Category Archives: Non-Technical

As a platform aimed at developers, we get really excited to hear about dev shops that are able to speed up their development time – and therefore their business – by using our services. It’s great to know that we’re helping to enhance the process for creative teams out there, making their lives easier and, hopefully, their companies more successful as a result. Today, Will Kelly of Lavacado Studios, LLC, tells us why he and his team love using Parse.

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Crossfit, and its now-ubiquitous companion, the Paleo Diet, have spread across the world like wildfire over the past several years. With so many devotees to the two, and with each having certain needs and guidelines, it’s no surprise that despite their low-tech appearance, apps would spring up to support people following the regimens.

Parse customer StoreBoughtMilk Apps leads the charge with these tools, producing apps that have seen thousands of downloads as well as being embraced not just by the Crossfit community, but also by official Crossfit events. We spoke with Andrew Bucchin, CEO of the company, about their Parse-backed app, Workout Hero.

Tell us a little bit about your company, Andrew.

StoreBoughtMilk Apps is the producer of over 50 applications with a primary focus in Fitness and Survival. Our company has had 8 top 300 apps in their respective categories and plans on continuing to produce several more apps that will likely gain the same popularity as our current selection. I am the CEO of StoreBoughtMilk Apps.

Can you explain the concept behind Workout Hero for us?

Workout Hero is an advanced functional fitness application that has been in the top 100 of the iTunes Healthcare and Fitness category for over 14 months. The app has over 90,000 downloads and features TIMERS PRO which has been used 2 years in a row by CrossFit.com in the official CrossFit Open workout videos. Workout Hero is unique because not only does it educate its users on how to properly conduct functional fitness workouts and save your workout records, it also allows its users to “Link Up” with each other within the app, see their friends saved workouts, and save their friends workouts if it’s a workout they might like to do later.

What inspired the development of Workout Hero?

Workout Hero was actually created by the owner of StoreBoughtMilk Apps while he was deployed to Iraq. He was in need of an application allowing him to save and view workouts without the use of internet and wanted to have a timer on his iPad so he could easily see how much time he had left in his workout, even in low light levels. So, Workout Hero was born in a combat zone.

That’s amazing! Given that background, what led your team to Parse? 

Word of mouth is a powerful tool! While in the process of developing the new social ATHLETES section of Workout Hero we knew we would need a company that provided affordable server, data storage and simple social integration. So, we began talking to developers and after only a few days of looking, we caught wind of Parse and never looked back.

It’s great to hear that happy developers led you to us. What would you say are the benefits developers such as yourself get from using Parse?

Parse has made development so much easier! With Parse, no backend needed to be created and SDK integration was a breeze. Now the sky is the limit in regards to adding new features to the app. Social Integration was also incredibly easy to integrate and has made logging into Workout Hero as easy as clicking 1 button.

Which Parse features are used in the app currently?

Social integration and backend services. Push notifications coming soon!

It sounds like your app has been pretty successful; can you share how many times Workout Hero has been downloaded?

We are close to 100,000!

Congratulations! Do you have any plans to use Parse in the future?

We have 2 applications in development right now that will include Parse, both of which will use almost all of the offered features.

One of our biggest goals is to decrease development time for our customers. Do you feel that using Parse has cut down your development time at all?

Parse has not only decreased development time but it has also saved us a ton of money since we did not have to develop our own backend services. Saving time and money nearly doubled the speed at which we could develop the app. Our newest version of the app was out almost a month early.

That’s great to hear! Is there anything else you’d like to share with our potential, and existing, users about why you use Parse? 

The thing we love most about Parse is the customer service. Any time we had a question, we had an answer almost immediately. Not only was the customer service fast, they have also been incredibly helpful, friendly and happy to help. It’s great to see a company that has finally got customer service figured out.

You can download Workout Hero in the iTunes Store here, and view StoreBoughtMilk Apps other great offerings here.

Sometimes, a great app is about making something people already love even better. That’s what today’s app story is all about: making the beloved Instagram app even more functional for its users.

We spoke with Daniel Corso of Appiphany to learn more about their newest app, InstaFeed, and how it aims to improve the Instagram experience.

