My 2011 summer was superb. It involved a lot of outdoor adventures including hiking, mountain biking, paragliding, and exploring condemned buildings. More on that to come.
One of my work projects this summer was developing a website for an office complex in downtown Anchorage that just got a huge solar retrofit. The building now has 96 solar panels on its south wall that are rated at 180W each. The system has a potential output of 17.28 kW!
Along with building the website, I installed the monitoring hardware and software for the solar system. This keeps track of how much energy is being produced in real-time. A lot of the monitoring data is on the website, and it updates as often as every 10 minutes.
The website is nearly complete. The last thing being developed is a custom graphing system for the solar power data. The current graphs on the Solar Power Output page are provided by the software that comes with the monitoring hardware. Unfortunately these are not very appealing visually, and they aren’t as flexible as I’d like. The new graphs will be gorgeous.
Take a look at www.AnchorageSolarBuilding.com!
I’ve just submitted a new update for Fast, a Speedometer. This update adds a special ‘Heads Up Display’ mode that reflects the speedometer screen onto a car windshield. When it’s dark outside, you can set your iPhone on a car’s dashboard, and see Fast reflected in the windshield.
The update should be approved by Apple and into the App store by next Wednesday.
No more looking down at your iPhone to check your speed!
Before yesterday, PhotoRotate did mediocre in the Photography category. The paid Photography category is filled with great apps like Hipstamatic and CameraBag. The market is saturated with really good applications. PhotoRotate was rarely in the top 400.
Today, PhotoRotate (the full version) has enjoyed its first full day as a Free app. It’s doing great.
PhotoRotate is now sitting at 46th place in the Free Photography apps category. It has been climbing all day.
This table and graph show the rise.
PhotoRotate has been an excellent starting app project. It taught me about taking an application from concept to market. I learned how to build software with a team, and I enjoyed every bit of it.
Now, the full PhotoRotate version is free on the app store. The app lets you rotate pictures, adjust their brightness, and adjust their contrast. The interface is dead simple.
Enjoy!
A few weeks ago I picked up a Goal0 solar panel and battery pack for the 970to907 road trip.
The solar panel is flexible and encased in fabric, so it’s very durable. The output is 13.5Watts. The battery is also very durable and has 50 Watt-hours of capacity. As a reference point, the iPad 2 battery is 25Watt-Hour, and the iPad will run for 10 hours on that. So this battery pack could hypothetically power the iPad for 20 hours from a full charge; that 20 hours doesn’t factor in more charge coming from the solar panel.
The Goal0 team has been extremely helpful in getting me a great setup for the road trip. This panel and battery will also be practical for charging my MacBook Pro on the go or at home.
I submitted an update for Fast last night. This one is simple, but it will make some of our users very happy! Now you can choose to lock the app orientation on either Left or Right landscape side. You can also choose Auto, which will rotate the app depending on how you hold your iPhone.
Here is a shot of the new Info page:
Updates soon to come are:
- Portrait mode
- HUD mode – set your iPhone under your car windshield – the screen will reflect onto your window so you can see your speed while driving!
- Additional Speedometer Themes
I got to go skiing at Copper Mtn. today. Great weather, and actually quite good snow. I also had a chance to play with Fast. My top speed for the day was 46MPH.
Yesterday, Fast’s ranking was on a huge rise. The day started off with Fast ranked at 30 in Paid Navigation apps. By early morning, it was already up to 20th rank and by the evening, Fast was up to 11th. At 10PM Mountain Time, Fast broke right into the Top 10 in a jump from 11th to 9th
Sales reports are updated daily rather than hourly, so I was eager to wake up this morning and see what sales from yesterday were like!
Sales for Saturday shot up to more than 5x what they had been on Friday. As you can see, Friday was already an above-average day for sales. Totally exciting!
My theory had been that if Fast was able to make it into the top 25, it would quickly climb up to the top 10 because of increased exposure (On the iPhone, app categories are shown on pages with 25 apps/page. So if Fast is above the 25th rank, it appears on the first page of Paid Navigation apps). That appears to be what happened. Hopefully Fast is able to hold its own in the top ranks.
A bit earlier this week, my iPhone app ‘Fast, a Speedometer’ got featured in the What’s Hot section of the Navigation category. Being featured in What’s Hot, Fast will appear frequently on the front page of the Navigation page on the App Store!
Like this! (from earlier today)
Since the feature, Fast has jumped hugely in ranking. On Tuesday, Fast ended the day in 96th place for Paid Apps in the Navigation category. By Wednesday night, Fast had climbed to 44th place – a 52 rank jump! Now, on Thursday night – entering Friday, Fast is in 37th place. Woohoo!
If you’re looking through the App Store on your iPhone, Apps are shown in pages of 25. Currently Fast is right in the center of the second page. I believe that being on the first page of apps in the iPhone view would continue to push Fast up, and sustain it in the high ranks. Hopefully it gets there!
PhotoRotate Free is now featured on the front page of the Photography category in the App store. In fact, both the free version and the full version of PhotoRotate are in the What’s Hot feature.
I recently moved PhotoRotate (full version) from the utilities app category over to the more fitting photography category. Initially, I had thought that being in the utilities category could give the photo-editor a more unique presentation. I was incorrect. PhotoRotate is now climbing in the ranks of the photography category – most likely because people find it now when searching for a broader range of terms. – Food for thought.
