Indie+Relief was a great success. Yesterday, 294 copies of Where To? have been sold generating $617.40 in proceeds after Apple’s cut.

Some developers suggested Apple should donate its 30% share as well. We absolutely support this idea! While we’re unsure whether Apple will take this step, we decided to not only cover the 30% but round up our donation to $1,000. The sum has been donated to Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders).

If you’re considering a donation yourself and don’t know yet which charity to support, check out this summary of the Huffington Post. Or you can donate to the American Red Cross right in iTunes.

Let’s help together to remedy the terrible situation for the people down there.

A victim cries for her father as she is treated at the Israeli Defense Forces field hospital, Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Saturday, January 16, 2010.

To support the victims of the Haiti earthquake, we decided to donate all proceeds for Where To? purchases made on January 20 to Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders). So for every purchase of Where To? we donate $2.10 (100% of our revenue after Apple’s cut) to the cause.

Please check out indierelief.com, organized by Justin Williams and Garret Murray. All proceeds of more than 150 Mac and iPhone apps go to Haitian relief. I browsed through the list and there are some gorgeous apps that shouldn’t be missing on any Mac or iPhone. So you get great software and support the cause. Please help spread the word and tell your friends, family and colleagues.

We sincerely hope our donation can make a small contribution to tackle this terrible disaster.

Should iPhone app settings be placed in Settings.app or included in-app? — There has been quite some debate on that topic and we don’t want to repeat everything all over again.

In our eyes there are a lot of good reasons to take the in-app route:

• Settings.app becomes a total mess with more and more apps and takes long to load all apps
• Most users simply don’t understand the mechanism and miss the settings if they are only placed in Settings.app
• A context switch is needed to switch between settings and the app. If the app happens to be on the 16th screen, this involves quite some tapping and flicking.
• In-App settings can instantly change the behavior of the app

On the other hand, some (albeit a minority, we feel) users are used to the mechanism of Settings.app. Also, being part of Settings.app gains some user exposure and apps included there are viewed as first-class citizens by many advanced users.

So how can this dilemma be solved?

Many apps decide to get rid of a Settings.app pane altogether. Interestingly, all user-installable apps from Apple are amongst them (Remote, Keynote Remote, MobileMe iDisk). Further examples are Twitterrific, AIM and countless others.

We’re proposing a second approach that we call “hybrid settings”. In this model, the user has the choice: the settings are available in Settings.app. But they’re placed in-app as well. That way, every user can decide where to edit the settings. The in-app settings are a 100% clone of the Settings.app style.

How does it look like?

Well, the settings look exactly the same as in Settings.app. This consistency does make sense if we don’t want to confuse our users. In TouchPad, a “Settings” button shifts in the settings dialog. In Where To?, the settings are entered by tapping on the i-icon on the top right of the first screen. The settings then appear with a nice flip animation known from Weather.app or Stocks.app.

Can I integrate this in my app?

At first, the solution was developed by Luc Vandal of Edovia and Ortwin Gentz of FutureTap because we both had the need. So we wrote this piece of software as a Canadian-German co-production. Then, we thought twice and felt the code might be useful for some other folks. So we decided to release “InAppSettingsKit” as open source. Check out InAppSettingsKit.com for more details. This site also lists all apps currently using the framework and we hope it will be adopted widely.

One year has passed since I acquired Where To? from tap tap tap. Time to ask myself: was it all worth it? But first of of all, some background: Where To? was one of the first ~500 apps when the App Store launched in July 2008. The sales numbers where really impressive in these gold rush days of the App Store. When the app was put on the acquisition market it was removed from sale in the App Store for about two months. Two months in the iPhone app market is an eternity. Time for new competitors (and copy cats) to enter the stage. And time for customers to forget about your app and look for alternatives. So we expected way lower monthly sales. Basically, we had to start from scratch in terms of ranking and reputation.

Also, many apps in the store show a peak behavior with an initial spike and a following irresistible decrease in sales. In some cases apps started a second life at a lower price point (typical for many games, but also for apps like Beejive). We always hoped that Where To? would rather achieve sustained success allowing to develop new functionality on an ongoing basis. Also, this was a key factor in my plan to amortize the investment in 18 months.

It turns out, Where To? is not the kind of rocket-like app that flies through the roof and then crashes on the hard surface of negligible sales. Since the takeover in mid December 2008, it made a total of $325.055,07 in gross sales, that’s $227.538,55 after Apple’s cut:

Where To?

