Jolly Christmas Party 2011
December 23, 2011 by Carolyn
This year marked the 2nd Annual Christmas party at Subsplash. It far exceeded Christmas from the year before.
While families made introductions around the room, Chris turned and quietly commented
“Last year we had like 10 people huddled around a table eating pizza, now look at this!”
As we glanced around the room it was filled team members that had more than doubled from the last year, families enjoying each other, and co-workers strengthening friendships.
Merry Christmas: from Subsplash
December 20, 2011 by Chris Sharpe
We wanted to do something special here for Christmas and thus are offering special discounted pricing for churches and ministries via The Church App (click here for more info). If you want an app for your organization, we’d be happy to help get you rolling on some sweet new software that is sure to make Star Trek technology look like a thing of the past.
Farewell 2011:
What a year it has been! In looking back at 2011, we’ve seen the tremendous growth of Android and iPad apps in popularity, continued to watch the evolution of the iPhone, been blessed to work with hundreds of new organizations, and have thoroughly enjoyed every minute of it. And now we eagerly look forward to 2012 and beyond and are excited about the many new things we are working on. We’d love to announce them all here, but we’ll let you wait a little longer for the big surprises.
Christmas time is here:
It is in this Christmas season that we reflect on the life and works of Jesus Christ. We are thankful for the great gift of salvation that God has given to man through Christ! May you enjoy this Holiday season and remember Jesus (Luke 1:26-2:21)
Merry Christmas!
from the whole team here at Subsplash
Happy Thanksgiving from Subsplash
November 23, 2011 by Chris Sharpe
We just wanted to take a quick minute here on this week of Thanksgiving to thank all of our clients for working with us! We have loved every minute of it and are excited to continue to expand our software to reach new levels of delight. We couldn’t do it without you!
We are working on many new things that we can’t wait to show to the world. From new platforms to new features within our Subsplash App Platform, we are working our hardest to make sure that we stay at the forefront of this mobile revolution.
Happy Thanksgiving from all of us on the Subsplash Team!
Why Mobile? Do I Need An App?
October 20, 2011 by Chris Sharpe
The Question:
“Do we need an app?” That’s one of the primary tech related questions being asked today by organizations of all sizes. There are a number of reasons to consider taking your message and offerings mobile, but how do you know if it’s right for you?
Today, people are consuming data nearly as much on their mobile devices as they are on their computers. In fact, mobile is projected to become the dominant source for data consumption in the near future. Just two short years ago, app development was largely reserved for game creators or huge corporations with substantial budgets for custom development. Today, apps are being created daily for anyone looking to connect with their audience in a new way. It’s no longer a conversation for the Fortune 500 or tech elite, it’s now mainstream.
(more…)
The Church App: by Subsplash
September 13, 2011 by Chris Sharpe
What is The Church App? It’s an incredibly flexible platform that helps you develop mobile apps for your ministry!
Every single week, churches and ministries create incredible Gospel-centered content that needs to be shared with the world. Sadly, this content is often never published or is simply trapped within undesirable, clunky technology. So, the big question is; how do we get this incredible content into people’s hands? Here at Subsplash, we want to see the Gospel proclaimed to the ends of the earth. With that vision in mind, we brought our team of world class developers and UX designers together and created The Church App platform. This cutting edge platform allows churches and ministries to very easily create their own mobile applications (apps) for iPhone, Android, iPad, Windows Phone 7, and web. With rich features designed specifically for the presentation of the Gospel through an app, ministries can present full length audio and video messages, share blogs and articles, keep people connected with calendar events and social networks, integrate with online giving, and much more! With the growth of mobile technology, it only makes sense that the Church needs to be at the forefront of this tremendous tech revolution. Today, people actually consume as much data on their mobile device as they do on desktop computers. It’s an incredible cultural shift being led by mobile apps. We truly believe we can help churches and ministries get their Jesus-driven content into the palm of your hand.
(more…)
The Ever Changing Mobile Landscape
August 31, 2011 by Paul Oremland
The mobile landscape is constantly changing forcing those that develop mobile applications to always be adapting to those changes. As things change trends tend to become visible which define the mobile world. Here’s our take on the mobile landscape as it stands today. It may be different tomorrow, at which time we’ll reevaluate, adapt, and change.
Most of the mainstream media doesn’t understand the current mobile landscape. They write article after article about Google, HTC, Motorola, and etc wondering if their next device is going to be an “iPhone killer” or an “iPad killer.” I almost cry every day when I see and read articles like that. Not because they’re wrong but because they miss the point. Actually I believe that they don’t understand the point. The goals in the mobile world are different depending on the company. What is important to Apple isn’t important to Google and isn’t important to Microsoft and vice versa.
For Apple, success is defined by popularity of individual devices. This means being number one in every category they’re in but not trying to be number one at everything. They want the most popular phone. But they don’t care if they have the biggest market share. For them having 25% of the market with one line of phones is more important than having 35% of the market with a whole slew of lines. They’ve built their whole revenue structure around that. Apple makes both the operating system and the hardware. This allows them to tightly integrate the two together to create and sell very beautiful very easy to use devices. The side affect of that is that there are not a lot of options as far as shapes or sizes go because that’s not what they care about. They care that the options that they give you work well, work consistently, and look wonderful. So Apple makes 1 phone at a time not 10. The only thing that will vary on an Apple phone is the storage size and the wireless radios that they use.
