I’ve been experimenting with the Line 6 MIDI Mobilizer SDK for iOS, and this is my first project: an analog-style sequencer for the iPad. In the video I sequence an Alesis Andromeda A6 synth using the iPad and the MIDI Mobilizer interface.

I’m not sure where I’m going to take this as far as features/etc go, and for now I’m going to be shifting my focus back to finishing up a different music app, but I think the demo shows that MIDI control using iOS devices definitely has some promise.

Thank you to Alesis founder Keith Barr for the Andromeda A6 and his many other contributions to music making.

http://createdigitalmusic.com/2010/08/30/remembering-keith-barr-founder-of-alesis-lost-last-week/#more-13095

http://valhalladsp.wordpress.com/2010/08/25/rip-keith-barr/

We’ve been using the Pulse News Reader iPad app to follow blogs and news lately. The latest version has the ability to create a meta-blog from your favorite “pulsed” articles that you come across. You can check out our Pulse picks with links to articles on music, iPhone/iPad, general technology news, gaming, and cool random design stuff at our Synthetic Bits Pulse site.

Note that like many other super-hyped Web 2.0++ things, this one often has reliability problems so it’s possible the site will be down when you check it out. Despite that, we’re really digging this and other alternate ways to browse the web using the iPad through apps.

In Synthetic Bits news, we’re currently working on a new fun music app, more on that soon!

…and a couple other similar ones: Synthetic Bits on Youtube

We’ve been making videos of all our apps to include in the new and improved in-house ads we will run to promote our other apps when iAds doesn’t serve us any real ads. More on that once we submit the updated Explore Space! ad-supported app and try it out.

A free update that makes our FunkBox drum machine iphone app into a universal app, meaning it runs natively on both iPhone/Touch and now iPad, has been submitted to Apple and is currently waiting for review. These pictures show a preview of how FunkBox will look on your iPad.

For our eighth and ninth apps we decided to experiment with a free model that promoted our other apps and ran Admob ads. We made a free entry in our Puzzle Fun Pack series called Explore Space!, and a new one that helps you come up with really Terrible Baby Names. So far the initial results haven’t been that great, but we’ll give it some time and keep you updated as the experiment goes on.

So do we.

Puzzle Fun Pack: Wild Animals! is apparently huge in Portugal. We have no idea exactly why (other than it offers wonderful gaming value, delight, and wildlife fun – transcending  borders to appeal to kids across the globe) but we’ll take it. Obrigado!

In Part 1 of our “asks of iTunes Connect and the iTunes App Store” series, we presented the argument for more data for app developers, and pushing for the move towards more sophisticated information to design, build, and market our iPhone and iPad apps.

With Part 2, we’re looking to address some opportunities that lie within the social space for iTunes.

CONNECT DEVELOPERS WITH CUSTOMERS

In it’s current state, the iTunes App store is a bit of a black box for developers. We design and build apps that we think people will like, we submit them into the App Store, and we wait to see what happens. When people buy our apps, we don’t know who they are, where they came from, or if they’ve bought our apps before. Sometimes we know if they like our apps, but usually we don’t.

In the past few years, we’ve had two negative reviews on apps that had issues with functionality or install. We had no way of contacting these people – the only clue we had was their iTunes username left within each review. Through some intense Google searching, we were able to trace those usernames to other usernames/email accounts, and finally contact both of them. We addressed both of their issues, and both changed their reviews from 1 star to 4-5 stars, with revised review write-ups. We are happy to jump through hoops to offer service to our paying customers, but we shouldn’t have to. And if someone gives us a 1-star rating without a written review, we have zero visibility into who they are or why they didn’t like our product. That’s not helping anyone out.

What we’d really like is a direct feedback channel with our customers. Set up rules of engagement so that we don’t abuse the privilege, but allow us to talk to customers that opt-in, get a roster of active users, see which users are brand-loyal or just trying our apps out for a spin. Let us reward loyal customers with trackable promo codes they can send to friends, create our own brand ambassadors.

We could also use some help with visibility in the store. Want to help small-shop developers get out of the long tail? Let us tell our story by giving us control over our homepage in the iTunes App Store. Sure, we have our website, but hardly anyone clicks through (we’re guessing most people never even see the link.) Instead of just having a developer’s page be a list of apps, let us choose the presentation. We want to tell people why we build our apps, the problems we’re trying to solve. Customers see so many “krapps” in the store, so much spam day after day. Expose them to the unique stories of hard working App developers that love Apple and are trying to solve problems. Let us build our brand in the framework that means the most to our customers – right in the App Store itself. We know that “chosen” app developers have some of this capability today (see the pretty basic customization for Disney, EA, Gameloft, etc.), but it should be extended to all app developers.

ENCOURAGE COMMUNITY

Today to find our own measure of satisfaction, we review our in-app analytics (by Flurry) to see how much people are using our apps – sessions per day, time spent using the app, and more. Actual usage is the best measure we have towards satisfaction, other than reviews (which are sparse.)

What we’d love to see is the opportunity to create a community around an app, or an app developer. Let our customers talk to each other - offer tips and tricks, send questions, talk about what they love and what they don’t. We’re not being naive and assuming our customers want to connect with each other – but they do want to solve problems and exchange information. Get past just having “reviews”, and open up the discussion to everything about the app. Let customers recommend new features. Let us embed blogs for app-specific updates, news, and issue resolution. Syndicate the conversation on social networks.