Hi Daniel! Tell us about Appiphany and your role there.
My name is Daniel Corso. Formally, Ranier Gadduang is the CEO and I am the CFO. We have one other member whose title is COO, Fahad Al-Saud. We all consider ourselves co-founders. Appiphany was founded in August 2012 with the goal of developing simple, high value applications in proven markets. The first two applications we have developed are photo-centric and our pipeline consists of apps that will play in the photo space.

And what can you tell us about your new app, InstaFeed?

Essentially it allows one to subscribe to popular Instagram users in categories of interest. Currently, we have 6 major categories: Sports, Models, Fashion, Celebrities, Food, and Pets. Within these categories, our team has gone through and vetted the most popular Instagram users. A user can then create a custom feed within these categories by subscribing to the users of their choice. For example, in the Celebrities feed, one could subscribe to Justin Bieber, Kim Kardashian, and Beyonce and create a custom feed that would display only photos from their official Instagram accounts. This does not affect whom you are following on Instagram. In addition, you can like a photo on Instagram from within the app itself as well as view comments from Instagram users. In the future you will be able to comment on a photo from within InstaFeed, repost a photo to Instagram from within InstaFeed, and create and share custom feeds of your own.

What was the inspiration for InstaFeed?

We recognize Instagram as an amazing way to edit and share photos. However, we felt that we could open the platform by allowing users the ability to explore some of the great content that exists on the network through a new paradigm: subscribing to users in category feeds to create a unique, customized photo experience.

Since using Parse to help develop InstaFeed, what gains have you noticed?

The ability to get our backend up and running quickly, allowing us to focus on key functionality and UX.

How is Parse used in the app?

Parse allows us to run all of our API calls to the Instagram network and provides a framework for us to sort and organize the data returned so we can serve it up to our users.

Do you have any other Parse-backed apps in the works?

We are going to do another photocentric application related to InstaFeed. In addition, one of our clients, Chubbies Shorts, uses Parse for their application per our recommendation.

Are you using any specific Parse features such as Parse Push, Parse Social, Parse Data or Cloud Code?

Parse is providing the backend for our fundamentally social application and we are using Cloud Code to pull and serve content to our application. We use Parse data for some minor caching.

Anything else we should know about Appiphany or InstaFeed?

We are excited to grow and continue to develop with Parse and hope that the service offerings continue to expand and make our job easier.

You can download InstaFeed in the iTunes App Store here.

Apps to streamline experience and assist attendees have become an expected part of many conferences and other large events, especially in the tech sphere. Although these apps might only be used over a short period, it’s critical that they be as well-designed and user-friendly as any other app, particularly when an experienced customer-base is set to be the audience.

SXSW is an exciting, and rapidly growing, conference held each year in Austin, Texas. As technology, and mobile technology in particular, becomes a larger and larger chunk of the conference base, it’s no surprise that mobile apps would become one of the tools. We were excited to learn that at SXSW 2013, Parse was used as the backend for the Startup Crawl app, developed by Donoho Design Group, LLC. We discussed the app with Andrew Donoho to learn more about how Parse figured into its development.

Tell us about your company the role you play there.

I am the President of Donoho Design Group, LLC, a family run app publishing and development consulting firm. DDG publishes Retweever®, Startup Crawl, and the award winning Punch It Out™. Our development consulting clients include OtherInbox and Silent Circle.

What can you tell us about your app, Startup Crawl?

Startup Crawl is a company directory app written to support a semi-annual event, the Startup Crawl, in Austin, TX. As you might expect, the Crawl is an open house where startups in Austin welcome the public into their offices to learn about what they do. It is typically attended by investors, developers, marketers and other interested players in the Austin startup scene. The spring crawl is held in conjunction with SXSW.

This spring over 7,000 people attended and over 1,100 downloaded the app. In addition to being a simple company directory, the app displays a map to the Crawl with, new in this edition, live bus tracking. Parse’s technology was key to adding live bus tracking to the app.

What inspired your team to create Startup Crawl?

A technology crawl without a mobile directory? Perish the thought. It just took some time and willpower. Developing the initial app was also used as an example in the beginning iPhone programming class I teach at Austin Community College.

