Sam TII

Hey Guys,

So my friend and I entered the mobile app competition at our university with HerdIt, a herding game for iOS devices (iPhone, iPod, and iPad). Part of the competition is of course number of downloads and unique daily uses so I'm hoping for some help from my MiataTurbo brethren. The app is free, so if you wouldn't mind donating a few seconds to us to download and play it, that'd be awesome.

Oh, and you get to herd cats too, and I know how much all you fools love cats.

Here's a link to it on the iTunes store, or you can just search for HerdIt in the AppStore on your device: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/herd...6344?ls=1&mt=8

Oh and mods if this post is out of line, please delete it, I couldn't find anything in the rules against it because it's for a university sponsored competition not commercial sales.

Thanks!
Sam

Joe Perez

iTrader: (8)

Serious question:

Is there a specific reason you chose iOS? Is that mandated by the course, or did you determine that the iOS market was more lucrative than the Android market?

I ask out of genuine curiosity, as someone who isn't really an OS bigot, but just uses whichever phone best matches his needs.

Sam TII

It was mandated by the course. It's a generic mobile development class and the professor held a vote the first day to see what the class wanted to do, apparently we had one more Mac kid than PC/Android guys so iOS won. Personally, I'd rather do Android as I think it is better but no amount of logic could dissuade the Mac users.

However, it has been shown that iOS stuff is way more lucrative (iOS users are willing to spend about $250/yr on average in the AppStore and Android users are a measly $50/yr) but the apps are all not for profit so it didn't affect our decision much.

Joe Perez

iTrader: (8)

That is truly shocking ($250 a year in the appstore?!) but it certainly validates the platform.

dk wolf

Ugh.. I've already spent 400 bucks in the appstore this year... and come december, you can except another couple hundy....

I don't do it for fanboyism, my online textbook app is super helpful and I think it's worth it for everything that's included with it.

Sam TII

Yeah it actually increased quite a bit in the last little bit since they started allowing in-app purchases. People get hooked on stuff and need to buy the power ups etc. That made the annual spending increase dramatically.

Sam TII

Which app do you use? I've sort of wanted to try it but I've heard mixed reviews on a bunch of them. That and I'd need to buy a tablet to do it, which likely won't happen. I'm so cheap I built a semi functional hackintosh just so I could write this app.

dk wolf

I'm using Kno.. they JUUUUUUST released for Android so I'm pissed... I would have probably gotten the Transformer Prime.. but I got my iPad3 like last year, and this app was a deal maker/breaker. Comes fully digital, comes with study material, note cards with all the key terms pre-made, highlight capability, bookmarks, reminders. It's ******* great. And it's reasonably priced. I haven't paid more than 100 bucks for any of my books, and for any of the smaller specialized books, costs me about 40 bucks... but I think the cost is totally worth it.

messiahx

iTrader: (2)

While the app you're using sounds a little bit more fully featured...why not use Kindle? I've gotten textbooks for the last couple of terms on there. It's especially cheap since I can rent for a specified time (I taking a lot of fast track classes). Only fail I've seen so far is that now that I have a Windows 8 tablet, I've discovered that the "metro" version doesn't support all the books yet, so I have to go to the standard desktop to use Kindle.

dk wolf

I wouldn't want to get kindle just for that. And I don't know what the app store is like for the Kindle, and don't really want to bother with it since I get most of my books physically anyway.

But my iPad does it, and better than what the kindle offers, I don't pay that much and I can live with that.

Yeah, my classes are insanely fast tracked also, highly concentrated semesters in 7 weeks. 2 classes per "semester" qualifies as full time, and I'm taking 4 right now. and it's breaking my *****, if it wasn't for this app, I'd probably be totally lost.

Joe Perez

iTrader: (8)

So, stupid question 2, then:

Do college students not use physical textbooks anymore?

I find e-readers to be extremely convenient for books which I intend to read in a linear fashion, from beginning to end. But based solely on my experience with owning a current-gen Kindle, I think I'd find it rather inconvenient for books which I tended to skip around in, constantly reference the index of, etc.

dk wolf

A lot of people still use them, at least at my school. Then again, I'm not in a conventional university. But the downside to electronic books is that, it might be cheaper up front, but you can't sell your books back.

Also, you can't get your books off someone else for cheap either. But that depends if that student is a broke *** or not.

But the thing with my textbook app, it has a search feature, which is dope. I can bookmark specific pages with the key terms, I can doodle/highlight specific areas of the book and you can go to a "journal mode" that shows you everything you highlighted in your book (in color coded fashion). So it makes referencing much easier.

Sam TII

The other thing is that I actually like having the real book to highlight mark, write notes in the margins etc, but I've recently started using OneNote to keep track of that stuff--Can you copy/paste your notes out of the app at all to use in other stuff? That might sell it for me.

Joe Perez

iTrader: (8)

Yeah, this is a tough one for me.

I will admit that for at least the past decade, I have occasionally found myself mentally wanting to hit F3 while reading a physical book.

On the other hand, I find the user interface on the Kindle to be somewhat cumbersome for non-sequential access, at least as compared to using my hands to flip through physical pages. Admittedly, I am using the non-touch, non-keyboard Kindle. I am sure that a more tablet-like device (Fire, MyPad, etc) would be greatly enhanced in this regard.

My primary reason for having this device is for convenience when traveling by airplane, which I do frequently. It fits nicely into the front pocket of my jeans, and alleviates the need for me to estimate my projected reading requirements at the start of a trip and pack the requisite number of books accordingly. This is of particular importance given my reading habits. Fire in the Valley, for instance, measures 9.1 x 7.3 x 1.6 inches and weighs 2.4 lbs, and that's in the paperback version. So in addition to 2-3 days worth of clothing, toiletries, laptop and charger, a 3 ring binder or two, a one-quart zip-loc bag completely filled with travel-size bottles of rum, etc., packing becomes something of an art form.

By comparison, in a college environment, I know that I will have certain classes on certain days, and so the concept of packing appropriately becomes quite simple.