The App: Bejeweled

The Device: iPhone

The Price: $0.99

Why We Love It: There’s a reason why Bejeweled has been downloaded 500 million times since the game’s initial creation in 2001. It’s one of the most addicting puzzle games ever made, a game that can be played anytime, anywhere. It’s the kind of game that can be played for thirty seconds or for an hour. It’s pretty much the perfect game for smartphones.

The current version of Bejeweled, available for download in the App Store right now, owns my life. Seriously. If I don’t get to play it about once an hour, I get shaky, weird and horrible. It’s my new drug. It’s the same as it has always been: your screen is filled with several rows of gems of various color. You have to match three gems of the same color in a horizontal or vertical row, which will eliminate them from the screen. You can only move a gem by swapping it with one of its neighbors, which limits your options and forces you to think about the longterm. Do you go for quick and easy points or do you attempt to set up a chain reaction by carefully maneuvering various elements into place? Different combinations of gems can create super-powerful reactions that will wreak all kinds of gorgeous havoc over your screen.

Hovering over your entire game is random move counter, which determines how many moves you are allowed per stage before you get a game over. Initially, this random and invisible counter can seem frustrating, but repeat plays reveal how elegant, evil and brilliant this is. A visible counter would let players know exactly when they’ve failed or when they no longer stand a chance of succeeding. This way, you are trained to play thoughtfully, to consider that each and every move may be your last. This way, the game trains you be better. It trains you to think outside of the box and try to rack up major moves rather than take the simple, easy options.

The iOS version of Bejeweled includes additional modes, a cool scoring system that lets you level up and earn achievements and wonderful art that makes you feel like this simple puzzle game is an epic adventure. You mobile gaming library is incomplete without this.

The post Apps We Love: Bejeweled appeared first on Tapsauce.

The App: Netflix

The Device: iPhone/HTC Incredible

The Price: The app is free, but a subscription will cost you

The Basics: Surely you know about Netflix. In fact…surely you use Netflix. After all, it is the year 2012 and you know how to use the internet. What was once a rent-DVDs-through-the-mail service has evolved into a digital streaming service, with an impressive selection of ready-to-watch movies and television shows. Since you could now watch movies through an internet connection with no need for a disc, a mobile app was inevitable. I’ve used the Netflix app on both Android and iPhone and both versions are just about identical…but is that identical experience good or bad?

The Review: The Netflix app gets the job done. You open it, you find the movie or show you want to watch, you tap play and watch it. It’s entirely functional and delivers what matters most about the modern Netflix experience: you can watch a crap-ton of movies anywhere you want to watch them. Taken as an extension of the main website, the Netflix app is pretty great, but the moment you look at it by itself, it’s lacking in a few key areas.

Navigating the app can be a pain in butt. Want to add movies to your queue? Re-arrange your queue? Extensively browse? Good luck. The small screen isn’t built for the current Netflix layout and doing anything that intensive will give you a headache. Thankfully, this is essentially negated by the extension of the actual website, where building and re-arranging you movie queue remains pretty effortless (in all fairness, the iPad version supposedly has a superior layout, but I have not used it). As long as you maintain your account from your computer, the app remains incredibly useable. All you’ll ever have to do it tap the “Queue” button.

Speaking of buttons, I wish the app had a better visual response for your interactions. When you select a movie or hit the play button, there’s occasionally a slight delay as the app loads, but there is no cue that your tap has been registered, leading to few seconds of unease as you try to tap it again or wonder if the app has locked up. This may not seem like a big deal, but when you’re trying to do this while at the gym or riding on a bumpy bus, it can be a headache.

But let’s face it: that’s a real first world problem. Issues aside, Netflix still lets you watch thousands of movies on your phone. That alone makes it worth your $10 a month. Hey, the app may not be perfect, but it’s still an A+ service.

The Grade: B+

The post App Spotlight: Netflix appeared first on Tapsauce.

(Every week, Rocksauce Studios CEO Q Manning will answer your questions about app design, app development and the mobile industry.)

Can you describe a healthy customer relationship? An unhealthy one? 

