From the article: A spokesperson of the Royal Dutch Airforce says they are surprised about the words of Lubbers[1]. 'We never disclose any information on this. As former prime minister, he knows that'. According to the spokesperson whether or not there are nuclear weapons is a state secret.
[1] Lubbers was prime minister from 1982-1994, confirmed that there are in fact nuclear bombs in Volkel, and said that he never thought that "those silly things" were still there.
This looks great! Congrats on the release, I hope this does well.
Some comments:
- In the Dutch Appstore description you mention that this is good for children in "groep 3, 4, 5, 6". In the US appstore you say "grades 3, 4, 5, 6". They are not equivalent. In the Netherlands six year olds are in "groep 3", so it's equivalent to US grade 1.
- The handwriting recognition worked well, but it's not perfect (of course) and I do have to write a bit differently than usual. I suspect it will be easy for me to get used to. I am glad there is no penalty for errors, that makes it less frustrating. Will test it out on my child later.
- There need to be user profiles. That's essential for a game that you market to both school children and parents. There also should be highscore lists in the game itself, not just in Game Center. Also: in Game Center I only see highscores for the Advanced modes, which is a pity.
- I would absolutely love it if there were an option to choose which time tables to test. That would be perfect for school children who have to train them. I have a few apps for that, but none that measure your progress so nicely and that purely focus on speed. I understand that that's not your focus with this app, but still, I thought I'd put the idea out there
All in all, I am very impressed (though the lack of user profiles would normally be a deal breaker for me in an app like this).
Thanks for the feedback lena. I am happy to say user profiles will be in the next version as we are working on them right now. Also thanks for the feedback about the Dutch description, I will fix that.
As for extra leaderboards, we are looking into it. We didn't do it at first because we thought having 15 leaderboards would be a bit over the top.
Thanks a lot for the feedback, I really appreciate it.
That's great that you're adding user profiles, thank you!
15 leaderboards definitely isn't over the top, especially not for an app where improving your score is so essential. You could even add a 16th, 17th and 18th leaderboard for total time across the modes on each difficulty (that would be great, IMO). I own multiple games with 25 leaderboards (one for each level on speedrunners, one for each song for music games, etc), and on gaming forums people moan that that is the maximum number allowed on Game Center because they would prefer more.
Unfortunately the opposite is a much, much bigger problem right now: people running around telling people with chronic pain that they must have physical issues that must be corrected, and that pain that is not caused by physical issues is somehow not "real".
There is a lot of science about this. Look up David Butler and Lorimer Moseley if you're interested.
I have to second the "Spark" recommendation. It presents the very compelling research behind exercise's cognitive and mood benefits. I've read many of the articles and books on this topic and Spark still included new information for me.
After reading it I decided to finally get on a religious exercise schedule and I've been on it for two months. The improvements to my will-power, focus, and mood have been tremendous.
As a side note: one thing that has helped me keep up the 5 to 6 exercise sessions per week is reminding myself that I'm only exercising for cognitive and mood benefits. This helps me personally not get distracted by other factors like fat-loss, improving running times, etc. If I added other non-brain goals, then it'd be easy to get bummed out and discouraged if I didn't achieve them, so I keep my goals purely brain focused. If those other benefits happen as a result of the exercise, then great, but they are not why I'm doing it.
Me too, but I noticed the other day that you can only save your progress at Khan Academy if you sign it with either Google or Facebook. That stung. I don't want to sign up for a social network, just to save my progress on a math course.
I agree. I have always steered away from sites that require "facebook connect." I'm worried one day many more sites that I use daily require Facebook, which I don't use.
Your point is valid, but it is still worth noting that a huge audience also did buy their game. They just sold their millionth game on the App Store alone.
http://2dboy.com/2012/01/09/one-million-downloads/
Yes, and the price is dramatically lower as well: $2.99. I paid $19.99 on Steam three years ago. I'd be curious if they could do it all over again today, if they would do iOS first.
Sarno's book is part great and part fluff, but the idea that stress/ideas play a big part in chronic pain is not controversial among pain scientists. Explain Pain by Butler and Moseley is a great book about this, but unfortunately it is rather expensive. The latter part of this blog post gives a summary:
http://changeyourpain.com/2011/03/03/what-was-that-about-chr...
Yeah, that's awful. A tip: install iCab (I'm sure there are other browsers that do the same, but I have experience with this one). You can then set your browser-id per site. So, I set in my settings that wordpress.com sends the "Safari 5/Mac" browser header, and all is fine.
[1] Lubbers was prime minister from 1982-1994, confirmed that there are in fact nuclear bombs in Volkel, and said that he never thought that "those silly things" were still there.