The iPad Has Been Unveiled - Now What?

Posted by James Keller on 28 January 2010 @ 11:33 PT

As a veteran of agency life, I can say that being an iPhone™ OS-driven agency brings with it a unique set of hurdles - namely, that we have hitched our wagon to Apple’s pace of innovation, which includes newly accessible features with every new release of the OS, and sometimes, like yesterday, a whole new device.

As with all great things in life, this pace of innovation is the thing that gets us up and into the office each morning, but at the same time, it presents the most formidable challenges - creating the need for both our little business, and our client’s businesses, to stay nimble, aware and enthusiastic.

Getting Comfy with Our New Tools

Now that we have finally emerged from the post-launch haze, the Small Society team has downloaded the new Software Development Kit (SDK), the new Human Interface Guidelines (HIG), and run our existing apps through the paces in the iPad simulator.

We are taking a hard look at how well our apps will scale, and which of our clients might benefit from making custom iPad™ experiences.  Of note, we are under NDA with Apple, as are all developers - so we can only say so much about  what the future holds - but we wanted to share with you our thoughts around what details are already in the public realm.

While technically all iPhone apps will work “out of the box” on the iPad, that does not mean that most apps will look great, or even make sense when blown up to twice their natural size on a new device.

iPhone Apps Will Work Out of the Box, But is That a Good Thing?

Read More

New Year’s Resolution: More Blogging

Posted by Raven Zachary on 5 January 2010 @ 14:52 PT

Happy New Year, everyone! At Small Society, we’ve been so busy building apps that we’ve been doing a poor job keeping our company blog up-to-date. One of my goals for 2010 is to dedicate more time to outbound communications. 2009 was a very successful year for us as an iPhone agency and we have already some exciting things in the works for 2010. Hopefully, you’ve been following us on Twitter (@smallsociety), where updates are a bit more frequent than they are here.

Expect a batch of catch-up posts in the next few weeks covering some of our 2009 news and app launches.

Support your Local Community - this Thursday!

Posted by James Keller on 16 November 2009 @ 11:06 PT

When the citizens of Small Society heard about 30 Hour Day we knew that this was something that we wanted to come out to support!

For those of you who haven’t heard, 30 Hour Day is an event where Rick Turoczy of the Silicon Florist and Cami Kaos of Strange Love Live are going to livestream for 30 hours straight in an effort to raise money for charities like Free Geek, Oregon Food Bank, and Toys for Tots.  So basically, 30 Hour Day (@30hourday and #30hd for you twitter types) is the warm, fuzzy trifecta of Portland community, charity and fun!

While the actual Livestream itself isn’t happening until December 18 and 19 (including 30 hours of entertainment, interviews, and interesting goings on) - we wanted to start the excitement, get the word out, and kick off the giving season where we knew there would be a collection of generous geeks… so….

We are proud to announce that we will be accepting donations to both Toys for Tots and the Oregon Food Bank THIS THURSDAY at Ignite Portland:

November 19, 2009
IGNITE PORTLAND 7

Bagdad Theater
3702 S.E. Hawthorne Blvd.
Portland, OR 97214

Doors Open at 5:30PM
Show Starts at 7:00PM

General Admission, No Tickets
Admission is always FREE!

We know that even the most organic-home-grown-in-my-garden types must have an errant box of mac and cheese lying about, or perhaps you bought too many cans of refried beans in a regrettable Costo moment.   Or perhaps you can swing by your local Fred Meyers and pick up some crayons and a coloring book?  When you’ve got those non perishable foods and new unwrapped toys together, bring ‘em to the Bagdad, and we will take care of the rest.  Whatever you can contribute, we will be grateful.

We also wanted to give a huge thanks to the Legion of Tech who didn’t hesitate to let us set up a collection area at Ignite.

See you Thursday!

Whole Foods Market - There’s an App for That

Posted by Raven Zachary on 14 August 2009 @ 18:31 PT

Apple has been running a series of TV commercials over the past year featuring iPhone applications in action. I’m sure you’ve see a few of these. In the past week, Apple has released a series of new iPhone TV commercials, two of which include the Whole Foods Market Receipes iPhone app icon during both the beginning and end of the commercials (“Travel” and “Share”). And while the mysterious hand does not actually tap on the Whole Foods Market Recipe app itself, it sure is an honor to be included on the iPhone during these segments.

