Infographic – The Trivi.al Side of Trivia

April 25, 2012 //
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We’re a few days away from releasing our app Trivi.al. It’s in the hands of Apple now and we wanted to share with you an Infographic that we put together on the history of trivia called “The Trivi.al Side of Trivia.”

It’s a fascinating industry with a lot of cool tidbits of knowledge we’ve throughly enjoyed learning about. And, this journey has led us to meet so really cool people from all over the world. We’ve talked with people from New York to London to Warsaw, Poland and many more in between. We’ve loved the journey so far and we hope it continues to grow as we introduce you to the app. Stay tuned and if you enjoy the infographic leave us a comment below. We’ll have some printed versions soon so if your interested let us know. Thanks

Big thanks goes out to our artist @warlick for the illustration.

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Categories Our Apps, Trivi.al App

Follow Our Progress on AppStori.com

April 19, 2012 //
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AppStori is a great site to help crowd-fund your next mobile app idea. Michael and the team at AppStori have created this great widget that shows the progress of our contributors and we’re excited to share it with you guys. We hear they have some really cool stuff coming up soon for their site and we’ve been pleased to be a part of their early release. If you dig mobile apps (esp. social trivia apps) check them out and maybe drop a few bucks to help build the next great app. Be an Appvocate!

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Categories Our Apps, Trivi.al App

How to Get Great Traction for Your Startup!

April 16, 2012 //
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Last Thursday we were featured on a site for startups called Betali.st (www.betali.st). We enjoyed watching the effect it had on growing our business and building awareness for our product. We saw our highest day ever of traffic and saw a 200% increase over our previous high day. Not only were we featured on their website at http://betali.st/startups/trivial, we also made it into their email campaign and RSS blast. We doubled our mailing list subscribers over a three day period and we were thoroughly entertained by the comments we saw about Trivi.al from users on Twitter, Google + and more. Some of our favorites we’re:

AmritKJudge - “What’s after #DrawSomething? TRIVIA! trivi.al”

@greenamit - “Is this going to be the next Draw Something? Trivi.al”

Looking forward to trying Trivi.al shar.es/rcAvV. Next “words with friends”!

Betali.st has provided us some very important exposure from people that are influencers in the startup community. People that blog and tweet about startups that have huge networks and can get our product seen have helped us extend our reach. We’re definitely a fan of tools like these.

They had a super easy submission process and it took about a week for our app’s site to be reviewed and approved. If you’ve got a hot new startup in Beta and you need to gain some awareness I would highly recommend using Betali.st, it’s a great tool.

Thanks to the team at Betali.st for all your help!

 

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Categories Trivi.al App

Creating Appvocates via AppStori.com

April 11, 2012 //
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Appvocate – to be a part of the next great App!

We’re excited to be a part of AppStori (www.appstori.com) as they roll-out this week and launch to the public. AppStori is like a Kickstarter for mobile apps that allows mobile companies like MobileFWD to build appvocates for the apps their building such as Trivi.al. The idea to involve supporters and fans that can help us reach our goals is a fantastic idea and we’re excited to grow our user base and take part in this exciting launch.

Michael Semegran and the guys at AppStori have been fantastic to work with and have been extremely supportive to feature us in their new release. We feel like this is a great opportunity for MobileFWD to build appvocates for the apps we’re building and hopefully get the resources we need to help grow our team. And to bring Trivi.al to many, many platforms in the near future.

We’ve been working on our app for the past few months and we will be blogging there regularly to let you know our progress, especially as we get closer to launch. Thank you and we look forward to your support and having you on as an Appvocate.

Check out our page at: http://www.appstori.com/projects/56

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Categories Mobile Development Company, Our Apps, Trivi.al App

Earning an Advocate

April 5, 2012 //
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Earning an advocate for your app/brand/company is not easy.  There is no scientific formula, gimmick, or give away that will earn you an advocate.  I say, earn, because that is what it takes to have someone become an enthusiastic evangelist for you.  I hear a lot of social media people talk about being “genuine” and “positive” or whatever the hot new way to get people to follow you and re-tweet your tweets or to come in your door or to buy your app, but that’s not it.

I have been using Parse (a server-side stack for mobile devices) to build Trivi.al for the past several months.  Their platform is incredible.  It started out with limited functionality, but everything worked.. right out of the box.  Facebook Single Sign On — CHECK.  Twitter Integration — CHECK.  Simple Data Persistence through SDK – CHECK.  Caching — CHECK.  Offline Data Queue — CHECK.  I could go on.

