When Andrew Burke presents Remembary at DemoCamp Halifax on Sept. 23, he’ll be displaying one item in what is becoming a portfolio of apps and, well, an online curiosity.
Burke heads Shindig Digital Constructions Inc. and Remembary, a digital diary for iOS-based products, is the company’s first app, but it won’t be the last. Burke is also working with Toronto-based partner Chung Wong on his second project, Jump2Spot.com. He’s also the brains behind the tongue-in-cheek Starships Start Here campaign.
“The best way to make money in the App Store is to have a portfolio of apps, so people will see what you can do and hire you to do their apps,” said Burke in an interview.
Remembary is a diary app that runs on iOS, the Apple operating system. As well as standard features like password protection and nice-looking graphics, Burke said that Remembary is set apart from competition by how it includes Twitter feeds, Facebook status updates, photo library images and videos, and calendar events. If events are geotagged, they even show up on a map. It gives you an automatic context for what you did each day, he said.
He designed Remembary, which costs $3.99, to leverage all the tools available on the web to enhance the experience of writing a diary. He has marketed the product on app review sites, and the next marketing step is to try more literary sites, to get the product in front of a more bookish crowd.
His next project will be Jump2spot.com, an app that allows users to share stories about a certain location, whether it’s a restaurant or tourist attraction. The writers can post their stories about a place for free, and read other people’s stories. The developers plan to monetize the product by having owners of locations advertise on the site.
Burke gained national attention last year when he launched Starshipsstarthere.ca – a spoof of the Ships Start Here campaign that gripped Halifax ahead of the awarding of the federal shipbuilding contract. His web-based campaign – which is still on the web – superimposes startships and aliens and the like on famous sites in and around Halifax. The website was featured on CBC TV’s national news and received 66,000 page views the next day.