A healthy customer relationship at Rocksauce Studios is one where we’re both mutually beneficial, both respectful of each other’s ideas and one where we are deferred to as the expert in what we’re good at, which is app design and mobile development. The customer is looked at as the owner and master in regards to their own industry (which the app is built to work with and for, of course). A good client will give us the feedback we need right away and let us know any specific details that we need to know about the project. For example, if we were designing an app for pilots, they’d supply us with information about FAA regulations, where to find certain documentation and what rules there are and what rules there aren’t.

Conversely, a bad customer relationship is one where they don’t provide anything for us, where they don’t respect the way we work, where they don’t respect what we bring to the table and where they’re very poor with providing us with the required context to understand their industry. When we’re working on an app, the customer needs to focus as much attention as possible on it. It’s their industry. It’s their baby. They need to love it as much as they want us to love it. They need to act as a partner and a resource if they want us to deliver their ideal product.

How does your sales team seek out customers without becoming the stereotypical obnoxious salesperson?

Most of our customers come to us, actually. We don’t do a whole lot of outbound stuff. We have some relationships in the community that bring us leads, so we usually capitalize on that. When a client comes to Rocksauce, they’re usually ready to work with us, rather than us going to them and trying to convince them to make an app. They have a good idea, they know what the app stores are capable of, what smartphones are capable of and they’re just looking for us to fill in the gaps and make the best app that we can.

Is app design and development an actual industry yet or is it still very much the wild west?

The entire app game has become a lot more defined. There are a lot of companies out there offering various levels of design and development. Rocksauce is pretty distinct in that we’re a company that focuses on the market and how to make the best app possible instead of just doing exactly what we’re told and getting paid for a weak product. The app sector is one of the few industries actually growing right now and is acting as a major employer for tech people. It’s replaced web in a big way! That said, there are still a whole bunch of question marks up in the air. Platforms and technology are constantly changing and because of that, you see people fall by the wayside because they can’t keep up to date. To be an app company, you’ve got to be ready to go with the flow and roll with the punches. If Apple decides to change up everything, you’ve got to be ready to do that as well.

The post Q & Answers: The Customer Relationship appeared first on Tapsauce.

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!

During my two post-college years in Singapore, I got a job at Estee Lauder under the Clinique side, where I was their only 3D design person (my background and education is in product design). If you asked me to break it down, I’d say I was doing 90% 3D design and 10% graphic work. Singapore was the pacific design hub, which meant that we oversaw the company’s work everywhere except the United States! That’s a lot of work!

I was put in charge of making all of the display merchandising units for Russia, Japan, China, Australia and Korea. Naturally, each of those countries has its own native language and they each read and write differently. This meant that I had to learn to deal directly with these various languages and how to present them properly in my designs. Kerning text is design 101, but have you ever had to kern Korean letters? I speak Chinese, but not Korean, so I had to learn!

I had to go back and forth between the different countries and their heads and their designers to figure out the best way to do something. It was a trial by fire, a crash course in figuring out what would resonate in a culture that was not my own. Naturally, what was acceptable in one culture would seem completely wrong in another!

Case in point: there used to be a small thing that really irked my American boss (the only American in the entire Singaporean department). One of our Japanese clients would physically mark his work with bold red pens and, well, he did not take that well at all! Many Americans view red ink on their work as condescending and “teacher-y,” but this is common in Japan! Since I was one of his few employees who spoke as much English as him, it became my job to assure him things were fine an defuse any potential culture clashes before they happened.

Honestly, you are going to encounter culture differences like this if you pursue work on the international stage and there is no real way to prepare yourself: it’s going to be a trial by fire. You make mistakes and you learn and you go forward. You dealt with it. A meeting with a Russian designer or businessman may feel more aggressive than a meeting with an American, but from that Russian’s perspective, they’re being just as polite as you (not to stereotype, but trust me…I worked with tons of Russians!). Although many westerners think of many Asian countries as being interchangeable (boo!), my family experienced a bigger culture clash when we moved to China than when they visited me in the United States. You may think two cultures are similar, but trust me: they’re not. Either you’ve got to have that trial by fire or you have to hire someone who has already gone through it!

The post International Business is a Trial By Fire appeared first on Tapsauce.

A lot of people talk about the idea of starting their own business, whether that is a mobile app or a manufacturing company. I say go for it. I love the enthusiasm and vigor entrepreneurs bring to the conversation. However, many people enter into new ventures without any formal business structure. Lawyer 101 says to get everything in writing and have all interested parties sign it, especially when it comes to a new business. I’m sure the Winklevoss twins and that other guy whose name is hardly worth remembering still cry at night thinking about what they could have done differently.

