There is a not-so-secretive secret to those of you out there who are curious about iPhone application development and desire a more structured learning experience outside of a book.

The Stanford University iPhone course is a great resource, and best of all, it’s free. Yep, it costs nothing more than your time and some bandwidth (assuming you already have everything needed for iPhone app development and iItunes).  Employees from iPhone and iPad development teach the course and post the videos of the lectures and lab sections online a few days after they occur.

I found this course last year, but it was only the presentations and posted after the course was completed.  This time around, you can be taking the course in near real-time, watching the video lectures, downloading example code, and working on the progressively more difficult (and fun) assignments.  Last year’s course gave me a firm foundation, where I learned more from these slides and reading documentation than the random tutorials found online.

I am taking the course again, this time taking notes and immersing myself in all things iPhone OS.  If you’re the least bit interested in iPhone development, check it out!

The secret is finally revealed after years of speculation.  The Apple iPad looks to be storming into user’s hands in the next few months and looks sexy.  Although it was a bit odd watching Steve Jobs hang out on a couch and browse for movie showtimes (while demonstrating that we’re still not going to see Flash when he checked nytimes.com) I was overall impressed, but not blown-away.

Some thoughts:

• The use of the iPhone OS vs. a flavor of OSX shows us that Apple is pitching this as a consumer device, not a personal computer.  This means a tightly controlled user experience that “dumbs down” computers – which is not necessarily a bad thing.  I’ll probably end up recommending this to most of my computer un-savvy friends and family.  Grandma will love this.
• A closed, controlled experience for iPhone OS products (iPod Touch/iPhone/iPad) is one thing, but doing such a thing for traditional computers is another. I shudder to think that this may be the future of OSX, where everything is sandboxed and goes through Apple for approval.  Creativity would suffer, but there is no reason to believe this the path they will take.  It will be interesting to see what Apple looks like a decade from now.
• As Sarah Mitchell writes, the big question is where is the social aspect of the iPad?  I think everyone was expecting to see some type of camera on the face of the tablet and some spiffy video conferencing built in (think iChat).  I have money that next year’s signature Apple event will reveal iPad 2 with this feature.
• Tricky that most people didn’t realize that you’ll need to pony up the extra dough for the “WiFi+3G” model to get GPS built in.
• I’ve seen tons of impressions that say great things about the responsiveness of the platform.  Apple is making the chip (the Apple A4) and one of the things that excites me is that we’ll most likely be seeing this chip in future iPhones in some form.

But the biggest thing that came to my mind while watching the debut was think of all the app possibilities.  With that screen real estate and improved processing capability compared to the iPhone, a whole world of new apps just opened-up.

I’ve been researching how to gain momentum in the App Store in preparation for a relaunch of That Movie Game. There are hundreds of websites out there with ideas, but basically its all 1) create a website 2) hit up social networks (fb, twitter) 3) be active in developer forums 4) submit to review sites 5) stay up-to-date by interacting with all of these.

With That Movie Game I’ve been pretty lackluster on marketing, outside of a few twitter updates, news on this blog, and a placeholder site.  And by looking at my sales, it shows.  Now I’m working on TMG 2.0 and I want people to take notice when it launches.  Here’s the plan:

• Updates to the app: include a giant increase in the size of the database of actors, films, and connections, meaning a much more fun game with less repeats; ux/ui tweaking; and a few other items.
• Splitting the app product family into FREE and PAID versions (with wittier titles other than those), with the difference being the database in the free version being much smaller.  This will let skeptical users play the game without spending a thing and determine if it’s worth a purchase.
• Social bonanza.  Facebook fan page, Twitter updates, etc.
• Updated webpage with movies of the game being played, descriptions, and a nice big iTunes link, of course.
• Submission to review sites.  Check out this list.
• Buying adspace.  I’m conjuring up a Google AdSense plan and also will buy some rotating banner ads on targeted sites.
• Hitting up message boards, forums, and any other online resources that are playing the inspiration for TMG.  Just a simple Google search brings up quite a few hits.
• Stay up to date with my userbase.  I’m going to go all out for these guys and gals with TMG (and future titles), responding to questions and comments as well as incorporating suggestions.  This is tremendous.

Thanks to all of those out there who’ve purchased the app.  Comments, ideas, suggestions, and recommendations on TMG are very welcome.

You’re my lifeline to the future of this app!

In January 2007, Steve Jobs took the stage at MacWorld and dropped a bomb:  Apple was releasing a cell phone.  But not just any cell phone, but a touch-based device that works as an iPod and internet communication gizmo, all in one.

If you were like me, you knew this was going to be big and you couldn’t wait to get your hands on one.  And if you were really like me, you would have to wait for your cell phone contract with another, non-iPhone carrying provider to expire so you wouldn’t have to deal with a seemingly draconian “early termination penalty”.

Fast-forward to July 2008.  The App Store was opened up for business, and a few short months later, NDAs expired allowing a deluge of information to hit the internet.  Sometime in August of that year, I was driving around Austin, Texas with a friend thinking off all the things that we could do with iPhones.  That conversation soon evolved into what could we create with the iPhone.  Ideas literally erupted from our heads as we drove the eight hours back to the city of New Orleans.  The next week, he and I would get our iPhones, and be hopelessly addicted.