As a developer, what do you feel have been the key benefits of using Parse?

The thing about using Parse is that it is straightforward. It is a technology without pretense. This edition of the app used Parse to store directory assets as well as user and bus locations. This allowed the Crawl organizers to add and remove companies to the Crawl as late as two days before the event. The bus positions were used in the app itself and, as a surprise bonus, the user positions were shown in venue maps.

This app suffered some operational challenges that Parse helped us overcome. Initially, we were going to use a commercial asset tracking service to track the buses. To this end, we had developed Cloud Code to read the RSS feed for each bus and stuff the data into the app’s database. When the tracking service could not surmount some operational challenges 4 days before the Crawl, we cobbled together bus beacons out of a colleague’s test iPhones, my daughter’s iPhone and two iPads from the Crawl organizer’s children (still wrapped in their rubber Gumby protectors). This required that I create a custom version of the crawl app to act as a bus beacon and duct tape the 6 iPhones/iPads to the buses. Parse made it easy to push a new source for the bus data to the cloud. The app that had wound its way through Apple’s approval process did not need any changes. This is a real victory for decent code abstractions and Parse’s service.

How many people used the app during the event?

Over 1,100 downloads during the two days of Crawl buzz, March 6th & 7th. The app made over 250K API calls during the event.

After this experience, do you have any other apps in the works that will use Parse?

A client’s unannounced app uses Parse. Parse is one of the technologies I am evaluating for my own apps.

Do you feel like Parse decreased your development time, or provided any other benefits in building your app?

It isn’t that Parse decreased my development time; I had to strip out a bunch of preexisting networking code to move to Parse. Parse allowed me, through Cloud Code and flexible schema, to evolve an app system with just me and two days of aid from a colleague who wrote the Cloud Code for the RSS feed from the buses. (My colleague was not a JavaScript maven nor RSS pro. It was a hack it together experience. This is a good thing.) Parse made it easy to “roll with the punches.”

How are the Parse products used in Startup Crawl?

Parse was used to store company directory assets, icons and descriptive text. It also stored user positions and their history, likewise for the buses. We didn’t use Parse Push in this edition but future editions will probably support geofenced push notifications from arriving buses. We use the automatic anonymous users in Parse Social and this data was used to create venue maps. Lastly, Cloud Code was used to read RSS feeds from a commercial asset tracking service.

What do you like best about Parse?

Parse is a technology without pretense. It gets the job done.

Any last thoughts you’d like to share?

Parse is enabling us to think bigger about this app. The fall Crawl will test out geofences, more extensive venue map support and, perhaps, Android support. We’ll be integrating venue photos and other social activities. Parse is making it easy to make this event app even more useful and fun.

Be sure to look for new iterations of Startup Crawl at future SXSW events!

It’s always refreshing to see mobile technology being used to help people. Today we have a guest post for you from developer James Sweet, who used Parse to build a prototype of a mobile app that helps people in emergencies by connecting them to nearby EMTs, medical professionals, and other first responders. He is based in Virginia, near Washington D.C.

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How Things Came to Parse

The lowest offer I got from any mobile app development company to build my Minimally Viable Product was $10,000, and it would take at least a month to build. However, the only reason I considered contracting out some of my development work was because setting up a virtual server with a database and handling push notifications is a headache. I estimated the learning curve would take me months. 

Luckily, though, I found Parse through a mobile app development company called Citrrus.  Once I found Parse, I was able to build a basic version of my app in just over a week and at no monetary cost. Now that I know what I’m doing, I can build similar apps with Parse in a day.

How Parse Helped

• For rapid prototyping Parse can’t be beat. They handle well solved problems that I would otherwise have to spend a lot of time troubleshooting. They even have built in point in polygon queries for sending push notifications to users in a geofence. New features are constantly being added to their SDK, and they are listening very closely to suggestions from the community.
• Amazingly, their customer service is even better than Amazon’s. Whenever I’ve have a question, I talk to the same person each time. It’s been great not having to re-explain things to different people. I’ve always gotten a quick response from support and am rarely passed around to different departments or people.
• Parse made it easy to try their platform without committing. I’ll have to acquire a LOT of users before I get anywhere near the push notification or data caps on my free account. Parse also lets me export my data to my own machine in JSON format whenever I feel like it.

