I was not very careful sending the previous update of Inorganic Acids and Polyatomic Ions. Now everything is fixed and the app looks and works exactly as I wanted. Enjoy!
Monthly Archives: March 2014
Days of the Week and Months of the Year in 7 Languages
The app Days and Months was approved on Monday but I decided to experiment with postponing the release day. I chose Saturday, because the most successful starts of my apps happened on this weekend day.
Its quiz mechanics generally follows the Learn Numerals app. However, both Days and Months modes are open from the beginning.
The English description of the game is the following:
Today you’ll learn the names of all 7 days of the week and all 12 months of the year in 7 important languages. Please choose the learning method that suits you the best.
* Tables
* Flashcards
* Quizzes
– Spanish
– French
– German
– Italian
– Portuguese
– Russian
– English!
*****
One problem that I didn’t have with numerals was how to ask the question on the user’s language. How do you ask an American to translate “Monday” from English to English? It sounds like a stupid thing to do. So for the user’s own language, I change the names of days and months to their order: 2nd day, 9th month. And preparing this app, I learned a lot of things about the calendar. It seems that the US is a rare place where the week starts on Sunday. The standard now is to start it with Monday.
The icon is a fragment of the Aztec compass. But it was also a calendar, so it is relevant to the app.
3. Acknowledgements:
icons for buttons were downloaded from iconmonstr or were created with Font Awesome.
Thanks!
Filed under Games
Carboxylic acid – Ester and Salt Names – Organic Chemistry Quiz
The app Carboxylic acids was released on Monday together with Greek Letters and Alphabet 2 and it was featured as a new free app in the Games/Word category for a couple of days. I got 250 downloads yesterday that is very good for so specific topic. Well, if people in Apple like “smart” apps, I’m ready to create many apps about different chemistry topics. We’ll see.
The English description of the app is the following:
Carboxylic acids and esters are one of the most important classes of organic compounds. They are everywhere:
* in food (citric acid; vinegar = a solution of acetic acid);
* in drugs (aspirin = acetylsalicylic acid);
* in fats (triglycerides are esters of fatty acids and glycerol);
* in plastics (polyesters);
* in biochemistry (transformation of pyruvate through the citric acid cycle);
* and even in ants 🙂 (formic acid)
Learn structures and trivial names of 50 most important carboxylic acids and their esters and salts.
* Aliphatic saturated acids
* Unsaturated and substituted acids
* Di- and tricarboxylic acids
* Aromatic acids
* pKa values of all acids!
*****
All modes are available for free (though all flashcards require in-app-purchase), but one has to give a certain number of correct answer in first modes to open the next ones.
Acknowledgements:
icons for buttons were downloaded from iconmonstr or were created with Font Awesome.
Thanks!
Filed under Chemistry
Greek Letters and Alphabet 2 – From Alpha to Omega
The Greek Letters and Alphabet 2 was approved and released yesterday together with Carboxylic acids. Now I’d like to write briefly about the first one.
Many (7.5) months ago, I published my second app called Greek Letters and Alphabet. I didn’t expect much from it, but it turned out to be fine. Especially, after it accumulated 10+ positive ratings and I made it a paid app. When I thought about updating it, I had two options. But the normal update to v. 1.1 would hide the rating history and I planned more serious changes in the quiz modes that would require the complete rework of the main menu. So I decided to go with the second option and release Greek Letters and Alphabet 2.
The English description of the game is the following:
It is a perfect app to learn Greek letters and alphabet. Choose the way of studying that suits you the best:
* Quiz “Find the Letter”
* Quiz “Name the Letter”
* Flashcards
* Greek alphabet table
* Example of the usage of Greek Letters in math and science
* Time modes, multiple-choice questions (in Greek Letters and Alphabet 1)
Alpha, beta, gamma, and go on!
*****
Features:
– The app is localized to 8 languages (vs. 2 languages in the first part)
– I used the same color in its design, but there are no ornaments, dragons, and the stuff
3. Acknowledgements:
icons for buttons were downloaded from iconmonstr or were created with Font Awesome.
Thanks!
Filed under Games
Inorganic Acids v. 1.1 – an Update with Localizations
Today the Apple review team decided to eliminate the backlog of apps awaiting for the review and they approved my 3 apps and this update of Inorganic Acids and Polyatomic Ions. I submitted it just 14 hours before its status became “In Review”.
There are two major things:
1) Localization into Italian, German, French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Swedish languages. It’s probably the hardest of my apps to localize because the database is vast, strings are messy, and many compounds are quite obscure, so it’s impossible to find everything quickly in Wikipedia. But I designed the first version keeping only English and Russian in mind, and I don’t want to remove any compounds now.
As for the Italian translation, I am obliged to Sandro Soldano who did a great job on translating a lot of compounds’ names and fixing my lame Italian translations that I had done before. Thanks!
2) In v. 1.0, only the simplest acids and ions (“Acids 101”) were available without buying the in-app-purchase. This is less than one third of all compounds and since the purchasing activity was quite low, I decided to make the next level (“Acids 201” – 30 more acids and 30 more ions/salts) free. However, it is required to give 100 correct answers in the first level to get a free access to this second level. The IAP opens both the 2nd and 3rd levels immediately as it did before.
