There's an app for that

The lucky dog

Jerry Jones says iPhone-application development changed his life. In 2007, he was unemployed, trying to figure out how he was going to make his next truck payment. He used his spare time to start messing around with his iPhone.

“In those days,” Jones says, “there was no official tool kit available for developers. It was all hackers that were developing these applications. Back then, you had to jailbreak your phone so you could put applications on it.”

Jones started by designing a simple app that allowed him to update his online Blockbuster queue from his phone. Soon after, he designed a simple game called PegJump for a job interview with a gaming company. He didn’t get that job, but as soon as Apple launched its App Store in 2008, he submitted his game and, in just a few days, it ended up as one of the top three free games in the store.

Once he saw how many people were downloading the game, he began using an ad-service program and put ads in the game.

“It still makes money on ads today,” he says. “It absolutely helped me buy my house. I went from having basically zero money and a fair amount of debt to completely paying off my debt and having enough for a down payment.”

And thanks to his skills, he was eventually offered a job at a development company called meLLmo, where he’s currently working on Roambi, a business-intelligence-visualization application.

“Honestly, iPhone software development completely changed my life,” Jones says. “Let me put it this way: PegJump still pays for my mortgage and I haven’t updated it in two years.”

The gamers

Ian and David Marsh just upgraded to a corner office. It’s still a modest-size room filled with colorful rugs, stuffed animals and other oddities, including a trophy cup filled with plastic ice-cream scoops. The twin brothers are the driving force behind NimbleBits, their application-development company that has put out 13 games for iPhones and iPads in the last two years. The first game Ian ever made was called Hanoi, based on the mathematical puzzle, Tower of Hanoi.

“I made that just to learn how to develop for an iPhone,” he says, seating himself on a bouncy exercise ball. “I was still working a day job, and when the App Store came out two years ago, I threw it on there and it ended up shooting up the charts to No. 1. So, I hastily made a paid version that had a little bit extra for 99 cents and started making more than my day job pretty quickly, so I got out of there and started doing this.”

Ian is on the programming side. His brother is better with graphic design. Together, they’ve since created three games that have topped the App Store charts, which is no easy task. Most of their games cost a dollar or two, but lately they’ve been experimenting with the so-called “freemium” business model, which means they give a game away for free and offer in-app purchases (thing you can buy to enhance the app) or upgrades.

The game, Scoops, was their first experiment with freemiums. It’s a simple, tilt-based game in which you catch falling scoops of ice cream and try to balance them on top of one another. In the beginning, it was their most popular paid-for app, but once they started giving it away for free and offering new themes for a nominal fee, they saw even more success. Their most recent game, Pocket Frogs, is free as well, but this time, they’re adding the extra revenue generator of in-app advertising through Apple’s new iAd program.

“It’s only been out for two days,” Ian says. “But so far, the revenue’s been pretty promising.”

The do-gooder hobbyist

David Neiss is a software engineer at Qualcomm by day and an iPhone-application developer when he finds the time.

Neiss took an iPhone-development class through UCSD’s extension program and learned the basics. His first experiment was Light Cost, an app that shows you the real cost of leaving lights on.

“Everybody gets an electric bill,” Neiss says. “Everybody kind of knows, Tuoff the lights, but it’s not clear what that does for you.”

Neiss’ app quickly and easily calculates the cost of electricity over a specified amount of time.

“If you had six 150-watt bulbs running four hours a day,” Neiss says, pulling up his app and clicking a few buttons, “that costs you just about $200.”

Neiss has also created an application for Westie Rescue of California that makes it easy to adopt or find out more about West Highland Terriers, and he came up with an app that was intended to help San Diegans submit complaints about the noise coming from the Marine Corps Air Station Miramar.

“The idea was, you show the pictures of the kind of airplanes and then you hit that ‘Complain’ button and it generates an e-mail and sends it off to them,” he explains.

Neiss has since removed Miramar Noise from the App Store due to user abuse. Apparently, people in Europe and other parts of the world started downloading it and lodging fraudulent complaints.

“It was a victim of its own success,” he laughs.

There’s even an app for that

Fun apps

James Womack and Andre Gonzalez are the guys behind Cirrostratus, a local iPhone application-development company. They build apps for clients, but in their spare time, they’ve created apps like Burrito Amigo, which serves up local restaurant listings and reviews and tells you exactly what’s in things like the al pastor burrito. Other apps include Cheese Moon, Golf tournament, Greeting Note, Tune Man, iAdmit and Vitamate.

Emergency app

If you’re into the local nightlife scene, you know Edgar Nuñez as DJ Edgartronic. Nuñez’s idea for an iPhone app started as a joke among friends. But after asking people what they thought of an application that guided you to the nearest stockpile of Plan B, the emergency contraceptive also known as the morning After Pill, Nuñez decided there was enough demand to make the app a reality. Panic Button reads your location then gives you information about the nearest pharmacies. Since building his first app, he was offered a job as a full-time developer in Silicon Valley.

Sweet app

Noel Llopis’ Flower Garden app allows you to grow digital flowers then cut and send a bouquet to a loved one. The app is free with the option of in-app purchases from the so-called “Flower Store,” like seeds or fertilizer. Fertilizer (Llopis’ wife’s idea) is the big seller. On his blog (snappy touch.com), Llopis posts information about his finances. On average, he says, he makes $1,600 a week, after Apple’s cut. Not bad, eh?

To read more about these local smart-phone developers, visit our blog, Lastblogonearth.com.