For Google its quite different. They’re not a hardware manufacturer. They make software, whether it’s the Android operating system, Google search, Gmail, or their calendar. Success for them is defined by reach within the market. This is because their revenue structure isn’t built around margins on phones. Their revenue structure is built around integration, search, and advertising. The larger their reach the greater the likelihood that you’ll be clicking on one of their ads or be searching using their search site. So for them getting GMail, Google Maps, the Android Market, and etc into most people’s hands is what defines success for them.
For example, if Apple had 40% of the mobile phone market between their iPhone line of phones (iPhone, iPhone 2, iPhone 3, iPhone 3GS, and iPhone 4) but their current phone had 10% Market share while the HTC Evo had 20% they would consider that failure. Their goal isn’t to get 40% of the market (though they’ll gladly take it). Apple’s goal is to have their phone be the single best on the market. If you don’t believe me just look at their laptop, desktop, and server strategies. It’s the exact same strategy. And it works for them because they’ve spent years and years building their business on that strategy. Apple has the most popular phone on the market by a landslide.
On the other hand if the HTC Evo was the most popular phone in the mobile phone world but there were more iOS, WP7, or other devices on the market Google would say they’re failing in the market. That’s because their goal isn’t to have the most popular phone on the market. It’s to have the biggest share of the market. That’s not how their business structure works. They need reach. They need eyeballs looking at their products and fingers touching their products because they don’t make the physical phones. They make things that eventually lead you to search and advertising. In order to help get this reach they give away their operating system. They want it on more phones in the market than anything else. And this strategy works for them. Android is the most popular OS (in the US) on a smartphone by a landslide. Android is also really catching up in the “beauty” field as well. They still have a ways to go to be on par with Apple. But they’re making tremendous strides. Look at what you get with Honeycomb verses what you got with Eclair. It’s a world of difference from a UI standpoint.
What that means is that both Google and Apple are winning in the mobile landscape. How can that be? Because they’re not competing in the same game. Yes they’re both in the same arena and it is possible for one to affect the other. But for the most part they’re playing different matches.
So for a design centric company it means that we need to be aware that the mobile landscape is being defined by multiple paradigms. It’s not a one size fits all world. We need to be conscious about the platform we’re building for but more conscious about how the design we’ve built plays out on any particular platform. The moment we stop doing that is the moment we stop being useful to our clients.
Building Beautiful Products
August 26, 2011 by Paul Oremland
Subsplash is a company that loves the web. We see mobile as a natural extension of the web. We believe in building beautiful products that delight our customers as well as providing them with the greatest reach possible for their content. So naturally we follow what’s going on within the mobile landscape very closely. Being a company that builds both custom applications and supports a content management platform that has a far and deep reach in the mobile landscape it is a requirement for us as a company to stay objective. We take this very seriously and feel as though the moment that we start being emotionally tied to an individual platform is the moment that we’ve failed at being able to deliver the best possible solutions to our customers. We have an obligation to stay informed, to inform our clients, and to stay ahead of the trends.
For us not being emotionally tied to any one platform doesn’t mean that we’re naive enough to believe that all platforms are created equal. They’re not, not by a long shot. And as individuals we all have our own preferences per platform. Some of us at Subsplash are iOS enthusiasts. Others are Android or Windows Phone 7 fans. But in the end we’re all just a bunch of fans of great designs and alluring applications.
Here at Subsplash we think the important thing when tackling any mobile application that will live among many different platforms is to keep the focus on design first. What that means is that our paradigm for designing applications must be different than if we were designing and building a one off platform specific application. Instead of designing within the boundaries of iOS, Android, WP7, or any other specific platform we design for the application first. After we have the application design finished we can then adapt that design to a specific platform so that it feels natural on that platform and so that it takes advantages of the strengths and uniqueness of that platforms capabilities.
So instead of designing a great iOS experience and porting it to Android or WP7 we ask ourselves how can we design a great experience. After that great experience is created it can then be adapted to be a great iOS, Android, WP7, or other experience. Our experience is defined by what we’re trying to build and not by any one device that we’re trying to build it for.
A good example of this is our media player experience on the Subsplash platform (for which The Church App is a part of). It’s pleasant to look at with consistent functionality across all our supported platforms. But as we bring it to any platform we adapt the UI slightly or the functionality slightly to make it feel natural on that device. This has resulted in our media player having a consistent and delightful experience that feels natural on whatever platform you’re using it on.
Luminance for iPhone and iPad – Now Available!
August 23, 2011 by Matthew Turner
We’re excited to announce our latest product… Luminance.
Luminance for iPhone and iPad gives you pro photo editing capabilities in a simple and elegant app. Effortlessly add effects to your photos, choose from many built-in presets, and take edits from one photo and apply them to multiple photos.
How the app came to be
We started Luminance about a year ago. A co-worker and I wondered what it would take to create a photo processing app that is a non-destructive editor, using adjustment layers and such. We started working on the concept in off hours a couple hours a week for a few months until we had a pretty good tech in place.
Designing the app layout and UX was a real challenge. We knew that we wanted to keep the user interface very simple, make it feel like it belonged on your device, and kinda create a mashup of the iPhone/iPad Photos app and Aperture/Lightroom.
After a couple more months of fine tuning and testing, we decided that it was time to release it as a product, and here we are today.
We’re really excited about where Luminance is at, and we’re excited about making it better.
Upcoming
- You can keep your eye out for Twitter integration 
- Many of you have been asking about a Crop / Rotate feature, or… er… just saying that it’s “missing.” We’re definitely aware of that, and don’t plan to leave it that way. Please be patient with us as we work to increase the power of Luminance.
Thanks for your support and we hope you enjoy Luminance!
Download Luminance in the App Store today,
or visit luminanceapp.com
subsplash.com © Copyright 2011 Subsplash, Inc.