Go, Dog, Go!

"Dog Days of Summer"... never did understand that phrase. So, I looked it up.

Webster defines “dog days” as...
1 : the period between early July and early September when the hot sultry weather of summer usually occurs in the northern hemisphere
2 : a period of stagnation or inactivity

Stagnation or inactivity? Not in this business! If you aren't working 24/7 and then some, you can't keep up. Technological breakthroughs are happening everyday, every few hours even! Bit.ly is old news. For those of you who may not know bit.ly, (http://bit.ly) it's a URL shortener.

This is our app's URL before bit.ly works it's magic:
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/abc-on-the-go/id387046507?mt=8

This is the same URL after bit.ly: http://bit.ly/bItKah

The last two weeks have been an emotional roller coaster - up, down and all around - a quick up, then an extremely fast decent. Think Tower of Terror. Okay, maybe not that bad, but definitely a flurry of activity and emotional highs and lows. You work diligently to get your app tweaked and ready for submission. Then it's the wait and wonder game. Once you've submitted your app for review, you get put in a que. Review times average anywhere from a week to ten days. Our latest app, ABC On the Go, hit the iTunes store exactly one week ago today. Once your app goes "live" you need to hustle to get all the other pieces together. My partner and I wrote and rewrote our press release until we were bleary eyed. With every revision it got shorter and more simplistic. People don't read that stuff, one glance at the number of stars and it's straight to the reviews... Remember, keep it simple!

I digress. To continue... after strategically setting an "embargo" to hold the press release until Monday morning at 5 a.m. CST, our ABC On the Go press release was picked up by the revered Macworld. They then posted a review on their site! We were elated! It's not easy to get noticed in this dog eat dog world here in the app business. Let me clarify, there are 250,000 apps (and counting) in the app store and 14,345 education apps alone! Those are tough odds.

Well, we made it into the top 100 paid education apps and watched our numbers climb. They went up... and then down. We watched this see saw with bated breath. We would move up five... then go down two; this went on for a solid week. We could hardly sleep! We were glued to some mobile device or another tracking our rankings. Between email, Facebook and twittering day and night (not to mention that we have day jobs) we rode that elevator up and down until we were dizzy. Next thing we knew we were we out of the top 200! Emotional nosedive.... Just out of curiosity, I checked the New and Noteworthy section under Education AND low and behold - THERE WE WERE! Nosebleed!!!

I would be remiss, if I did not mention, Lorraine Ackemann of momswithapps. We have been so lucky to connect with her, she's become an incredible resource to all educational app developers. She's created a google group that works together, shares ideas and insights and maybe most importantly, networks. Lorainne's guidance and expertise is helping all of us help one another to succeed. Watch Lorraine on ABC News just yesterday: http://bit.ly/duCAgI

Charlotte's Web

We have been putting all of our efforts into trying to blog and connect with other iPhone app developers, who also develop educational apps. This whole web business is about networking and to succeed you need to work together! And let me tell you, it is incredibly rewarding to see what goes on behind the scenes. People making connections, people helping people, new forums cropping up everyday, where like minds from literally all around the globe are creating "communities."

The link below is from momswithapps

Read this TERRIFIC article by Lynn Rasmussen!

Apps as a Learning Tool for Education

iThink I can - iThink I can....

Are you wondering how we ever came up with the name i-itch for our company? Well, honestly, every other name we thought of as a good representation of our endeavor was taken. Really? Yes. We tried short, one syllable words, we tried mythical characters, we tried literary references, we tried our two names in at least 100 different ways, and countless hours with various iWord combinations, and they were all taken.... We didn’t settle for i-itch, it really grew on us.


The slacker boy with the bad rash really did epitomize our educational methods. When teaching children the letter “i” we model the act of scratching, which incorporates tactile and kinesthetic elements. This is more commonly referred to as the multi-sensory approach. It’s been proven to be a more effective way to teach, a more effective way to learn and most importantly, improved retention.

Then there is the other component to successful learning that both my partner and I are absolute devout believers in - learning by doing. And the experience should be FUN! It’s true! If learning is presented in a fun way, the learner learns more, retains more, and is inspired to continue learning. This process develops lifelong learners.

"Learning is not a product of schooling but the lifelong attempt to acquire it." Albert Einstein
Originally we were set on Educating and Entertaining Simultaneously as our mission statement. It said exactly what we believed and it had flair using, my favorite literary device, alliteration. About midway into the initial project we switched to Apps that Delight and Develop. We learned how important it was to include the word apps in our tag line. Oh what a steep mountain the learning curve can be! "Puff, puff, chug, chug, I think I can - I think I can...."

Where's the Ad-hoc?

It was my partner who knew early on that we were being conned. I'd convinced her that making an iPhone app first and then working our way back to a good old fashioned ABC book was the way to go. She'd already discovered the magic of the iPhone, as she was one of the first people to jump into the"icraze." This group doesn't discriminate by age, gender, or socioeconomic stature. Anyone can become a member, as long as you own an iphone. And chances are, if you own an iphone you are going to want an iPhone4, and if you own an iPhone 4, you are going to want an iPad... And that is why if you give a Moose a Muffin....

Back to being conned, we'd discussed how our alphabet was going to be transformed into a state of the art technological breakthrough for teaching children their letters and corresponding letter sounds. We'd set up a corporation, applied for a trademark for our logo, copyrights for art work, and sent a large deposit to get things started. Whoops! We were told our app would hit the app store mid November. Believe it or not in the fall of 2009 there were not many alphabet apps out there, we felt that we had little competition with our teacher developed, research based, wonderfully illustrated, educationally sound, iPhone app concept.

This is when Malcolm Gladwell's teachings come to mind. In Blink, The Power of Thinking Without Thinking.
My partner, although never meeting the slick, young entrepreneur in person knew something wasn't right and she knew it right from the get-go......

Lesson 1. Trust your gut!

It took me months before I could even admit that it was possible that we were being scammed, and then one day our domain name was inhabited by an intruder! And we were still not even close to an ad-hoc! "Ad-hoc is the method given to developers to test their app or to get client approvals and such," according to Lawrence H. Leach of Technical Ramblings.

That was the END of that business relationship... and the beginning of the transition from trusting school teachers to savvy business women. We chalked it up to an invaluable lesson learned early on!

Up next: From Educating and Entertaining Simultaneously to Apps that Delight and Develop www.i-itch.com.