So you have a new idea, you have a team together, and you’re going to make a killer app that gets you rich or you’ll die tryin’. Stop! Before you go any further, you want to get organized: who is doing what, how much everyone contributed, and how much they get. The easiest way to do this is to organize a business entity, which can come in the form of a Limited Liability Company (LLC), Corporation (either C or S-Corp), Partnership (limited or general), or, if you’re going at it alone, a simple sole proprietorship may work just fine. For my money, I vote LLC and here’s why:

An LLC is a relatively new form of business organization, providing the liability shield inherent to corporations, but without the pitfalls of double taxation. You don’t need fancy bylaws or articles of incorporation, you don’t have to pay state fees to issue shares, and you don’t have to follow the same corporate formalities in an LLC that you do in an Corporation. It’s cheaper, just as effective, and far more flexible. In fact, LLC’s are best described as the epitome of freedom of contract. That is, you can organize an LLC and describe the relationships between members in just about any way you can imagine.

A typical argument against LLCs is that venture capitalists only like to fund corporations. Why? They have all the legal paperwork set up to invest in them, their lawyers are lazy and are already familiar with corporate structures, and traditional wisdom says all successful companies are corporations. However persuasive this advice may seem, it is out of date.

I’ve had to opportunity to meet some venture capitalists, and they say they would be more than happy to invest in an LLC if the opportunity looked right. In other words, your company structure won’t make or break the deal. Furthermore, they thought an LLC may even be better, because if the business turned out to be a dud they could at least write off the losses on their personal taxes. However, we aren’t planning to fail, so we need another justification for starting with an LLC: they can be converted into a corporation pretty easily.

Some web experts out there will lead you to believe that the LLC-to-Corporation conversion process is complicated and treacherous to maneuver; however, the truth is if you have venture capital money knocking at your door, that money also has a lawyer, an accountant, and experienced business professionals who will handle the process for you. Nothing to worry about, just make sure you and your counsel read the documents carefully before signing anything.

Whether you chose an LLC or some other form of business organization, make sure you have something in writing and signed by you and your partners. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, and nothing can foul a good team effort faster than a greedy founder stealing it for himself.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are just that – opinions. They are not to be taken as legal advice.

The post Your Startup (and you) Need Structure! appeared first on Tapsauce.

(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.

Truthfully, I’m more irked that they stole the original app’s title as a selling point than I am at them stealing the concept. I’d Cap That is such a simple idea and it’s found such rapid success that rip-offs were going to roll in no matter what. Most app rip-offs have the basic decency to try to disguise the fact that they’re blatantly ripping off someone else’s idea. Also, most app rip-offs actually work as advertised, while Piccap is barely functional (most of its button and functions do not work). Piccap is bottom of the barrel junk. It’s to apps what Asylum releases are to film. It’s embarrassing.

As annoying as it is to watch successful apps get so blatantly plagiarized, I do wonder where certain lines get drawn. If we put a blanket ban on every Angry Birds rip-off out there, do we also have to put restrictions on apps that take something an app has done before and improved it? After all, that’s what the vast majority of apps are: improvements on a concept that someone else has attempted.

I mean, we can get bent out of shape that games like Cut the Birds and Angry Farm and quick cash-ins on the Angry Birds success, but then we’d have to acknowledge that Angry Birds itself borrows pretty heavily from games like Crush the Castle, which pre-date it by some time. Is something only free from idea thieves if it becomes a phenomenon? How is that fair? There’s a weird logic there that implies you can rip off anything you want if you don’t think you’ll get caught and that’s just not cool.

The frustrating truth is that there is no clear answer here. Art and technology only get better when you take what was done before and improve it (and that goes doubly so for apps, since they’re the perfect merger of both). However, I am going to use my painfully limited authority to draw this line in the sand: if you rip something off, do it well. Make a good product. If your app is a hastyily produced piece of junk and a rip-off, you deserve all of the scorn.

The post Talksauce: Death to App Rip-Offs! appeared first on Tapsauce.

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.

