That thing we call a Blog

Haiti

Like most, we are in shock as we read and see the devastation that has taken in place Haiti this week. We’ve decided as a team to donate 100% of our profits from today until the end of January to help those that have suffered in this time of crisis. We aren’t alone, many have joined in donating to this cause. If you haven’t already please consider donating in some way to help the people of Haiti.

Other ways you can help:
American Red Cross
Doctors Without Borders
Partners In Health

Introducing Tripmix

We’re happy to announce the release of our third application, Tripmix, to the iPhone App Store.

Tripmix is a fun little app that came out of Jonathan’s long road trips from Idaho to California and back. Jonathan and his wife could never agree on what music they’d like to listen to. She always wanted to suggest Hall & Oats and he would suggest Nightwish. So they come up with a sort of routine or game they would use to figure out what to listen to. She’ll pick an artist and then listen to 3 songs by that artist and then he’d pick an artist and listen to 3 songs from that artist and so on and so forth. Only problem with that though is often times they still have no idea what artist they’d like to listen to.

It came to them on their last trip that it’d be great if there was an iPhone app that’d do all this work for them. The idea for Tripmix was born. It’d randomly choose an artist and then play 3 songs from that artist. Then it’d randomly choose another artist and play 3 songs, so on and so forth. If they didn’t feel like listening to the artist that started playing they could shake the phone to pick a new artist. Together they brainstormed what features it’d have. She sketched out UI concepts while he tried to keep his eyes on the road. Passing all the interstate signs even gave them the inspiration for the icon. Harold’s taken the UI concept sketches and ideas and turned them into something truly gorgeous.

After playing with Tripmix for awhile now, it turns out we’re having a lot of fun using it anytime we’re in the car and not just long road trips. We’ll be working on an update to make this use case better. In the meantime, if you have any travel plans this Holiday season, why not take Tripmix along for the ride?

Introducing Skitzy

Today we’re proud to announce the release of the second Overcommitted application, Skitzy. The easiest way to describe Skitzy is a photo mix and match application for your iPhone. Grab a few friends, take everyone’s photo and start mixing. You’ll be shocked with the results!

We created Skitzy because we think you shouldn’t take life too seriously. Skitzy gives you a great excuse to blow off some steam for a few minutes and have some fun with family, friends or co-workers.

Here are a few first impressions:

“Skitzy turned my cute little girls into wretched monsters!”
- Brian Cooke, Rocket

“Skitzy is a fun and easy way to play with photos of your family and friends. An iPhone camera, a couple of friends and you’re good to go!”
- Mike Rohde, Rohdesign

“A fun application that has almost no user interface. Touch faces directly, play with them. A genius approach.”
- Vitor Lourenço, Twitter Inc.

We have enjoyed making Skitzy and look forward to seeing how you use it.
Visit skitzyapp.com for more information or download it in the App Store.

Ember featured as a top 10 iPhone app for marketers

Tendo Communications featured Ember as one of their top 10 killer iPhone apps for marketers:

Contribute to your company’s Campfire network with this helpful application. This application (and Campfire) is a great way to save and archive corporate communications from anywhere in the world–a solution that’s far more elegant than your typical instant or text messaging conversation. Keep your team on the same page without having to scroll through endless email replies in your already overflowing inbox.

Ember 2.1.2

Ember 2.1.2 has been released. New in this version are:

• Preference to disable landscape support
• Added ember:// URL scheme
• Miscellaneous bug fixes including the bug where the room view would occasionally be blank after viewing the room info.

Push Notifications From Campfire

Jon Maddox (@maddox) has written up an awesome blog post detailing how to get push notifications from Campfire (or anything else that Growls). This setup is great for using with Ember.

Jonathan

Ember 2.1 wider than ever

Ember 2.1 is now available in the AppStore. We’re happy to bring one of the most requested features with this release, landscape support. Here’s the complete list of what’s new in 2.1:

• Landscape support
• Save photos taken to camera roll
• Open Google Map links in native Maps application

Wazzup?

One of the great things about getting feedback from users is that they have the opportunity to add something to the application that would not have otherwise been thought of.

One such new feature in Ember 2.0 is the ability to recognize posted transcript links for the current room and display the particular transcript. We received a lot of feedback from people asking for transcript support in Ember but Brad Greenlee over at Wesabe (http://wesabe.com) offered up a suggestion for something really cool. They wrote a Campfire bot (http://github.com/wesabe/wesabot) that, when someone enters the room, posts a “catch-up” link to the point in the transcript where the person last left. This bot combined with Ember 2.0 means that it is ridiculously easy to keep up to date with what’s been going on in the chat.

Setting Contexts Interviews Our Team

Ember 2.0