Electric Peel Blog

Developers Against Poverty

Tue, 01 Feb 2011 12:19:08 -0500

Electric Peel Software is joining Developers Against Poverty:

Developers Against Poverty is a campaign that will run during February and March 2011 asking software developers from around the world to help bring clean water to areas of that world that lack it. The aim is to raise $50,000 to ensure clean water for the next 20 years for 2500 people.

We’ll be donating 50% of the profits from February sales of Note-A-Lator for iPhone to Charity: Water.

To learn more about the initiative or to make a direct donation, visit: http://www.developersagainstpoverty.org/.

Fraser Speirs on the Volume Purchase Program

Mon, 16 Aug 2010 19:17:51 -0400

Fraser Speirs of Connected Flow explains Apple’s new Volume Purchase Program:

The institution buys a “volume voucher” on a purchase order.

Apple mails the vouchers to the school.

A “program facilitator” at the school decides which apps and how many.

The “facilitator” then gets a number of coupon codes - a bit like promo codes.

The coupons are distributed to students, who then redeem the coupons in their own iTunes accounts for a ‘free’ copy of the app.

Back to School Sale

Sat, 14 Aug 2010 15:24:00 -0400

We are also joining the iAppsForStudents back-to-school sale. From August 15 to September 1, Note-A-Lator and Note-A-Lator Pro for Mac will be 50% off, and Note-A-Lator for iPhone will be 75% off!

As of August 14, there are already more than 100 applications taking part in the sale, adding up to more than $1300 in discounts.

Volume Purchase Program

Thu, 12 Aug 2010 00:00:00 -0400

Electric Peel Software is joining Apple’s App Store Volume Purchase Program. Educational institutions will get a 50% discount on Note-A-Lator for iPhone if they buy it using a volume voucher as part of Apple’s new program.

We also offer volume pricing for Note-A-Lator and Note-A-Lator Pro for Mac through our regular store. Please get in touch with us if you have any questions.

Our beautiful new icon for Ariena. By Jordan at OneToad Design.

Thu, 01 Apr 2010 12:57:09 -0400

Our beautiful new icon for Ariena. By Jordan at OneToad Design.

Introducing Ariena

Mon, 22 Mar 2010 14:11:00 -0400

We’ve been hard at work on our newest project, Ariena: an application that helps music teachers organize their teaching businesses. It’s getting pretty close to release, so we thought we’d tell you a little about it.

What’s the Problem?

Anyone running a teaching business has a lot of work to do besides actually teaching. You have to schedule students, keep track of lessons that have been cancelled or moved, figure out how much each student owes you, keep a list of every payment that you receive, write down lesson notes, and organize your students’ contact information.

Current Solutions

The Good

iCal is a great calendar application. Once you’ve set up some recurring events, all you need to deal with are cancellations and rescheduled lessons—everything else is handled automatically. You can even make changes on-the-go if you have an iPhone or iPod touch synced with your computer.

Address Book also works well for teachers. It’s easy to make a group and keep all your students cards in there. You can also edit Address Book cards with your iPhone/iPod touch.

The Bad

At the moment, the only way of managing all the payments that you receive from students is to store them in a spreadsheet program (like Numbers or Excel) or an accounting program (like QuickBooks). Both are overly complicated, and they’re not very easy to use.

If you want to use your spreadsheet or accounting program to figure out how much each student owes you, you need to spend a lot of time entering each lesson that you teach into the program. You’ve already entered all of this information into your calendar—entering it all again is tedious and error-prone.

When it comes to lesson notes, there aren’t too many choices—you’re probably using a word processing program (like TextEdit, Pages, or Word), or writing them down by hand.

If you save each lesson note as a separate document, you very quickly end up with an unmanageable number of lesson note files. If you combine multiple lesson notes into one file (using one file per student, for example), you’ll have a manageable number files, but all of your documents will be so long that it will be hard to find anything in them.

Ariena

With Ariena, we’re building on the great tools you already use (iCal and Address Book), and replacing the bad tools with solutions specifically designed for you: a music teacher who uses their Mac to manage their business.

Scheduling

You don’t have to change anything about how you schedule your lessons to use Ariena. If you’re using iCal or Google Calendar, Ariena can get all the information it needs to tell you when a student’s next lesson is, or how long it’s been since their last lesson.

Contact Information

Ariena also integrates with Address Book, so you can keep using it like you always have. Once you’ve told Ariena which of your Address Book contacts are students, the two programs will stay in sync. Ariena can quickly show you any student’s contact info.

Money

Ariena figures out how much each student owes you by checking your calendar to see how many lessons they’ve had. There’s no need to re-enter information that’s already in your calendar. All that’s left for you to do is enter payments when you get them.

Ariena can show you several different views of your finances. A yearly report which shows you how much you’ve earned in any given year will be useful when you’re doing your taxes. You can also see monthly reports and a list of students who are behind in their payments.

Lesson Notes

Ariena can store all of your lesson notes—you don’t need to manage any files. Ariena makes it easy to find old lesson notes; you can sort by student and date.

Coming Soon

Ariena is getting close to release. If you’re interested in being notified when it goes on sale, or would like to be a beta tester, sign up for the mailing list. If you have any suggestions or questions about Ariena, please get in touch with us at support@electricpeelsoftware.com.

Indie+Relief Follow-Up

Fri, 22 Jan 2010 12:38:00 -0500

Indie+Relief was a huge success, raising over $143,872! Thanks to everyone who supported Indie+Relief, all the developers who participated, and especially to Justin Williams and Garrett Murray, who put the whole thing together in just 6 days.

Indie+Relief

Sun, 17 Jan 2010 14:15:00 -0500

Electric Peel Software is joining Indie+Relief, “a gathering of Mac & iPhone developers who are pledging to donate their sales on Wednesday January 20, 2010 to Haitian relief charities.” All income from sales of Note-A-Lator on January 20th will be donated to the Clinton Bush Haiti Fund.