Convert recently took a dip in the charts so we’ve decided to further play the pricing game and put it on sale for 99¢.

Convert’s widely regarded as the best unit converter on the App Store, with a beautiful design and very intuitive UI. So if you’ve never checked it out, you’ll want to see what you’re missing.

Get it now at the App Store before the price goes back up as we approach the release of Convert 2.0 (which will be free to all existing Convert users)…

http://daringfireballwithcomments.net

The stress of having your iPhone unexpectedly change its portrait/landscape screen orientation is similar to the stress that occurs when you try to open a drawer that has a childproof latch on it that you didn’t know was there. Minor, but distinct frustrations.

It’s been a while since we’ve posted sales figures for Convert. When things are going great, people often want to tell the world… and when things are going in the other direction, they tend to clam-up. This isn’t the case at all with Convert. We’ve just been a bit preoccupied with our most recent release, Voices.

One significant thing to note regarding Convert’s sales is that after our initial peak (because of our big marketing push for its launch), it’s been doing fairly consistent numbers after it had its run and subsequently fell off the Top 100. And those numbers are still very strong. For the past three months, we’ve averaged a net of over $21,000 per month (the 5-month net total is now just over $188,000 on 228,283 sales). It’s worth pointing out that Convert is now $1.99, versus the 99¢ intro price. After playing around with pricing for a bit, we found $1.99 to be the sweet spot for this particular app.

When you compare that to typical independent Mac software, it simply obliterates it. I developed a Mac app that was relatively popular a few years ago. During its prime, I considered a good month to be one where I’d come away with $4,000 or so. These numbers are completely in-line with many other popular Mac apps (we know a lot of Mac developers and most are open with us about their sales figures). This is for an app that I’d venture to guess was in the top 100 or so of paid Mac shareware, based on where it ranked in popularity on various download sites. Conversely, for Convert, it’s likely not even ranking overall in the top 1,000 in the App Store right now, yet it’s been taking in over 5× what the Mac app did.

Granted, the most popular Mac apps typically sell significantly more than this but if you look at the numbers for the most popular iPhone apps, they blow away pretty much every Mac app.

Also, realize that this is by no means unique to Convert. Since the App Store opened, we’ve created numerous apps and most of the numbers have been in-line with what I’m presenting here. I suspect that Voices will have an even higher sustained rate once it settles down since it has many more users who were acquired in a much shorter time span. Word of mouth goes a long way in the App Store.

Is Mac software dead?

Compared to iPhone software, from our point of view, it is. Granted, there’s the occasional Mac app that makes some big waves, but these are far and few between. AppZapper, which has consistently been one of the most popular apps for the Mac, is a great example of this. It had a ton of buzz when our friends Austin and Brian released version 2.0 recently. Some of you’ll be quick to point out a few other apps that launched right around the same time and got some buzz, but these were barely blips compared to AppZapper if you were paying attention to Mac news sites, blogs, Twitter, etc.

Again, it’s important to keep in mind that apps that do as well as AppZapper rare exceptions on the Mac, whereas on the iPhone we’ve been seeing blockbuster hits on a very regular basis. And many of these hits have been put out by very small, independent developers.

So it’s just about money?

Nah. There’s no doubt that monetary success is a motivating factor with a software business, but this goes way beyond that…

For one, developing for the iPhone is a dream compared to developing for the Mac. Yeah, it’s Cocoa development for both iPhone and Mac, but many of the Mac SDKs are old and crufty compared to the shiny, new iPhone one. This means much quicker development time and greater programmer satisfaction. Many, many programmers I know never want to go back to Mac for this reason and usually cringe when they have to.

Beyond the technical aspects of it, for me, iPhone apps are just a lot more enjoyable to create compared to typical Mac app. They’re generally smaller, more focused, and inherently more fun. While the current state of Mac software has basically devolved to coming up with the next great email client (yawn), the iPhone has proven to be where all the coolest apps are at.

Another major factor is the “rock star” one… When you create Mac apps, you have little chance of having your apps in TV ads, Apple retail store promotions, WWDC promotions, on TV networks like CNN and CNBC, etc, etc, etc.