• What is it: find points of interest around you
• Price: $2.99
• Gross sales: $325.055,07
• Net Sales: $227.538,55
• More Info: at the App Store

Marketing

Admittedly, there is a large volatility caused by factors such as new versions, featuring by Apple and advertising. Speaking of advertising, we experimented with all kinds of different media and types. While in the first half of the year we had decent success with cost-per-click campaigns such as Google Adwords, in the recent past virtually all sorts of paid advertising were totally ineffective (with Admob and Facebook offering the worst value in terms of ad dollars spent per sale). The root of the problem is that at a sale price of $2.99 ($2.10 after Apple’s cut) and typical click-to-sale conversion rates of 5-10% the maximum affordable CPC is at around 10-15¢. For apps priced lower than $2.99 or promotional offers the maximum CPC is even less. At this level, however, the available inventory is nearly non-existant. This is the reason we drastically reduced our ad spending since September. Overall we spent roughly $50k in ads so far which is far lower than initially planned.

I feel the most effective marketing are continued improvement, word of mouth and of course positive reviews both in the App Store (yes, you’re welcome to take this as friendly reminder to review Where To? and all your favorite apps you use everyday – Thanks!) and in the press (e.g. TUAW or iPhoneFootprint). After releasing new versions, Where To? achieved rankings in the top 50 of all paid apps in the US, #2 in Germany and it climbed up to the top position in the Navigation category in the US, Germany and other countries. Clearly, this strategy wasn’t too bad.

Going International

Another interesting subject is our internationalization strategy. In contrast to other app genres local search is highly dependent on a good adoption of the local language. So localization has a completely different importance in our case. Throughout the year we added localizations for all major iPhone markets. Including our recent Japanese localization, Where To? is now localized into 9 different languages and contains local categories and brands. This contributed to a noticeable increase in non-US sales: Before the acquisition the US accounted for 90% of the sales, in December ‘09 the non-US share increased to almost 50%.

A Worthwile Investment?

So was it all worth it? – Yes, absolutely. While the bottom line of our sales was lower than expected, the profit turned out better than planned due to the lower than budgeted ad spending. So there’s a good chance my $70k investment will pay off sooner than expected. In terms of the make-or-buy decision, I think I made the right decision. Although meanwhile, the acquired code only contributes to a small percentage of the whole code, the (unchanged) basic look-and-feel and the market reputation of the app are critical success factors. Also, my point of time-to-market being a key factor now holds true more than ever. With more than 100,000 apps in the store, every day a new potential competitor enters the market and it’s important to be first.

What would I do differently today? – Well, I’ve learned the hard way that the transfer of an app into a different iTunes vendor account is practically not possible. Should I acquire an app again, I’d avoid the disaster and do the account switch right away.

Despite all the trouble we had with Apple last year, we’re absolutely thrilled how the App Store ecosystem grew in the last 18 months and what amazing potential it offered to developers. We’re more than happy with our outcome and take it as an incentive to achieve even more in 2010!

The Future

We always said that new apps are being planned. Unfortunately we didn’t deliver on that promise so far. We sincerely hope to change this the sooner the better. (If you happen to be a talented Cocoa developer anxious to get your hands at some interesting new projects, please get in touch.) Also, we do have a great roadmap for updates of Where To?, so I’m happy to welcome year 2 in the history of FutureTap!

Where To? 2.5.2 is available as a free download for all Where To 2.x customers in the App Store. This update fixes an issue modifying favorites.

Where To? 2.5.1 has just been approved. This is what’s new in the update:

• fixed a crashing issue for Greece
• improved compatibility with specific mobile websites
• added Australian banks
• additional bugfixes

All Where To 2.x customers can download the update for free in the App Store.

Our last Where To? update was the first update to go through Apple’s automated private API usage detector Craig Hockenberry noticed recently. No wonder, this tool found one match we introduced four updates ago and falsely didn’t consider as a problem. The method is named setNumberOfRows: and allows placing two buttons in an alert below each other instead of beside each other.

What was interesting though: Apple didn’t reject the update but just asked to resolve the issue at the next update. To me that’s a new spin to the whole App Store review debate and I must admit that I like the approach. Still, it’s debatable why such a useful functionality to create alert buttons with slightly longer labels is a private API. But leaving that aside I value Apple’s approach to solve those kind of minor issues in a low-key manner that doesn’t lead to silly resubmissions and loosing valuable time.

After all, it’s in Apple’s best interest to avoid burdening the review team the loads of resubmissions by giving the developer the time to fix the issue at the next update.

