Eddie Haskel

July 30, 2010

GoodNight Blog

Getting two very favorable video reviews posted was the highlight of the week at The Daily App Show (ABC Shakedown and Let's Bead Friends) ...until.... we realized two of our apps were also being spotlighted by the Daily App Show right on their homepage! Anchors, keep being told we need anchors to get our name out there and get noticed... What are we? Creators of quality educational iphone apps. You might continue to wonder how we got involved in this fast paced, techno savvy industry.... And I did promise to tell.

Less than a year ago, it was late August, and a houseguest was out visiting again. An acquaintance of my son’s who was taking advantage of a free bed in the Hamptons. Why I didn’t pick up on the signs when this 21st century Eddie Haskel, (the disingenuous troublemaker on "Leave it to Beaver," who could turn on the charm when adults were around) came a second time, I’ll never know. Wish I could discuss this with June Cleaver.

So slick was he, and claiming to be in the iPhone app development business, he had me snowed. I’d been in possession of my very own iPhone for maybe a week and was bowled over with it’s magical features.

On my dining room table lay a set of student illustrated ABC cards used successfully as a highly effective, skill and drill method of teaching the alphabet to struggling learners in my classroom. Suddenly, my quaint plan of transforming this concept into a computer game was being turned upside down, inside out and into an iPhone app. All because this house guest had me pegged for ......

More Motivation for the Mind

I mentioned yesterday that I had been speaking with a friend of a friend's who gave me total affirmation to stick with this endeavor and inspired me to begin this blog.

And Scott, wherever you are, thanks (I think) for convincing me that blogging could help our PR campaign by anchoring our website and products with the help of forum tags. Got all that! Hope so. It has been quite the learning curve since we two old hens have emerged from the classroom and landed ourselves in the midst of this trans-media revolution.

I have to say, it wasn't the reference to "vertical integration of mobile strategies" that rekindled my enthusiasm for making and promoting iPhone apps, and it wasn't the link to double rainbow , which has gotten over 5 million views on YouTube.


See how contagious genuine enthusiasm is?!?

And, no, it was not the talk about augmentive reality that did it. It was the story about your friend, who made it big, with a site called My Pet Chicken. Watch the video.

My First Entry

As I begin my first blog, I’m excited and nervous. Where do I begin?!? Today seems like a logical place. After an incredible phone conversation with a friend of a friend's, I came away feeling totally pumped to continue on this pursuit of making educational iPhone apps.

From there, I went downstairs and directly into the filming of a video shoot to promote our educational iPhone apps. The children being filmed? Our graphic designer’s (and dear friend!) daughters. The production team? Mine and my partner’s sons, both film students. Did I mention that I have a partner? You can find out more about us at our website: www.i-itch.com. Do a background check and learn what we’ve been up to and what you've been missing. Don't forget to come back here!

Film shoot went well considering the heat and the age group of our subjects – 2 and 6. Gotta tell ya, my partner and I were EXHAUSTED by the end of the evening. But I have to say, the whole effort was made worthwhile when later, during dinner, the younger of the two sisters pipes up saying what we thought was, “I want my water now” and pointing inside the house.
She kept repeatedly demanding what we thought was "WATER, I want my water NOW!" Finally after help in translating from her older sister we realized she was not asking for water, she was asking for "Letters, I want my letters!" OMG! She wanted to play our ABC app again - ABC Shakedown Plus!

ABC Shakedown and ABC Shakedown Plus are our babies. We've been nurturing the development of a rare species of iPhone apps, unequivocally educational ones! We'll be celebrating their conception and first birthday next month, and oh what a journey it has been.....

Stay tuned for: How we lost $7,000. in the infancy stage
Where and Why, two old hens found themselves in the app business
What Vertical Integration with Mobile Strategies really means