The more you get customers talking about apps, the more apps you’re going to sell. And for Apple – that means more revenue. They already know this – the Apple.com forums are some of the best places to find feature requests, feedback, Apple love, and even venting. Apple has done a great job in keeping the forums open and helpful.

To extend the community aspect, let’s make the app store more than just one way communication. You ever ask your friends what apps they have, and they just hand you their iPhone so you can take a look? Happens all the time. So why make that experience limited to just an in-person scenario? Let customers create pages on their favorite apps, app lists, recommended apps. Let them link to you, tell their stories about how they found their favorite apps, and which ones make their devices truly indispensable.

Just a few ideas on how to extend the App Store, make it more robust, and a better overall experience. What are your ideas?

Our next entry will tackle the store itself, and other iTunes App Store asks to complete the series.

For those that don’t know, iTunes Connect allows developers to submit and manage their apps, as well as serving as the sole source of reporting for daily/weekly/monthly sales, financial reports, and more. The earliest target for criticism was approval timelines from the tool (which have seen obvious improvements), but that spoke more to the processes of the store vs. the tool itself. Any developer can tell you that the next stage of evolution for the iTunes Connect service is well overdue.

We’ve found with the current iTunes Connect system does an adequate job of suppling some of the information that we need, but in a less than elegant manner. Sales data is supplied in daily text files, no graphs, trending, or tracking over time. Reviews, ratings, and other touchpoints are only accessible through the store interface itself. Promo codes are created through a four step process ending in a text file and aren’t trackable.

So now that the iTunes App Store is obviously a hit, it’s time for Apple to get serious and create iTunes Connect 2.0. Every developer has their own wish list, but we’ll be tackling a few topics in the next few blog posts, starting with data in this post.

Developers have the opportunity to become more sophisticated in how they design, build, and market their apps. For Apple, the benefit lies in keeping developers happy, and increasing the size of the moat that they’ve created to keep the Android, Blackberry, and Windows app stores far behind them.

THE DATA ASK

Apple should create a system that can report in-store behavioral and attitudinal information to app developers, much like traditional web analytics reporting. Creating a system won’t be cheap, so let’s start with the short putt where the data is already being collected: ratings and sentiment. Tell us how our apps are doing with iTunes Store ratings and review reporting across all geographies. Let us know how our apps are reviewed vs. other apps in our category, and how the people giving us a good/bad review typically review other apps. Speaking of reviews, the biggest missing piece here isn’t just the data and reporting, it’s letting us contact unsatisfied customers for support or assistance. These our are customers – make it easy for us to digest and respond to feedback.

Now on to the fun asks: let’s get some behavioral data from the store. We’re talking visits, visitors, app page views, and time spent on our app pages for starters. More importantly, let’s get into the actionable data like traffic sources. When someone views our FunkBox Drum Machine app page, where did they come from? Was it an external link, a New Release list, a Top 100 list, a Genius recommendation, Tell-A-Friend functionality, or a new review site? What’s the purchase conversion once they land on the page (and how does it differ by referral source?) Give developers tools to slice the data by geography, demographic, and segment by types of apps they buy. Give us iTunes Store search data. How often are we appearing in results, and how often are people finding us through those searches? Are customers more likely to purchase that way? Are there valuable keywords that apply to our apps that we’re not listed under?

Now that the covers have been taken off the iPad, it’s also time for sales data based on device type. Give us all the above information, and the ability to see who is buying/installing on an iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPad (and overlap.)

Each of these data asks are trivial on their own, but combining the pieces of data together can help give us a better picture of our customers, and build better apps by using data. Instead of simply throwing an app into the iTunes ether and crossing their fingers, developers would have the tools to begin actively managing their apps as products. It’s silly that today we can tell more about our customers from high-level analytics on our Youtube videos vs the iTunes store.

In future posts, we’ll tackle the remaining asks we have of iTunes Connect, including social opportunities and tackling improvements to the store itself. There’s so much that can added to make the guts of the store a truly remarkable opportunity for developers. In the meantime, let us know what you’re looking for from iTunes Connect, and what we’re missing.

Online news reports and forums are filled to the gills with iPhone developers claiming to be seeing astronomical improvements on app approval times since the new year. The old days of no transparency and months of waiting are finally over, they proclaim.

So what are we seeing? Well, we’re seeing improvements, but nothing through the roof quite yet.

Our latest app, the FunkBox Drum Machine, was submitted to Apple about five days ago, and was just approved this afternoon. Our wait times were never that bad to begin with – we were seeing weeks, not months.

With this latest release, we’re definitely seeing an improvement, especially how fast the app gets placed “in review”, which took all of three hours. But we then waited for five days before getting released into the iTunes App Store. Other developers are reporting updates to apps being approved in a few hours, and brand new apps in twenty four hours. We sure didn’t see that.

Sure, we may have got caught up in some Apple employee getting us into their approval queue and then heading out for the three day weekend, so this may not be the best time to test out the store’s approval timeline improvements. We’ve got another app to submit in the next few weeks, we’ll hopefully get some twenty-four hour goodness on that one. The trend is definitely heading in the favor of iPhone developers, sounds like Apple is listening to the community and responding.