The Online Magazine Focused on App Design, Branding & Marketing

 

Kyle St. Romain | APPS | 06.05.2012 @ 1:00 pm

(Every Tuesday, Kyle St. Romain will talk about the business and legal side of the app world. While his opinions don’t always reflect those of Rocksauce Studios, you should hear him out…the guy knows his stuff!)

Apparently I’m not the only one who likes to use the phrase “Troll Toll.” Apart from the obvious (*cough* ‘It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia’), I’ve found another writer who recently used the phrase to discuss AT&T, net neutrality, and why those two terms shouldn’t go together. What’s unfortunate about the prevalence of this phrase is how pervasive these greedy little trolls are collecting tolls.

More after the JUMP…

 

Faith Goh | BUSINESS | 05.30.2012 @ 5:00 pm

Before I became a UX designer at Rocksauce Studios, I literally lived and worked all over the world. I was born in Singapore, but I moved to Beijing, China when I was two. I was there for about 15 years, but then I moved to Savannah, GA to attend the Savannah College of Art and Design. Although I’ve spent most of my time since then living and working in the United States, I spent two of those years working in Singapore.

If you want to run a successful company, you’re probably going to have to deal with clients and customers from other countries. Business is global and while learning how to work on such a large stage can be bumpy, it’s not as difficult as you probably think it is!

More after the JUMP…

 
Jacob Hall, Editor-in-Chief of TapSauce

Jacob Hall, Editor-in-Chief of TapSauce | APPS | 05.25.2012 @ 11:18 am

(Talksauce is the Friday editorial where Tapsauce editor-in-chief Jacob Hall talks about something that’s on his mind. His brutally honest opinions don’t represent the views of Rocksauce Studios, but hopefully they’ll give you some food for thought!)

Earlier this week, I briefly wrote about an app called I’d Cap That, a comedy application for the iPhone that placed random hilarious/vulgar captions under the pictures you took with your phone. As far as apps made for 15 year old boys and people with the sense of humor of 15 year old boys (like yours truly) go, it’s a ton of fun and was rightfully dominating the top of the charts in the app store. After playing with it on a friend’s iPhone, I grabbed my Droid to see it was available across the aisle.

It wasn’t, but someone wanted very hard for me to think it was. The top search result was an app called Piccap, but in parenthesis next to the title was “I’d Cap That.” Not only was this a blatant rip-off of I’d Cap That, it had the audacity to use the original app’s title as some kind of sub-headline to ensure it got the downloads from people searching for the version only available on iPhone. At the risk of being hyperbolic, the people behind Piccap deserve a nice hard slap to the face and Google deserves an equally hard slap for letting that slide.

More after the JUMP…

 

Daniel Burres | BUSINESS | 05.23.2012 @ 3:14 pm

Whether you’re trying to find a hot fashion accessory, hunting for your next vehicle or searching for a company to bring your app idea to life, we have all had our fair share of run-ins with sales professionals. Naturally, some have been better than others. We all know what makes a bad salesman, but what differentiates those who are simply good at selling and those who are great at selling?

The key is simple enough: good salespeople sell a product, but great sales people, well, they sell a brand. True, selling the product is important, but it is just a piece of the overall puzzle. In my 10-plus years of selling experience, I have seen firsthand what it takes to sell a brand.

More after the JUMP…

 

Chris Lindenmayer | APPS | 05.17.2012 @ 1:00 pm

Welcome back to Inside the Design Studio, where we take you behind the scenes and give you a quick glimpse at the app design process! Today, we’ll be teasing DaySince, an upcoming Rocksauce Studios app. We can’t tell you what it does quite yet (but you will soon enough), but after the jump, you can check out the creation of a piece of art — a number, if you want to get specific — in Illustrator. Whether you’re genuinely interested in app design or just want to see hours of work sped up to a brisk 45 seconds, you should definitely hit the jump.

More after the JUMP…

 
Robert Blake

Robert Blake | APPS | 05.15.2012 @ 1:00 pm

(We love apps. We make them, after all! Our Favorite Apps is a series where we briefly take a look at an app that we really like.)