1. You must have a stellar product

A strong salesperson can truly sell just about anything, regardless of quality (which is my way of saying be careful out there!). However, in order to sell someone on a brand, they must feel that having your product is necessary. A great salesperson always highlights not only the value of the product, but also the necessity of the product.

2. You must create brand awareness

Companies like Coca-Cola and Kleenex have accomplished this with such unparalleled success that their brands have become the industry standards. We call all facial tissues by the name Kleenex and in many regions, all sodas are simply known as Coke regardless of the actual brand (“What Cokes do you have?” “Oh, Coke, Diet Coke, Dr. Pepper, Sprite…”). A great sales person does not stop at promoting the brand…they seek to make their brand the industry standard.

3. You must build relationships

Time and time again, I have encountered sales professionals who do not understand the importance of building a relationship with their clients and customers. The customer must feel that you are relatable and approachable. Even if you only speak to that customer once, they must walk away knowing that you’re trustworthy and on-the-level (you must be a good person for this to work, but you’re a Tapsauce reader, so surely you are!). One of your greatest assets will be the strong recommendation from a current or previous customer.

4. You must keep it real

This is the most important component in great selling. We all know that uncomfortable feeling you get when dealing with a pushy telemarketer or a cheesy car salesman. Sales are often made by playing the “yes” man, omitting information or straight-up lying. While this might earn a sale in the short term, it destroys any chance of selling or expanding the brand in the long-term.

The post Don’t Sell the Product, Sell the Brand! appeared first on Tapsauce.

The App: Quipper

The Device: HTC Incredible (Android)

The Price: Free

The Basics: Quipper is an app built for two different perspectives: those who want to learn and those who enjoy a good round of trivia. The app consists entirely of user-created quizzes, with subjects ranging from the Renaissance to 1970s television. Quipper can function as a study-aid , letting you research a subject or create a custom quiz of questions you need to study (and which can then be used by everyone else also studying the subject) or it can be a wonderful time-waster/road trip tool, where you pick a subject and see just how much you know (because there’s nothing sweeter than proving to your girlfriend that you know the name of Richie Cunningham’s older brother).

The Examination: Conceptually, I’m deeply in love with Quipper. I don’t think it’s where it needs to be quite yet, but with some updates and technical massages, I think it has the potential to become a truly essential app. I’m certainly not alone in thinking this, since the app recently raised a boatload of funding. Right now, Quipper feels like the first draft of something truly great.

A quick note: this review is of the Android version of Quipper. A brief Google search suggests that the iOS version may have some differences, but I haven’t had a chance to directly compare the two.

Although Quipper generally functions fine (outside of it slowing down and eventually locking up once during my time playing with the app), it’s not always pretty to look at. Its layout is functional at best and ugly at worst. Sure, it gets the job done, but it needs a complete and total visual overhaul. Too many apps look far too good for something this rough-around-the-edges and Quipper is far too much fun to be dismissed after a glimpse at its cluttered main page.

Quipper never stops being a little cluttered and visually cumbersome, but once you get familiar with navigating the app and actually dive into the content, much of those problems can be forgiven, mainly because Quipper is just plain fun to use. Although the main page offers “hot topics” (“Western Films” and “Music of the ’60s” are at the top of the list as I write this), I went to the Search tab to find my first quiz. You can search for any subject by typing in a word or phrase or by selecting an option from various categories (“Arts and Entertainment, “Math and Science,” etc) and from there you get even more specific (“Games,” “Classics,” “Chemistry,” “Biology” and so on). There are an impressive number of quizzes available under each subject and the beauty of Quipper is that if you don’t see one that applies to you, you can just make your own…which sadly can’t be done in-app. You have to register on Quipper’s site to create quizzes.

Once you’ve selected a quiz (I started with a James Bond quiz, because that’s how I roll), it’s pretty simple. You are given a question. You have four options. You pick one. You either get it right or you get it wrong. You are shown the percentage of users who picked each answer. Every ten questions, you have the option to call it a day or keep going. It’s that simple. Your stats (number of right/wrong answers, etc) are stored under the “Review” tab. The subjects you’ve selected are placed under “My Topics,” letting you revisit them as you see fit. It’s simple and more importantly, it’s a terrifically fun time waster.

