It's nearly Christmas... [UPDATED]

Ho Ho Ho!

Well as Andy posted a few days ago our little MyChristmas App was updated and submitted to Apple for review.

The latest version is a free upgrade to existing users so if you want to jump in and grab [MyChristmas 1.1 now then feel free] UPDATE - it's now live!

We're loving version 2 and finding ourselves getting all festive.

To get a feel for the new features in version 2 then take a look at the video.



What's in version 2 I hear you say.... well...

- Multiple Sleeps to Christmas which also allow you to take/use a picture of a loved one on the countdown.

- A Christmas Carol eBook (themed)

- Carols for singing (inc. Wiki lookups on the history etc.)

- Various Christmas music tracks (updated)

- Games which include Solitaire and a couple of Christmas themed match games (updated)

- A Christmas Candle (great for carolling)

- A Christmas fireplace (New and great to keep toys warm)

- A Snow Globe

- Christmas Sounds (updated)

- Mistletoe

- Musical Christmas bells which can be touched or rang using accelerometer.

- New Years Fireworks (updated), Song and words

- The ability to send and receive traditional Christmas Greetings Cards on the iPhone (New)


More will be added on the Talee Talee website soon.
Enjoy.

MyChristmas Will Fill You With Holiday Cheer

Rated: 8/10

"Whether you are already riding a holiday high or still looking for something to get you in the spirit MyChristmas has everything you need to celebrate the season." - Allison Glennon, from App Craver.

"MyChristmas is an all in one holiday app by Talee Talee and it has everything that you need to make your holiday bright. This app is jam packed with whatever you are going to need to take you through Christmas right into the New Year.

When you open MyChristmas and go to the main menu it becomes clear that you are in for a pretty thorough holiday experience. The full list includes: a Christmas Countdown, “A Christmas Carol” eBook, Christmas Carols, Music, Games, Entertainment, New Years, and iChoose Choice".

MyChristmas Review from iPhone App Reviews.net

A review of MyChristmas from Michael over at iPhone App Reviews.net:


I don’t know the people at Talee Talee, but after poking around MyChristmas for a while it’s pretty clear that they took a good look at the mess of Christmas apps hitting iTunes and they came to the conclusion that it’s all just soooooo unnecessary. And they’re right! Seasonal apps are usually very lightweight and have a pretty short shelf life so why not roll them all up into one download?

And thus was born “The Christmas Compendium” that is MyChristmas. This kitchen sink app includes all of the following:

- Two Christmas Countdowns
- “A Christmas Carol” eBook
- 18 Christmas carol lyrics
- 7 instrumental Christmas songs
- 2 pretty good Christmas games (Solitaire and Match)
- Ding-’em-yourself Christmas Bells, pretty cool
- A flickering Christmas candle
- Mistletoe with smooching sounds
- 2 Christmas sounds (Santa and Rudolph)
- New Year’s Eve Countdown
- Auld Lang Syne lyrics
- A fireworks display

Whoa! That’s a lotta holiday crap crammed into one application.

By themselves none of these apps-within-an-app will blow you away, but as a collection it’s pretty impressive. You’ve got your countdown, the eBook, the music, the lyrics… it’s Christmas overload! But it’s way more efficient than installing 10 different apps that you’ll be deleting come January.

The best parts of MyChristmas are probably the music, the Solitaire and Match games, and the Christmas Bells. The mistletoe could also come in handy if you’re “that guy”, the one who’s always ramming your tongue down a girl’s throat when she thinks she’s leaning in for an innocent holiday peck.

An interesting thing that Talee Talee built into MyChristmas is its ability to “talk” to iChoose when you can’t decide what part of the Compendium you want to play with. On any menu screen you just tap on “iChoose Choice” and the app will temporarily switch to iChoose (which you have to have installed already), make a selection for you, and then kick you back to the selected MyChristmas section.

It’s true that a lot of the apps included in MyChristmas can be had for free and some of them, like the Snow Scene, are pretty underwhelming, but you could do a lot worse for a buck. If searching the iTunes App Store for various Christmas apps sounds like a pain in the ass that you just don’t want to deal with, spend $.99 on MyChristmas and be done with it. Even despite a little lameness here and there, MyChristmas comes with plenty of value to make it worth buying.

Top Christmas iPhone app lists

A quick round-up of 3 top lists of iPhone Christmas apps from the interweb:

File Cluster - Top 5 iPhone apps for Christmas

"This last application is actually a compilation of Christmas games, bells, holiday music and a New Year countdown. The developers are also offering MyChristmas free until 14 December, so you better hurry and install it on your iPhone."

OnSoftware - 10 iPhone Christmas apps

"Compendium of classic yuletide games and festive fun"

Sleek iPhone - Top Free Christmas Apps for Your iPhone this Holiday

MyChristmas is available now from Talee Talee.

Free!

The festivity must be getting to us because for a very limited time (until the 14th) ALL our Apps are FREE! Yes, we've made them free!