Like, really dead?

Well, no… I’m just being a tad dramatic. There’ll still be a Mac market for years to come. It’s just not one that we plan to be developing for. After all, we still have MacHeist and we don’t see that dying off anytime soon.

But there’s little doubt that the App Store economies are affecting other markets like the Mac. Mac software sales are down for just about every developer we’ve been talking with and while the poor economy is partly to blame for this, I definitely feel that the App Store is another major factor for it.

Why?

Phill and I had an in-depth discussion about this recently…

The App Store has proven to be a super-efficient distribution system. In a nutshell, you can earn a lot of money even with 99¢ apps because you can reach so many people. Conversely, the Mac shareware market has always comparatively been very inefficient. Developers depend on services like VersionTracker, MacUpdate, i use this, and even Apple’s own Mac OS X Downloads site, etc for small publicity/sales spikes. But all of these sites (including Apple’s) get far less attention than the App Store.

In addition, payment systems are all over the place, versus the unified, simple, trusted one that the App Store uses. No matter what complaints some developers have about the App Store, and how “fundamentally broken” they think it is, it doesn’t take a wizard and/or genius to see that the distribution and sales of iPhone software dwarfs that of Mac software.

Because of the much smaller reach and resulting far lower number of Mac software sales compared to iPhone, developers have had to compensate by keeping prices at a much higher point. But this is also what’s kept the market down and now on a decline, unfortunately.

What if Apple did an App Store for Mac software?

I doubt they’d actually do it. Apple loves control and there’s no way that they can have total control over Mac software sales since the current distribution and sales methods are in place and well established. Besides, the market’s significantly smaller, so they’d be taking a little slice of the little pie.

What if someone else did an App Store for Mac software?

It’s been done and simply hasn’t taken off. All of the efforts have been by smaller, basically unknown players and for something on this scale, you really need some big guns to make it successful.

In the end, it’s your choice…

You’re obviously free to develop for whichever platform you want. Whether it’s Mac, iPhone, Windows, Android, rumored tablets, etc, you ultimately are the one to make that choice. Pick the one or ones that make you the happiest and go with it. All I know is that the one that makes me the happiest these days is the iPhone and we’re putting our efforts into that platform.

If you’re passionate about design, I highly recommend that you check-out the documentary, Objectified. If you’re an Apple fan then you’ll likely enjoy it even more since there’s a great interview with Jonathan Ive, Apple’s Senior Vice President of Industrial Design.

It’s available on DVD or you can rent or buy it on the iTunes Store (although, I don’t understand why you can only rent, but not buy it in HD there).

Let me know what you think of it…

After what seemed like an endless parade of media stories highlighting the early “lottery winners” in the App Store, the inevitable backlash is now in motion. People are now starting to see the App Store as more of a game of craps than a gold rush.

While craps is probably closer to the truth, you can significantly swing your chances with some smart plays based on knowledge of the system, and a dollop of brute force.

My first gig as a new partner at tap tap tap was to work with the team to ensure our new app, Voices, would be a success. Part of it was working with John, Scott, David and Oliver at Taptivate to polish up the design and add some new effects. But more important, in terms of guaranteeing a blockbuster App Store launch, was what ended up being a fairly simple launch strategy for the app. (Simple as opposed to complex, but not easy.)

Releasing Voices held some special significance for us —this was the first app launch following a tap tap tap partnership restructuring. We also partnered with the Potion Factory to offer a freebie of its voice morphing app for Mac, Voice Candy. With that in place, we were ready to introduce the iPhone app and a Mac freebie for tweeting to a fanbase now numbering close to 600,000 MacHeist members. This TweetBlast and email announcement would almost cover the entirety of our launch marketing for Voices.

Launching an app in this way, without any teasing, ads or a press release, and with one (to be fair, giant) mailing would be experimental. But I had launched an app successfully before with a much smaller audience of 6,000 email sign-ups gathered through a week of previews and teasing. In our initial charting, we peaked at No. 12 in the overall charts. 

