Earlier today I mentioned being selected as a speaker at 360iDev San Jose in April. But before I fly out to San Jose, I fly down to Atlanta for NSConference. I’m looking forward to attending this event. For those wondering about NSConference, check out this promo video.

Yesterday I was having a very good day but around 5:45 pm my day got even better. I received an email from the fine folks at 360iDev that my topic “Building Web Service Powered iPhone Apps” has been selected. Yep, that’s right folks. I will be speaking at the upcoming 360iDev San Jose (April 11-14).

I’m very excited about this opportunity for a number of reasons. First and foremost, speaking at the conference gives me a chance to share what I have learned over the recents months about leveraging web services within iPhone applications. I have worked with web services in some form for over a decade now so it’s only natural that I would gravitate towards using them in iPhone applications. I also plan to blog more on the topic as I prepare my materials for the conference.

Another reason I’m excited about speaking at 360iDev this spring is I get to attend the conference. I was on the fence about going. I’m already registered for NSConference 2010 USA and I plan to attend this year’s WWDC. I actually was planning to email John at 360iDev to ask if there are plans for another event later in the year. 360iDev Denver was such an incredible experience I knew I didn’t want to go the entire year without attending at least one event. But before I got the chance to ask about another event this year I received the email accepting me as a speaker. This of course made my decision easy. Heck yeah I’m going in April!

And the final reason I’m excited about this opportunity, 360iDev events are the best. Granted I have attended only 1 and that was last fall, but it was by far the best developer conference I have attended in recent years. And definitely one of the top conferences I have ever attended. I posted my comments about 360iDev Denver back in October so I will not repeat myself here. What I will say, though, is if you are an iPhone developer then you should attend 360iDev San Jose. I guarantee you will pick up a trick or two or twelve and best of all you will get to meet other awesome iPhone developers.

Labor Mate was originally release in October 2008. My expectations for it were low. If it sold 100 units in the first year then I would consider it a success. But my expectation were exceeded. Labor Mate sold 4997 units in the first year, and it has sold 9201 units in all as of yesterday.

In January 2009 Labor Mate broke into the Top 100 for the Health and Fitness category in the U.S. store. It stayed in the Top 100 daily for nearly 11 straight months peaking at number 34 in the U.S. store. Labor Mate has also been in the Top 100 for the Health and Fitness category in a number of other stores including the U.K., Japan, Sweden, Netherlands, and Italy among others. All of this changed in mid-November. Labor Mate’s fall from grace had started.

A couple of things happened in November bumping Labor Mate out of the Top 100 in its category. First, it received a couple of ridiculous, negative comments in iTunes. I’m not sure of the real impact but the slide from the Top 100 started at the time of the comments. Second and only a day or two later, BabyBump made the What’s Hot list. I believe it is this second point that has taken the biggest toll on Labor Mate’s Top 100 streak.

BabyBump was released in October 2009, just over a year since the initial release of Labor Mate. BabyBump includes features that I have long planned for Labor Mate but have yet to implement. And honestly it looks better than Labor Mate in my opinion. Creative design has always been a weak skill set of mine.

At the end of the day, BabyBump did it better. This was a major wakeup call for me. I let Labor Mate, the one time market leader in its space, grow stale. I had a top ranking and it was mine to lose. And lose it I did.

A major mistake I made in 2009 was to focus most of my attention on contract work and not enough time on my own company. This lack of focus was a setback but also a major kick in my ass. Unfortunately it took Labor Mate’s fall from grace to light the fire under me (and in me). I have learned from this lesson and will do better going forward. For starters, I have since hired a part-time designer as the “Creative Director” for White Peak Software and the first project we worked on together looks great. It will be in the app store soon.

So what about Labor Mate? Is Labor Mate dead? No, far from it. Just a few weeks before the fall from grace, version 1.5 of Labor Mate was approved. This release added support for 8 additional languages, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Spanish, Swedish, and Russian. So while sales in the U.S. have dropped, sales worldwide have improved and Labor Mate continues to sell an average of 31 units per day worldwide. So despite not being in the Top 100 of the Health and Fitness category in the U.S., sales remain steady. Also, I have big plans for Labor Mate 2, which I will start working on soon.

