Developer Spotlight – Electric Pocket, Ltd. [Plus Giveaway!]

Posted on May 26th, 2010. Written by Cody 'Code'.

Electric Pocket, who you may know as the developers of BugMe!, are a fairly large group of developers based out of England. I recently read Part 2 of Arron’s “10 Gorgeously Designed iPhone Applications”, and, that, in fact is where I first came across them.  All in all, it was a pleasure communicating with them. (mainly Iain, Pippa, & Kevin) Thanks to them, we have one promocode of their latest iPhone application (released yesterday, in fact!), ‘BookLover’, which allows you to keep track of books you have read, share them with your friends on Facebook, etc. etc. You can find details on how you could win this after the interview, Enjoy!

1. Where did you go to college, and what is your degree(s) in?

Well, college for me was a long time ago – I graduated in 1990! I studied Electrical Engineering at Cardiff University. Cardiff is the capital city of Wales – a part of the UK. I’ve never actually done any electrical engineering, turning to coding pretty much for my first job – with Japanese company Hitachi and later for the research labs at Hewlett-Packard in Bristol, England.

2. How long have you been developing apps for?

Since long before they were called apps – that’s for sure! I wrote my first handheld application, as far back as 1996 when I had a work project for the HP Omnigo 100 (http://www.ericlindsay.com/palmtop/omni100.htm) – we designed a prototype system for doctors to receive messages as they went about their hospitals – it was very primitive, with the data being supplied by tethered GSM cell phones, but amazingly it worked (to a degree, anyway!). Soon after the first Palm Pilots came out and I bought a Pilot 5000 which came with an SDK. I wrote my first commercial app for that – a VT100 terminal emulator. I used to get grateful emails from field technicians who could tap into their equipment using it, and that interaction really gave me the bug. In fact, one guy was amazing – he sent me a cheque for $100 just to inspire me to keep going with it! My next app for the Palm was BugMe! – at the time a very simple reminder app which let users jot notes in digital ink directly to the Palm’s screen and set alarms very quickly. Life has come full circle, as we just released BugMe! for iPhone a month or so back!

3. What is your inspiration for iPhone development?

I love the ecosystem of iPhone development, all the websites, the App Store,  the ranking analytics tools, everything! When we release an app on iPhone, there is a whole machine that comes to life, with people tweeting, reviews being posted and it seems the world goes crazy for our app for just a little while – in many ways it reminds me of the early Palm days, where there was a community of people making a living out of making apps and sharing the news> and goodwill about apps. The downside to that is that the machine moves on quickly – looking for the next new thing, but I find that week in the> spotlight exhilarating – and exhausting.

4. Do you plan on developing / releasing any more apps to the iPhone community?

Yes, most definitely, We were late to the iPhone world really, and I only now feel I’m coming up to speed with it. We’ve found a great designer – Gordon Irving (http://gordonirvingdesign.com/) – and he’s really been able to bring our latest apps like BugMe! and our brand-new app, BookLover, to life. I actually have a new idea brewing in my head right now, so I expect that will become the next app – though probably not until after WWDC now.

5. How do you come up with the ideas of your apps?

It’s definitely a cliche, but I would say the best ideas come when you are not trying to think of things – I find walking my dog is probably the most creative time for me, and I’ve had countless product ideas and fixed many bugs just by stepping out with the dog. Other times that have worked well are when I travel with colleagues, especially to conferences like WWDC where we have a period of immersion in a new platform and hear about the new capabilities that we can go and use. Our MailTones email app came directly from WWDC last year, where we learned about the Push Notification solution(s) using that system to “announce” incoming mail seemed to fill an obvious hole in the iPhone’s capabilities.

6. Would you ever develop apps for anything other than devices manufactured by Apple (e.g., the Motorola Droid, Windows Mobile phones, etc.)?

Electric Pocket was started in 2000 by myself and three friends, so we’ve covered quite few platforms in that time. We’ve developed for Palm OS, a little Symbian, Windows Mobile and currently its iPhone, Android and Samsung’s Bada platform are keeping us fully occupied.

7. What is each of your favorite apps that you have developed?

My favorite app is always the one I’ve just finished – so in this case, it has to be BookLover! BookLover is an app for people who enjoy reading books – it lets them record and share the books they’ve enjoyed, or jot down information on the books they want to read. This is an app in a completely new space for us, and I think there is an awful lot of potential to grow the app if its successful. We can do things like recommend other books they might like to read, and really grow the whole social side of talking about and sharing books. And ebooks of course, it would be cool to see how we can bring e-books into BookLover, if that’s something the users show an interest.

8. What are your thoughts on the iPad?

As a user, I love the iPad – as does everyone (really, everyone) I show it to. I had to import one via the grey market, as they aren’t released in the UK until late May, so I paid a little premium and had some exclusivity in showing it off to people – of course, as a developer it was worth doing that, and we’ve had BugMe! in the iPad store since day one and been very pleased with the reaction to it. As a developer. though, I have to say that I wince a little at the fragmentation it brings to the platform – now, when we make an app, we have to do more work, cutting the graphics for new sizes, etc. and, also, rearranging the UI. The benefits of doing that are worth it, of course, but it makes the delivery process just that little bit longer.

9. Where do you do most of your developing from, and, also, what is your Mac of choice?

I’m based in a town called Chepstow (in the Wye Valley part of Wales),  a beautiful, green, rural place. I work from a wooden shed in my garden, it’s actually purpose-built and a good size if anyone else ever come over to visit. It’s a perfect working environment, as I’m always around when the kids come home from school, yet have the peace and quiet of my own workspace, too. My Mac is a 13″ MacBook Pro, though when I work in the office I plug it into two big monitors and use a wireless keyboard and mouse with it, so I’d never really know its was a laptop at all. But its perfect just to pick up at the end of the day and take into the house if I need to finish anything off after hours.

10. Any upcoming updates that we should know of?

I’m hard at work at the moment on integrating the new OS4 local notifications into BugMe! – they make such a difference to the way alarm-based apps can work on the iPhone and I have to say are long overdue. BugMe! with the proper alarms we can now offer is really a much nicer product than we could offer, using the Push Notification system and I can’t wait until we can ship it to our patient customers!

We’d like to thank Electric Pocket for taking the time to answer our questions. If you’re a developer and would like to be featured in a future Developers Spotlight, contact us: code@RazorianFly.com

How to Enter

Simply leave a comment below telling us what your favourite book is along with either a twitter username or an email address at which we can contact you should you win.

Closing Date

The competition will run from today until midnight (BST) on Wednesday 2 June 2010.

How will the winner be picked?

After the closing date, we’ll put all the names into a proverbial hat and pick a winners at random.

The Rules

• This RazorianFly contest is open to all residents worldwide. Although, please be aware a US iTunes account will be required in order to redeem the promo code and you must be 13 years of age (or older) to enter.
• Judges decision is final.
• Winner will be contacted via e-mail or Twitter DM.
• 1 Winners. The winner will receive a promocode for BookLover!
• Winner will be selected randomly.
• Prizes used for contests are NOT redeemable by RazorianFly.com or it’s representatives.
• One entry per contestant.

Full terms and conditions for all contests RazorianFly.com hosts, can be found at:
http://www.razorianfly.com/contests/terms/