Our Story Dice app was featured on NPR Morning Edition. It was a segment with Mark Frauenfelder and his 9 year old daughter Jane. They have a podcast, Apps for Kids, that reviews apps. Most exciting for us, in addition to co-founding Boing Boing and being an editor at Wired, Mark is the editor-in-chief of Make Magazine. We’ve been fans of Make for a long time and were proud to hang out and help at the Tampa Bay Mini-Maker Faire last year. Jon even has a Make button on his laptop bag.
Just in time for NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month), Story Dice has been updated with 40 additional die faces, for a total of 140. The update is available now for iPhone / iPad and Android on Google Play. The NOOK and Kindle Fire / Amazon versions are pending publication and should be available soon.
Like every other iOS developer on earth, I’ve been checking out the iPad Mini and trying to determine if it’s a need or a want. I’ve read scores of articles, watched every Apple launch event online, watched plenty of reviews on YouTube, etc.
I still haven’t decided — need or want?
Tonight, I attended a Google Hangout hosted by Ed Dale. “Who is Ed Dale?” you ask. Well, he’s an internet marketing guru. I started following his work years ago and worked through his original Thirty Day Challenge program for internet marketing. Jon and I have both learned a wealth of information from Ed Dale, and continue to follow his teaching and fascination with the latest technology (something he and I share as rabid early adopters!) Follow Ed Dale on his blog, Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook.
Anyway, I attended Ed’s Hangout all about the iPad Mini and he compared with head-to-head with Kindle Fire HD and Google Nexus 7. He also had an iPad and quite an assorted lot of devices during his chat. Well, he asked the viewers if they’d like to see their Magcast magazines in Newsstand on the iPad Mini (he has a program called Magcast for digitally publishing in Newsstand), so we saw some examples of those magazines, which were quite nice, by the way!
He also asked if anyone would like to see any apps on the mini, so I suggested our app Story Dice in a tweet and followed up in the YouTube comment window. I had a bit of a fangirl moment when he saw my messages, downloaded the app, then proceeded to demo it on his Hangout! I’ll admit that I was a little nervous, but he really liked it! I grinned like a silly schoolgirl on this side of the earth, but also like a proud mama see her child complimented. We are featured at 58:30.
If someone asks for an example company/app/whatever, pull a Hermione Granger and get your hand up in the air! Just do it! If there is a chance for quality advice from someone, get it.
Aside from my fangirl silliness, I cast my worries aside and seized the moment like the entrepreneur that I am. I’m still really tickled that he has my app on his brand new iPad Mini. Bonus: He bought the app. I offered a code, but he just went ahead and purchased it!
I’m mostly writing this to remind myself to keep taking chances. Tell everyone you know about your business. If you are not a fan of your own stuff, perhaps you should try a new field or pick something else that you love! Do something you believe in and are proud of.
We are very proud of our apps and I love demonstrating them, showing people ways to activate their creative core. Creativity is the key to the future. Embrace it.
What the heck is NaNoWriMo? Well, it’s a crazy good time! National Novel Writing Month is an event held during the 30 days of November where the goal is to write 50,000 words. Yep. That’s a lot of words. All in November.
The Young Writers Program is an educational extension of NaNoWriMo to encourage writers of all ages to write for fun! The goal for students is 1,000-10,000 words. Students of all ages can accomplish 1,000 words in a month. That’s a mere 34 words each day. One bonus of the YWP is that each student that successfully reaches his/her goal receives five (5) free paperback copies of their book! Totally awesome!
Thinkamingo’s first and most popular app, Lists for Writers, was born out of our own personal list of lists that we’d each been keeping for writing projects. This week, it is the first app listed in Cult of Mac’s National Novel Writing Month App Superguide!
It’s safe to say that Lists for Writers is a “must have” app. With over 10,000 users, and more downloads every day, we know that people love it!
Some of our reviews from the App Store:
- “Five stars isn’t enough! A fantastic app for writers. Whether it be writer’s block or character development, this app will help you with all your writing needs. The rhyming dictionary and plot guides are particularly helpful. One of my favorite apps.” from Appvocado
- “I am totally in-love with this app.” from Dayana32738
- “I work off lists, so this is a godsend for me.” from Lulunw
With 69 ratings and 39 reviews in the App Store, Lists for Writers is a solid 4.5 star app with many more reviews like the ones quoted here.
Today we are releasing version 1.5 of Lists for Writers on iOS (iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch). This version fixes a few bugs. We improved support for VoiceOver (text to speech for the vision impaired).
This version adds full support for the iPhone 5 and 5th Generation iPod Touch. In order to fully support those devices and iOS 6, we are no longer able to support iOS versions prior to 4.3 and older arm 6 devices (the first and second generation iPod Touch, the original iPhone, and the iPhone 3G). We understand that a few users still use those devices and we wish that Apple made it possible to continue to support them.
Spice up your campfire tales! Bewitch your audience with creepy creativity! Roll the dice to get your creative juices flowing! Make up stories with your kids at the dinner table!
9 out of 10 zombies prefer Spooky Story Dice over brains!
Great for Halloween storytelling and seasonal writing prompts!
Features:
Lists for Writers now has definitions available (for iOS 5+)! This has become a frequently requested feature. Now you can tap on any word in a list and get the definition for it*.
We’re excited about this new feature and it’s already proven useful.
This update also adds a new list of body types and improves our support for older devices. The iPhone, iPhone 3G, and iPod Touch second generation and older should all now be supported as long as they are running iOS 4.0 or higher.
* Not all words in the app appear in this dictionary, but most of those appear on lists that already contain a definition.
We are happy to announce a Windows Phone 7 version of our Lists for Writers app. We hope to continue to bring more of our apps to the Windows Phone and Windows 8 platforms.
Since we launched Spy Tools for Kids, we’ve been hard at work on our next apps! Yes, APPS! Do you like sports? Does your child play sports? You will want to subscribe to our newsletter to be the first to know about new apps!
To keep up-to-date, subscribe to our email list, follow us on twitter (@thinkamingo), like our Facebook page, and circle us on Google +.
We just got a postcard in the mail with a sneak peek at the 2012 Fall product program. We are thrilled to see flamingos all over the place! We support Girl Scouts of West Central Florida! I know one Girl Scout who will be trying to earn one of those fabulous flamingos!
