Successful players of The Amazing Game of REcollection will get to experience a well-design and fun app, while discovering cool new products and winning coupons for retailers. Users can build up a collection of their favorite products, and check out more information about each item from the HolidayMatinee.com blog.

The Amazing Game of REcollection is available now on the App Store, for iPhone and iPod touch.

From NewLeaderSmartTools.com:

Leading a team through a transition? At any level, in any role, in any assignment, whether it’s a new company, new position or new project – the New Leader Smart Tools iPad app will help you and your team get done in 100 days what would normally take 6-12 months.

Mobile Distortion was proud to partner with touchbee Solutions, Ash Atkinson, @francispedraza, @markgriffo, and @appifyco for this effort.

New Leader Smart Tools is available now on the App Store, for iPad.

If you’re interested, check out our Jobs page: http://mobiledistortion.com/jobs/

Mobile Distortion partnered with Freakatars, Inc and touchbee Solutions to develop Freakatars Creature Creator – Free Monster Avatar Builder!

Freakatars Creature Creator – Free Monster Avatar Builder! is free, and available now on the App Store

On the surface, Privacy for Facebook doesn’t appear to be too terribly interesting technically; it is basically an enhanced web browser. The interface is a very straightforward wizard, showing the user some instructions and then taking them to a series of web pages. The end result is that the user will have visited each of Facebook’s disparate privacy settings screens, and will have been shown how to set each one for maximum privacy.

Under the hood, however, there are a couple interesting technical tricks that are worth discussing.

One of the primary requirements of the app was that it must be responsive to Facebook’s rapidly changing privacy settings. 2010 saw Facebook launch a completely overhauled privacy system, and a number of new features, such as Places, the new Profile, and Groups, that users of our app would want to be up-to-date with. This meant that going through Apple’s app review process for each of these changes would not be appropriate. Instead, we implemented a system where the app downloads settings from a server each time it launches; these settings contain the definition of the wizard screens. This allows us to update all of our users’ devices, after installation and with no intervention from Apple, whenever we want. In turn, this gives our users the most up-to-date app possible.

We also use push notifications in Privacy for Facebook. We use these notifications to add value to the app by letting the user know (in a silent and non-intrusive way) that there is new content for them to upload. We also use the notifications to send our users FYI-type messages from time to time; Facebook’s new Profile, for example, warranted a note to our users to review their photo settings (since the new Profile features them more prominently), even though this didn’t lead to any content updates in the app. We use Urban Airship as our push notification provider, and they have been excellent. We are able to test notifications and broadcast them in a very rapid fashion, keeping us in contact with our users with very little effort.

When we initially launched Privacy for Facebook, we had intended for it to be a paid app. However, soon after launching it at $0.99, we found that the ratio of paid users to actual users didn’t jive. After 30 seconds of research, we found that a cracked version of our app had appeared on the Internet a mere 2 days after release. We quickly implemented advertising and made the app free.

Initially, we were using iAd, exclusively. This turned out to be a poor choice due to Apple’s limited rollout of iAd. We then implemented AdMob as a fallback; the app would try to load an iAd and if it failed, would load AdMob. This raised our fill rates to nearly 100%, where it remains today. We recently updated the app again using AdWhirl integration, which mediates between iAd, AdMob, Greystripe, Jumptap and InMobi. This will allow us to tweak the ad distribution in real time.

Overall, I’m pleased with the performance of Privacy for Facebook. Our users seem to like it too; we maintain a 4-star or better rating in the US and several international App Stores; Privacy for Facebook has over 9,000 “Like”s on Facebook as well.

We’re also going to take this time to announce that Privacy for Facebook 2.0 is entering the last stages of development. Some new features include:

• A complete redesign of the UI and art
• A new “Audit” mode that allows users to cherrypick the setting they wish to configure
• “Privacy Reminders” – a feature acknowledging that simply configuring privacy settings once isn’t enough – our users want to keep on top of new photos and posts that their friends “tag” them in
• Better feedback mechanisms for users
• Better sharing mechanisms

We’ll be updating this blog with more details when we get closer to release!

“App idea – call me.” With this one line email on September 9, 2009 the seed for Medsy was born, as our Product Designer, who already juggled a battery of prescriptions for a chronic condition and was then also taking medications to fight off a nasty cold, realized that he needed a better way to manage his medication schedule. After the many trials of putting together a team, and designing, developing, and testing an application while still working for The Man, Medsy was finally launched five months later, on February 19, 2010.

Due to limitations with the then-called iPhone OS (now iOS), the first versions of Medsy relied on a Push Notification Server to deliver medication reminders. This limited Medsy’s device-compatibility strictly to the iPhone — as connection to cellular network was required for sustained functionality — and also rendered the reliability of alert delivery susceptible to the unpredictability of reception issues. In retrospect, this Push Notification Server scenario generated the most bugs for us, and the most user experience issues for our users.

Needless to say, we were more than happy when Apple introduced the support of device-generated Local Notifications with the release of iOS 4.0. Not only did this allow us to exponentially increase the reliability of the medication reminder alerts, bit it also broadened our reach to the vast install base of iPod Touch devices.

In recognition that Medsy is still a young product with much room for improvement, our promotion efforts this first year were fairly modest. On World Health Day, Medsy was provided FREE for all users who downloaded it from the App Store as an effort to raise awareness about the importance of medication adherence. This campaign gathered some media attention, being mentioned on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW), as well as MacWorld Italy and other outlets. Medsy also enjoyed the honor of being among the health apps reviewed by the New York Times, and the nationally syndicated YOU Docs.

While the majority of the activity on Medsy’s support page on Get Satisfaction related to the push notification issues mentioned above, that forum also provided great insight into the features users would like to see to make the app more useful and user-friendly. That, in conjunction to numerous suggestions submitted via email, is the basis for the next major release of Medsy currently in the works (release date TBD).

It has been a great first year for Medsy, and we are very, very grateful for our users who were patient with our initial Push Notification Server challenges, and candid with their feedback and suggestions. Medsy was created to make managing your health easier, and with your help we are confident that it will just keep getting better at that. Thank you, and stay tuned!

Read more about Medsy at medsyapp.com.

With over 500 million active users, Facebook is the most active social network in the world, and the second most popular site overall, behind only Google¹. A series of controversial updates to Facebook privacy options have been released in the past few months², which have resulted in more private information being exposed, without users’ consent³.

A growing number of Facebook users, media outlets, and lawmakers have criticized this increase in exposure as a privacy violation⁴. The safety of children using services such as Facebook is also a growing area of concern⁵.

About Privacy for Facebook
Privacy for Facebook was conceived when James Jennings, president of Mobile Distortion, noticed how much personal information his friends were inadvertently exposing through Facebook. The app guides users through the multiple Facebook privacy options, making recommendations on best practices. This guidance is automatically updated, for free, as Facebook releases new privacy options and defaults.

Privacy for Facebook is available now on the App Store, and is free.

¹ Alexa Top 500 Global Sites. http://www.alexa.com/topsites . Accessed 6/8/2010
² Facebook Grapples With Privacy Issues http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704912004575252723109845974.html. Accessed 6/8/2010
³ The Evolution of Privacy on Facebook. http://mattmckeon.com/facebook-privacy/ . Accessed 6/8/2010
⁴ Facebook Privacy Becomes Hot Issue In California Attorney General’s Race http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/06/04/facebook-privacy-becomes_n_601095.html. Accessed 6/8/2010
⁵ Excuse us. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WH18NlAKLMA – Accessed 6/8/2010