One of the hardest challenges I face right now is growing my independent software business while taking care of my 21 month son. Like many other dads out there, my wife works. But what is not typical is my wife is a flight attendant. When she works she is gone for 3, sometimes 4 days in a row, leaving me to fly solo with the kid.

Over the last 21 months we have tried a number of things to help me find time to work on and for White Peak Software. Some attempts have been more successful than others, but in the end I still struggle to find quality work time.

Taking care of the kid myself and work while he sleeps.

This was a disaster. Taking care of a kid all day is exhausting, and with the wife away I not only had to use the time when the kid was sleeping to catch up on my own sleep, but I needed to clean up around the house, cook myself lunch and dinner, and so on. This meant I didn’t start work until 10 pm or so on most days. And this was at the time when the kid was waking during the night. I was doing good if I got 3 hours of work and 3 hours of sleep in a day.

Daytime babysitters to the rescue.

I definitely needed help so we tried babysitters. This past summer we had 2 sitters that were awesome. Best of all the kid really liked both of them. The sitters would watch the kid for approximately 6 hours a day. This definitely helped. I used that time to shower, eat breakfast and lunch, and work. Unfortunately it still left me with only about 4 hours of quality work time per day. I could have logged more hours by working nights but honestly after months of going solo with the kid while the wife was away I needed the sleep. So I stopped working as much at night and used the time to catch up on sleep and re-energize.

All good things come to an end.

The two sitters we had during the summer were awesome, as I already said. They set the bar for how to judge all other sitters, and the bar was set high. Unfortunately for us, but good for them, each sitter got “real” jobs. The babysitting thing was only during college years and not a career choice.

One thing that helped with these babysitters is that we used a set schedule for each week. One sitter was always here on Tuesday and Thursday and the other was here Monday and Wednesday, and sometimes Friday. The set schedule made it more predicable for me regarding when I could work. The problem was my wife’s work schedule isn’t predicable, so this meant there were times we paid for a babysitter even though we didn’t need her. When my wife isn’t working a trip, she is more than happy to spend the day with the kid.

This lead us to try using babysitters on a flexible schedule. We might need a sitter on Monday and Tuesday of one week, and Wednesday Thursday of the following. This was problematic because even babysitters like to have some structure in their work life.

Finding sitters who could be flexible was challenging, and there was even a period of time when we didn’t have a sitter at all. I was once again watching the kid all day and trying to squeeze in as much work as possible at night. It was very exhausting.

What’s next? Daycare.

Since the flexible babysitting thing didn’t work out, and since we don’t need to have a babysitter at the house all the time, we have decided to give daycare a try. Daycare provides the benefit of having set days when the kid will be in daycare (we’re doing part time, 3 days a week for now). This means once again my work time is predicable again. And if we decide not to put him in for a day, it’s doesn’t cost us as much. The daily cost for daycare is about half what we pay for a babysitter. So on days when we don’t need someone else looking after the kid it will not cost us as much as it did when we used a babysitter.

We still may use a babysitter during the day from time to time, and lucky for me, the daycare will allow us to switch around the 3 days from time to time. So I’m hopeful this next attempt at finding me time to work will be good for both me and my wife. Time will tell. The kid starts daycare tomorrow.

On January 1, 2010, the official support groups for all White Peak Software products will moving to Google Groups. The new URLs are below:

Labor Mate
http://groups.google.com/group/whitepeaksoftware-labormate

Killink CSV Editor
http://groups.google.com/group/whitepeaksoftware-killinkcsveditor

Why the move? The old forum software I used was becoming a pain to host and keep running. Also, almost all support questions and bug reports I receive come via email and not via the support forum. In other words, the this support forum was rarely used. And frankly I do not like web forums. I prefer email.

Google Groups offers the best of both, web forums for those who prefer it and email for those who rather interact with a community via email. I know the move will be a pain for the select few who use this forum especially if don’t already have a Google Account. But the small pain outweighs the benefits of the move.

Also, I hope this move will help the online community to grow. Time will tell if that happens or not.

