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

Digg This Post | Stumble This Post

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.

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.

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

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.

The Flip video made a big spash on the market last year. This wallet sized video camera is the model of good consumer electronics. To record something, turn it on, point it towards something and press record. To play something you’ve recorded, turn it on, select the clip and press play. To download the footage to your computer, press the USB button and out *flips* the usb connector, plug it into your computer, and copy to your hard drive. Piece of cake, they’ve sold tons of these.

The Kodak Zi6 took the Flip concept and improved on it, most notably with image resolution. Where the Flip records at 640 x 480 VGA, the Zi6 does 720p HD at 60 fps. That’s a pretty huge jump in resolution while keeping the price just about the same, $180 or so. There’s also the ability to take still photos and it uses SD HC cards for expandability. Very nice. That’s all it took for me to pick one up.

What’s this review based on

I’m not going to compare the Zi6 to the Flip anymore, because frankly it blows it out of the water for the price. I’ll be using the Zi6 as my out and about camera. I have a 14 month old daughter and never want to be too far from a camera.

I already have a Canon HV20 but it’s a little too big for taking with me everywhere. Also, because it records to miniDV, it’s a bit more work to import the clips. I’ll still use the HV20, but only for home videos and planned events.

We also have a Nikon D40 for stills, but that’s overkill for casual pictures for me. I’m more interested in how it compares to my iPhone, since I always have that with me and use it for most photos. The iPhone still has a great little camera for Twinkle posting and taking pics while I’m out, but I’m hoping the Zi6 will be a little better.

So what’s it like?

The Zi6 fits easily into your pocket. It’s about the size of my iPhone and maybe 2x as thick. The weight is pretty much the same as the iPhone too, but feels lighter because it’s so bigger. Since I usually put my wallet and iPhone in the same pocket, the Zi6 balances out nicely in the other pocket.

It takes two AA batteries, and even comes with a set of rechargeables and a charger you can use for any rechargeable batteries. Pretty cool they threw that in. My first day with the Zi6 I took around 30 minutes of video and a few dozen pictures, played back a few clips on the drive home, and was just starting to see the red low battery warning. The beauty is, if it dies on you, AA batteries are everywhere.

There’s also the usual cables for playback on a TV, it outputs component and composite as well as stereo audio, a small case and a little lanyard for strapping it to your wrist I guess. I never use those. I’ve got an 8 gig SD HC card in there, so I can record a few hours of HD video no problem. I got it on Amazon for $20 or so, can’t believe how cheap these things are now.

The screen is nice and large making it easy to see what you’re capturing. Unfortunately the plastic screen covering is glossy which makes it difficult to see in the sun or from an angle. This isn’t a problem with my HV20 or really much of a problem with the iPhone, but it’s more annoying than a deal breaker.

Since the lens is really narrow, you can’t get too close to what you’re shooting. I found that staying at least 6 feet from the subject works pretty well for both video and still shooting. There is a macro switch which shortens the lens a bit, though I couldn’t get very good results with it. There’s no optical focus, meaning the lens doesn’t change when you zoom. There is a zoom, but it’s all done digitally, which really degrades the quality. I keep it as wide as possible at all times, then crop down on my computer if I need to. Though, what do you expect for $180.

The physical controls are minimal, three buttons and a peg joystick let you do everything. I always hated these peg joysticks; maybe it’s because I have fat thumbs, but I always have a hard time using them. Pressing in on the peg starts/stops recording, or takes a picture. Moving up/down zooms in/out and adjusts the volume on playback. Left/right changes camera modes. The other two buttons change from recording to playback or delete things and stop playback.

When you’re ready to import your recordings to your computer, it’s as easy as pressing the USB button and connecting it to your USB. This is just like the Flip, and a great idea. I don’t know how many times I’ve needed to look for a mini-USB cable or pop out a memory card and slap it into a reader.

Enough teasing, show me the video already!

I took the Zi6 to the North Carolina Zoo the other day and captured some clips of animals doing what they do. It was a beautiful sunny day at the zoo, so the footage came out really great. While the Zi6 can record in 60fps, I did most of my recording in standard 30fps. I’d bet if you were recording sports or something moving quickly, you’d want 60fps. These animals weren’t moving much though.

Here’s some footage of a seal swimming. You can really see the detail in the water. Embeded below is the scaled down, compressed Vimeo version, but you can download the raw quicktime here for all the quality. (right-click save as…)

These flamingoes get all pissy towards the end. Good example of motion and capturing the audio. Vimeo below, download raw quicktime here. (right-click save as…)

I did take some 60fps footage just as a test. Here’s my wife and daughter on the carousel. I think the vimeo embed is capped at 30fps, so to see the real quality you’ll need the raw quicktime. (right-click save as…)

How about the pictures?