We were confident that Voices’ comparatively rocket-powered launch would drive us high enough into the charts where we could glide slowly down for a huge opening month or even longer. We also expected this would affect the US and international charts because of our wide-reaching MacHeist member base.

So the plan in short? Get our app charting as highly as possible from an email announcement. Then let it snowball.

You may question the logic of sustaining an epic charting run fueled by a single email announcement and TweetBlast that was read and played out over just a few days. I don’t think it would normally make sense either, save for an interesting feature of the App Store’s chart placement that is far from common knowledge.

The Missing Piece to Charting

As it turns out, your charting position in the App Store is based on a rolling-day average of units sold, which we suspect to be based on a window of around 3 days. (As opposed to placing you based on live sales, or sales over the past hour or day.) On the surface this doesn’t seem to change much, beyond smoothing over activity in the charts, as opposed to apps jumping all over the charts if they were updated live.

But the situation changes a fair amount when your app is new, for two big reasons:

1. You start with trailing ‘0 sales days’ that can dampen but also lengthen your charting momentum, which is based on a rolling average of several days’ sales. Trailing days with 0 sales mean you have some degree of guaranteed momentum for the first few days, as you replace them (presumably) with days with actual sales.

This means no matter the size of your email announcement, its effect would be automatically spread out over the first few days, and result in smooth charting momentum. In other words, as opposed to live charting, you won’t face a huge charting position dropoff immediately after your email announcement (an artificially inflated and very temporary sales spike).

2. Your app is brand new and fresh. Freshness translates into maximizing sales from your charting exposure. As it rises in the App Store’s most prominent shelf space, it will ‘pop out’ to all the App Store browsing regulars who have seen everything else in the charts before.

So the bigger the initial spike, the closer it’ll rubber band the app to its peak charting position (or send it even higher than its ‘natural’ charting) and translate into higher amounts of sustaining, exposure-driven sales. (This effect strengthens the higher you go, and as the sales gap between charting positions near the top widens.)

With these points in mind, we quietly sent in Voices for approval. The app was scheduled for release close to Black Friday; once its release date came around, we not-so-quietly announced it to an audience of nearly 600,000 via the HTML email below.

Boom

Hundreds of thousands of people checked the app out. Tens of thousands of people tweeted and collected their free copy of Voice Candy. (Enough to get multiple related terms trending on Twitter, though sadly we never topped New Moon:)

And, in the end, thousands and thousands of people thought ‘why not?’ or ‘cool!’ at 99¢, and checked it out.

Voices’ climb in the charts was fast. A little too fast perhaps. A strange glitch in the App Store temporarily split Voices into two placements in the top 100 list and probably ended up further compounding our momentum. We speculate that our rapid climb might have caused something to do with going out of sync on Apple’s end but have no real clue what happened. A few days later, the “shadow Voices” mysteriously disappeared. 

But long before that, and just a few short days after we had officially launched the app, Voices claimed the No. 1 spot in the overall “paid app charts” in the US, becoming the most popular selling application in the entire store.

It then continued to hold the spot over Thanksgiving in the US while also rapidly breaking into the top 100 overall charts in pretty much every possible market (first column after the country is position in the overall paid charts):

That is, except for Japan (those weirdos), where Voices began charting a week or so later. But I figure you guys are all waiting for the sales chart, right? The results speak for themselves, in graph form with added hot air balloon and rocket metaphors for fun:

Long Distance Hot Air Ballooning in the App Store (with a Rocket Attached)

I know, a hot air balloon with a rocket attached. Cheesy, right? But the thing is, riding the charts in the App Store is very much like long distance hot-air-ballooning. And like that esteemed sport and lifestyle, the higher off you start, the further you’re likely to float with a steady wind, no matter how light your craft is weighted by price, or by its aerodynamic design. (There is no cookie cutter guide for determining the mysterious “legs” factor for an App Store application.) It’s just that in this case, the distance you cover times your average height = revenue, and it starts scaling exponentially up as you inch higher and higher towards the peak of the charts, and your charting and revenue ceiling. 

