Here's some from my piece in today's paper about a Mayo Clinic cardiologist who as a hobby created a popular iPhone app.
Calling Dr. App. Calling Dr. App.
Dr. Paul Friedman's late-night activities have people all over the world sending photos with silly messages to each other on their iPhones.
"I didn't really have a hobby. I don't garden or anything," the Mayo Clinic cardiologist said. Then he bought an iPhone. Soon Friedman, who was an electrical engineering major as an undergrad, became fascinated with the whole trend of small software programs or applications for the phone.
The computer geek in him decided it might be fun to program an iPhone application. "It is sort of like deciding to write book in French … and then realizing you don't speak French," Friedman said with a chuckle.
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Soon he was teaching himself how to program a mobile app. After talking with his family, Friedman decided to create a way for iPhone or iPod Touch users to doctor up photos with cartoonish thought balloon messages, labels, date and time stamps as well as graffiti-style additions like devil horns, halos or muscle-bound bodies.
The result after an estimated 200 hours of work is the 99-cent iBlurb app, which hit the App Store on Jan. 14.Sales of the app started at about 30 a week or so, but spiked with 600 sales during one day last week.
Friedman mostly worked on the project late at night. And when the end of the project was in sight, he took a week's vacation for a surge of programming.
"In my free time, I found it very engrossing. It is such a pure thought problem," Friedman said. "I'd look up and three and four hours would have gone by."