I had some questions, so I emailed them (they said, anything you need shoot us an email).  They replied back.  I checked their about us, and it was one of their main developers.  Wow.  They cared.  I emailed them several times over the next few months about different issues.  Some of them they answered, and some were feature requests.  They added the feature requests to their list, and a few weeks later I started receiving follow up emails, personal emails from developers saying features had been implemented.  Wow!  Just like that, I had case insensitive RegEx queries, many to many relationships, OR subqueries, and more!

All of that is really great, and honestly I was already sold on the first half of the features.  The second half was awesome and made me excited about tweeting what they were doing.  They were earning an advocate.  Now here is the tricky part.  The special sauce.  The part that, as a business, you won’t be able to just “do.”  It has to be apart of who you are and your philosophy as a company.  Parse went over and above.  They invited us out for a get together to talk about their product and just hang out.  Well, we are in Arkansas, and they are in the heart of San Francisco.  But for us, this was a really big deal, we are a startup in a scene who has a fledgling startup community that is being nurtured by things like @JoshClemence‘s buildingicebergs.com and @JAmerine‘s The Ark Challenge and @KristianIndy‘s Gravity Ventures.  So we emailed them and said, we’re flying out, could we hang out at your office??  They said of course!  @JamesYu invited us to work from their couches and hang out until the event began.  When we showed up, they greeted us and showed us a place to work and hooked us up with T-Shirts.  THAT, my friends, is earning an advocate.  It even inspired me to blog about it.

I follow @TedRubin.  He talks about Return on Relationship.  This is an interesting concept to me.  I haven’t read a book about it, but I believe the gist is that the more you pour into your customers the more they will pour into you.  I’ve followed the golden rule on Twitter.  I RT things I believe in or thoughts I subscribe to, and yeah, I get some RTs or @mentions back, but honestly.. who cares?  What is the real value of that?  The only real value is in the relationship it creates.  Parse has created a relationship with us and earned an advocate.  They don’t know us, but they invited us in.  Two mobile guys from Arkansas creating a kick ass trivia app called Trivi.al.

What Parse does: all of the heavy lifting for 10k different developers on their platform in regards to data persistance, single sign on, data caching, and the less obvious server scaling.  If you’re building an iPhone or Android App or even a web app, you should consider them.  

Categories Entrepreneurs, Mobile Development Company

Introducing Al…

March 29, 2012 //
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We’ve been in private beta these last few weeks collecting feedback on the app from close friends and colleagues and so far the response has been outstanding. While it’s been great to see people’s reactions to the game and gameplay we really wanted to make sure the game style was a homerun as well. We worked closely in-house, as well as with a close friend/artist to create the new style that portrays a rich game feel while incorporating adjoining sound effects and animations that play into the user experience nicely.

We wanted Trivi.al’s mascot to represent the essence of trivia and what better way to do that than portray the definition of what pure geniuses is, Albert Einstein himself. Obviously in his some what younger years. We will be incorporating other unique characters from academia that portray a sense of knowledge and smartness such as Richard Feynman (someone I’ve grown up to idle and love reading about) and a whole host of others throughout the years.

We believe a great game or any experience for that matter displays distinct qualities of sight, sound and motion to tell a story and enrice the users lives. We’ve been really happy with the outcome of our new mascot Al and the new style of the game. We will be applying this new look to the app and queuing up for our beta release in the next few weeks. So stay tuned and leave us a comment on the new branding and tell us what you think. Sign up on our site at www.trivi.al and we’ll let you know as soon as the games ready to download.

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Categories Our Apps, Trivi.al App

Trivi.al App Teaser for iPhone – Coming Spring 2012

March 13, 2012 //
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The guys over at Explainify just sent over this teaser video of our Trivi.al App coming this Spring. Take a watch and let us know what you think.

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Categories Trivi.al App

Trivi.al – Clash of the Craniums new site launch

February 27, 2012 //
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Love Trivia? We’re getting close to launching our new app. In the mean time visit our site and stay connected for the official release announcements. Early invitations available for Trivi.al! @Trivialapp www.trivi.al Coming Spring 2012 to iPhone & iPad!

