Our thoughts on the iPad

Since Steve Jobs showed the world his company’s latest creation, the surprisingly controversial iPad tablet device, the Internet has been flooded with a wealth of opinions on its features – both those included and omitted by Apple.  Vaya Broqui, being one of the better known iPhone development teams in Puerto Rico, was asked by the island’s leading newspaper, El Nuevo Día (link to original article, in Spanish), to share its initial reactions on the iPad.  Both Pablo and I weighed in on the device, as well as our friend and fellow developer Hector Ramos (check out Hector’s blog for more of his thoughts on the iPad).

The Bottom line: as developers we are excited about Apple’s new device and the possibilities for mobile computing it might open – especially for casual users and professionals – even though we would have liked if other features had been included from the get-go.

Here’s a transcript of the complete article (in Spanish):

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Aguinaldos Navideños

Here are a few classic ‘aguinaldos navideños’ from Puerto Rico (some of them abridged) for you and your family to enjoy during the holidays!  These work great for singing along to the rhythms you’ll find in our ‘Parranda’ applications for the iPhone and iPod touch.  You can find many more in El Boricua website as well as in this dedicated YouTube channel, which includes many recorded versions of Puerto Rico’s festive and contagious alternatives to caroling.  Click the link below to enjoy a selection of traditional Puerto Rican holiday songs!
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Parranda App Influences Mobile Advertising?

As we prepared to release the ‘Parranda’ application late last year, we never thought that twelve months later we would have expanded our product line to three unique ‘Parranda’-branded musical apps, with our Parranda Cuatro and Parranda Plena Libre applications.  Even less did we expect cellphone companies to have embraced our concept as THE seasonal approach to marketing advanced mobile phones this Christmas season.

It’s not like Puerto Rico’s rich culture and musical traditions haven’t been exploited before for marketing purposes – but after AT & T in Puerto Rico decided to do some product integrations showing off the iPhone with our original ‘Parranda’ app (for which we are grateful) in the top rated local television shows last year, a full-page story in the business section of the island’s leading newspaper, and over 10,000 downloads,  its hard not to look at some of this year’s cellphone ad campaigns for the Holidays and not wonder if our application influenced some of the marketing decisions made.

Here are some images taken from an AT & T promotional brochure and a CLARO storefront in Plaza Las Américas Shopping Center.  I also ran into a Sprint promotional shopper in El Nuevo Día newspaper a few weeks ago which I would have included but alas, I can’t find it.  Until we port ‘Parranda’ to other phones and operating systems, the only phone you can play with our apps is Apple’s iPhone (and the iPod touch of course – a much cheaper way to enjoy the myriad of applications available from iTunes).  This makes some of the advertising images below a bit misleading if not entirely disingenuous.  Take a look and decide for yourselves:

AT&T opted for some confusing images. They know which phone plays 'Parranda' and its not any of these.

Claro, once thought to be bringing the iPhone to our shores, plays the tradition angle as well.

Have you spotted any other cellphone advertising examples out in the wild that you think might have been inspired by ‘Parranda’? Share them with us by writing to info@vayabroqui.com!

Feed Your Soul

While browsing this month’s Parranda reports I saw a huge bump in downloads for the first week of August. When you get a bump like this you really try to figure out where the downloads came from.

Initially we were clueless as to the source of the downloads (in a happy way). Was there a talk or conference , a news article that we didn’t know about?.  After searching Google Analytics we were happy to see that must of the traffic came from Sofrito For Your Soul, a Latino /Hispanic culture website by George L. Torres (@UrbanJibaro).  He learned of Parranda through a very brief  Facebook ad campaign we ran during summer.  A big shout out to Urban Jibaro for a great site… you have been automatically added to our beta testers list  Weeepa!!!

WWDC 2009

During the last week our team has been attending Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco.  We have been learning many of the new technologies in iPhone OS 3.0 and OS X Snow Leopard.

The new iPhone OS 3.0 provides possibilities for software and services that seem truly endless (and technically impossible a few years ago).

We have been exposed to ideas and demos that allow us to see the breadth of future iPhone / iPod development.  And we are really excited about the near future.

Stay tuned for some big projects coming our way.

Controlling our Universe: Physics Engines

Physics Engines are programs or libraries that simulate real world physics in a game or application. We’ve been playing around with some of them for our new games… its amazing what some fake gravity, momentum and motion sensors can do…

Here are some ants and a spider rocking out in a test called: Mosh Pits.
Rock ON!!!

New Vaya Broqui Game Under Development

Thanks to our unprecedented success with Parranda and our ongoing desire to become an iPhone Development powerhouse (both for fun and profit)… early in March we decided to start working on a new iPhone game.

Although this new game will be simple and fun on the surface, it will require a lot more creative and technical looooove than any of the other apps we have developed in the past (We have made several apps, Parranda is our first public AppStore app).

We continue our tradition of trying to build and produce everything ourselves. Some of our fondest memories of Parranda are from working with friends who let us record their music, making our family members shout out  “Asalto”, “Wepaa”, “Ua Ua” in exchange for food and Xbox 360 play time.

If you read articles like this one where someone (supposedly) spent 32K for a game that made him around $500 you’ll quickly realize that this is the best possible approach.

For us, making fun iPhone apps is cathartic…  we love what we do and love turning our ideas into touchable, shakeable, swipe-able, blow-able reality .

Vaya Broqui says:  Stay tuned for more details.