Unless you somehow manage to hit every minor updraft of a press review or feature, gravity will inexorably pull you down. Intuition tells me the best way to balloon far and smoothly is to find the highest starting point (remembering that you start out of the gate with your app’s release at ground level). Clearly strapping on a metaphorical rocket is the most direct, if not best solution.

For purposes of full disclosure, I have no personal experience in the sport or lifestyle of long distance hot-air-ballooning, but I hear it’s a rush.

In short, Voices achieved a peak sales day of 18,000 sales, and powered through its first 30 days, finishing with an incredible 302,337 copies in customers hands, and over $205,000 in revenue, at an average rate of over 10,000 copies sold a day.

But was your success repeatable?

It’s worth noting that the three-day rolling average can also work to your benefit if you’re switching your app from paid to free, though again only if tied with a large focused blast of promotion to go along with it. (And of course if you’re planning a temporary switch, the same goes for switching back to paid which is a tough move to pull off, and a situational move best suited for apps with DLC.)

The guys at the Iconfactory recently trumpeted a temporary free-switch of Ramp Champ to a large portion of our MacHeist members who had picked up a free copy of Twitterrific for Mac in an earlier promotion. The app skyrocketed to #8 in the free charts, jockeying for position with the Facebook app, and picked up hundreds of thousands of new fans in a short couple weeks, who in turn purchased in-app bonus levels in droves for 99¢ a pop. Counterintuitively, a free switch ended up breathing a second life of revenue into the game and fueled an unexpected, huge second run for it in the free charts this time, where it was once again fresh.

Where can I find myself one of these “Rocket” thingies? Preferably the extra powerful kind?

In this scenario we happened to have a very, very large rocket we could strap Voices onto for launch. Its propulsion allowed Voices to hold its own against huge pushes by larger companies like EA and Gameloft slashing their prices over Black Friday (though to be fair, they still remained at higher prices), and from past experience, was even more effective than exposure in Apple’s huge TV ad campaigns. But as I said, it was a really large rocket that we’ve been working on for several years that our hot air balloon was strapped to.

Realistically, the average indie developer isn’t going to have nearly as powerful of a force to attach an app’s launch to, but as I also mentioned before with Classics, the rules still apply at a smaller scale. If you’re launching your app to a very targeted audience of several thousand with an email announcement in one concentrated blast, it will almost assuredly result in a strong launch for your app that will snowball for some time to a degree of sustained success, and decent chances at cracking the overall charts. The best part about it? It’s in your control… Instead of praying on launch day for a fortuitous string of high-profile media coverage, App Store featuring, epic word of mouth spread and dumb luck, you can take your time planning for your scheduled release, growing your list of fans to contact on release. And if your app is the super rare app that’ll float on its own once enough people see it, it’ll go on floating quickly right up to the top where it belongs.

Or, in the end, there’s always the option of hitting us up with a video pitch of your amazing app. Like our recent partnership with Taptivate on Voices, we’re interested in collaborating with the right developers to make sure their sexy app reaches its full audience.

In Summary, The Cookie Cutter Build* to App Store Success

*As a gamer who shouldn’t be spending much time gaming, and one who has far more interest in pwning than natural twitch reflex skills, I tend to gravitate towards ‘”cookie cutter builds” and strategies in online competitive games. These are the proven, easy-to-use character builds and tactics that often take advantage of some of the system’s more unbalanced mechanics, the best being a combination of powerful and easy to use. Until they are hit with a nerfstick, which could totally happen in this case. (Live charting updates? Less emphasis on the charts with better browsing, searching and recommendations? Further alternative revenue options? Who knows.)

Prerequisites

• Targeted mailing announcement list for your app, the more the merrier.
• An app with legs. (It has to be good, and/or have nascent demand for it in the charts.)
• A fresh app, or a fresh chart to chart in.
• Price conservatively, and by conservatively I mean low. If you want to chart as high as you can, you want to notch the price slider more towards volume rather than revenue. Only the industry really watches the top revenue charts. Keep your balloon lightweight.