Yahoo! Developer Network Spotlight - Small Society

Posted by Raven Zachary on 14 August 2009 @ 18:15 PT

While I was at Yahoo! for iPhoneDevCamp 3 a few weeks ago, the fine folks at the Yahoo! Developer Network (YDN) filmed a short video interview with me about my work at Small Society. They did a fantastic job with the production of the video, especially considering that I was a bit tired and stressed during the filming, as it took place just a few hours before the start of iPhoneDevCamp 3. Thanks again, YDN!

iPhoneDevCamp 3 Recap

Posted by Raven Zachary on 14 August 2009 @ 18:07 PT

Two weeks ago, I (along with Small Society developers Jon Wight and Andrew Pouliot) visited Yahoo! headquarters in Sunnyvale, California, for iPhoneDevCamp 3, the largest iPhone developer conference (other than Apple’s own WWDC). This year, we had close to 600 attendees, the largest event yet. This is our third year. The prior two years were held at Adobe Systems’ San Francisco office. I created iPhoneDevCamp in June 2007 before the release of the first iPhone - when iPhone development equated to web development. We’ve come a long way since then, and with the tremendous success of native apps and the App Store, this year was bound to be a success.

The highlights from this year included keynote presentations by Chi-Hua Chien from Kleiner Perkins (talking about the iFund, of course), Andrew Stone (Twittelator Pro), and Steve Demeter (Trism), a musical performance by BT, dozens of presentations by attendees, and 54 new iPhone apps demoed during the Hackathon.

Thanks to everyone who made the event possible this year. While we aren’t quite ready to start the planning for iPhoneDevCamp 4 in 2010, based on the success this year, I suspect we’ll be repeating the event next summer.

Oregon Business Journal: Kickin’ Apps

Posted by Raven Zachary on 14 August 2009 @ 17:56 PT

The August 2009 issue of Oregon Business Journal included an article by Adrianne Jeffries entitled, “Kickin’ Apps: Portland’s fertile ground for mobile app development.” Jeffries did an excellent job covering the diverse and impressive mobile technology scene emerging in Portland. Small Society is included in the article, along with a number of other cool companies in the area.

Willamette Week: Hotseat: Raven Zachary

Posted by Raven Zachary on 14 August 2009 @ 17:49 PT

Catching up on a backlog on Small Society blog posts…I was recently featured in the one of Portland’s arts papers, Willamette Week. The Hotseat format is essentially a Q&A with an individual in Portland. I was selected by the paper for the July 15th, 2009, issue. I have linked to the online version of the article for those of you who are interested in reading the interview.

Whole Foods: our most drool-inducing project yet

Posted by James Keller on 2 July 2009 @ 14:22 PT

Raven and I have been known to pass travel time by making the short list of folks/brands that we’d like to work with someday, but from day one of Small Society, there was one company that Raven was passionate about making an app for…

Whole Foods Market has always kept the citizens of Small Society stocked with Kombucha (those of you who know us will understand how serious this is), and both Raven and Jon spent some time living in Austin, Texas, home of Whole Foods and their absolutely gorgeous flagship store. So, this year when Raven was in Austin to moderate the “iPhone: The New Gaming Platform” panel at SXSW, he and I decided to swing by headquarters to have a quick meet and greet with their team.  Lucky for us, it was a great meeting, and we kicked off just a few weeks later.

When we started thinking about how to bring the Whole Foods brand to life in the mobile space, there was a lot of passion about the content available in their recipe database.   Whole Foods has a core mission to bring fresh and healthy food to their customers - and so it makes sense to help those customers transform that food into a nourishing meal that they can share with friends and family around the table.

Our only concern was that there were already some recipe apps available on the app store.  But, after discussing it, we all agreed that the exact same brand values that make Whole Foods different than your average grocery chain would help differentiate the app itself.  We focused the user experience on these key criteria - for example, the recipe search has a filter that supports special diets such as vegan, dairy free or sugar conscious, and the recipes call for quality, whole ingredients.

We also wanted to flip the recipe finder concept on its head a bit.  As much as I’d like to tell you that I pre-plan each week’s meals and shop ahead, the project team agreed that most of us don’t usually approach dinner that way.  Instead, most of us open the freezer, fridge, and pantry door and rely on our creativity to make something work.  It was this paradigm that inspired the “on hand” feature that allows you to choose up to three ingredients and the app provides recipes that leverage what you already have available.