Overwhelmed by your Facebook friends? Flooded by a constant stream of tweets? Think Path’s 150 friend limit is still too much? Then try out Pair an iPhone and Android app that is meant for just you and your significant other. Dubbed Super SMS by the developers, the app allows both users to text each other, share photos and videos, and also allows you to sketch pictures. You can even send your current location for impromptu rendezvous.

More after the JUMP…

 
Jacob Hall, Editor-in-Chief of TapSauce

Jacob Hall, Editor-in-Chief of TapSauce | APPS | 05.11.2012 @ 1:00 pm

(Talksauce is the Friday editorial where Tapsauce editor-in-chief Jacob Hall talks about something that’s on his mind. His brutally honest opinions don’t represent the views of Rocksauce Studios, but hopefully they’ll give you some food for thought!)

About a year and a half ago, comedian Patton Oswalt wrote an article for Wired where he declared Geek Culture dead. Naturally, the citizens of the Geek Kingdom (AKA, a significant portion of the entire internet) were none too happy with their way of life being called out in such a way and the article became a subject of debate across the online world for about a week, which, in the sped-up universe of the internet, is the equivalent of six months in the real world. However, many people who railed against the article seemed to miss Oswalt’s point, which wasn’t “Geek Culture is dumb and bad and deserves to die” but rather “Geek Culture has officially become mainstream culture.”

Although Oswalt’s piece was more directly tied to comic books, science fiction and other geek staples, the same can be applied to technology as a whole. Decades ago, computers were used — and understood — by a select few, mainly a handful of nerds. Now, they’re literally everywhere, being used by toddlers, senior citizens and everyone in-between. Loving and understanding the technology in your pocket is an everyday act of pride. Geeks were ahead of the curve on just about everything relevant in modern culture. The world is literally at our fingertips.

With that said, is all of this new technology making us all dumber?

More after the JUMP…

 
Jacob Hall, Editor-in-Chief of TapSauce

Jacob Hall, Editor-in-Chief of TapSauce | APPS | 05.09.2012 @ 3:00 pm

The App: Fancy

The Device: HTC Incredible (Android)

The Price: Free

The Basics: If you’ve ever window shopped, you’ll immediately understand the appeal of Fancy. In many ways, it’s a consumer-friendly version of Pinterest, letting you browse through countless items, “fancying” the ones you like and maybe even buying them. As you shop/browse, you can leave comments on items that look cool and follow other users, to see what they’re looking at. Fancy is less about shopping and more about finding a window into what your friends (both in real life and digital) think is awesome.

The Review: I had two immediate reactions to Fancy when I first opened it up. My first thought was: “What the heck is this thing? What does it do?” That thought was immediately followed by “Oh, but it’s so pretty!”

More after the JUMP…

 

Kyle St. Romain | BUSINESS | 05.08.2012 @ 1:00 pm

Whether you’re a giant like Facebook and Google, or a smaller company flying under the radar, online privacy is a big deal.

Recently, I had the opportunity to meet with Julie Brill, commissioner of the FTC, to discuss upcoming issues regarding online privacy. The main topic of our conversation was the Commission’s recent report on best practices for online privacy protection (tracking, collecting, disseminating personally identifiable information). If you’d like to read the report for yourself, you can find a copy here. It’s quite interesting, albeit a big lengthy.

More after the JUMP…

 

Alex Riviello | APPS | 05.03.2012 @ 9:00 am

 

The Game: Death Worm

The Device: Droid X

The Price: $0.99 for Android or iOS

The Basics: Tremors: The Game. That’s pretty much all Death Worm is, an arcade-style game that sees you sending a giant worm hurtling through the ground only to pop out and devour unsuspecting people in bloody fashion. This is the mobile version of the popular internet game and its visceral fun should be immediately obvious, but the lasting appeal of it is questionable.

The Review: YOU ARE THE DEATH WORM.

There’s an on-screen joystick that you use to maneuver the giant beast through the ground, trying to angle up and come flying out of the ground to take down the unwary humans, animals, cars and planes living on the surface. Each level you’re given an objective that’s simple stuff like “Get 30 Kills” or “Get 50 Kills in 60 seconds” or “Get 10 Kills without getting hurt” and- well actually, those are the only objectives you’ll ever have. Just keep killing, you graboid!
More after the JUMP…

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