No support group URL for SMTP Diagnostics? Support for SMTP Diagnostics will be email only going forward. Use the contact us page to send your questions and bug reports.

For those who might be new to this blog, my name is Kirby Turner. I run White Peak Software, my independent software company, and have done so since November 2003. That makes White Peak Software slightly over 6 years old now.

There have been ups and downs for White Peak Software over the years but 2009 seems like the most challenging for me. For starters I have transited the company from one that offers services (aka contract programming) focused on Microsoft technologies to an iPhone company. This is a major step in my ultimate goal of eliminating service work all together so I can focus on writing and selling my own software products.

There is only a day and a half remaining in 2009. Even so, I thought now is a good time to post a year in review for 2009. My primary inspiration for this posting comes from Patrick McKenzie of Bingo Card Creator frame. While I make a good living from contract programming, it is not the ultimate goal for my company so I will focus the business stats reported below on the product side of the business only. Besides, the product side is likely more interesting to other indie developers out there.

Business Stats for the Year

Product Revenue: $15,217.57 (reflects payments received in 2009 for product sales between December 2008 and November 2009)

(Sales numbers below reflect sales between January 2009 and December 2009. For those doing the math, the sales numbers below will not add up to the product revenue total reported above.)

SMTP Diagnostics Sales: $737.10 (change from last year -24%)

Killink CSV Editor Sales: $9,089.20 (change from last year 6%)

Labor Mate Sales: $4,104.10 (change from last year 1,515%; U.S. sales only; includes sales between January 2009 and November 2009)

Web Stats for the Year

Visit: 19,943

Unique Visitors: 17,293

Pageviews: 41,381

Traffic sources: 25.55% Direct Traffic, 25.55% Referring Sites, 48.87% Search Engines (with 44.60% coming from Google)

Trial software downloads: Unfortunately I just discovered that my tracking of downloads broke at the end of April so I don’t have the stats. Bad me for not being on top of this.

What Went Right

• Marketing efforts this summer for Labor Mate helped increase sales.
• Labor Mate remained in the 100 in the Health and Fitness category for most of the year, reaching an all time high ranking of 34.
• A mention in MacBreak Weekly podcast caused a one week boost in sales.
• Got my first taste of in-app advertising thanks to Matt Martel.
• Sales for Killink CSV Editor continued to grow despite not releasing a single update the entire year.
• I reduced my technology focus on the service side of the business from a broad range related to Microsoft to a smaller set of technologies with a primary focus on the iPhone. I spent half the year doing full time iPhone development, which has been great. Unfortunately this transition involved ending relationships, some long term, with clients not interested in iPhone development, but it also meant building new relationships.

What Didn’t Go So Well

• Failed to release Killink CSV Editor version 2. I’m hugely disappointed by this. I had a number of setbacks at the end of 2008/beginning of 2009 that derailed Killink CSV Editor. I’ll spare you from the list of excuses. At the end of the day I screwed up.
• Failed to release my second iPhone app. Another setback for 2009 that effects my ultimate plans for the company.
• I had a serious time management issue for most of 2009. Life with a kid has introduced new challenges for me. For almost half of 2009 I juggled my time between taking care of the kid and working on White Peak Software. The kid won most of my time, leaving little time for the company. This time management problem meant I spent what little time I did have on the service side of the business, ignoring the product side.

Plans for 2010

• Spend more time focusing on my products. The kid starts daycare next week which will should help out on the time management, although it does mean another expense to pay out.
• Release Killink CSV Editor version 2. This is long over due.
• Release Labor Mate 2. This will be the app I originally dreamed of but never implemented.
• Release at least 2 other iPhone apps. Details coming on the new apps.
• Eliminate service work entirely by the end of 2010. This means I will be able to focus 100% of my “work” time to my products.

To say Matt Martel is a swell guy is an understatement. He is a super swell guy who does what he can to contribute to the iPhone development community, and he is somewhat a role model for me (though I doubt he knows it…yet). He started and ran a regular iPhone developer meet up group in the Boston metro area, he is willing to share his thoughts and feedback on the business of running an indie shop, and just this week he made a special offer to indie iPhone developers.

