Happy Halloween guys and ghouls! Well, our costume contest is over, and it’s time to find out who won. As you may have guessed, every entry is a winner, which is great news not just for the them, but for me as well. It means I don’t have to pull my hair out trying to choose which costumes to pick - because I thought all the entries were very creative, and I was not looking forward to narrowing it down.
So, on to the prizes: like I said in the original post, each winner will get to pick between a $10 iTunes gift card or a $10 Amazon gift card. I’ll send out an email this afternoon to all the winners asking which store you’d like to choose. If you don’t get the email, be sure to check your spam filters! If you still can’t find it, reply to this post and let me know.
Also, I found out the hard way that after turning off the image upload plugin, the images no longer appear in the comments for the contest post. So, I’ve combined them all into the handy little image you see below; you can click on it to see the full-size view. The costumes were very clever; if you missed them before you should definitely check them out now!
And to all the winners: the Ilium Guys say thanks for the costumes. They’re planning on going trick-or-treating tonight in each costume, to get 9 times the amount of candy from unsuspecting folks. Thanks again for playing and…
I love Halloween. It’s easily my favorite holiday. I like Halloween decorations, lights, and colors, and the people who take the time to make their yards look like haunted houses. I’m also a fan of the day after Halloween, with the half-price sales - that’s when I add to my collection of Halloween stuff. You can bet I’ll be the first inside the store this Saturday morning, ready to scoop up all kinds of great things, running around like a kid in a candy shop.
But don’t get me started on stores these days. The past few years, right alongside the Halloween gear, they put out the Christmas decorations. This year, it was still September when they started stocking the shelves with Christmas lights. It’s too early - and it’s enough to put me in a really Grinchy mood and ruin my Halloween cheer. So then I decided - why not throw a costume party to keep me in the Halloween spirit (ha! spirit - get it)?
And that’s where you come in. Sure, we could throw a party here at the office, but how would you get to join in? So what about a costume party with a twist; something with, say, a little competition added in and a chance to win an awesome prize? Well, boys and ghouls, if that sounds like fun to you, join me for the details after the jump.
Great - I knew you’d be interested! So here it is, the first ever Ilium Software Worldwide Costume Contest: we have here at Ilium Software something called the “Ilium Guys”. They’re the two people-shaped “i’s” in our logo. A while ago, Marc decided to dress them up a bit just for fun, like so:
Well, I’m sure you can guess what I’m getting at by now. We can’t let our little Ilium Guys go without a cool Halloween costume to wear. But we need your help! So, from now until Halloween (this Friday) at noon EST, you get a chance to get creative, have fun, go all out, and dress up our Ilium Guys in whatever costume you’d like to see them in. I’ll include a couple different types of “blank slate” Ilium Guys at the end of the post that you can use as your canvases - they’re bigger than the ones you’d find on our site.
What’s that? You say you didn’t go to fashion school, you’re not artsy or you don’t have a cool graphics program to use? Ah, that’s okay. I’ll post my rendition of Ilium-Guy-as-Frankenstein in the first comment below, which I threw together in about 15 minutes in Photoshop. That should be enough to make anyone feel better about a lack of artistic flourish. I bet you could use the Paint program, Google some images and super-impose them, or print out the logo and use Magic Markers, then scan the image back onto your computer. In fact, I’d really like to see something done in crayon - that would be awesome.
All right, let’s wrap this up (ha! wrap it up - mummies - get it?) and dole out the rules so you can all get to designing. Here they are, the official rules and important stuff you’d better read before entering:
There are two different kinds of Ilium Guy images you can dress up. One is a single guy, the other is our whole logo, a little smaller, like Marc’s Star Wars image above. The thumbnails are below; click on either to open it full-size in a new window. You should be able to right-click the image, save it to your computer, and then away you go!
You’ll be uploading your image in your blog comment. At the bottom of the comment form, you’ll see a link telling you to click and add your image. Your image needs to be online somewhere for you to be able to submit it. So, upload it to Flickr (or whatever it is you crazy kids are using these days) or anywhere else you can, then click the link on our comment form, enter the URL to your image, and it will show up.
I’ve turned on comment moderation this week, since this contest requires image uploading. We just need to make sure that no one tries to upload any malicious code to our blog. Now, I know you guys would never do such a thing, but it is Halloween time, and there are evil things that go bump in the night who might try to upload something dangerous.
