Author: Matt

  • Top Grossing Apps Has Stabilized – Keeping you out

    I like to keep an eye on the top grossing apps in the app store.  They are the ones killing it, and rolling in much of the money players spend, they are the games that I look to for ideas to model in my own apps. The big games have it mostly figured out, and…

  • Api First Web Development

    The web is still suffering through a page refresh disaster. HTTP started with simple pages where full page reloads when navigating wasn’t so bad. Modern sites have boatloads of images, css, js and html files on each page that need to be requested each time a page loads and checked to see if the file…

  • Distraction Free Writing

    I have just discovered a feature in wordpress to do full-screen distraction free writing. The idea is to remove all visual distractions from the computer so that the only thing you can focus on is your writing. Managing distractions is something that I have always done at work. I turn of notifications for emails and…

  • How to find time

    One of the hardest things in getting productive work done has always been finding time to get focused work done.  There are so many demands on our time that what we want to accomplish gets pushed out in favour of other more immediate or more pleasurable things. Back in the day when Ben Franklin, Albert…

  • App Kontrol

    My next project has got underway and it will be launching as App Kontrol sometime in the next month.  This app will be a business dashboard that can be used to pull together download and advertising revenue numbers from various mobile services into one place.  With this information gathered we can produce metrics to help…

  • Announcing AffiliTunes

    I’m happy to say that the first service under the new Halotis.com is open now for it’s first users. Affilitunes is a simple service to geo-target iTunes affiliate links. You provide your affiliate keys for PHG and Trade Doubler and AffiliTunes will redirect clicks to the correct affiliate program depending on where the click came…

  • Taking Rails Lessons to Django

    For the past couple of months I’ve been working on a number of Ruby on Rails projects with some talented and experienced developers.  After years of working in the Django world on various projects, Rails is an interesting contrast. My perspective on developing webapps has changed greatly since working with Rails. This is both due…

  • Minimum Viable Sale (MVS)

    One of the big things about running a business is managing risk.  As an entrepreneur I know that 25% of businesses fail within the first year, 60% have failed by year 4 and 71% have failed or closed by year 10. Given that most businesses are started with the best of intentions and usually with…

  • New Site New Direction

    With the launch of the new design for this site we have also taken a new tack on the strategy going forward for future development of products and features.  The backend services that currently have been built for Halotis iOS Apps will be re-built so that others can benefit from the work done.  Where appropriate…

  • Building something bigger

    Halotis is in the process of a pivot. We’re re-writing all of the software developed for the backend of our mobile apps so that they can be opened up for anyone to use. We will be offering a host of BaaS style applications to make mobile development easier, more social and hopefully raise the bar…