I shot just a few pictures to compare the quality between the Zi6 and my iPhone. Overall it’s a big improvement. The native resolution of the Zi6 is 2048 x 1536, while the iPhone is 1600 x 1200, so a slight bump there. All that’s important though is the quality of the pictures. I’ve put the Zi6 photos on the top with the iPhone pictures on the bottom. Click on the photos to download the raw pictures. Which do you prefer?

The Carousel Sign

A Cactus

Some Puffins, shot through glass

The African Safari View

I’m not loving either, but the Zi6 wins it for color depth and brightness. However, pretty much any point and shoot camera will probably kill both of these for still shots, so I wouldn’t want to rely on the Zi6 as my primary camera.

Getting stuff on your computer

Like I said earlier, connecting the Zi6 to your computer is a breeze with the built-in USB connector. I’m a Mac user, and it automatically opened iPhoto for importing. Both the photos and the video get imported into iPhoto. Since the Zi6 records to h.264, you can double click the video files to open in Quicktime and export from there if you like. That’s the easiest way to access your full res video.

If you’re interested in making a little edit of your clips, you can fire up iMovie and it’ll see your clips at launch and start making thumbnails out of them. Again, since it’s already in h.264 format, there’s no importing and converting required. However, iMovie is limited to 960×540 exporting, so your 720p video will be scaled down to 540p. I don’t have a problem with this for most applications, but I can see how this is a problem.

Here’s the video I put together from the Zoo trip exported at 540p from iMovie on Vimeo. Notice the lack of steady cam on the Zi6, especially in the first few shots. Update: iMovie 09 has a cool “Stabilization” feature which could help with this. Here’s my review of iMovie 09 using the Kodak Zi6.

Final Cut is the best way to edit and export the full res video. I have Final Cut Express and after scrubbing through the footage in iMovie, piecing together a rough edit, was able to export the clips as XML into Final Cut with no problems. I’d imagine this is how most people will do it, I just like the ease of iMovie for these sorta edits.

Final Conclusion

If you’ve read this far, you know I love this camera. I’m no video expert, I really can’t tell the difference between high end HDTVs, but for what it’s worth, this camera rocks. If you can budget $200 for a camera and are in need of some video, this is the way to go. Get an 8 gig SD card, a few rechargeable AA batteries and you’re good to go.

Trism is available on the app store for $5, and I’ve probably logged a good 10 hours of play since purchasing it last week. The idea behind the game is simple, line up triangles on the board so you have three or more of the same color touching. In a sense, it’s very similar to Columns, Meteos, or even Dr. Mario. There’s the usual special blocks which pop up, a Rainbow if you get 5 matching triangles which can take the color of any block, a bomb which will end your game if you don’t destroy that block in the allotted number of steps, etc. This makes for a really fun, pick up and go game I can play while waiting for a chicken sandwich at the cafe, or for the wife to choose between the black shoes or the brown.

What’s unique about Trism is the use of the iPhone’s accelerometer to control gameplay. After you clear blocks, the holes that are left get filled in with other blocks nearby. You control which way the blocks slide by tilting the iPhone. That means you get to look like a fool flinging your phone around in public, which is always a good conversation starter.

There’s three different play modes in addition to the tutorials. The timed version throws bombs and locks if you take too long to get matches. The infinite version lets you play forever, so long as no bombs blow up. Finally the tilt version is more of a puzzle than a game, requiring you to tilt your iPhone to line up blocks in the least amount of moves. I usually play the timed version, it’s the most challenging for me.

In between a visit to the Space Needle and a viewing of Batman, we caught up with a Seattle Mariners game. Now, I’m not a baseball fan, so I really couldn’t care less about the game. I was just happy to have a beer with the guys, and they love baseball, so it worked out. I heard Safeco field had an agreement with Nintendo which lets you use the DS along with the game over their wireless. They used to charge fans $5 for this, but now it’s free and I was dying to check it out.

First off, you need to find a Nintendo station at the stadium to download the Nintendo Fan Network game. There’s one every 20 sections or so, flip open the DS and download it, couple minutes setup max. After you first launch the game, you need to pick a username and where you’re sitting. Then you’re connected to the network and can access all the features available.

The main menu has 6 sections you can explore:

• Food and Beverages – Order food to your seat, the single reason you need a DS. More on this later.
• Fan Network Audio and Video – Tune into the closed circuit tv for instant replays and listen to the play by play announcers, kinda cool but delayed a few seconds from the jumbotron.
• MLB Stats and Standings – As you’d expect, live stats and division standings. Probably great for those baseball fans without an iPhone.
• MLB in Action – I think this was the Pitch Tracking page, shows you approximately where the last pitch was in relation to the strike zone with related speed. Kinda cool.
• Fan Network Games – Things to do when you’re really bored, puzzles and crosswords, etc.
• Fan Network Messaging – The app with the most promise that sadly under delivers. More on this later as well.
• Log Out and your Profile – As you’d expect.

