo animals that your child can tap on, and when they tap the animal makes their sound. Simple concept, but it’s incredibly effective for distracting her. She’s also learning what different animals look like, what they sound like and their names as I read them out to her.

There’s a second mode of play which shows 4 animals at once. Then you can ask your kid “Where’s the Elephant” and have them tap on the right animal. It’s a little more advanced than the single image mode, but she’s able to get through most of the animals correctly. That’s only going to improve over time, the more and more we play.

Take a look at the video below showing Zoo Sounds in action. If you’re interested in learning more about it, check out the official Zoo Sounds page. And of course, if you want to play it yourself, you can buy Zoo Sounds from the App Store.

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One of my biggest gripes when I reviewed the Kodak Zi6 was the lack of Image Stabilization. I’m using this camera mostly to capture video of a very energetic 18 month old, and she’s hard to keep still. This results in me running after her trying to hold the camera steady, which doesn’t produce the most usable clips. I was hoping the new Kodak Zi6 firmware would address this, but it doesn’t seem like it.

This is why I was so excited when Apple introduced iMovie 09, with built in Image Stabilization. The pitch was, take some video from the back of a truck driving in africa, run this filter on the clip and Boom, usable video. Looks like a perfect cure for “running after daughter” footage. I set out today to give it a shot.

Using the Image Stabilization within iMovie 09

After I imported the clips in from the Zi6 into iPhoto, then created thumbnails in iMovie, I played back the clips to see how bad they looked. My wife actually said she was feeling a bit nauseous after watching one of them. If a clip can do that, it’ll make a perfect example for the test!

To use the new Stabilization feature, just select a clip and choose “Clip Adjustments” from the little blue menu in the bottom left of the first frame. A HUD menu will appear, click on “Analyze Entire Clip” to start the process. You can also get here from the File menu by selecting “Analyze for Stabilization” though I haven’t found a keyboard shortcut.

This process takes a while, depending on the size of your clip and the power of your computer. I’m running a Macbook Pro 2.4 GHz with 4 gig of ram on the Zi6′s 720p footage. The 56 second clip took around 7 minutes to process. I cut it down to 20 seconds, which should be enough for you to get the idea.

To use the new clip, you need to drag it to the Project window, which is kinda weird. I mean, just let me see how it worked without that extra step. Anyway, you drag the new clip to the project window and hit the spacebar to play. The little red squiggles mean that the clip has “excessive shake” and won’t make a huge difference to your clip, though the improvements are more than good enough for me.

Here’s a quick 20 second clip from the Zi6 I shot today.

Download the full 960×540 version

Here’s the same 20 second clip with iMovie 09 Stabilization.

Download the full 960×540 version

Still a bit wonky, but it’s a huge improvement over the original. You can see it zooms in on the subject, cropping out some of the border and keeps Maxine in the middle of the frame. That’s not a big deal for me, especially when she’s running against grass in the background, but I could see some situations where this would be a problem.

iMovie 09 makes your little camera worth a damn

Granted there’s a lot of variables at play here. If your initial source material was really bad, if there’s a lot of activity in the background, nothing is guaranteed. I’m pretty impressed with the quality of the clip, more than good enough to use in my next monthly video.

If you have one of these little cameras, the Kodak Zi6, the Flip MinoHD or the Creative Vado HD, and are on a Mac, you’d be smart to pick up iLife 09. Not only is the new iMovie a game changer for your videos, but the new iPhoto’s faces thing works really well too. Well worth the $79.

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Kodak just released updated firmware for the Kodak Zi6 Video Camera that I reviewed a few months ago. I’m still using my Zi6 regularly for quick captures and still love it. The price has dropped a lot since I first purchased it, Amazon has the best price I found, making it even more attractive. You can download the new firmware from Kodak’s site:

http://www.kodak.com/global/en/service/downloads/dln_ekn035874.jhtml?pq-path=13243/14559

I haven’t found a real “feature list” so I don’t know exactly what’s been changed, but here’s something I think is handy that I didn’t notice before.

Turn off Sounds

Since I don’t have a Zi6 with the old firmware, I can’t confirm this is new, but I just figured out how to turn off those sounds that I found so annoying. This includes the startup chime, the record and stop recording beeps, and the shutdown chime.

To get into this menu, hold down the Review and Delete buttons at the same time while. Use the stick to get to Sounds and click in the middle of the stick to turn on or off. Would be nice if it weren’t all or nothing, I’ve started recording by mistake before and didn’t know it, but it’s better than nothing.

I’m not sure if there’s been anything else added, but if I find more, or a full release list, I’ll update this post.

Updated:
Here’s the feature list. I was right, only thing I really care about was the sounds off, which was a new add.
1) turn the camera chimes on or off in the menu
2) choose to delete all video files and pictures at once, or one at a time
3) format your SD card
4) take sharper still pictures, with improved low light performance

via

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I’m not a great writer by any stretch of the imagination, but I felt it necessary to put something up here. Don Ingraham, or Dad as I used to call him, was a truly great person, touching so many people’s lives and making me into the Dad I am today. He passed away yesterday, December 12th 2008, at the age of 71 after a 6 year battle with Alzheimer’s.

