Tag : apps

Instagram, I loved you.

You were my first real relationship after Twitter, and right now I feel angry and bitter about you turning your back on all the good stuff we had going. I feel shut out by you, and I can't bear the thought of you and Facebook, you know... 'together'... 

I don't know how I can keep all this hurting inside of me...

So, back from another SXSW :(

It's great to be back in a country where the butter doesn't contain sugar by default, where fizzy drinks don't come in buckets and where you can buy meat in units of less than one pound. But... I will miss adding cheese and chipotle oak-smoked maple-flakes and sugar-coated tequila-bacon dust to my deep-fried food. If we hadn't got out when we did I would not have fitted through the doorway of the plane.  

It was another awesome trip for Made by Many for many reasons - not least because of the way people embraced Picle, the iPhone app we launched. 

We promised to make Picle an open experiment in Lean product innovation. To that end, we approached SXSW as a giant customer development exercise. This blog post is about how we prioritised the feature-set that we launched with, and how we might grow and evolve from that Minimum Viable Product.

After a week of BBQs, speeches, panels, margaritas, putting names to faces and more BBQs I’ve landed back at Made by Many HQ and I want to share some of the Picle love.

Last week we announced the forthcoming release of an iPhone app for SXSW called ‘Picle’. The reception was overwhelming, and we’re really excited to announce that Picle is now available in the app store.

But, hold on... before you run off and start Picling there is something we must remind you of...

SXSW has been an important event in the Made by Many calendar over the past few years.

We take as many people as possible and we always have a great time - we learn, we swarm, we go to lots of parties and we live together for a week in some big houses in Travis Heights. We also get to spend some quality time with our clients, do some new biz and hang out with lots of people we'd only otherwise know through Twitter and Instagram. 

For the past few years, we've tried to launch something new for SXSW: a homepage takeover and/or a new app. Last year we launched Hollergram for the iPad - an app designed specifically for SX that turns your iPad into a  glowing sign, and that simultaneously tweets your wittiest bon mots into the stream. Gosh, how we all laughed!

This year we are beyond super-excited to announce the birth of Picle. Our most ambitious Made by Many product yet - an iPhone app that uses photos and sound to give users storytelling super-powers.

Here's a little preview...

Christmas is coming, the goose is getting fat, and our little festive update to Holler Gram is now in-store.  

Welcome to Holler Gram Seasons. 

More screenshots below.

In March we launched Holler Gram, an app that turns your iPad into a glowing sign and simultaneously tweets into a predefined hashtag. It was perfect for conferences and we only did it as a bit of fun - which is why we are amazed that it's now been downloaded 45,000 times.

It's still being used by people all over the world and of the many fascinating uses people have found for it, the most humbling is from Australia where a group of teachers got in contact with us to say they'd been using the app to teach deaf children.

Are you one of those people who look at your phone in frustration every now and then, with the knowledge that there must be thousands of fantastic apps you're not making use of because you don't know about them? Fear not - here's Made by Many's list of the apps we're using more often than the rest at the moment:

Games/fun

Death Rally: This is the app for you if speed’s your thing.

Toca-Boca Hair Salon: Tim was the one who first introduced us to this super fun app that allows you to change a character’s hairstyles as if you were a (slightly warped) barber. Definitely one that kids will enjoy too, even if that last bit sounds a bit counter-intuitive!

Toca Doctor: In Charlotte’s words, ‘anatomical educational fun’.

2011 was my first time at South By South-West. Before I left I'd been given a range of advice, from drinking my year's quota of tequila in 5 days to avoiding most of the panel based sessions harder than I'd be avoiding healthy eating. It's passed in a whirl, with each day blending into the other until now that it's all over it feels like one helluva long day has just ended, not a whole week.

So did it meet my expectations?  Yes it did, and more. It was an incredibly stimulating, vibrant and inspiring experience which has left my brain spinning. But, because there has to be a but, my only issue was that it did take me a day or two to perfect picking out the good sessions to attend. I'd been warned to expect more breadth than depth, and to stay away from sessions that were too close to my day to day work, but I was initially tripped up by sessions which sold their topic very well in the programme and then turned out to be nothing more than an exercise in selling the speaker and his/her start-up/book/app during the session. If I'd wanted to listen to a marketing pitch, I didn't need to fly  10 hours across the Atlantic to find it. A good talk should put sharing value first, and self-promotion second.

Last week our new iPad app, the SXSW-themed Holler Gram, hit the app store. Today we’re introducing the Holler Gram to the world with a post on the design story and an in-person show and tell over a beer at MxM HQ this evening.

The Holler Gram is a cheeky, disruptive little number we’re calling “a physical messaging platform”. It turns your iPad into a glowing sign you can use during the sessions and parties of SXSWi 2011 this coming week. It’s fully wired up to Twitter and stacked with pre-set messages and a big numbers score-slider so you can unleash your inner armchair critic pretty much whenever and wherever you please. Intrigued? Read on...