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Categories Mobile Development Company, Our Apps, Technologies

Matt’s Proposal with Words

February 13, 2012 //
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Congrats to Matt & Becca:

To read the Washington Post Story: Click here

I never thought proposing to my girlfriend of many years would turn into as much of a game as it was, but I’m a social gamer, so I suppose I should have expected nothing less.

When Rebecca and I started dating, we played Words with Friends frequently. Affectionately, we called it “Words,” and I admit, she beat my pants off regularly though I often claimed to let her win. There’s something to be said for flirting online and the way it adds to the flirting we experience in real life. In fact, I have many fond memories of passing the phone back and forth during those times when couples find themselves waiting around for a table or a food order or to board a plane—the game inspired us to talk about each other and life and we fell in love, in part, because of it.

There came a time in my life, and I feel so lucky to have gotten there, when I simply knew that I wanted to spend my life with Rebecca as my wife. But, since I don’t do anything the normal way, I contacted Zynga, creators of Words With Friends, and asked if they could help me with my proposal.

I’m a geek. A gamer. A developer. Fortunately, Rebecca understands my passion, my dreams and supports my goal to create applications that make a difference in people’s lives. She’s put up with a lot over the years as I’ve created my own companies, especially of late; my brand new mobile gaming venture, MobileFWD, is intended to mash social and trivia together into an app we’re calling Trivi.al “Clash of the Craniums.” All the flirting we did from Words even inspired new flirting features we’re developing in our app coming out spring 2012.

From my initial request, Zynga bent over backwards to assist. Paul Bettner, VP/GM at Zynga, loved my idea so much that he made T-shirts to commemorate my big night. There’s something to be said for technology these days; when you can reach out with an idea and get a response… well, that’s why I love the world we live in.

So, with my “Words” gimmick in place, I ordered a ring. And, little did I suspect, that’s when the real gaming began. After a week I followed up with the jeweler about the ring, no luck. It was late to arrive. Rebecca and I were scheduled to leave town and I wanted to propose before we went away. I tracked my delivery by phone and online trying to predict when it would arrive at the jeweler. As our departure date grew nearer, I could see that I had no choice but to intercept the package at the UPS shipping center; it wasn’t going to make it to the jeweler until after we’d left town. But, the ring somehow made it onto the UPS delivery truck before I could meet it at the shipping center. We called the driver and arranged a meeting, but it was 30 minutes across town. I broke a lot of laws (and the stoplights cooperated) getting to the destination early, but I’d still missed the driver. I then called a friend at UPS who got on the phone with the driver and arranged another location for us to meet. This time I was successful in the exchange, but I had a soon-to-be fiancé who’d become quite incensed at the fact that I was running late for dinner.

Speaking of words, I took them on the chin from her when I got home. I thought, if I could pour her a glass of wine and ask her to play a round of Words with me, maybe I could diffuse the situation. Thank my lucky stars, she agreed. She went first and placed “Vat” for seven points. When she handed the phone back to me I brought up the special board that Zynga had created—off the “M” it spelled “Marry” horizontally and “Me” vertically—got down on one knee and proposed. She cried. We got engaged!

It was one of the greatest days of my life, so far. I can’t thank those who helped pull it off enough: the jeweler, UPS, the UPS driver,  Zynga, my friends… the list goes on. Rebecca and I got to know each other through gaming, and on the night of December 21st we both won. I can only hope that my work at MobileFWD, like Zynga, can have such a positive impact on people’s lives.

To follow Trivi.al and it’s upcoming release please visit www.trivi.al 

MobileFWD

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Categories Founders, Mobile Development Company

Does your start up have focus

January 29, 2012 //
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I think for any new start up something important to concentrate on right from the start is focus. Focusing in on what is most important and what will maximize your return will be key to your products success. There will be many distractions from the plan including chasing new opportunities, meeting with new clients, vendor calls/relationships and meeting with people just plain excited about what your doing.

For me personally I set out to build a really cool product and that is what I’m sticking too. Something that requires a lot of focus and attention to detail can easily get away from you and finding your internal prowess to stick to the plan will be the challenge. For me it’s measuring new opportunities against that goal and asking if it makes sense and does it move my product forward.

We constructed MobileFWD around agile methodologies of development where we layout small tasks and focus on results. We’re striving to accomplish common goals where we can test these results that ultimately add up to a larger, more refined product. We believe everyone’s efforts must initially focus on these tasks to measure progression and move us forward.

Focus is a value we adopted right from the start in our company because of the impact it will have on our future success and well being.

 

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Categories Entrepreneurs
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