I first met Matt, and his wife Trish, in September at 360iDev Denver. Turns out Matt and Trish lived in the Boston area too. I say “lived” because they recently moved to Colorado Springs, but that’s a different story.

Matt and Trish have an indie software company called Mundue, and have published a few casual games for the iPhone and iPod touch. The most popular is reMovem, which I find to be highly addictive. Two favors of reMovem are available, a freeware ad-support version and a $1.99 paid version. The paid version comes with additional play modes which make it well worth the price.

A few days ago Matt made an offer to the indie iPhone development community that was too generous for me to pass up. He offered to include ads for apps in his popular game reMovem, the free edition. I was a little hesitant at first because I have not tried advertising Labor Mate this way before. Past experience with Google Adwords for Killink CSV Editor has turned me off of ad placement to market my products. However, I’m learning this week that might be a mistake.

In the first 24 hours the Labor Mate ad received 112 clickthroughs, and 238 total clickthroughs within the first 48 hours. Admittedly I was surprised by these numbers. First, Labor Mate is very niched app, and second, I thought “Who wants to learn more about a contraction timer while playing a game?” Boy was I wrong. 238 people found out about Labor Mate in a 48 hour time period that probably would have never known about the app. I find this to be great.

Unfortunately it’s hard for me to say if the ad has resulted in additional sells. According to Matt, “Most ads are getting an average of 1% clickthrough (CTR) which means 50-150 clicks per day. That’s really not much, and with conversion (sales) rates of 5% you might not notice any difference.” This is true. I haven’t noticed any change in the normal sales pattern for Labor Mate over the last couple of days. Still, I’m happy to know at least 238 additional people have learned about Labor Mate.

Thank you very much Matt for your generous offer to the indie iPhone development community. This little experiment has been a huge eye opener for me. Thanks for the opportunity to participate.

Now everyone go buy reMovem.

I’m making an early 2010 New Year’s Resolution. I’m going to blog more. There. I’ve said it. And in a blog posting no less. This entry will haunt me if I do not stick to this resolution.

I’ve done a horrible job at blogging since my son was born 20 months ago. This is true for all 3 of my main blog site, my personal blog, this company/tech blog, and even the blog about my son. Of course it’s not his fault. I blame Twitter.

I’ve developed a bad habit. If I can’t share it in 140 characters than I don’t share it. This is wrong on so many levels, especially since 2009 has been such an important year for White Peak Software, which I will explain in an upcoming blog.

So with that, you can expect more postings on this blog.

I’m pleased to announce the release of Labor Mate version 1.5, which is now available in the App Store. This release fixes a few bugs but more importantly it adds support for 8 new languages. Labor Mate now supports the following languages:

Dutch
French
German
Italian
Japanese
Spanish
Swedish
Russian

Labor Mate is available for only $0.99 in the iTunes App Store.

I recently went through the process of translating Labor Mate into 8 different languages. Unfortunately the phrase “Labor Mate” doesn’t translate well into other languages such as Japanese and Germany so the translators came up with new localized app names. The problem I had though was displaying the translated app name on the iPhone’s springboard.

After a bit of experimenting I finally got the translated app name to display. Turns out the steps are fairly simple. Here are the steps I took to localize the app name:

1. Added the property LSHasLocalizedDisplayName to Info.plist and set to True (mark the checkbox). Note that Xcode might change the property name to “Application has localized display name”.
2. Add a new strings file called InfoPlist.strings.
3. Make the file InfoPlist.strings localizable.
4. Add the languages that will have a translated app name.
5. For each localized version of the InfoPlist.strings file, add the follow string key/value pair: CFBundleDisplayName = “App Name”;
6. Be sure to set “App Name” to the translated value.

That’s it.

Speaking of language translation, I hired the fine folks over at iphone-i18n.com to translate the app description, keywords, and in-app strings for Labor Mate. I met Chuck and Judith of iphone-i18n.com at 360iDev|Denver. They impressed me with their knowledge of internationalizing and localizing applications as well as their specific technical how to knowledge for the iPhone.

If you are an iPhone developer looking to translate your iPhone application into other languages then I highly recommend talking with Chuck and Judith at iphone-i18n.com.