Launch build

1. Whip your app into satisfactory 1.0 shape.
2. Submit it, and schedule it for a later release so you can prepare for a planned launch instead of haphazardly reacting to its random release.
3. Set a timer for the release date and spend your time gathering interest and anxious fans through an email signup. Think of it like a buzz capacitor.
4. The morning after your app release, announce it to your fans and release all of that stored energy.
5. Enjoy your launch, obsess over the charts, and hope your hot air balloon is a graceful and sleek airship, and not a brick falling with style.*

*But remember, even a brick can fly with a big enough rocket strapped onto it. It just won’t fly for long.

As I mentioned when we released Voices last month, tap tap tap has undergone a bunch of changes and additions. First off, and most significantly, I’d like to announce that Scott’s and my MacHeist partner, co-creator of Classics, one of my best friends, and my arch-nemesis, Phill Ryu, has become one of the principals here. In addition, Scott himself, who’s been part of tap tap tap since our inception, has taken on a broader role and more responsibility in the company.

Why? Since starting tap tap tap, the business has always taken a back seat to MacHeist, which is our main business. But with the recent success of Convert, I felt that we were onto something big… much bigger than I ever envisioned when we launched the company when the App Store first opened.

I’ll admit that I had visions of tap tap tap taking the place of MacHeist as my primary business after we got things off the ground. Once Apple made the iPhone SDK available to us and we launched our initial apps, with everything exceeding my expectations, it was hard to not think this way. As much as I dislike coding nowadays, I love coming up with app ideas, helping shape their direction, all things UI in general, and the dirty ’M’ word (marketing). But I also love everything about MacHeist and by the time MacHeist 3 rolled around at the start of the year, tap tap tap effectively got put on hiatus.

Up until recently, I’d been the primary decision-maker here and basically had been overseeing every minute detail of everything we’ve been creating. But I realized that if I wanted tap tap tap to really grow and not be “this other thing that I do on the side of MacHeist”, I had to let go a bit and put my trust into other capable hands. Since I’ve been working very closely with Phill and Scott for several years now, and we’ve done some great things together, it was a natural choice to have them be the ones to lead tap tap tap along with me now.

Voices has been the first project that we’ve been working on together as equals and it’s been an unbelievable success. “The whole is greater than the sum of the parts” is undoubtedly a saying that applies to this change. Stay tuned for Phill’s upcoming post with the first month’s sales for Voices and you’ll see what I mean (I’ll follow-up soon after with the most recent numbers for Convert, too).

So now I’m free to not have to micromanage everything and it’s a huge relief. This is the second major change to happen since the company was formed and each change has been an overwhelmingly positive one. Phill and Scott have proven track records I have complete faith that they’ll always get the job done and that they’re adding a lot to tap tap tap. As a result, we’ve managed to ramp things up considerably. I’m positive that you’re going to love all the apps that we have in the works.

Staff updates

With all the new development we have going on, we’ve added a bunch of new people to our roster. I’m very proud of the team we’ve assembled and I feel that we’re working with some of the most talented people on the planet. Remember that talent isn’t measured in Twitter popularity and blogging output, but rather in what people actually accomplish in the work they do and I think you’ll understand what I mean. One of the things I appreciate most about the people we work with is the absolute lack of ego on their parts.

Instead of redundantly listing every new member here, I’ll simply refer you to our freshly updated about page. You’ll likely notice a lot of similarities between this about page and the MacHeist one. It’s no coincidence, and it’s become hard to tell where one company ends and the other begins. This is a good thing.

We’ve seen the future, and it’s HTML… flour… CSS… eggs… JavaScript… and sugar

Recently, there’s been a lot of buzz behind PastryKits and Pie Guys and such. So, in addition to announcing new people and projects, I’d also like to announce that we’re switching over from developing native iPhone apps to web apps.

Yes, I couldn’t be more kidding.