I’ll go through and approve comments a few times a day, so please just be patient if you don’t see your comment approved right away.
Am I forgetting anything else? Oh, yes, the prizes of course! I bet you’d like to hear what’s up for grabs. Each winner will get to choose between a $10 iTunes gift card or a $10 Amazon gift card. And in keeping with that theme, there will be 10 winners chosen from all the entries. You can enter as many times as you’d like, but you can only win once. Like I said earlier, the contest closes at noon EST on Halloween (this Friday) and I’ll announce the winners sometime that afternoon.
So good luck to everyone - the Ilium Guys are excited to see what they get to wear this Halloween. Make them creepy, make them kooky, make them mysterious, spooky, altogether ooky - whatever it takes! Have fun and…
UPDATE: Doug over at Tilt Mobility (check out his awesome contest entry below) has just upped the stakes (ha! stakes - vampires - get it?) with a little added incentive of his own to our Halloween contest. If you dress up our Ilium Guys here and drop a comment over on his site, you’ll also be entered to win one of two Triforce Styli that he has to give away! Read the complete details and comment at Tilt Mobility. Thanks Doug!
While we’re all eagerly waiting for Julie’s fun contest next week, and of course for the U.S. election after that, I’ll take this chance share a few mobile-related links:
GoodShop.com - Here’s a great way to support schools and causes you believe in, with no direct cost to you. Click on a link on this page before you buy something on many major sites, including iTunes, Amazon, and eBay, and your kids’ school, or your favorite charity, gets a kickback. With no extra cost to you, some worthy cause can benefit from your purchases.
MediaBistro: Mobile Apps Today - This is one of the most interesting and useful sites I read. It’s got new info every day, and a lot of it is news I don’t find on other sites. For people who want mobile news about apps and platforms, this is a great resource.
Contact Hero - Here’s a new site that lets you manage your contacts online - optimized for mobile devices. Now that mobile’s (finally) so hot, I’m sure this is going to be a big category for popular web apps. This site does a great job of it.
And, finally, for people curious about some of the development issues we mobile developers face, there’s an interesting conversation going on at 4WinMobile.com, about Why Windows Mobile Apps are Falling Behind iPhone Ones. Check it out.
You folks are amazing! Thank you to everyone for all the incredible answers to my post about ListPro. I knew we’d get a couple of in-depth replies, but the sheer number of well thought out, insightful, and considerate responses were beyond my expectations. THANK YOU for all the help.
Everyone is welcome to keep posting ideas at the ListPro post and I will continue to read them. We are working right now to create a definitive roadmap for ListPro, based in large part on your responses. Once we come up with a solid plan, I’ll fill everyone in. Normally we keep this stuff a little closer to the vest, but considering the response I only think it is fair to keep you in the loop.
Thank you again! You’ve helped us out a lot with this challenge, and we’ll do our best to come back with a plan that is just as strong as your replies! In the meantime, take the weekend off! You earned it! :)
PS: If you asked specific question in your comments I will answer them over at the other post. Thanks!
Last week I let you know that you are the Ilium Software advisory board. When we’re trying to determine the best course of action, we really listen to our customers. That said, we’ve got an assignment for you.
As you know we’ve been planning to release ListPro on the iPhone. Working with a contractor, we actually made quite a bit of progress. Of course ListPro, even though relatively simply to use, is an extremely complex piece of software. Anytime you offer the level of customization that ListPro does, you’re looking at a ton of work. Throw synching into the mix and you’re talking about a monumental task.
That said we’re faced with a bit of a dilemma and we want to get your feedback. So if you’re up to the challenge, read on after the jump!
The Challenges We’re Facing
At this point, were facing a number of tough challenges. Here’s what we’ve got:
1: Behind Schedule
ListPro for iPhone is running behind schedule. While we had expected an August release, we now find ourselves looking at a release with limited functionality closer to early next year. (BTW - Part of the reason I’m talking about this is for you folks waiting eagerly for it - I want to make sure that any expectations we give you are real ones.)
2: Boatloads of Competition
Had we hit the August release date, ListPro would have been an early entrant into the list maker/task manager market. Now, list makers in the AppStore are as numerous as tip calculators. This “business issue” affects our customers indirectly. If we release ListPro and it fails to make enough money to maintain it, you’re going to end up stuck with version 1.0 and that will be that. Furthermore, ListPro is a huge investment to develop which means it has to do really well for us not to lose money on it!
