Nice Teeth! (from Nick)

Since iStrip was released to the App Store a few weeks ago, many of our 45,000+ users have sent us their favourite screenshots of iStrip used with their own photos and textures.

Today we have published a few of our favourites in the new iStrip Fun sections on our site. These are some fun examples of how creative people get with iStrip.

Send your favourite screenshots to iStrip@rockcottageindustries.com and we may publish them on the site!

We find it all this data very interesting and wanted to share some of it with other developers and interested folks. Here is a list of countries where iStrip is doing exceptionally well (as of today) in the charts.

Of course, some of these countries are pretty small. Tiny in fact. It does not take a lot to get to number one in Lebanon. But Australia and Canada are a slightly different story.

One thing that really surprised us is how similar the growth curves in all of these countries were. No matter how big or small they are, our most important learning is:

When successful, growth is exponential!

Let’s look at some details (charts from AppViz)

Growth was fast and steep

An almost perfect curve

At least 10x of New Zealand, but also explosive growth

These are some of the positive examples of how an app can shoot to the top, if only it gets enough exposure in the App Store. Making it into the Top 100 of your category is the most important step to this. If you don’t get there, no chance. Here is what happens…

Despite big initial numbers, never made it into Category Top 100

The US market is very big. We think at least as big as all the other markets combined. iStrip didn’t quite make it into the Entertainment Top 100 in the first couple of days and so it remained mostly obscure.

So what are the inflection points that give your app more exposure in the App Store (excluding being featured in some way by Apple, which is only ever going to happen for a handful of apps)?

There you have it, what fun it is to be making iPhone apps. We will post some more as we gather more data.

Thank you everybody for downloading the app. Get it for free from the App Store today.

Obscene and offensive!

UPDATE (Feb 12): The Competition is now closed. No More iTunes vouchers will be given away.

iStrip has been rejected for inclusion in the App Store several times on the grounds that it contains potentially obscene and offensive material. It never did.

Now you can find out for youself, because we are making the original photo of our vintage model available for all iStrip fans!

iStrip allows you to add custom “bathing suit fabrics” from your photo library. Of course, they don’t need to be fabrics. You could add drawings or photographs. Anything you like, really.

Simply email us a screenshot of iStrip using your favourite “fabric” and we will send you the original bikini model photo. You can then import this to your photo library on the iPhone and use iStrip as it was always intended to work.

Send your favourite iStrip screenshot to istrip@rockcottageindustries.com and we will reply with the full size image of our vintage iStrip model. You can now download the original image from the iStrip page on this site.

We will publish the best screenshots we receive on this website. Let us know in your email if you want your name to be listed along with your image.

To our favourite entries we will award $10 gift vouchers for the US iTunes store. (The competition is now CLOSED) BUT So keep those screenshots coming.

(Btw, we will not publish anything offensive)

iStrip was quickly rejected, because apparently it lacked “utility for the wider iPhone user community” (despite it being submitted to the ‘Entertainment’ category).

Offensive material?

In December we made another attempt to get it published by adding a bit more ‘utility’ to it: a clock. This time we were told very directly that the app contained “offensive material”. This material was a woman in a bikini on the vintage 1960s photograph we used for our background. This version is the one you can see in the iStrip video on YouTube and AppTheater.

So we thought, let’s made the bikini bigger. At some point it has to stop being offensive, right? To make it more fun, we actually added the ability to choose bathing suit styles. Who could be offended by this? But no luck iStrip Clock did not get approved.

So in our final attempt we changed the name to “Novelty App”, changed the icon a bit and submitted the application as a game, stating that it contains ‘mild mature themes’. And guess what, this time it worked! Novelty App is now available in the App Store.

One great feature of Novelty App is that it allows you to pick one of your own photos as the bathing suit pattern. This opens up a few interesting possibilities :)

You can get the much, much improved version of Tokyo Time 2.1.5 from the App Store. Jetzt auch auf Deutsch!

We were hoping that the recent change in Apple’s attitude towards profound apps like ‘Pull My Finger’ and iFart would mean that iStrip could finally get a chance in the App Store. Well, you can now make up your own mind on the subject by watching our video below. It is also available in high quality on YouTube. Let us know what you think.

Related Links:

• Apple Rejects iBoobs (Register)
• Apple allows ‘Pull My Finger’ (Venture Beat)

iStrip Clock is a Virtual Novelty Pen for your iPhone or iPod Touch! It brings the two essential features of any self respecting Novelty Pen to the digital age: an LCD clock and a gravity defying dress model. It can be operated in either ‘Freestyle’ or ‘Clock’ modes.

‘Freestyle’ mode uses the iPhone’s built-in accelerometer to reveal the vintage model beneath the dress. This mode is perfect for use in the pub or at a party to show off iStrip Clock to your friends.

‘Clock’ mode moves the dress a slowly with the passing of time. But you can also sneak peak by moving the dress across the screen with your finger. This mode is perfect for use with your iPhone dock. You can keep it running all day.

iStrip Clock is a family application and does not contain any offensive material, but the App Store reviewers at Apple have been known in the past to be very strict about their content guidelines. So we are anxious to hear their verdict and hopefully you will be able to enjoy iStrip Clock in the next few days.

We have also increased the price of the application from $0.99 to $1.99. There has been a lot of talk recently in the iPhone developer community about pricing and the problems created by a tidal wave of $0.99 ‘craplets’ that developers knock up for the store and then abandon quickly. We want to create a sustainable business by building good quality applications that we are committed to for the long run. This is very hard to do on $0.99 per download. We also see more value in having fewer users in total, but who are more excited and passionate about our applications. If you like Black Clocks and use it frequently like a ‘screensaver’ when your iPhone or iPod is docked, we believe that $1.99 is a reasonable price to pay.