The people that actually think this could be the future of iPhone development are basically delusional. They think and hope that web apps will somehow magically replace the App Store but there’s no way in hell that it’ll ever happen. A lot of this stems from all the publicity that some app rejections have gotten by the media, and a childish, “Ima take my ball and go home” attitude. But in reality, these rejections are by far the exception, rather than the rule…

For what it’s worth, we’ve submitted many, many updates of our apps to the App Store and never once got rejected. And we’ve been known to sneak in the occasional private API use here and there. A little common sense goes a long way. What’s unfortunate is that some developers have actually come to hope for rejection because they know that it’s a sure-fire way to get some publicity. Both the developers and the media are to blame, in my opinion.

2010 and beyond

As I mentioned, we have a ton of new projects in the works. And some major updates for our existing apps are in progress. 2009 was an amazing year for us and we’re expecting 2010 to be even bigger and better. I couldn’t be happier with the way things have gone here and I so often feel like I’m the most fortunate person alive to have not the best job in the world, but the two best jobs in the world.

Firstly, an introduction. My name is Oliver Cameron and I own a little app company called Taptivate (yes, we have Twitter). You may have heard about of us from our television featured postcard app, Postman. We’ve been working in conjunction with the guys at tap tap tap for the past few months to bring you Voices. It’s been a blast and we couldn’t be happier with the result. I sincerely hope we can work on something just as awesome real soon.

The Past

The truth is that there is little luck behind Voices success. The app was developed and finely tuned to such a degree of polish that I’d be disappointed if it didn’t get near first place. Of course it helps when you’re working with quality designers and audio experts. Then we have the epic and giant launch courtesy of MacHeist, which has proved to be invaluable. Many iPhone developers complain that it’s far too easy to get lost in the maze of the App Store, but I think that’s simply because they’re missing half of the game. Marketing has always been prominent in promoting software releases way before the App Store came to be, so why ignore it? But of course we cannot deny that some luck is needed to get to where we are now, we just like to think of it as engineered in a sense.

The Present

Voices itself has skyrocketed up the charts since its launch. We’ve hit the number 1 spot at the App Store in just three and a half days, which may be a new App Store record! It’s an amazing feeling, considering how fickle many developers believe the App Store to be. Really, this is all a testament to the amazing potential the App Store has and the environment Apple has created. We only hope you see Voices at the number 1 spot for as long as possible.

The Future

We are not resting on our laurels either. A new version of Voices is being actively developed as we speak. We had some crazy ideas for other voices (I shan’t shame anyones idea’s, Phill) that didn’t make it into the 1.0. Who knows, they might find their way into the app in the future.

Whilst reading many of the reviews on the App Store for Voices, one thing that stands out is that people want more Voices. We planned for this during development so we could easily add in a bunch of new voices. However, not many people actually suggested any ideas. So my question to you, reader, is what voice would you like to see in a new version of Voices?

We recently announced that we were looking for beta testers for an upcoming app. After a ridiculously overwhelming response to that post, we’re happy to say that the app has finally hit the App Store.

http://www.taptaptap.com/voices

Voices is a fun app that lets you change your voice into several different sounds. Grab it now for a limited time at the introductory price of just 99¢.

Voices was developed in conjunction with Taptivate (be sure to show them some Twitter love). The team at Taptivate created the bulk of the app and we collaborated with them on a lot of the polish toward the end. We brought in David Lanham to put his magical touch on a lot of the graphics in the app, especially with all the great character icons.

Be sure to check out the Voices promo video by MostlyLisa and screencast by HiLo Media.

As with the launch of Voices, we wanted to have a big splash and to do so we’re giving away free copies of the Mac app, Voice Candy!

http://www.macheist.com/tweetblast/

We had a blast working with Taptivate to bring you Voices. We hope you all have a lot of fun with it.

Also, it’s worth pointing out that we’re recently undergone a bit of a company restructuring. I’ll be detailing it all in a post soon, so keep an eye out for that and a new About page…

If you’re an iPhone developer, then surely you’ve given out promo codes for your apps. Most developers usually just send out the promo codes… sometimes with instructions on how to redeem them… sometimes with no details at all. The latter can obviously be confusing to people who aren’t familiar with the process for redeeming them because it’s not completely obvious as to how to do it.

