How My Friend Found His iPhone in Antipolo Because of the Find My iPhone App

I get a call from my friend. Let’s call him Blad. He tells me he can’t remember what happened last night and that he lost his iPhone.

I’m sorry I tell him. “Maybe next time you should wear a lanyard.”

Half an hour later, Blad sends me a Google Maps link to something. He says his phone is still turned on, that he tracked it using the Find My iPhone app, that it’s somewhere in Antipolo and the best part: that I should help him find it before the phone’s battery dies.

I laugh at the ridiculousness of this idea. There is no way in hell we can find that.

Blad is Filipino-American but unfortunately can’t speak a lick of Filipino other than “Nasaan yung CR.” Obviously, I can’t let him try to find it by himself so I decide to help him. I also call another friend, EJ, and ask if he wants to help out. EJ says yes. We all agree to meet up at the McDonald’s in Katipunan.

We head out excited but also feeling like dumbasses. Blad is sure now, thanks to another friend who was in the cab with him, that he left it there. On our way to wherever his iPhone is, I ask them about our plan. Turns out we don’t have any. Maybe we should look for a cab parked there and ask for the driver?

What if it’s a warehouse and it’s a trap and their plan is to kidnap us? Naaah. We have two bowling balls in the trunk which we could use as a projectile. We’re safe.

We finally get to where the iPhone’s location is.

It’s a Saturday morning so no one’s really outside except for someone hanging clothes. We didn’t spot any cabs.

Great. Now what?

EJ comes up with a brilliant idea: let’s knock on all the doors and ask if someone came in at 3AM and found an iPhone!

Sounds time-consuming but we’re already here so sure, let’s do it!

After our 3rd door, we decide that it’s not a brilliant idea after all. Whoever we were asking would just end up asking someone else in the house so this method was too slow.

We go back to the guard house (we entered the subdivision without him noticing us) and ask the guard for help. Maybe he can show us his log book?

He says he will need to call the president of the subdivision association. We tell both of them the story and how the phone is still turned on and that it’s here somewhere.

“Ang galing pala niyan! Hindi talaga pwedeng manakaw!”, exclaims the subdivision president. He then looks at my iPhone (I signed in using Blad’s account so we can track it there) and says “Pwede pa bang i-zoom yan?”

I zoom it in, he looks at it with squinting eyes and says that’s not their subdivision. The dot is in that area behind it.

We see it from where we’re standing and it’s a shantytown.

The subdivision president insists that it’s safe but that we should go in there with a Barangay Tanod just in case. We figured it’d be a waste of time if we back out now so we soldier on.

A guy comes in riding a bike, he’s our guy says the guard. We follow him into the shantytown area as he goes to another Tanod’s house. We tell our story again but this time surrounded by 20 other people, half of which are shirtless men. They pass around my phone, talking amongst themselves how crazy it is that we can track it.

At this point, we were getting slightly scared. What if they start getting mad at us for accusing them? We look at each other thinking we should probably head back.

Then another shirtless man approaches us.

“Anong hinahanap?”

“iPhone daw brad. Ganito oh.”

“Nasa akin yan.”

In my head I’m like WTH just happened. Blad overhears this and asks me, “Did he just say he doesn’t have it?” I give him my straight face and tell him to follow the shirtless guy.

He goes inside his house. And then comes back outside and shows us a phone.

Turns out he did have it!

Apparently, he was the guy that cleaned the taxi cab where Blad’s phone was left. The shirtless man explains that he didn’t touch it, didn’t know what to do with it but that if someone looked for it, he’d return it. We thank him for his honesty.

From this experience, I can tell you that the Find My iPhone feature actually works. So if you have an iPhone, make sure you enable it.

It’s not foolproof though. If someone finds your phone and turns it off, you’re SOL.

How do I know this?

Well after we found Blad’s phone, a couple weeks later…

He loses it again.

This time the person turns the device off. We couldn’t track it.

So no, Blad did not live happily ever after.

He’s stuck with an Android now. Bummer. Should’ve gotten a lanyard. :)

Peanutubo Interviews: The Filipino iOS Game Developer Behind Streetfood Tycoon

This interview has also been posted on the TrafficDito blog.