A month later, I would make the jump and get a MacBook Pro.  The iPhone got me hooked on Apple, more so than the handful of iPods I had been through.

In March of 2009, I finally started working on an original concept for an app, which would become That Movie Game.  I spent weeks learning as I went, picking up Objective-C documentation while twiddling around the SDK.  I found a few websites with tons of resources that I worked with for a few months.  Juggling a full-time + overtime job while trying to create the greatest movie trivia game (believe me!) does take time. But eventually, I stopped adding features and hit the submit button, sending version 1.0 to Apple in July.

I expected a rejection after hearing the countless stories of other developers.  Weeks went by – the status was still ‘In Review’.  What torture!  I eventually developed a case of the swine flu that knocked me out of commission for over a week.  But alas – in the middle of the worst I’ve ever felt in my life – I received notification that my app was approved!  That Movie Game was out in the App Store for a day already and had sold three copies, one sale coming from overseas!

I wrote Facebook status updates and told my friends but left further marketing on the shelf.  I eventually created a website for the app, but it is more like a placeholder.  The important thing was that I had a goal – an original iPhone app design, implemented and released – and I achieved it. Although there are over a hundred thousand apps out there now, I’ve set myself apart by realizing a personal goal that took plenty of time and energy.

Now it’s time to move again.  Expect to see more out of this blog, with continuous updates and features.  Get ready for an expanded, visually overhauled That Movie Game and a new, free app that I’m going to create that will be a “thank you” to everyone out there.

This past Thursday I had an epiphany that applies to business, work, play – or rather life in all of its aspects.  It goes like this: learn how to play the game, and then set the rules. This simple concept came from words of human connections specialist Julien Smith, coauthor of the book Trust Agents, as he spoke at the inaugural TribeCon.  Although Julien’s speech was the last delivered on Thursday, that message permeated the air (like the humidity) throughout presentations and discussions by this year’s team of speakers and panelists.

TribeCon was born from a roadtrip back from the SXSW Festival in Austin, Texas.  Chris Schultz (@cschultz), Tiffany Starnes (@tiffanystarnes), and company sought a way to bring together people who are interested (and actively working) in building communities, while still bringing attention to the city that is a microcosm of the tribe concept – New Orleans.  The inaugural event had its big day of speakers the day before the kickoff of VoodooFest, a music festival held annually at City Park.  This year featured a number of big name artists and groups, including Eminem, whose appearance in second annual VoodooFest brought worldwide attention to the festival and help make it the big event that it is today.  This year’s festival just happens to also feature “the greatest tech conference ever held in a circus tent” (@austinalroche).

The theme – playing the game with your own rules – began with Micah Baldwin’s (@micah) ironic statement that we shouldn’t be afraid of failure, as the projector displaying his presentation failed and forced Micah to work the crowd without his visuals.  His thesis was that failure is a process, leading to success.  When applied to communities, leaders should embrace risk and the inevitable failures.  Communities are built upon trust for their survival’s sake, so don’t be afraid to talk about those catastrophes.  If open dialog about these events takes place, groups become stronger.  Micah also reiterated a strong message: a failure is an event, while a loser is a person or group.  Our culture respects those who risk and fail.  It doesn’t respect those who never try.

Brian Oberkirch (@brianoberkirch) followed up with a mission statement for communities: help people be less lonely. People seek connections, and if your community offers them a place to do such, let them do so.  But don’t stop there.  Listen to them, take heed of their opinions, and let them self-rule (to an extent, of course). As a leader, you should design experience to be a sandbox where its members to build their own sandcastles, or whatever they wish.  The visual metaphor shared by Brian is the college campus quad from a bird’s eye view, where the pre-designed sidewalks are barren in activity compared to the beaten paths of the everyday walkers.  Embrace these beaten paths in your community.  As Brian said, “Manage the awesomeness.  The numbers will work out.”

Next on tap was a trio of panels, with the first discussing the role of communication within the community during times of crisis.  This is an all too familiar subject since Katrina devastated the area years ago and left its victims without electricity, internet, or voice communications over cell phone networks for weeks.  New Orleans area residents, such as Oberkirch and Ernie Svenson (@ernieattorney), became beacons as their blogs collected and reported information to readers.  Communities within the larger Gulf Coast community, such as Robert Fogarty’s (@rxfogarty) evacuteer.org, are helping mediate crisis when it comes.

The second panel of the day taught conference goers how to ‘rawk’ a new community.  All four of the panelists – Sloane Berrent (@sloane), Taylor Davidson (@tdavidson), Shannon Lane (@Cajun_Mama), and Carl Nelson (@CarlRNelson) – are no strangers to new communities, as each travel for their various ventures.  A whole lot.  Their message is to seek out the edges of a community and to create new cores, therefore growing the boundaries even further. And while doing this, be sure to be consistent both online and offline.  This was another theme that emerged throughout many of the day’s presentations.