It’s not too bad if you redeem them in iTunes on your computer since there’s a “Redeem” link at the top of the iTunes Store main page. But I suspect that many people go to the App Store link and mistakenly look for the link there.

But if you try to redeem in on your iPhone and you’ve never done it before, the method could hardly be any more illogical… What you do is go to the App Store, then tap the “Featured” tab at the bottom, then make sure that you’re in the “New” section at the top. Scroll to the bottom and there’s you’ll find the magic Redeem “App”. After tapping on this pseudo-app, you can then type (or paste) in your promo code.

There’s gotta be a more intuitive way, right? Well, yeah, there definitely is…

There’s a little-known iTunes Store URL that enables you to easily provide promo codes that can simply be clicked or tapped to be redeemed (replace “REPLACEWITHPROMOCODE” with the actual promo code):

https://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZFinance.woa/wa/freeProductCodeWizard?code=REPLACEWITHPROMOCODE

And the great thing is that these URLs work in both in iTunes on the user’s computers and on their iPhone/iPod touch devices. Help make life for people just a tad easier by using these links in the future.

I was watching the “no god” thing on Twitter today because it was the top trending topic. I’m not going to get into my beliefs here because it doesn’t matter. (I do find it pretty ironic that it ended up being a trending topic in the first place as a result of some Christians trying to get the phrase “Know God… Know Peace. No God.. No Peace!” to trend after former Run-D.M.C.er RevRunWisdom tweeted it.)

What does matter, though, is that Twitter seems to have just removed it from the trending topics list. That’s pretty much censorship from my point of view and I get the feeling that they did it because they got a lot of complaints about it being there.

People, trending topics are a result of what’s currently popular on Twitter… not some conspiracy to turn your world upside-down in the event that you may possibly have been wrong about your choice of faith.

So, to Twitter, if you really did censor this because of some religious pressure, I send out to you one big fuck you.

A big thanks goes out to all of you who provided feedback on Convert pricing the other day. You’ve validated my gut-feeling about the impulse buy price point for an app like Convert. So we’ve decided that Convert will be $1.99 now that it’s finally fallen out of the Top 100.

For any iPhone developers out there that are considering making a run for the charts, it’s definitely worth noting that even with a minimum of 1,100 daily sales (Friday’s level), and averaging around 1,200 per day for the past week, that it wasn’t enough to keep it in the Top 100. Compare this to around the time the App Store opened and all it took was around 100 daily sales to get into the Top 100.

So, the good news is that it looks like the apps that get in there in the future will continue to make a boatload, with levels that’ll likely only keep growing. But the bad news is that that the barrier to entry is now really high. These are levels that are very unrealistic to hit for most apps. Plan accordingly…

I’ve recently stumbled upon an interesting iPhone-related blog named Tapity because I noticed in our logs that we were getting some hits from it. Tapity is run by Jeremy Olson and according to his Twitter, he’s a “student, UX designer, web developer—currently focused on launching an iPhone app and blogging what I learn”.

If you have interest in the iPhone business, whether you’re an experienced developer or someone itching to get your feet wet in the exciting world of the App Store, then I’d strongly recommend that you take a look at it.

I wouldn’t recommend it, though, if you’re just the type of person wishing to just strike it rich off some flashlight idea… Jeremy seems to put a lot of though into his analyses of the iPhone app market and goes into good detail about all the hard work it takes to attempt to design, develop, and market a solid iPhone app. His upcoming app is called Grades and he’s putting a lot of effort into creating a polished user experience.

Check it out…

http://tapity.com

We’re about to release a new app. It’s not an app that we’ve talked about yet and all I’m about to say about it at this point is that it’s a lot of fun.

We have a few slots open for beta testers for it. If you’re interested in being one of them, leave a comment below with your device UDID. Mention what kind of device you have (iPhone 3GS, iPod touch, etc) and why you feel you’d be a good beta tester.