When I learned that Dad had Alzheimer’s, I didn’t think much of it. I didn’t know much about the disease and couldn’t tell any changes in him over the phone. It wasn’t until I came home for Thanksgiving in 2002 that I was able to spend some time with him and my Mom and realize exactly what was going on.

Alzheimer’s is a bitch. It must be the worst disease to attack a family there is. Car accidents, Cancer, they all suck. But with Alzheimer’s, you have to watch your Dad slip away, one day at a time. I mourned for him once already when I knew my Dad was gone. Now I’m going through it again.

If there is a light at the end of the tunnel, it’s this. For the last 5 years after caring for my Dad and watching him leave us, all my memories were of him with the disease; forgetting who I am, forgetting to eat, forgetting how to take care of himself. Since he passed, all I can think of are the good times we had together; the trips to Disneyland, the mornings he’d bring me to hockey practice, the way he raised us. Watching old videos and scanning in old photos the last 24 hours has really left a great memory inside. I can finally mourn him properly.

The Life of Donald Ingraham

Don was born on September 19th, 1937 in Berkeley, CA. At the time he had a brother, George, and his parents Aubrey and Bill, and later gained a sister, Marjorie. They lived in Oakland, CA for most of his life.

In 1950 he went to Oakland High School where he was a classmate of Frank Oz and David Carridene. He picked up a love for puppeteering and magic and was one of the creative designers behind Children’s Fairy Land in Oakland. He went to college at UC Berkeley graduating with his JD and passing the State Bar exam in 1962.

In 1963 Don was drafted by the US Army as a 1st Lt Judge Advocate. The army took him through Georgia, Virginia, Korea, Vietnam and finally ended up in Washington DC as a Captain assigned to the Pentigon. He left the Army in 1967, returned home to Oakland and joined the District Attorney’s office.

Don stayed active with theatre and design and eventually met Terry during a performance. They married in 1974, moved to Alameda and had two boys, Lawrence and Andrew. Terry owned a dance studio and expanded it to include children’s theatre, which Don did the logo design and assisted with the sets. The studio has since relocated to Campbell, CA.

Don retired from the Alameda County District Attorney’s office in Oakland, CA in 2001 where he lead the High-Tech Crime Team and was the host of the Video Unit. Over his 30+ year run with the DA’s office, he was responsible for creating a multitude of laws and policies for handling computer crime, years before the internet. He is probably most well known on the internet for his appearance on the Geraldo Rivera show back in 1992, where he defended the government’s stance on prosecuting hackers.

Here’s a clip from 1991 presenting to the Computer Security Conference in Miami. This was probably when he was at the top of his game, and what he teaches in this segment about social engineering and network security is still being taught today.

That’s the man you’ll find if you Google him. But that doesn’t tell you much about him as a person. I’m hoping I can share that side of him with you now.

My Dad

The one thing I remember most about my Dad was his sense of humor. He’s the guy that keeps a rubber pig nose in the glove compartment so if he pulls up at a red light next to a car full of kids he can put it on. He taught me the trick while waiting in line at Disneyland you can unlink the red rope from the pillar and connect it to someone’s pocket. I hope that someday I can be on par with him.

Illustrations were always a big thing for him. I always saw him doodling on something, napkin, tablecloth, menu, etc. He had a great eye for designing things that were easy to recognize and memorable. He’s actually the guy that designed the flag for the City of Alameda. I remember the year that the flag was introduced; during the 4th of July, he bought out all of the little flags he could find. I wish I had one still.

He always had love of teaching. Watching these videos, I’m in awe at how polished he is at articulating a point and keeping an audience’s attention. Most of all, he loved teaching kids. He was active in the Boy/Cub scouts and was a sunday school teacher at our church growing up. Every lesson would someone turn into a craft project, hands on learning.

Disney was a huge part of his life. He had a collection of old Disneyland maps, dating back to the first year it opened in 1955. When we used to go to the park, I remember the two of us making fun of the Swiss Family Robinson treehouse, so much so that when they eventually closed it down to remodel into Tarzan, I bought him a leaf for his library. I’m fortunate enough to have that leaf now, and an animation cell from Puff the Magic Dragon, in my office.

He loved books, books were everywhere in his life. He could spend hours at a book store, even a small store with only a few hundred books needed a visit. I remember how he’d perk up whenever one would come in sight and start saying “book book book” over and over like a chicken. Funny that I really have to force myself to sit down and read.

A Lasting Impression

I’ve put together an album of photos I found around the house that were special to me. I’ll be adding to it if I find anything else, something like a gallery of all the great memories I have of my Dad.

http://sharemyalbum.com/DonIngraham

I’ve also set up a YouTube channel for any videos I find of him. There’s only a few up there now, and obviously the material is out of date, but you can see what a master of presentation he was.

http://youtube.com/DonIngraham

I’ll leave you with my favorite, the closing sequence from his retirement show with the DA’s office. It’s based on one of his favorite movies “A Field of Dreams”. I’m not really sure why he loved that movie so much. Maybe it’s James Earl Jones, he always loved his voice. Or maybe it’s the idea that after we’re done here, there’s a better place in the field where you can relax. I’m sure he’s there now, in the cornfields with his Pig nose firmly attached.

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