It’s been a while since the last Where To? update. Nevertheless, we think it was worth the wait! We’ve integrated a ton of new features in Where To? 2.5:

• Searching of categories and brands in a cool Spotlight-like interface
• Free search
• Customization (add and delete) of categories
• Search in contacts (address book)
• Food & Drink categories optionally grouped by region (Asian, European etc.)
• Get directions using Navigon MobileNavigator (App Store affiliate link)
• Center the search on the current location (configurable)
• Japanese localization
• VoiceOver support

Towards a more collaborative App Store ecosystem

So what’s the Navigon compatibility all about? — So far, we’ve seen quite a large number of high-quality apps that are specialized on a single task and aim to fulfil this single task exceptionally well. Navigon MobileNavigator is a perfect example of this strategy and it does a great job for turn-by-turn navigation. However, most of these App Store gems somehow live on a lonely island and don’t collaborate with each other. Some apps even try to incorporate more and more features just to cover everything by themselves. We feel this is the wrong way. We are a strong believer in an ecosystem where a collaboration of high-quality apps leads to a better value for customers. So we’re really glad that the guys at Navigon shared our vision and were extremely helpful in getting this collaboration going.

Of course, there are many customers who purchased other turn-by-turn apps or didn’t buy one so far. We made sure those customers don’t get a worse user experience by detecting whether MobileNavigator is installed and falling back to “Maps” if not. Furthermore, Navigon support is just the beginning. We’re very open to support more solutions in the future. So what turn-by-turn solutions are you using? Please let us know in the comments or via Twitter what vendors you’d like us to support!

Welcome Japan!

New in Where To? 2.5 also is the Japanese localization. We had to learn that Japanese is totally different from all western languages we support so far. So we’re more than excited to now support this interesting market. A big Thank-You goes to Masayuki Nii and Larry Staples who did a great job with localizing and beta-testing!

Where To? 2.5 is available for download in the App Store. It’s free for all Where To? 2.x customers.

When traveling internationally with your iPhone you want to avoid the exorbitant roaming charges using a local SIM card. First, you’ve to make sure, your iPhone is not SIM-locked – either factory SIM-lock-free or unlocked manually (no, I won’t go into the details).

Here is my experience how to get 3G data access in Italy. In Italy, there are four major operators: TIM, Vodafone, Wind and Three. Depending on your destination you might want to check the coverage first:

• TIM
• Vodafone
• Wind
• Tre

While Wind and Tre are a bit cheaper, I found TIM has the best 3G coverage. Getting a TIM SIM card is rather easy: TIM Stores are in every larger city.

The prepaid SIM card with 5€ credit costs 10€. National voice calls cost 30 cent/minute, SMS 15 cent, incoming calls are free. To buy the SIM card, TIM requires your ID or passport and an Italian postal address (just use an arbitrary address, they promised not to send mail to it).
On top of that a data option is needed, in this case Maxxi Internet 10 that gives you 50 MB/day at 10€/month. You receive an SMS if the 50 MB are reached. If you’re using more than 50 MB, you get another 30 MB for 1€/day. After this, traffic will be billed with 6€/MB!

Total investment: 20€

So the total investment is 20€ for the prepaid card including Internet access. Activation takes only a few minutes. To enable Internet access, open Settings > General > Network > Cellular Data Network and enter ibox.tim.it in the APN field. Leave user and password blank.

Extra tip: If you happen to swap SIM cards you have to enter the APN again.

The connection was rather reliable and fast. There’s only one caveat: If the maximum volume is reached, the warning SMS is not received instantaneously but with a 1-2 hours delay. So you can easily produce expensive overtraffic and eat up all the prepaid credit. When the credit is used up, the Internet access is disconnected and you’ll get a message that you’re not a subscriber of the data network. Internet access is restored the next day even if all the credit is used up.

Status Check

To check the balance and the activated plan, I found it useful to create a web password that still allows you to access the status when you’re back from the trip. To activate the web password, send a free SMS with TIM XXXXXXXXX to 49001 where the X are your new 8 digit (no characters allowed!) password. Then go to 119selfservice.tim.it and login with your phone number and password.

Other countries?

This blog post was inspired by Till Schadde’s coverage on US prepaid data access using T-Mobile. If you figured out how to get access in other countries, please let us know in the comments.

These are the changes of the new version:

• optimized point of interests search method
• doesn’t display points of interest that were marked for deletion
• adaptive distance to fetch new POIs on map movement
• displays a warning in detail view if entries have only approximate coordinates
• fixed a hang at startup that could occur in rare situations
• error alerts such as for missing internet connection are not repeated anymore
• added categories: smog check, playgrounds
• added brands: Germany: CashPool, Austria: Grocery chains
• optimized: English: landmarks, German: Train Stations, several Swiss categories

All Where To 2.x customers can download the update for free in the App Store.