“I want to stand as close to the edge without going over.  Out on the edge you see all the kinds of things you can’t see from the center.” – Kurt Vonnegut

The final panel before lunch – which is a difficult place to be scheduled, having to talk over all of those stomach growls – featured active community leaders, both online and offline.  Eric Marcoullier (@bpm140) moderated the panel composed of Andrew Hyde (@andrewhyde), Ted Rheingold (@tedr), Ray Nichols (@MrRayNichols), and Blake Haney (@humidhaney).  These veterans of community organization spoke that an organizer’s creativity sparks the birth of a community, but once the community begins its successful (and organic) growth, leaders should not be afraid to let go of the driver’s wheel a bit and the direction change.  In fact, as Andrew Hyde said, leaders should take the ‘benevolent dictatorship’ approach to running the community. Ted Rheingold saw this firsthand with his website dogster.com, when users wanted to interact with each other and be linked together (remember, this was before the days of Facebook), and most importantly, not have any cats on the site.  Rheingold incorporated these desires, created a new community at catster.com, and saw his communities grow stronger.

Dirty Coast founder – and future feretster.com owner – said that communities need to define their culture and not let the culture define them.  Differentiation and diversity are good.  His recently launched social networking platform, humidbeings.com, allows users to create their own communities and their feedback is constantly brought back to the creators to further evolve the larger community.  He, and the other panelists, agreed that the best community growth comes from the slow, yet powerful, friends of friends effect.  Members of the community who are having a great time in your sandbox will eventually get their other social connections involved as well.  When the time comes and you have a gignormous community, you may want to follow Ray Nichol’s advice and focus on acting as a curator and not as a moderator.  Running everything yourself and controlling the vision are big no-nos and will most likely lead to your members jumping ship.

After a delectable lunch on the world’s longest picnic table, Tom Martin (@TomMartin) geared the crowd up on the “me too” media world.  Nowadays, content creation and distribution is relatively cheap, so companies and individuals should be working on strengthening and expanding their brand communities.

Martin was followed by a trio of panelists that are making new rules in the game and jumping over the traditional gatekeepers.  Perry Chen’s (@perrychen) kickstarter.com allows content creators to show the world what they’re working on; while to world can crowdsource funding to support the content creator.  Earl Scioneaux (@mwikkid) used kickstarter.com to not only fund his New-Orleans-music-meets-electronica album, but to generate a community that has buy-in with his content – and thus will be more likely to spread the word about the project.  Billy O’Connell (@biosi) also shared thoughts based on his work with the non-profit CASH Music, which helps musicians sustain through a wealth of open-source tools and services.

The last panel of the day featured local community leaders from around the New Orleans area, sponsored by Net2No.  John Hoa Nguyen, Edward Buckner, Christian Brown, and another panelist represented the New Orleans East Vietnamese, 7^th Ward, Rex Mardi Gras Crewe, and Mid-City communities, where they were asked about the problems that face the city today.  The group highlighted that New Orleans has many traditions and groups within, and those should be preserved. Edward Buckner summed it up quite nicely in his words: “That’s New Orleans – that’s the gumbo we mixin’.”

The final presentation of the day was left to Julien Smith.  As mentioned before, he is the coauthor of Trust Agents, a book I had picked up a few weeks ago and started reading a few days prior to the conference.  This is an amazing coincidence (or what us in New Orleans call serendipity) since I had no idea of Julien’s involvement with TribeCon until I opened my schwag pack and glimpsed at the schedule Thursday morning.

Julien spoke about the truths of the change in our tribes as they age: the incentives to take risk are lost; networks tend to shrink; and those built on hype fizzle (like renting a car – you’ll never own it).  What Julien suggested is that you constantly work on your tribe before you need it.  How?  Facilitate the exchange of social capital.  Create stuff that is both indexable and visible.  Differentiate.  Break patterns by saying something both difference and memorable, and thus elicit emotion.  Be a part of every conversation. The metaphor that Julien mentions is quite appropriate: be both the priest and build the church. In today’s world, we’ll never need more advertising.  We need more community.

The message of the day shared by Julien and the other presenters was to know the map and how to play the game.  Then tweak the rules.  Don’t be afraid of failure, the risk is usually worth the reward.  When you’re a husky in the Iditarod, be to lead dog.  Otherwise you’ll be staring at another dog’s ass.

It’s time to tell everyone that ebounde has landed.  We’re a creative group hell-bent on developing world class, kickass apps for the Apple iPhone.  And not only that, our goal is to become a trusted resource in the iPhone development community, which is growing like kudzu drenched in Miracle-Gro.

Although we’ve already created and published our first title (That Movie Game), we’ll be starting nearly from scratch, telling our stories on designing, developing, and marketing our little app bundles of joy.  We’ll also be quite open with our successes and our failures, so that you readers out in the interwebs can learn from our experiences.  Also expect interactivity, because we’ll be asking for your opinions.

We expect to learn much on our journey from sketches on a napkin to a App Store success (fingers crossed!).  Stick around.  You won’t regret it one bit.