This is for 2 reasons (and we're not shy saying why).

1) The Apps are buried in the App Store, so unless they are popular they are not found. Allowing them to be free for a while will hopefully allow people to use our Apps and see they are great. Hopefully in the future more of our stuff will be found, seen and purchased.

2) We love Christmas and we like being generous.

Merry Christmas from Talee Talee!

Oops...

One of two things has happened. Either we have annoyed Apple to such an extent that they have removed us from the App Store, or (much more likely!) my own personal stupidity has resulted in our apps not appearing on the App Store at the moment, or indeed for most of the day.

We have rectified things (hopefully) from our end and they should start filtering through again soon. As far as we know the App Store links from the Talee Talee website work fine again now, although you may have trouble seeing us in iTunes.

Hope to be back soon!

Sorry, I won't do it again :-)

Spread The Cheer With Your iPhone

Over on iPhone Nuts (www.iPhoneNuts.com) is the nicely titled: Best Christmas Application For Your iPhone

We agree.


"Well as I sit here typing this wishing I had a caramel apple spice drink, I’ve got the perfect iPhone Christmas app to let you know about. This app really has it all under one roof. The app is called MyChristmas, and for everything this app will do for you this Christmas it still comes in at a cheap $1.99. "

"My favorite part in the entertainment section was the Bells. There are seven sleigh bells you can tap and play your own Christmas song."

- Ryan Ray, iPhoneNuts.com


You can continue reading more of Ryan Ray's post on the iPhone Nuts website.

Christmas is nearly here, so get into the spirit right now with MyChristmas.

More information about MyChristmas (including additional screenshots and videos) is available from the Talee Talee MyChristmas website:

www.taleetalee.com/MyChristmas/

Christmas Bells for your iPhone

Talee Talee bring you Christmas Bells, for your iPhone or iPod touch.

Christmas Bells is a free introduction into the joys of MyChristmas, available now on the iPhone App Store.

Christmas Bells has been released and should appear in iTunes later this week. Ho, ho, ho! Merry Christmas! :o)

uSnap released

uSnap! was released on the Apple iPhone App Store today.

Visit the Talee Talee website for further information, screenshots and a demo video.

Remember, it's only £0.59 ($0.99) for a limited time!

Talee Talee website update

We've updated the Talee Talee website, giving it a fresh look and added in some information about our native iPhone and iPod touch apps - uSnap!, MyChristmas, iChoose and a preview of the soon to be released native version of utopia solitaire.



The legacy web app versions of utopia solitaire, iChoose, iTouchStar and Blitz! can still be found in the Free Stuff section, along with some nice free MyChristmas wallpaper (for iPhone, iPod touch, Mac OS X and Windows).

uSnap

Coming this week to the iPhone App Store, is... uSnap!


It will be the most fun you have this week, with your clothes on. Although, hmmm, strip snap!? That might work!

uSnap! is being introduced at a special reduced price of £0.59 ($0.99), so get it quick!

Keep an eye on the Talee Talee store page on iTunes, and the Talee Talee website which will undergo a massive makeover in the next day or three.

Announcing MyChristmas (iPhone Christmas app)

Hot of the press we can announce that MyChristmas, our latest iPhone app has been successfully added to the iPhone App Store.

MyChristmas is a collection of great little apps, all rolled into one (like iChoose) to create your 'Christmas Compendium'. 

FEATURES:

- Christmas Music: 6 fabulous Christmas music tracks (courtesy of Kevin MacLeod) that can be played and stopped whenever you want them to be. They are: "Deck the Halls", "Jingle Bells", "Oh, Little Town of Bethlehem", "Oh, Christmas Tree", "Silent Night" and "We Wish You a Merry Christmas"

- Christmas Games: Snow Solitaire and Christmas Match. Snow Solitaire is a twist on Klondike solitaire and Christmas Match is a traditional 'match 2 pieces from the grid' game with a Christmas flavour and saved scoring.

- Christmas Countdown: A visual countdown to Christmas and a 'Sleeps till Christmas' for young Children, we fully expect the immortal phrases of "How many more sleeps until Christmas, mummy!" and "Is there anymore sleeps to Christmas, daddy?" to bring much joy to parents and children alike.

- Christmas Entertainment: Musical Bells is a great deal of fun and you can use the seven bells to play your own Christmas tunes (such as Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star). Snow Scene is, well, a Snow Scene. Our very own Christmas Candle, it looks great and you can zoom in/out for 3 different sizes. Mistletoe is a virtual sprig of mistletoe, complete with 'sounds', and Christmas Sounds provides a bit of amusement with a Honking Rudolph and a Merry Santa.

- "A Christmas Carol": An eBook that let's you read the classic Dickens story on your iPhone or iPod touch, complete with a single bookmark feature to remember where you were! A little hint, always remember to use the 'Update My Bookmark' button every now and then to save where you are, you can then get back to that point from the 'My Bookmark' option in the eBook menu screen.