But how is it as an educational tool? This is another area where Quipper can use a little more work, but it’s something that could be easily rectified. When you get a question right or wrong, a brief explanation about the proper answer and why it’s the right answer would be helpful and would actually educate the user rather than simply give them a “correct” or “incorrect.” This would also help curb mistakes on quizzes. During my several hours spent testing Quipper, there were a handful of answers that simply felt incorrect to me, but since the app offers no explanation for the answers, getting these wrong was frustrating. Was I missing something? If I’m incorrect, why am I incorrect and why did I think differently? It may seem like a small detail, but an addition would result in a hugely improved experience.

Right now, Quipper feels like a test run for something truly special. The app will stay on my smartphone, waiting for the the big update that’ll take it from good to great.

The Final Grade: B

The post App Spotlight: Quipper appeared first on Tapsauce.

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.

DaySince from Rocksauce Studios on Vimeo.

The post Inside the Design Studio: DaySince Number appeared first on Tapsauce.

The Apps: Gifture and Jittergram

The Device: iPhone

The Price: Free

The Basics: There is no such thing as a new idea in the app world. Everything has been done at least once (usually about ten times, if you want to be completely honest), so it’s not so important that you think up a great idea, it’s important that you think up a way to refine and perfect an existing concept. In today’s App Spotlight, I’m going to take a look at two apps that, on the surface, appear to do the exact same thing: create instant GIFs by taking a series of pictures and stringing them together. It’s a great idea and it’s the exact kind of thing that has the potential to catch on with smartphone users. But like the Highlander, there can be only one! Which of these two apps takes this golden idea further?

The Examination: Well, I can answer that question immediately and directly: although Jittergram certainly gets the job done, Gifture is the more successful app in every way.

Jittergram is only interested in letting you create a GIF. That’s it. On that level, it succeeds. Opening the app takes you directly to camera viewfinder mode…no fancy titles or graphics welcoming you to the app or anything like that. It’s simple, direct and to the point. In its own way, it’s pretty admirable, actually: no points for presentation, but plenty of points for Getting Straight To The Point. From there on out, it’s simple enough. You take a picture and camera immediately resets itself. In the apps’ best touch, the image you just remains a transparent overlay on the screen, letting you line up your next shot and make any changes you want with incredible ease (it’s a touch that Gifture should really considering putting in a future update). Once you’ve taken your second shot, your images are strung together and you have yourself a GIF. And that’s all that Jittergram offers and that may be enough for some smartphone users.

Gifture, though, is on a whole other level…and yep, it does have a fancy loading screen and a menu. Instagram users will instantly be familiar with the layout and format (if you’re going to borrow, you’d better borrow from the best!). Once you’ve set up your profile, your main page will display your GIFs as well as the GIFs of people you follow. Naturally, there’s also a “Most Popular” tab, but that page consists mostly of attractive girls GIF-ing themselves (get your mind out of the gutter, you know what I mean). Still, the social network aspects of Gifture are an excellent touch and should Gifture catch on in a big way anytime soon — and there is absolutely no way that it shouldn’t — it will be a great deal of fun to share GIFs with your friends and family.

The depth of Gifture goes far beyond  the sharing, though. Unlike Jittergram, which only lets you take those three pictures, Gifture gives you an insane level of control over your GIF. You can take up to twenty pictures with Gifture, letting you create GIFS that actually function as tiny short films or montages (fans of stop-motion are going to adore this app). After that, you are taken through a series of screens where you can adjust the number of frames-per-second spent on each image in your GIF from 1-10 and add Instagram-esque color filters to the final product. It’s the kind of customization that gives you total control of what your producing and sharing with the world. In short: it’s awesome.

Strangely, both apps had a similar issue with freezing and locking up during my time spent with them, but Rocksauce’s John Gholson (who told about about Gifture in the first place) told me that he’s never had a problem with that. Still, those were the hiccups in my experience with both apps, but I couldn’t pinpoint the cause for either of them.

Is it unfair to directly compare these two apps? Maybe. One has small ambitions and the other has huge ambitions. One appears to be working from a small budget and the other, well, not from a small budget. However, it’s an important lesson to learn: in the world of apps, your idea is always going to already exist. You just have to make sure that your take on the idea is the absolute best.

The Final Grades:

Jittergram: B-

Gifture: A-

The post App Spotlight: Gifture and Jittergram appeared first on Tapsauce.