Stevenson Software

App Store Promotion

admin — Fri, 01 Feb 2013 17:44:50 +0000

One of our biggest promotions by Apple started yesterday. They have included a banner to Landscaper’s Companion for iPad on the front page of the Reference category of the app store. We’re beyond excited, and honored, for this. Thank you for your support.

Utah Mobile Developers Meetup – November 13, 2012

admin — Fri, 26 Oct 2012 01:55:16 +0000

The Utah Mobile Developers group doesn’t meet often, but when we do, you don’t want to miss ‘em. This one is no different.

This is the best lineup of mobile developers we’ve ever had in Utah.

Free food and giveaways (including iTunes gift cards!).

Who’s speaking:

Trevor Mckendrick – “How to do €3,000 worth of iOS market research for free.”

Zach Holmquist – “A Post-mortem on Failing in Success.”

Clifton Labrum – “Building Native Mobile Apps with Titanium and Your Mom.”

Ben Dolman – “Integrating Dropbox File Synchronization.”

When:

Tuesday, November 13 at 6:30pm.

Where:

Neumont University in Sandy. Room #300.

Southerners, seriously, this will be worth the extra 10 minutes to drive over the point.

Can’t wait to see you all there.

iOS and Mac Developer Meetups, User Groups, and Events in Salt Lake City, Utah

admin — Tue, 09 Oct 2012 23:29:16 +0000

We’re lucky to have a lot of world-class iOS and Mac developers in the state of Utah. We’re also lucky that we have a few very active meetups for anyone interested in being part of the iOS and Mac community. Here are the top events:

Salt Lake City Cocoaheads – Salt Lake City chapter of the international organization, Cocoaheads.org. Meets the first Tuesday of each month, 7pm a at Neumont University in Sandy (106th South). Very active group of independent and fulltime Mac and iOS developers. Join the Facebook group to stay up to date and message members.

UICoder-SLC – Informal meetup of developers to hack on a weekly basis. Everyone gathers at Paradise Bakery on 4th South every Tuesday (except on the 1st) from 6pm-ish to whenever. Join the Google Group, uicoders-slc@googlegroups.com to keep in touch.

Utah Mobile Developers Facebook Group – Facebook group with almost 200 members throughout the state. Active message boards on Facebook. Meetups are held occasionaly. A great group if you are doing iOS and Android.

BYU-Cocoaheads – A BYU sponsored chapter of cocoaheads.org that meets on BYU campus. You don’t have to be a student to attend. They meet the second Thursday of each month at 7pm. Very active group of experts and beginners. Join the google group, byu-cocoaheads@googlegroups.com to know details of upcoming meetings.

NSCoder-Night – informal hack-night in Provo at the Cocoabean Cafe near BYU Campus. Meets on Tuesday nights at 7pm. Join the BYU-Cocoaheads group to stay up to date on meetups.

Please let me know if you have any other iOS or Mac meetups you’d like me to include. Utah also has a great startup community with plenty of events each week. Visit http://startuputah.com/ for details.

Living the Dream

admin — Thu, 02 Aug 2012 22:32:54 +0000

Sorry, this is a couple of months old and slipped my mind to share it here. I wrote a guest post a couple of months ago for a local (Utah) entrepreneurship blog, Startup Flavor. As some of you may or may not know, I’ve been full time as an indie developer for over 2 years now. I left corporate American in 2010 to “live the dream” of working for myself, concentrating on building up my top-selling gardening app, Landscaper’s Companion. In this Startup Flavor guest post I share some tips for how to live the dream. Enjoy!

Parse.com Quickie

admin — Fri, 22 Jun 2012 22:55:19 +0000

iCloud is cool in theory, but in a lot of cases comes up short for some use-cases. For example, how do you share data between your iPhone and Android apps? Or if you aren’t using Core Data or a have a UIDocument centric app, how do you sync your data?

A few months ago I came across a nifty server called Parse. Basically it’s a NoSQL database in the cloud for mobile and webapps. It also has some extra features like push notifications and user-management builtin. I liked it right off the bat because their iOS API is so easy to implement. The API is lightweight, modern, and block-based. I immediately saw use-cases for it in my apps and started implementing it right away.

In April I presented at the Salt Lake Cocoaheads on the basics of Parse. Here is the presentation:

Parse.com

View more presentations from Dave Stevenson.

Landscaper’s Companion Gardening App – New York Times Review

admin — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 14:26:47 +0000

Landscaper’s Companion, our top-selling mobile app for gardeners, was reviewed today in the New York Times. We appreciated that the review was honest in pointing out features the app is missing. However, we do disagree with the author’s conclusion about developers looking for quick bucks. While there are quick-buck cases, as there are in any market, most of the large gardening publishers and organizations do have apps already in the app store. But, in our opinion, they are built on the legacy book publishing model and release apps that are never updated, nor include any tools that gardeners need. Maybe someday they’ll “get it” and publish better apps, but in the mean time, their customer base will already be using other tools.

We are committed to keeping Landscaper’s Companion the top-selling gardening app for iPhone and iPad. We’re the only gardening app that releases frequent updates that include new plants and new features. We’re not in this for the quick-buck, but rather to support gardeners world-wide and provide them the best gardening and landscaping tools.

Full New York Times review: Digital Tools for the Sheds of Persnickety Gardeners

Update: I emailed the author letting him know of my disagreement with his conclusion. His quick response: “I didn’t mean to imply that you were among those who were looking for the quick bucks. That’s why I listed the qualifications of your researchers — to show that you took this seriously enough to include deeply knowledgable people in the process.” Thank you Bob.

MobileSlopes Conference Presentations

admin — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 16:17:53 +0000

I presented at the first MobileSlopes.com conference in Ogden, Utah on March 16. I had the opportunity to present a couple of sessions. One, Monetizing Mobile Apps, covered 10 ways to make money with your iPhone, iPad, and Android apps. The second presentation was an intro to building great mobile apps.

I’d like to thank the city of Ogden, MobileSlopes, and all the attendees for the opportunity to speak. It’s always great to be around other mobile app developers and feed off their energy and passion. If you attended the conference, please feel free to contact me with any questions.

Monetizing Mobile Apps

View more presentations from Dave Stevenson.

Mobile Mud Pie – Intro to Building Great Mobile Apps

View more presentations from Dave Stevenson.

Landscaper’s Companion Gardening App – On KSL Radio

admin — Sat, 10 Mar 2012 06:17:51 +0000

I had the opportunity to make a brief appearance this afternoon on Salt Lake’s #1 news station, KSL Radio, to talk about our top-selling gardening app, Landscaper’s Companion. Enjoy

Landscaper’s-KSL-3-9-2012

10 Ways to Monetize Mobile Apps

admin — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 15:20:16 +0000

I presented last night at the Utah Mobile Developers group on 10 Ways to Monetize Mobile Apps. In short, here are the 10 ways I talked about:

Paid
Advertising
In-App Purchases
Webapp Subscriptions
Subscriptions
Sponsorships/Promotions
Lead Gen
Affiliate Sales
Analytics
Don’t

Each way has different business and marketing implications. They can also all be mixed-and-matched for interesting combinations. I think the future is with in-app purchases and the “freemium” model.

Here are the slides for your enjoyment.

Monetizing Mobile Apps

View more presentations from Dave Stevenson.

Have a Mac? Like Airplanes?

admin — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 18:07:45 +0000

Try Airplane Quiz for Mac, now available in the Mac App Store for $1.99.