June 2011
1 post
QR codes and your business
By Tobin Harris
Latest research shows that 40% of UK consumers know what Quick Response codes are, and 12% have actually scanned them to access the information they contain. This means that it’s a good time to start getting serious about how you can use them for your business.
Here’s some ways you could use a QR code for your business.
Sharing information with customers
This...
May 2011
2 posts
Incredibly cool QR Code Generator
By Tobin Harris
We’re playing about with QR codes at the moment, thinking we’d like to put some on both our business cards and on our office windows.
A QR code is like a barcode that you can scan with your phone. When scanned, interesting things can happen. If the QR code contains a URL, your phone can open that in a web browser.
Or, if the QR code contains a vCard, your phone can grab...
1 tag
AllBabble: Our Celebrity Fuelled Social Network
By Tobin Harris
Last Friday we launched AllBabble, a social network for debating. It was built as a joint venture between Engine Room Apps and the innovative guys at Offficial.
AllBabble is a bit like twitter, but discussions are focused around topics of debate. Debates are sparked by celebrities, including Jimmy Carr, Bri Smithy, Martin Lipton and David Badiel.
We’ve released it on...
April 2011
5 posts
How fast do we deliver?
By Tobin Harris
Engine Room Apps is a service company that creates mobile solutions for it’s lovely clients. We have 10-20 projects at any time, and like to measure how fast we’re getting through them; how fast we’re delivering useful stuff to our clients.
We call this measurement our velocity.
Here’s our velocity over the last 3.5 months (we’re 19 days into...
Mobile Job Trends
By Tobin Harris
The growth of jobs in the mobile sector is booming along with all other aspects of mobile. We generated some live graphs from the indeed.co.uk job engine. They can’t be taken too seriously, but it’s interesting to see the indicators.
Mobile Web vs iPone vs Android vs Blackberry
This graph shows how Mobile Web is hottest right now, closely followed by iPhone and...
Apple's Shocking Customer Service
By Tobin Harris
One of our iMacs has been playing up by turning itself off at random times. Annoying when you’re in the middle of something.
Chris phoned the Sheffield Apple store at about 10am this morning to report the problem. The conversation lasted about 3 minutes.
Within that time they’d diagnosed the problem and informed us a replacement would be with us within the next 3...
1 tag
The Information Radiator
By Tobin Harris
Now that we’re in the new office, we’re taking the opportunity to sort a few bits and bobs out. The first is the information radiator, a tool which helps us feel the heart beat of the company.
Chris and I are huge fans of information radiators. The concept is simple. Put up a big screen in your office and make it show critical project information, visible to the team...
New Office
By Tobin Harris
Yesterday we moved into a slightly larger office space here at the Round Foundry.
The new Engine Room Apps office, at the Round Foundry Media Center
Despite a few concerns, we’re all really happy in our new home.
The wall at the front of the room is the only original red-brick still visible in the building. It looks cool with the sections of wood panelling scattered...
March 2011
8 posts
1 tag
The Funding Conundrum
By Tobin Harris
Engine Room Apps is in an interesting position.
1) We’re in a market that’s exploding. We originally thought that mobile was a fun and interesting market to play with, but it’s kicking off big-time now. Let’s just say the phone rings very regularly, even though we don’t do any marketing.
2) We’re new to growing a business. Not been there...
1 tag
Hiring Without Agencies - Lessons Learned: Part 2
By Tobin Harris
We recently posted up some lessons learned in our attempts to hire some iPhone developers without using recruitment agencies. It describes the dirty tactics we’ve seen recruitment agencies taking: Hiring Without Agencies - Lessons Learned: Part 1
Our original post caused an interesting discussion on news.ycombinator.com - we got to position 20 in the ycombinator rankings!
...
1 tag
Hiring Without Agencies - Lessons Learned: Part 1
By Tobin Harris (with thanks to Lee Sommerville for the “lessons learned” idea)
We’re currently in the process of hiring iPhone developers. Given the modern age of social networks and t’internet, we’re keen not to use agencies for this task.
As many may have discovered, it’s not easy. So… we’re blogging a bit about the process. This is the first...
Smartphones Revolutionising Customer Relationships
The IGD have released an article about how smartphones are set to revolutionising customer relationships in the supermarket industry.
They also mentioned ASDA price guarantee app, which we developed in 2010.
Asda’s iPhone app now plays a key role in the retailer’s digital strategy by allowing shoppers to validate its Asda Price Guarantee. This commits Asda to being at least 10% cheaper than...
1 tag
Guardian Reviews Our iLegal App
By Tobin Harris
Was nice to see some praise for our iLegal app in the Guardian today.
The good news is that the interface is excellent. The app is simple, fast and well designed. It runs offline, which means that you can access it when you have no phone signal. Legislation is presented clearly and is fairly easy to read.
Obviously we did something right! That said, the article does mention...
5 tags
Where to look for UK iPhone and Mobile Jobs
By Tobin Harris
We’re currently hiring iPhone app developers, and we’ve been hunting for places in the UK to post up job adverts. Ideally places that have a community around them and won’t charge a small fortune.
If you’re looking for an iPhone job, this list might help you. Feel free to post up more in the comments.