When I downloaded the app today, I noticed that I forgot to add one picture (more precisely, I added it but it has a wrong name: a little hyphen is missing). So it’s likely that I will soon submit Inorganic Acids v. 1.2 with “minor bugs fixed” in the What’s New section.
About three other apps that have been approved today, I’ll write in my blog later.
50 American States Map and Capital Cities of US Quiz
Besides chemistry, I used to like geography. And there are a plenty of good topics for geography quiz. I decided to start with US States Map and Capital Cities. There are a bunch of apps on this subject on the App Store, but my app is the best 🙂
Please check also a comprehensive review of the app and its functionality by Concordia University Online Nebraska: http://online.cune.edu/50-states-capitals-flags-app-review/
The English description of the game is the following:
All 50 states! All 50 capitals! From New England and the Great Lakes to the California coast and the Alaska wilderness!
* Northeast
* Midwest
* South
* West
*****
1. Initially, I was going to create an app about American cities. But it turned out to be very time consuming to find good (and available in public domain) pictures of several dozens of cities. I had visited (or lived in) some of them myself and I had my own photos (NYC, Pittsburgh, SLC, several others) but still… a lot of search. Meanwhile I created nice maps of all 50 states and decided to focus on state names first. I added capitals as the second mode
2. Features:
– My first geography quiz
– Photos as button icons; a US flag as a background
– I localized the app to 8 languages and I wonder if there is an interest for the US geography in other countries
– The setting button among the mode buttons in the main menu
– The only IAP removes ads
3. Acknowledgements:
icons for buttons were downloaded from iconmonstr or were created with Font Awesome.
My own photos of the Golden Gate Bridge in SF; the Utah Capitol in SLC; and a fire hydrant in Pittsburgh.
Thanks!
Filed under Games
Chemical Elements of the Periodic Table – Name Quiz and Flashcards
The most popular chemistry-related topics are Chemical Elements and Periodic Table. There are more than 150 app about the latter on the App Store. I’m adding one more. But it’s not just a periodic table or a multiple choice quiz. It’s a cooler “spell the name of the element” quiz + flashcards + Mendeleev. Let’s see how competitive my app will be.
The English description of the game is the following:
You’ll learn the names of all 118 chemical elements with this app. Please choose the way of studying that suits you the best:
* Basic Elements Quiz
* Flashcards
* Periodic Table
* Advanced Elements Quiz
Please check the short bio of Dmitri Mendeleev, the discoverer of the Periodic Law.
*****
– The game is available in 8 languages. It’s very easy to find translation of elements’ names.
– The buttons in the main menu look like “element cards”. For the first time, I added a link to my another app (Hydrocarbons) in the main menu.
– Periodic Table is very neat. One can find all 118 elements, their atomic numbers and masses.
Acknowledgements:
icons for buttons were downloaded from iconmonstr or were created with Font Awesome.
For the app icon a fragment of Ilya Repin’s Portrait of Dmitry Ivanovich Mendeleev wearing the Edinburgh University professor robe (1885; The State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow) is used.
Thanks!
Filed under Chemistry
Learn Numerals 1.1 and Hydrocarbons 1.2
Two apps have been updated today: Learn Numerals and Hydrocarbons. In Learn Numerals, I changed an icon to a brighter one, with an yellow background. In both apps, I added the Swedish localization. I consider this language the next most important in Europe after those 7 already present in my apps. The next will be Dutch. Besides the new localization, I added 5 new hydrocarbons and the “Unlimited Hints” purchase to the Hydrocarbons app. It is easier to get to the Settings now when the buttons of paid modes became active.
Filed under Updates
Learn Numerals in 7 languages
You may find the Learn Numerals app useful because it’s not about chemistry. It’s about another thing where you have to learn by heart a lot of new words: numerals (numbers) in 7 major European languages.
The English description of the game is the following:
In this app, you’ll learn the names of numerals in 7 important languages. Please choose the learning method that suits you the best.
* Tables
* Flashcards
* Quizzes
– Spanish
– French
– German
– Italian
– Portuguese
– Russian
– English!
*****
1. The app got into an “overnight” review. Yesterday, 8 days after the submission, the status changed to “in review”, but it was not until this morning, it was finally reviewed and placed on the App Store (formally after 17.5 h in review).
2. New features:
– It’s my first app since Monster! that uses different languages as quiz modes.
– The game is localized to those 7 languages as well. I believe that the localization at the time of the release (rather than in an update) was a key to the relative success of Hydrocarbons.
– There are interstitial ads that appear randomly around the 15th question (or flashcard). I’m disappointed with the “Press button to watch ads – Get 30 hints” approach that generated some impression but very, very little money.
3. Acknowledgements:
Icons for buttons were downloaded from iconmonstr or were created with Font Awesome.
Thanks!
Filed under Games
SI Unit Prefixes – Update to v 1.1
I updated SI Unit Prefixes. Download numbers were very low for this app, and I blamed the wrong category (changed it from Reference to Games Educational / Trivia). I also localized it to 5 additional languages: German, French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian. There were several minor fixes in app design as well but the question database remained the same as in 1.0. Enjoy!
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Andrey Solovyev's Molecular Games 