Fox News featured iCookbook as one of the top cooking applications available in iTunes!
Utilizing the hands free capabilities was a huge win for iCookbook in separating it from the field in this showcase: ”There are loads of cooking apps, which makes the iPad a great kitchen companion– that is if you don’t mind getting it greasy! However, iCookbook lets you work hands-free through the use of voice commands!”
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Apple just released its annual App Store Rewind for 2011 and has selected iCookbook, developed by Ratio Interactive, as one of the top Lifestyle iPad apps of the year!
Big congratulations to Publications International, Ltd, for seeing the vision for creating this really great app.
Thanks as well to the many Ratio Team members that have put so much effort into the iCookbook App, it was worth it!
Today we are at F5 Networks offices on Elliot to participate as a sponsor of the AT&T Mobile App Hackathon Event, looking forward to seeing what all these smart devs can accomplish in just a day! The basic philosophy of Hackathon is to get together with smart folks, team-up, and build an app in a day. Winners will be selected by a small team (Will and I get to be judges with a few others) and be awarded in Apple gift cards, swag and more.
Once everyone got in and set up their areas Jeff over @ Buddy.com shared a little about the “Buddy Magic” – a suite of scenario defined services for mobile developers. I’m expecting a number of teams to leverage these services today as they are FREE and solve a number of data services with a simple call. I spoke after Jeff and shared some of our knowledge on app monetization, after all devs gotta eat too. Then the chaos began as teams dove into figuring out how to build out their teams.
Watching the process was interesting as devs huddled around a few brave souls “pitching” their app idea for the day. It seems that there are 2 primary goals of attendees; compete to showcase skills, and to find other folks to work with, share and learn from. Early on I had my eye on a few teams that quickly grouped, began white-boarding and building consensus. I think they will be in the final group. I’m interested to see if my gut instinct is right.
At around 4 I’ve noticed a few drop outs, not sure if they just didn’t make enough progress or if they were here for the networking primarily. There are serious faces, smiling faces, quiet groups and talkative ones. Its all over the place. Of note, Apple laptops dominate the scene, even though I know many are building android apps…
1 hour before app deadline and attrition is setting in, but there are some cool ideas that should come together. One of the “dropouts” is a team that built an app that has zero market value, but was a mental challenge that the team wanted to solve, so they accomplished their goal even though they will never hit the judges table. Basically their app would self generate the source on screen of the device, definitely geek cool, they rolled out with smiles on their faces and packs on their backs.
Judging time and there are 12 apps to review, all in all the teams do a pretty good job. 4 teams stood out: Giraffle – a raffle manager app, Superhero – a fun showcase of 911 data integration, PryceTag: a mobile “mechanical turk”, and eatFindr: app that helps people find places to eat that support their dietary needs.
The Judges huddled and the results were:
Although it was a long day, Will and I had a great time and we look forward to many more!
Russ
We were bullish on the Amazon Appstore before yesterday, after all Amazon knows how to sell stuff, but the results from being the “Free App of the Day” were incredible. In this short period of time, iCookbook has already garnered a position in the top 5 of all paid apps on the Amazon Appstore (bestselling) sitting above the Angry Birds titles at number 4!
This was our first experience launching an app in the Amazon Appstore, let alone as the FAD (Free App of the Day). We had a contest with our client guessing how many total downloads we would get. The numbers ranged all over the place. One of our designers won for closest to the final number and only a couple people predicted more than the final number.
Obviously this experience showcases that Amazon is a serious distribution market for Android, their “retailer” approach and the fact that app sales can be woven into the amazon social shopping graph may separate them from the rest of the Android App markets. One interesting difference of note from a publisher perspective is how you can engage in the comment stream. We found that a great tool to react and respond to comments.
Today is an interesting day 2, we will be watching with great interest as this story plays out. Stay tuned for further posts!
Ratio is really excited to announce that iCookbook™ is launching its Android version today exclusively on Amazon Appstore for Android. Get it here. iCookbook, one of the premier apps developed by Ratio for Publications International, Ltd., is now available for 3 platforms; iOS, webOS, and now Android!
Russ Whitman, Head of Strategy and Business Development, worked with PIL management to develop the Amazon relationship and prepare for the exclusive launch.
“It’s been an exciting month for iCookbook and Ratio,” Russ offered, “Right on the heels of our big HP webOS launch a couple weeks ago, to be now launching exclusively in the Amazon Appstore is incredible! Amazon has established itself as a powerful distribution market for Android apps, we are really proud to have iCookbook selected as a featured app by Amazon.”
The iCookbook App for Android extends the app experience beyond tablets,while it looks great on the larger screened tablets like the Motorola Xoom,the Android version has been optimized to support smaller screens, including phones.
“The team collaborated with PIL to create a great experience on screens large or small, it was a challenge because iCookbook is such a visual application.”- Russ Whitman.
Learn more about iCookbook @ www.icookbook.com
Today HP officially launches its highly anticipated tablet, the TouchPad, into the market, and the Ratio team is excited to announce that iCookbook is a featured app in the initial catalog at release.
iCookbook, developed for Publications International, Ltd. (PIL), was successfully released for iPad earlier this year, and the HP launch is another highlight for Ratio. Ratio has been working with PIL for more than a year to develop and deliver a digital strategy for the 46-year-old publisher.
iCookbook is a complete cooking solution for the kitchen, offering more than 2,000 tested recipes from PIL, a global leader in cookbook publishing. The app provides everyday cooks a broad variety of recipes to discover and unique tools to use in preparing them. Check out the release (here) and visit icookbook.com for more info about the app.
The WebOS project was unique in that the device wasn’t on the market during the development phase and the OS is completely new.
“The whole experience of developing for a new platform was both challenging and exciting,” says Russ Whitman, Product Strategy VP for Ratio Interactive. “The HP team worked hard to provide our team with support to help us get across the finish line and deliver an experience that leverages the unique capabilities of the TouchPad.”
“I’m not sure any other development company could have pulled this off for us”, said Jerry Croft, President of Cooking and Digital Media at PIL, “I really wanted to be part of the HP launch so they turned this around for us in record time and under serious time restrictions. It turned out great and I look forward to having iCookbook as part of the HP TouchPad app offerings.”
For more information about the HP Touchpad, visit http://h41112.www4.hp.com/promo/webos/us/en/tablet/touchpad.html
Opportunity: Build an application to engage recipes on the iPad. PIL needed a new way to find, choose, and prepare recipes. They leveraged a team of food experts and came to us with over 2,000 recipes with photography, recipe details, and easy to follow preparation steps.
Solution: Create a unique and ground-breaking cookbook application. Ratio did this by designing a rich visual interface to find and filter through 2,000 recipes, add their own, scale ingredients using a built in scale feature in selected recipes, create shopping list with an easy to use shopping list feature in which enables a user to scale ingredients, add their own ingredients, and build lists using any selected recipe. Also included was the option to share recipes via email and Facebook. Another feature was to include integration with AirPrint so a user can print a recipe and shopping list wirelessly from their iPads. The biggest feature that set this product apart from similar applications was the Voice Command feature in Prepare mode, using voice commands that users can step through when preparing a recipe “hands-free” and keep their screens clean.
Results: Created a beautiful, unique application for people to find great new meal ideas and recipes with a must-have application. Set a new standard in recipe and cookbook applications for the iOS platform.
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