About My App, N-1-1

My app is called N-1-1 and in an emergency it lets people alert nearby off duty EMTs, medical personal, and other responders who can quickly come to provide aid.

All the things needed for N-1-1’s MVP were built into the Parse SDK. Push notificatons, querying by geofence, user management, and an API.

Visit James’ site about N-1-1 here and view his presentation at The Economist’s Innovation Forum here.

Return customers are incredibly important in our business. Not only is it a necessity for building a strong and profitable company, but it also means that you must be doing something right, which is what keeps the Parse team going strong. Keeping developers happy has always been our main focus, and we’re proud of the relationships we’ve built with some of the coolest development teams out there.

Leviathan Games is one such company building on the Parse platform. Leviathan has been working with top brands and IPs for more than a decade. In 2007, they beat out dozens of companies to be selected by Apple as one of the first 5 iOS developers, and worked for Apple and Disney on a “Pirates of the Caribbean” game that revolutionized gaming on the iPod. They are devoted to mobile games, specifically the freemium game model, and have never looked back.

Below, Wyeth Ridgway, President of Leviathan Games, tells us what brought them to Parse and why they’ve stuck with us.

Hi Wyeth! What can you tell us about Leviathan and your role there?

Leviathan create free-to-play games for mobile devices, including Apple iPads and iPhones, Android phones and tablets, and Amazon’s Kindle Fire. As President of the company, I focus on our long term strategic partnerships and business strategy.

Leviathan has put out a lot of great games; which of them utilize Parse?

All of the products we are currently developing or maintaining use Parse to some degree.  All of the games on our products page are using Parse except Smurfs, since it predated our adoption of the platform. Additionally, we have 3 unreleased products in development using Parse.

Where do the ideas for Leviathan’s apps come from?

For this I’ll focus on our “Bane of Yoto” app.

This interactive comic was inspired by our disappointment with the current comic offerings for mobile devices. All they are is scans of print comics – we knew we could do better. We created an interactive comic experience we call Dreamotion, which revolutionizes how comics are experienced. We also added a collectible card system that enables users to unlock additional content in the comic.

There is a video of the “making of” Yoto here, with a lot more information.

You must have a talented team, so what brought you to Parse?

I have been an advisor to many tech startups in the Boulder VC community. I had heard Parse first mentioned there, quite some time ago. I started tracking the tech and was amazed at how fast the feature iteration was taking place, and loved the general “pay by volume” business model. After 6 months or so, it was clear Parse would leave our current solution in the dust, so we made the transition.

Since making the switch, are there any benefits that you’ve noticed?

The scaling business and billing model are key. The rate at which new features rollout is also amazing. Parse just understands the ecosystem, where it fits in, and does what it needs to do perfectly.

You’re using Parse in a lot of your apps. What features are used and how are they integrated?

We use Parse to create user accounts linked with Facebook logins. We then store user data such as which cards the players collected, how much currency they have, and progress indicators that drive our metrics tracking. There is also a host of utility classes in the app powered by Parse. For example, every time someone crashes it posts a log of that crash and device information so our engineers can diagnose and fix the issue.

How many overall downloads have you seen for “Bane of Yoto”?

Between Yoto Episode 1 and 2, which launches soon, we should break 1 million downloads between Amazon, Google Play and iTunes.

Do you feel that Parse has been able to decrease the time your staff spends on development?

The best part about using Parse is that we used to have staff dedicated to maintaining our own servers, as well as writing and maintaining code that Parse now handles. It has let us focus our existing staff on our games, as opposed to infrastructure.

Push notifications are becoming quite popular; do you use this feature in your apps?

Yes, we use Parse to send notifications driving users to new products we launch, as well as informing them of product updates, sales, and so on.

What would you say is the main thing that keeps you using Parse?

Ease of use. Parse is a bunch of very smart people laser-focused on solving a scaling problem most developers can’t handle internally.

You can read more about Leviathan Games here, here, here, and here.