iChoose v3

The (somewhat) radical update to iChoose is coming soon. iChoose 3 will be available shortly on the iPhone App Store for free to new & existing iChoose lovers.

You'll notice an improved design and the introduction of music and speech - it's classic iChoose as you know it, but with some "attitude"! You'll either LOVE it or hate it... iChoose 3 will now act as our base for future updates - we plan on adding some additional decision makers, such as to-do lists (done the iChoose way) in the new year. Anything else you want added then let us know and we'll give it a think through....

AppReview review iChoose

The people over at AppReview have awarded iChoose their "Best" rating.

Nate from AppReview told us, "There are an extremely small number of apps that have received this rating, numbering barely more than 300."

Considering the number of iPhone Apps out there, we're kind of pleased with that.

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 :-)

iChoose still going strong - it must be update time then!

It's quite amazing really, when you think about it. Despite the fact that iChoose has been knocking about since July now, it is still going pretty strong and is currently the 52nd most popular entertainment app on the USA iTunes store.

We're still getting reports of quite a lot of downloads, and that's brilliant.

We believe in updates, so you'll be pleased to know that yet another iChoose update will be winging it's way to you shortly. What's new we hear you ask? Well, we'll tell you...

1. We've updated the UI a bit

2. A lot of people wanted 'shake' to make a decision, rather than just touch the screen. It's in now.

3. iChoose is now integrated with some of our other apps. MyChristmas and iChoose play together nicely, so that you can use MyChristmas to ask iChoose what music to play, what game to play, what entertainment to use and what carol to sing along to, etc. We think you'll like it very much. And, vice versa, from within iChoose you can ask it to choose an aspect of MyChristmas for you to see. (Obviously you will need to have both MyChristmas and iChoose installed on your iPhone or iPod touch for this functionality)

4. The same functionality integrated with uSnap! Can't decide which type of game to play? Let iChoose decide for you.

5. Following on from a wonderful comment from a bloke that downloaded iChoose, we've added in Turn Left or Turn Right decision making. This guy deliberately drives round getting lost so that he can learn the area and the streets! What a concept. Now you too can get lost with iChoose. It's sort of like a reverse sat-nav.

OK, so that's on its way in a few days when it gets through the App Store process - updates to iChoose (v2.1), MyChristmas (v1.1) and uSnap! (v1.1)

And, we have one more idea for another iChoose update before the end of this year. We're going to put in some GTD stuff - the iChoose way.

Happy

We like it when people are happy. We like it when people who use our apps are happy.

We like these reviews (and there are many, many more like these!)....

Thanks all for the great feedback. New version coming soon with some amusingly unique features.

Also, lookout for the wonderful utopia Solitaire....

iChoose 2.0 - now available!

A busy week ahead

A busy week ahead for us.

iChoose should be released any day now. We received correspondence from Apple asking us to 'tweak' a couple of the images as they did not meet their terms & conditions. This has been done and the latest version uploaded.

utopia Solitaire development continues with some lovely and unique features being put in by Andy. We hope to release this week.

I will be cycling to Paris from London from Weds in aid of The Rose Road so that will have me busy for a few days!

My skydive which I was due to do last Saturday was cancelled due to bad weather. It is re-scheduled for a couple of weeks.

Keep an eye on this Blog for the latest news!

iChoose demo video

Well, here is a little video demo of the all-new iChoose version 2.

We're [EDIT: 'Still!!!!'] awaiting release confirmation from apple which should be soon!

EDIT 13/09/08 - iChoose 2.0 is now Available on the iPhone App Store.

iChoose 2.0

We asked iChoose if it wanted to update itself. It did. We asked iChoose if it wanted to go all 2.0, and, guess what? It did!

Ladies and Gentlemen, we give you iChoose 2.0. Coming to the iPhone App Store real soon.

iChoose will always remain free. We will not (as so many others have) suddenly start charging for our free apps in some vain, crass and stupid attempt to gain popularity. You will, however, be given the opportunity to make a donation towards the future development and evolution of iChoose, should you so desire.

"The Swiss Army Knife of choice"
(source: the UK App Store iChoose reviews)




What's new?

* iChoose Settings (in the iPhone Settings App)
+ Turn animations on/off when making decisions (the initial 'flip' from the '?' button is retained)
+ Individual settings for certain decision makers (choices)

* iChoose interface
+ New 'improved' look
+ Added a 'Hold' button to let you hold your choice until you've finished with it
+ 'Additional' button for some decision makers - e.g. 'Roll All Dice' for Dice ROLL (see below)

* Coin Toss
+ Added 'Real Coin' graphics option (A £2 GBP coin to be precise)

* Dice Roll
+ Choose to have 1-6 dice on screen
+ Roll each dice individually, or roll all dice at the same time
+ On-screen 'total' of dice values, e.g '= 7'
+ 'Hold' dice rolls

* New (More ...) decision makers (choices)
+ 'Let iChoose Choose' - iChoose will take you to a random decision maker/choice
+ Rock/Paper/Scissors
+ Loves Me/Loves Me Not
+ Red/Black
+ Boy/Girl
+ Quit/Stay
+ iPhone/iPod touch
+ Mac/PC
+ Weather (rain, sun, snow etc)
+ Random Number (range of numbers defined by you in the settings - defaults to between 1 and 100)

iChoose #17

iChoose is currently the 17th most popular free app in the iTunes App Store (UK).

