Gifter's Blog

Hello again,

For those active users of the Gifters iPhone app, first off, THANK YOU very much and Merry Xmas!!! Next, I’ve made a small change on the server end of Gifters and fixes the “multiple person in the person search results” bug. When you searched for someone to send them an invite, there was a bug in which a single person could appear multiple times in the search results. This has been fixed. There are is a potential bug when saving a name of an item with a special character in it that I’m working on fixing right now. If you are having troubles logging into Gifters, this might be the problem. Send me an email at Support@GiftersApp.com and I’ll help you.

Secondly. People who are using IE8 to log into the webapp were experiencing troubles. I have fixed this bug as well and am working on squashing a couple more. If you are having troubles, feel free to send me an email. Support@GiftersApp.com

And finally, I believe there was a bug in the email setup for the support email address “Support@GiftersApp.com”, (clears throat) I’ve once again tested this and am having no troubles with this account, feel free to use it.

Ok. I apologize for those of you who are valiantly trying to use the webapp version of Gifters. It has been suffering from a lack of thorough testing, which, unfortunately, is my fault.

I have recently though, been doing quite a bit of road-testing and have fixed a LARGE number of bugs that affect even the most basic usage of the web app.

These bugs do not affect the iPhone app, just the webApp.

If you tried to use the webapp and had troubles, please try again. If you run into any issues, please leave me a comment here. I’m really wanting to hammer all the rough edges out. Thanks for your patience.

Hello to all,

After a brief hiatus on the webapp development, I have resumed the project and hope to have it wrapped up and in open public beta testing in about 2-3 weeks. My intent is to have the web app functioning and available to the public before the Xmas shopping season.

Once the webapp is in a stable and usable state, I will return my attentions to improving the iPhone client. Any and all feedback is welcomed, as usual.

Thank you to all my current users and customers. I appreciate your patience while this development going on.

Hello to whoever reads this blog.

Gifters has had a small start, and while I expect that things will pick up once the web app is released, it’s been a rough road. The app needs ratings, reviews, and public awareness. There’s only been on public review and no App-Store ratings/reviews. I can’t help but think the app will be buried under all the others without help.

I have so many more things I want to do to the app but can’t quite justify adding them with the poor performance of the app so far. I’ve been taking on other projects to help make ends meet.

I had hoped that in iTunes 9, the Genius app recommendations would help push Gifters out into the public’s eye, we’ll see.

The webapp is coming along nicely, and I am still working on it. It’s just been slower to progress than I had originally hoped. To the users of Gifters, and those that check this blog, your help is needed. I assure you that Gifters won’t die out any time soon, but it does need your help. It needs feedback and word-of-mouth, or ratings. Even if you left a comment to this post with suggestions and feedback, it would help.

Well finally. Gifters has had it’s first 3rd party app review. I think the reviewing site has a decent size audience which should give the public awareness I’m hoping for.

For the most part, I think the review was positive even if the perspective was a little off. I think, however, I might address a couple of comments in the review so that there’s no confusion about the app.

The app’s purpose is simple, basic, and as the review points out. It’s there to capture the impulse “oooooh I want’s” as you come across them in your daily life. I personally got tired of generating an email list come Xmas time to send around to my friends and family and I NEVER managed to make a paper list through out the year of the things I wanted.

Enter Gifters. You take your iPhone with you wherever you go. So not only do you have an app that can record your wants and gift ideas, but also deliver them to your friends and family in a manner that helps everyone collaborate and sync-up their gift giving. It’s an effort to prevent the last minute “here’s what I want, buy me this” list that can sometimes happen with gift giving. Any friend or family member can be alerted to changes in your list and “choose” to view it and pick something off of it.

A secondary benefit that the app provides is a place to store your gift registry for events like Weddings and Baby showers. Instead of having a Target registry and a Bed, Bath, and Beyond registry, it’s in one place with the notes and details you want associated with each item. You can put in a “level of desire” which the other store registries don’t provide. Helping your friends and family know what you prefer.

Lastly. I think that it’s great that the review covers both the iPhone client and the WebApp in one shot. I do, however want to clarify that the WebApp is still in HEAVY development. Translated means, very little works at the moment. A TON of effort is being put into this to wrap it up and it’s looking like it’s only a couple of weeks out from being ready for the public’s usage. Once this is released, it’ll REALLY make it easy for EVERYONE to use and jump on board. If you happen upon the webapp, please know this and understand that stability is on the way and ANY feedback is welcomed and wanted.

To wrap up. I have MANY MANY features planned for this app. To start with, I have ideas to make the app even more easier to use and interface with that I’m going to start with in the next version. Then I’m going to add features to empower the user as the “shopper”.

SO…. this means that it’s a simple app at the moment. And while I intend to keep it a simple app, I want to also have some powerful features under the hood that make sense and enhance the usage and experience of the app. I’m not interested in adding features for the sake of “adding features”, the new features will have a purpose and an intent.

THANK YOU!!   To my current app users. I appreciate you trying out Gifters and wish to inform you that there’s more to come.

Here is a link to the review: AppStore.GearLive

I’m very excited to announce that Gifters has finally been approved for release in the iTunes App Store. I just got the email from Apple not a moment ago indicating such. Today marks my first iPhone application release and the first of many feature laden versions of Gifters to come.

Check it out in the App Store using this link. (It may take a little while before it shows up in the store). Let me know what you think!

Yet another sigh. Last Thursday (7/30/09) I received an email from Apple saying that Gifters had been rejected from the App store. Shocked I opened the email to read on.

Thank fully, it was only for a simple matter that was quickly fixed and resubmitted. Apple is, thankfully, very stringent on their User Interface Guidelines. Meaning that you can’t use a button meant to bring up the Address Book to bring up a different screen than the Address Book, which is what I happened to be doing. I removed the button and resubmitted in less than an hour.

I suppose I can be thankful that that was ALL that was caught thus far. I happen to believe that apps go through levels of approval. First level, does it launch without crashing instantly and erasing EVERYTHING (lol). Next, does it meet User Interface Guidelines (which Gifters didn’t this time).

Beyond that, who knows. I can tell when they log in and they haven’t logged back in since the first wave of approvals so I know that a week has gone by and NOTHING has happened or been looked at. C’MON APPLE, GET A MOVE ON!!!!!!

A huge relief and a large amount of excitement accompany this first release to the App Store. Now it’s up to the Apple App Store Submission gods to bless my app and release it!

The submission only received one hiccup in that I needed to change a couple of pointers to go to my live server instead of the development server. But otherwise the submission went smoothly.

If you’ve tested for this app during the beta period, you’ll need to make a new account on the live server when the app is released.

Well the good news is Gifters is in the hands of my beta testing team. I’m as excited as I can be to know that I’m simply waiting on bug reports back from my testers. I can’t wait until this version hits the stores and I can start on the features for the next version.

I have loads of ideas I need to prioritize for the next version and I’m thinking of starting by refining the process of adding items to the list. Possibly using UPC code entry and UPC code lookup.

I’m also thinking about consolidating a couple of screens to make the UI a bit more streamlined and easy to use. Reduce the amount of screens you have to go through.

Any suggestions are more than welcome.