Our app launch was timed perfectly with the launch of the iPhone OS 3.0 Software Update, so the Whole Foods app was built using key new Apple technologies such as MapKit for the store finder, in-application email for sharing favorite recipes, and the ability to copy recipe data using Cut, Copy, Paste functionality.

(Please note that because we used these awesome 3.0 technologies, your device needs to be on 3.0 for the app to work. If you haven’t already done so, upgrade, it’s worth it… we promise!)

On its first day in the app store, it was hailed as a Staff Favorite.  We are also very proud to announce that it is currently Apple’s App Store Pick of the Week.

It was awesome working with the Whole Foods team, and we hope that as you read this you are happily snacking on Strawberry Shortcakes with Maple Syrup and Frozen Yogurt.  Wait, you aren’t?  Better download the app (after all, it’s free!)

One Big Step for One Small Society

Posted by James Keller on 19 June 2009 @ 16:42 PT

So here’s the thing… Small Society is the type of agency that believes that great people with a great idea can make a great app - but if you add just a dash of process garnered from years of experience making software, it can take that app from great to outstanding. We also fundamentally believe that in these young, Wild Wild West days of iPhone applications - having a strong process really sets us apart from many of our peers.

That being said, every once and awhile, an opportunity comes along that requires you to let go just a little bit and follow your heart.

Last week, we had the honor of having some of our work onstage at Apple’s Worldwide Developer’s Conference (WWDC). The Apple keynote has found its way into pop culture - having been parodied by everyone from 30 Rock to the College Humor crew - but to an Apple fan, it’s far more than that. Leading up to the keynote most Apple fans have already spent countless hours reading up on the rumors, trying to guess what the new announcements will be. For those who are not lucky enough to attend the keynote live, most fans will endlessly hit reload as one of the big Apple sites live blogs the entire event. So for us, the geeks who have dedicated our careers to this platform, an opportunity to help build one of the keynote showcase apps is an incredibly awesome experience.

It was this opportunity that inspired us to throw our usual user-centered design process out the window and join our friends at Zipcar for a crazy five-week sprint to bring a prototype of the Zipcar application to life. Our lead developer (Jon) and our fearless leader (Raven) went through a similar sprint on the Obama ‘08 iPhone application, and so the team was confident that there was enough time to get some solid code written, but our challenge was in understanding the Zipcar customer (25% of whom have iPhones!) and what they would want from this app, while at the same time leveraging brand new technologies to highlight the iPhone 3.0 OS.

Needless to say, we were excited. The weekend before the kick-off meeting in Cambridge, Jon had already implemented MapKit as a means to locate cars. On the plane home immediately following our kick-off, I had developed a first draft of the wireframes. From there, we were iterating the app almost daily, side by side with the Zipcar team, who were providing design, server development, and moral support every step of the way.

It was a crazy timeline, and the sprint wasn’t without a few tense and tiring moments, but in the end we built something that the whole team is quite proud of. We leveraged the best of 3.0 technologies including MapKit and Push Notifications, while at the same time bringing out the brand personality of Zipcar and keeping true to the ideal iPhone user experience. Luckily, Apple was pleased with our progress.

Perhaps the most talked about feature of the prototype was the ability to honk the horn and even unlock the car. Thanks to technology already built into the Zipcar fleet, it was possible to do some pretty amazing work in an incredibly short period of time. We were also lucky enough to not only see the demo live on stage at WWDC, but help the Zipcar team demo the technology for our fellow devs inside the Moscone center on Tuesday and Wednesday of the conference. (It was also pretty cool to be trending topic on twitter, if even briefly, amid all of the other cool announcements.)

Watch the Zipcar demo at the WWDC 09 keynote

Also, check out media coverage of the demo:
Wired (http://www.wired.com/autopia/2009/06/zipcar-iphone/)
Mashable (http://mashable.com/2009/06/08/iphone-30-apps/)
The Apple Blog (http://theappleblog.com/2009/06/09/zipcar-car-sharingrenting-with-your-iphone/)

We’d like to thank Apple for giving Zipcar (and us, by proxy) the opportunity to participate in the keynote, and for giving us such an awesome platform to work with. And, of course, we’d like to thank Zipcar for being an outstanding client. Not only is Zipcar changing the way we think about transportation as the largest car-sharing service in the world, but the people who work for Zipcar truly embody the company brand - they are smart, fun and passionate.

We feel lucky to have been a part of such a crazy endeavor, but are all just a tiny bit relieved to have a little extra time to catch up on all of that sleep we missed.