RatCat Software

Software designed for kids that is fun and educational.

Posts Tagged software development

DirtMovers – Construction Counting

Feb 16

Posted by Ted Moroz in Educational Games, Game Development, What's New | Comments off

DirtMovers - Construction CountingIt’s Done! (Well Almost)

After 3 months of off and on development work, RatCat Software’s newest iPhone App DirtMovers – Construction Counting has been uploaded to Apple for review and approval.

Construction Counting is an action packed construction yard playground for your preschool aged kids that gives them multiple opportunities to learn numbers 1 to 10.

There is the excavator that announces the number and displays a new pile each time it takes a swipe of dirt.

Then there is bulldozer pile up, where you child pushes the desired number of piles of rocks then chooses when to check his answer to see if he is correct.

The dump truck fill up is where your child is instructed to load the dump truck to a desired amount, then the answer is checked when the dump truck pulls away.

There is the tap and count game where your child taps a number then watches the screen as that amount of items appears with real voice counting to follow along with.

For the more advanced counting fun, there is the count and tap game, where your child is instructed to count the number of dirt movers on the screen and tap the correct answer.

Features:
• Real Voice Counting
• Realistic Construction Site Sounds
• Illustrations by Cartoonist Robert Salanitro
• Requires iPhone OS 3.0 or later

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Our first negative comment posted today

Aug 3

Posted by Ted Moroz in Educational Games, Independent Software Development, Meghan's ABC123, iTunes App Store | Comments off

So how does one respond to their first negative comment?

Don’t get
by crazymama3 on Aug 3, 2009 Version 1.0.1
Doest attract kids because no pictures and voice kind of wierd

Even if we could directly respond (which we can’t), should we? I believe that criticism is a good thing, it means that someone cared enough to let us know what they thought. Be it good or bad. I have thick skin, If someone thinks my voice is kinda weird, so be it. As for the app having pictures?? Not sure I follow that one, its an ABC Matching and Memory game, not a Picture matching/memory game. So this piece of the comment leaves me a bit puzzled.  I wish the forum that apple provided was not one way. It would be nice to be able to ask some additional questions of crazymama3 and find out what improvements she would suggest that would make the Meghan’s ABC123 an app she would provide a 5 star “Have to have” endorsement. So, a brief note to crazymama3, if you read this post, please take the time to use our Contact Us form and give us some more detail to work with.

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Updated Meghan’s Memory Games now available

Jun 26

Posted by Ted Moroz in Educational Games, Meghan's Matching Games | 1 Comment

Meghan's Memory Game Preschool

Meghan's Memory Game Kindergarten

Meghan's Memory Game First Grade

RatCat Software is excited to announce that the latest version of Meghan’s Memory Games for the iPhone and iPod touch is available in the iTunes Apps store. This version currently available in Preschool, Kindergarten and First Grade edtions is certified for use with iPhone OS 3 and backwards compatible with OS 2. In this version we added an optional timed display of words prior to the start of the game. This new feature, as covered in a previous blog post, provides your child an opportunity to memorize locations prior to match play. The goal is to enhance memory, increase awareness and concentration skills.

Interesting observations for iPhone developers: these apps were uploaded on June 10th and took fifteen days for approval. Prior updates had only taken six days.  It would appear that apple is doing some new OS 3 compatibility checks or that there is some lag time with a rush of new apps that had been waiting for the new OS to be released.  Something else to note is that iTunes now indicates (iPhone OS 3.0 Tested) alongside of the version listing . I wonder if that indication will have a negative affect on two other editions of Meghan’s Memory Game (2nd and 3rd grade) which have been in-house tested for OS 3 compatibility but have not been released since the OS 3 hit the store.

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Updated our subscription options

Jun 12

Posted by Ted Moroz in Independent Software Development, Website Development | Comments off

Picture 4This morning I added Feedburner to our blog. This service from Google allows us to provide RSS and Email subscriptions of our updates.  This way, if my sister wants to read the blog via her Google reader, she’s covered, and if my Mom wants to see whats up, she can subscribe to the email notifications  and be notified when a new blog entry has been posted. Wordpress by default offers RSS feeds however Feedburner takes it to a whole new level. If you want to read more information about Feedburner it is available here on Feedburners site. Like the Google Analytics installed yesterday, Feedburner was very easy to setup and add to the site. You start by creating an account (which authenticates with a gmail account), adding your current feed url and shazam Feedburner creates a new url for you to begin using on your site immediately.

To make the feeds easy to sign up for I  also added a Wordpress plug-in called “Subscription Options” from a site called Digital Cortex.
This plug-in creates three buttons that link to each of the available feed options, RSS, Email and Twitter.

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Attempting to learn more about our sites visitors

Jun 11

Posted by Ted Moroz in Independent Software Development, Website Development | Comments off

Not sure why I didn’t know this right from the start, but it hit me like a bolt of lightening today… We need to understand who is viewing our web site and why. From what I can tell Google Analytics can help us learn more about where our visitors come from and what they do when they get here. This information will help drive future decisions on what we do with the blog, our product pages, and our youtube postings.
The process of setting up google was very simple and straight forward. You sign up for an account, they assign you a bit of java code to add to the head section of your html and your off and running. RatCat Software is using WordPress to maintain our site, so I first attempted to add this via a plug-in, which too is a very simple and easy to do. Well, it didn’t work as expected and although I only installed one plug-in (there are several to try), I quickly gave up and just added the code directly into the custom.php. Once the code snippet was in place, Google was able to recognize the page and our sites status changed to indicate that the tracking code has been detected on the home page of our website, and Google Analytics is aggregating the data to populate into your reports. So, starting today, we are hooked into the google analytic system and tomorrow we can begin to improve our online presence and strengthen our marketing efforts.

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