An update will be released shortly that will add a few new features and settings, to allow you to control certain aspects of iChoose - such as whether you want animations or not, and and what speed they run. Look out for the iChoose version 1.2 update real soon.

Thanks for the reviews

We just want to say thanks to all for the great reviews we have been getting for iChoose (UK and USA).

We hope everyone will be keeping an eye open for updates and new apps that are on the horizon. Some will be free (but still quality apps) and others will have small charges.

Here is another nice review:

http://www.iphonefootprint.com/2008/08/decisive-iphone-apps/

Thanks.

iChoose review

Another iChoose review, this time from iPhoneAppy (via YouTube).

iChoose well received

We have been getting a lot of great reviews in the American App Store.   We're really pleased people like it and appreciate the fact we released it as 'free'.

Found on YouTube...

... iChoose.

Thanks to z953buzz for this review of two of his favourite free iPhone apps.

You can skip past the first 50 seconds of the (rather nice) New York Times app (which I also have installed) and get straight to iChoose.

iChoose downloads

"It could have animations, etc, but for a free app, I didn't expect any so I wasn't bothered. It is functional and looks good so I can't fault it.

Edit:
the makers of this app rule! They added animations in an update yesterday, which they didn't have to do. That makes them customer friendly: they are the Virgin Media of iPod apps :-D. Reccomended app and Reccomended developer."

- Dan_Da_Dude - updated comment on the iTunes App Store

Wow. We have access to transaction reports for iChoose from the App Store for Monday to Wednesday (inclusive) this week. iChoose was downloaded about 34,500 times during these 3 days.

Given that iChoose went live last Thursday / Friday (overnight UK time) we would estimate higher initial downloads for the 3 - 4 days over the weekend period (that we do not have reports for).

Our conservative estimation for total downloads of iChoose to date (including yesterday) are somewhere between 85,000 and 100,000. Based on the fact that iChoose is a tidy, handy, useful, but largely unexciting application - we're pretty happy with that.

Now, if we can duplicate that level of interest with future product releases and get just $1 for each download then we've made it! Of course the high volume of downloads is purely because iChoose is free, and rightly so. We hope you all enjoy it, and if you haven't downloaded it, then feel free to do so.

(Version 1.1.1 is still 'In Review' and will be with you from the App Store as soon as Apple approve it).

I never knew that! - take 2

Well, the old iPhone did have the mic on the headphones....I wonder where mine ended up as I was only using iPod ones....

Fact number 2 I found out today is the mic also has an answer / hang-up switch on it. I truly feel a right royal twit for not noticing this before. I'm normally well observant with gadgets!

On a side-note. iChoose 1.1 is in the App Store now and we are awaiting 1.1.1 to be confirmed.

iChoose update #2 - version 1.1

We have submitted version 1.1 of iChoose to Apple for placement on the iTunes App Store, and it is currently 'In Review'.

Although the added animations and graphical updates make iChoose even more of a must-have iPhone app, there is a 'minor' issue with the randomness of the choices it makes. My fault completely and it has already been fixed for version 1.1.1

Unfortunately, we are unable to update iChoose further until Apple has approved the version 1.1 submission. We are currently trying to work with Apple to get this resolved, and hope that we can get version 1.1 revoked before it appears on iTunes.

If you do end up getting version 1.1 as a free update, then don't worry - version 1.1.1 will follow as soon as we can get it through the submission process.

Here is a (low-quality) preview movie of iChoose version 1.1 / version 1.1.1 (QuickTime required)

iChoose update

"Worth the download. Simple and easy to use."
- Bradz Mckz

"It could have animations, etc, but for a free app, I didn't expect any so I wasn't bothered. It is functional and looks good so I can't fault it."
- Dan_Da_Dude

iChoose has been pretty well received - which is nice. It is (at the time of writing) the 2nd most popular 'Dice Game' on the App Store, the 13th most popular Entertainment app, the 5th most popular 'Family Game' and the 32nd most popular free app of all.

There have been four reviews so far, two of which are 5 stars (the other two are 3 stars). Unfortunately, we can't tell the number of downloads, which is a shame because it would've been a useful guide as to the App Store popularity amongst iPhone and iPod touch owners.

As a little reward for all of those who have downloaded - version 1.1 is coming tomorrow and will add animation to the Coin Toss and Yes/No decision maker, amongst other minor changes.

(When I say 'coming tomorrow' I mean that it'll be submitted to Apple to approve for the App Store tomorrow - it may take longer to actually appear).

And, finally...

iChoose is now (finally) available on the iTunes App Store!

It's taken about a week to get it there, which is far from ideal, but it is there now. Please download it. Thank you.

iChoose is really just a demonstration app, put together as part of our learning of the iPhone SDK, although it really is quite useful to have on your iPhone. We plan to release other, more substantial, iPhone apps soon.