I’m sure if I were a hardcore baseball fan, I’d be loving this stuff. The fact that you can be at a baseball game and be immersed with baseball near and far is great. Extremely progressive compared to the days of buying a program and keeping score with a pencil like I did when growing up (yes I was a fan back then, Bash Brothers baby!).

The biggest selling point is the food ordering system. They have a fairly full menu of foods available to purchase; drinks, appetizers, entrees. You put in your credit card information, place your order, and within 5 minutes it’s delivered to your seat. The people sitting around me were all curious how it worked after a couple beers were magically delivered.

There’s a charge of 15% for the delivery, on top of the already crazy prices, so I can see this adding up fast. For 2 beers it was $18 compared to $15, a small price to avoid getting out of my seat and standing in line for who knows how long. It’s really amazing how smoothly this process went, literally 5 minutes from start to finish, cold beer in hand and I never left my seat. My friend Grant left a few minutes before I ordered, and we were halfway done with our beers before he got back.

Then there’s the Fan Network Messaging. You can see a list of everyone with a DS at the stadium, and send them messages. They get the message, and can reply. Sounds great right, a no brainer right? Well, it’s completely worthless.

There is no way to send customized messages to people you don’t already know, so you’re stuck with the canned messages they provide. “Great game isn’t it” – “Doesn’t that traffic suck” – “I love Nintendo” etc. Even if someone sends you a message, you have to respond in a canned message. “Yes, baseball is fun” – “I like the Mariners too” – “Agreed, the umpire is blind” etc.

The only way to send a custom message is by being someone’s “friend” and entering a code to confirm. Of course, you can’t send this code to anyone over the network, has to be face to face. But how do you meet up with someone you’ve never met? No clue. There’s no option to “friend me” through the system, or to send your seat location or anything. Sending a message with “Where are you sitting” gives the responses “In a green seat” or “In better seats than you” etc.

So we’ve got potential to make a cool, friend making system of like minded people, but it’s shackled. Only people who already know each other can really use it, and odds are good they’re sitting next to each other anyway, typing back and forth making fun of the friendless people. “Where are you sitting” – “Right next to you, hee hee”

Sure there’s kids here who might be offended or tricked into meeting up with some strangers, but you’d think they could figure out a way to make it work. Credit card authentication for age verification, something like that. They’re sitting on a gold mine here and they’re just rubbing up against it.

So if you’re heading up to Seattle anytime soon and get the chance to check out a Mariners game, make sure you bring your DS. The message system is a “swing and a miss” but the food ordering “knocks it our of the park” so to say. I can’t help but wonder how long it would take for them to web-base this stuff though, my iPhone could handle just about everything this offers and then some. Maybe at Cisco field…

Here’s a few more pics in case you were curious.

Take for example a search for Lawpower, my design site. I’ve worked hard to get #1 on google, even though the guys at Lawpower law firm have the .com and more good links. So I’m numbers 1, 3-9 on google as of this writing. the .com guys are number 2 and 10.

Now do the search on cuil. I’m in the top left corner, but my code site is listed above my main page. Where’s the lawyers with the .com? Nowhere to be found, in any results! How is that possible?

Another oddity, I’ve been working with my mom’s dance studio website to get her ranking better for “kids dance lessons” (11 at time of this writing, so close!). Course I wanted to see what that ranked on cuil, and it get an error saying that there were no results?

So for now, cuil is totally worthless for me. It’s a cool idea, I guess, but I don’t see why Google or any other search engine could change a theme and destroy them. I’ll try again in a week or so and see if anything happens.

I did some research on this when it first happened and there wasn’t much online yet. Today there’s a few discussions about it. Since I’m about to head out for a long weekend, I decided to take it in to an Apple Store today to get it sorted out. I took that picture above this morning to show the genius, assuming it wouldn’t happen when I wanted it to.

When I showed the genius the photo and explained the problem, he knew all about it. According to him, it’s a known issue with some Penryn Macbook pros which Apple Engineering doesn’t have an answer for. They don’t know if it’s hardware, software, completely confused. He told me he’d take my computer and run some diagnostics if I wanted, replacing anything that failed, but that it probably wouldn’t fix the problem. Frustrating to say the least.

What he did recommend was a quick turn off and on of the display. This seems to do the trick most of the time. He showed me a key command I didn’t know of before to do this quickly. To turn off the display, hit Command – Option – Eject. Then once it’s off, hit any key to turn it back on, and you should be back in business.

While there’s no current fix for this issue, he told me to call applecare every so often and check if anything’s been resolved. In typical Apple style, if there’s a fix and it happens outside warranty, they’ll cover it. However, there’s no fix yet, so don’t hold your breath.