3: User Interface Limitations
ListPro on other platforms makes heavy use of drop down menus, right clicks, sub-menus, and more. It relies on these to present all the needed tools for customizing lists. The iPhone doesn’t lend itself to this style of UI. We’re pretty creative over here so we’ve got some good ideas, but the overall experience is a bit more complex (in a full featured iPhone version of ListPro) than anything else on the device.
4: Synching is Vital
With eWallet, you made it clear to us that sync is a vital component of the software. Couple this with the iffy (but hopefully fixed in 2.1) upgrade process at the AppStore, and we have the potential for problems. This means that the project really MUST include some form of sync on the date of release.
The Solutions
We have two solutions that we’re looking at right now. What I’d like from all of you is your thoughts on these solutions as well as any other ideas you might have.
Solution #1: ListPro Reader
In this solution, we release a simplified ‘companion’ to the ListPro desktop software. Depending on the level of functionality, it might even be free. This application would allow you to:
Publish lists from the desktop over to your phone where you can read them
Check/Flag items on the phone
Sort, search, and filter
Click live URL links
Changes would not sync back to the desktop and there would be no other editing tools.
Advantages: Besides the fact that it would be free (you’d still need to buy the desktop version), it would take a LOT less time to develop this. We’d still be looking at a release date late this year at best, probably early next year, but it would be ready a lot sooner than a full featured version. In addition, it would lend itself very well to the simple UI common on the iPhone. Finally, it doesn’t try to compete directly with the gazillion list makers out there. It’s almost a portable database reader.
Disadvantages: It isn’t a full featured list maker and it doesn’t have all the features of ListPro. Also, it might fail to bring any new users to ListPro. It might even confuse people. A new iPhone product can’t work if it doesn’t bring in new users as well as carry existing users over.
The Future: If the product does poorly, we can still keep it out there for long time ListPro users, offering minor updates as needed. We’d still take a hit from the development costs but it wouldn’t be huge. If the product does well, on the other hand, we could slowly expand functionality over time - perhaps even offering true list making tools in the future.
Solution #2: Full Featured ListPro on the iPhone In this solution, we do what we’d hoped to do before - port ListPro completely to the iPhone. In addition, we’d include synchronization letting users sync their files back and forth.
Advantages: We could offer all the cool stuff that has made ListPro so popular over the years to a new audience. In addition, we could help all out existing ListPro folks make a smooth transition to iPhone. Finally, I could use all my personal ListPro lists on my phone! :) Woot! IF the product sold well it could become a major part of our business in the years to come.
Disadvantages: It would take a long time. My conservative guess would be middle of next year. Also, this would be very expensive to build. There is a very real danger that new iPhone users won’t care about ListPro’s power and want nothing more than a simple maker (half of which are free.) If this happened, we’d probably end up losing money. Finally, the app might be so complex to operate on the iPhone that all that power makes it unusable.
The Future: If the full featured version doesn’t do as well or better than eWallet, this would be the first and last version. We just couldn’t afford to continue development. If it does well, we’d have another great platform supporting ListPro into the future.
So there you have it…
Your first assignment! Let us know what you think. How would you handle it if you were the Product Manager here at Ilium Software? We really look forward to your input.
I just wanted to take a moment to reinforce how much we appreciate all the input we’ve received from all of you. Even if we aren’t able to add something that you’ve been waiting for, much of what we do here is based directly on customer feedback. From features, to fixes, to new applications, we always look to what our customers tell us as we go to make decisions.
Does this mean that we can always do the things you ask for? Unfortunately no, if for no other reason than that for every person who asks for Feature A there is a person asking for Feature B, and at some point we have to make a choice. At the same time, we never take requests or comments lightly, even if it only comes from one person.
So thank you again for all of your feedback, and absolutely keep it coming. And over the coming week, expect to see some posts where we specifically ask you for your input on some of the challenges we’re facing!
Happy Halloween guys and ghouls! Well, our costume contest is over, and it’s time to find out who won. As you may have guessed, every entry is a winner, which is great news not just for the them, but for me as well. It means I don’t have to pull my hair out trying to choose which costumes to pick - because I thought all the entries were very creative, and I was not looking forward to narrowing it down.
UPDATE: Doug over at 