CoderStack
www.coderstack.co.uk
This is a site...
Video Review of iLegal on The Daily App Show
iLegal is an app we developed in partnership with Timothy Leigh in 2010.
iPhone Development Jobs
By Tobin Harris
We’re reaching out to any experienced developers who want to help us create great iPhone and iPad solutions here at Engine Room Apps.
This is a permanent role in our Leeds city center offices.
Here’s the deal..
You’ll earn up to £35,000 salary
You’ll get to practice agile methods on a daily basis. We take that seriously.
You’ll be working with...
January 2011
3 posts
1 tag
Shazam's Mobile Strategy
By Tobin Harris
It was interesting to see that Shazam has launched on the Nokia platform this week. Shazam was been around for years, it’s that cool app that lets you hold your phone up in public places, and then tells you the name and artist of the song playing on the stereo.
I thought it would be interesting to take a really quick look at their mobile strategy over the last 3 years.
How...
1 tag
54 Apps Submitted in 2010
By Tobin Harris
Chris gathered some stats from the first year of Engine Room Apps, which explain why we all welcomed the Christmas break so much.
In 2010, we developed…
20 iPhone Apps
3 iPad Apps
1 Android App
2 Universal iPad & iPhone Apps
1 web-based leisure boat booking system (to support iPhone app)
1 web-based twitter-like social network (to support to iPhone app)
1...
1 tag
Asda App Launched!
Engine Room Apps worked with Asda to develop their first ever iPhone app.
The Asda Price Guarantee iPhone app was launched about a month before Christmas, and allows customers to compare prices with other supermarkets, and get money-back vouchers that can be redeemed in-store.
You can download it on the App Store.
The project was a great success, and we hope to continue to improve the app...
December 2010
2 posts
Welcome Thomas and Richard
By Tobin Harris
This is a quick shout out to our two new latest Engine Room Apps guys; Thomas Curley and Richard Towers.
Thomas has joined us as an iPhone app developer. In his spare time he’s also an independent developer, working with his brother Marting to create games for the App Store.
Richard is our user interface designer, who’s fascinated by interactivity and touch-based...
3 tags
Buying iPhone App Leads: Is It Worth It?
By Lee Sommerville
You may have considered buying leads to help your iPhone, Android or iPad apps business? If so, we hope this post will help you.
Here we talk about the good and bad points of paid iPhone leads, and also share some statistics which you might find interesting.
A Bit Of Intel…
We have recently been doing some intel on our sales pipeline, with the aim of saving time spent...
October 2010
1 post
Welcome To The New Guys
by Tobin Harris
If you’re following us on twitter, you might have heard that we’ve hired a couple of great guys over the last few months to help us with our mobile solutions development. Welcome aboard Oliver and Layik :)
Layik Hama is focusing on Android and iPhone development, working from our offices in Leeds. He is also fascinated and skilled in many areas of computing, and...
September 2010
1 post
Our #1 Top Grossing App
By Tobin Harris
Earlier this year we built the iLegal iPad and iPhone apps. iLegal is a reference app containing all UK legislation - very handy for you legal types. The project was a joint venture with Timothy Leigh, a bright young Manchester-based law trainee.
We were amazed to see our app achieved the #1 top-grossing position for it’s category, and also made it into the...
August 2010
2 posts
History Tools iPad & iPhone App Launched
By Tobin Harris
After several months of developing and polishing, we launched the History Tools app for both iPad and iPhone last week. Hurah!
It’s available on the App Store.
Here’s some screen shots, isn’t she pretty (all thanks to Tony Pires).
In case you’re wondering what this app is all about, here’s an excerpt from the app store.
HistoryTools is a free...
1 tag
Interactive Card Wall
By Tobin Harris
We recently embarked upon building a virtual card wall to help us see all the work our team is doing, across all projects. It’s proving to be incredibly useful, and gives us a huge feeling of control.
The reason is that we’re learning about Kanban to help us better manage our projects. We believe that the more visible the process and the work are, the better we can...
July 2010
1 post
Give, Take, Work and Play
By Tobin Harris
There’s something incredibly powerful and rewarding about giving. You get a lot from making people feel good, for example:
Helping people get closer to their dreams.
Giving people more than they expected in a world where little comes for free.
Seeing someone excited by what you’re offering.
Doing your best and seeing it appreciated and even reciprocated.
...
March 2010
2 posts
1 tag
Seeing Where Your iPhone App Users Are
By Tobin Harris
Our client CrowdSpeak recently asked us to provide something that helps them see where their iElect users are in the UK.
iElect is a free political iPhone app that lets you see details of the up-coming election, including current MP, candidates and general trivia. It’s available on the App Store now.
Who’s Using Your iPhone app?
Knowing where you’re users...
1 tag
8 Tips For Picking Your Company Name
By Tobin Harris
Picking a name for your new company is difficult. It seems like an inconvenience when you’re worrying about winning clients and paying bills.
Of course, picking a name is seriously worth getting right. It can make a big difference in the short term, and the long term.
What Can Go Wrong?
Before I launched Engine Room, I had Socena. This is a name I picked because it looked...