- Christmas Carols: A collection of words (and Wikipedia information links - internet required) for popular Christmas Carols.

- iPhone New Year: A countdown to New Year, the words to Auld Lang Syne (Auld Lang Syne music coming soon) and a Fireworks display!

- And more.....

More information, some screenshots and QuickTime video can be found on the Talee Talee website.

We're going to try and get version 1.1 out soon also! 

For less than the price of a Big Mac you can get all festive!

Busy redecorating

We're busy redecorating right now - our new utopia 365 website will be up within the coming days (or weeks - you know how it is).

We will also be launching a much needed update to our Talee Talee iPhone and iPod touch website, including details of our native iPhone Apps.

In the meantime, if you'd like to subscribe to our notifications service, pop along to the website and enter your email address. We'll let you know when the new site is live and keep you up to date with what's happening in the world of utopia 365.

Gone native!

Finally, I had a bit of a chance to play with the iPhone SDK yesterday afternoon and the result is our first native iPhone App! That's right, Talee Talee's iChoose web app has gone native.

It may not the greatest app in the world but it's free and quite handy sometimes. The same Yes/No decision maker, Coin Toss and Dice roll features can be found in the native version.

Expect to see it on iTunes in the next day or so.


UPDATE 18/07/2008: OK, a couple of days shouting at my Mac cos I've been being a bit slow (or thick). I've finally managed to work out how the hell you get your app signed properly for distribution! and iChoose has been submitted for approval to the App Store., although rather worryingly iTunes Connect is still saying 'Waiting for upload...' even though I have successfully uploaded it twice with the Application Loader. Hopefully (fingers crossed) that will change soon and be 'Under review' or something.

UPDATE #2 18/07/2008: A Card Choice option has been added to iChoose, this will randomly select a playing card for you and can be used for countless entertainment purposes, such as playing Higher or Lower etc.

UPDATE #3 19/07/2008: Surprise, surprise, it was my fault that iChoose was still showing as 'Waiting for upload...' even though I had uploaded it. I was building it wrong and didn't have the required embeded.mobileprovision in the .app. It was there once - honest! A quick check on the build settings, a re-build, a re-upload and we're now "In Review".

Banners gone barmy

I'm kind of all for banner adverts - our Talee Talee site makes use of them to help fund the bandwidth bills (and we get a lot of traffic!). If someone wants to click them then that's great.Talee Talee is free so any income is welcome. Mostly they are random and occasionally have something worth-while.

However, I could not but laugh out loud when I saw this on Facebook. Surely this can't be for real!!! 

I'd love to know what people actually think of banner adverts - and why people click them! 

Talee Talee in May

Sorry to keep banging on about utopia solitaire and Talee Talee, but we've got all the stats for visitors to Talee Talee in May. Quite a good month.

They are as follows:

Unique visitors: 116,690

Number of visits: 148,890 (that's 1.27 visits per person - we'd like to get that up a bit, we know we have a dedicated core of several 100's who play daily! Thanks. We'd like to see all of our visitors returning daily.)

Pages: 381,454

Hits: 8,283,565

Best day: May 4th. 11,698 visitors (mostly to play utopia solitaire).

A quick peek...

utopia solitaire is still proving popular.

We think it is about time to release an updated version, fixing a couple of things that we are unhappy with and introducing a new look and feel.

So, utopia solitaire II will be available soon over at Talee Talee. Until then, here's a quick peek at how the new interface is going to look (probably):

Better Browsing

If you're using Internet Explorer, and you visit our utopia 365 website, you'll see our "Better Browsing" initiative in action. Taking the form of two bouncy icons to try and encourage you to use a better web browser, such as Safari or Firefox.

Internet Explorer is quite possibly one of the worst pieces of software ever written (in our opinion - it's our Blog!). It's non-compliant nature makes it a pain to work with, it's page rendering isn't a patch on Safari (or Firefox), it's bulky, it's slow and we won't even begin to talk about security.

Many will argue that IE is great and is the most popular browser in the world. That may be somewhat true (the popularity statement is questionable at best because most people don't know that they have a choice) but Firefox (certainly) is making big in-roads into IE's 'popularity' and more and more people are buying Mac's now, so Safari usage is growing.

We want the whole world to use Safari or Firefox. A mission inspired by SaveTheDevelopers.org but taken one step further. They say "don't use IE 6 - upgrade to 7", we say: "don't use IE 7 either - download yourself Safari or Firefox".

Safari is available for Mac OS X and Windows, and Firefox is a truly open browser available for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X.

We think that with either of these two browsers, you will enjoy the internet more and help keep web developers all over the world sane (well, almost sane!)

Our iPhone and iPod touch site, Talee Talee, is very refreshing in that 96%+ people who visit are using Safari, nearly all on their iPhone or iPod touch. That's very nice to see in the logs (OK, it doesn't work in IE but that's not the point - it's not meant to).

Visit our Better Browsing page for download links for Safari and Firefox.