We’ve been following Streetfood Tycoon ever since we discovered it from Janette Toral of DigitalFilipino. From that day, we’ve seen it get featured on several blogs, written about in newspapers and even featured on TV shows. Whoever says SF Tycoon isn’t a success is (pea)nuts.

 

 

What’s cooler than media attention? Downloads! And Streetfood Tycoon now has 320,000 of them! That isht be cray yo. At one point, it was also the #1 strategy game, the #1 family game, and #3 on the overall app store ranking for the Philippines. And this game was created by a Filipino.

Of course, the next question we had was, “Which startup or company is behind this?”

KuyiMobile (yes, that’s the answer just in case you also have the same question) is a name some of us have become familiar with especially with SF Tycoon’s popularity. What really blew us away was this: did you know that it’s basically a one-man team?

A true entrepreneur, Erick Garayblas founded KuyiMobile 3 years ago.

He keeps a blog for curious people like us if you want to learn more about his game developing adventures. BUT, if you want to know how a day in the life of an independent Filipino game developer goes or what his “theme song” is, read on.

For Philippine startups and all you budding entrepreneurs, this interview is for you!

1. How does your typical day look like? Can you walk us through a day in the life of Mr. Erick Garayblas?

My typical day starts at 10am. Brunch for 15 minutes before I turn on my computer and start work. I work in front of the computer at 2 hour intervals and take 1 hour breaks in between to save my back and eyes. My breaks are usually spent jotting down notes or sketching ideas—which translates to work too. I take a break at around 3pm either to take a nap (Team Batugan FTW!) or chat/spend quality time with my 2 lovely girls—my wife and daughter. I resume work around 8pm and work until the wee hours of the morning (1-2am). I make sure that weekends are spent w/ family though sometimes I cheat.

2. Before launching your apps, do you set goals for things like number of downloads? Did you have something like this for SF Tycoon?

I usually set a goal for number of downloads when it comes to paid apps. For Streetfood Tycoon though, it was my first free-to-play game that took advantage of IAP so I honestly have no idea. To quote Manny Pacquiao: Now I know. :)

3. What was the most difficult part in building SF Tycoon? Why?

The most difficult part was the last 10% (or last few weeks). I guess everybody feels the same way when finishing a project—the last part is usually the hardest and takes the longest to accomplish. A lot of small issues come up, you get burned out, suddenly life becomes redundant, you get too excited and just want to get it out the door.

4. Can you share with us the most inspiring comment you’ve received from a player?

There have been a lot of inspiring comments/reviews for Streetfood Tycoon and I honestly can’t single out any but I would like to note that the support I received especially from our kababayans have been so overwhelming. THANK YOU SO MUCH! :)

5. If you were to name the top 3 things Filipino game developers should have to succeed, what would they be?

Creativity, determination and patience. One needs to have a creative mind in order to come up with the most wicked ideas. Determination will make sure you finish what you started and patience is required in order to overcome the biggest obstacles.

6. Aside from Kuyi Mobile, are there other app developers or teams (even in non-game categories) here in the Philippines that we should look out for?

I know only a few—the TrafficDito team, Yves (@doblezeta) of Giroapps and Ramon (@filjedi) of Numlock Solutions. These guys are fantastic! :)

7. What are your thoughts on work-life balance?

Funny you mentioned this. Since last year, I set out to have one ultimate goal—to have 4-hour workweeks, as inspired by Timothry Ferriss’ book. Not that I don’t enjoy what I do but I would love to do other non-computer-related stuff in the future as well. I would love to get back to comics illustration, sports, giving summer art classes to kids and hopefully make my own children’s book someday as well as find more time to cook. Yes, cook.

8. Do you have someone who you look up to? Who is s/he? Why?

None in particular. There are companies that inspire me though—Apple, Valve, Twitter and small (but successful) indie teams like Imangi Studios (Temple Run), Lima Sky (Doodle Jump), Nimblebit (Tiny Tower) and Rovio (Angry Birds). If you look up the stories of these guys, it’s just amazing and truly inspiring.

9. What’s next for KuyiMobile? Are we seeing even more addicting games in the coming months?

Definitely more games. I can see myself doing this until my eyes can’t read anymore or my hands are too old to type. I’m currently working on improving an old game of mine called “Jump Rope”, a huge update for Streetfood Tycoon (for all the avid players!), the Android port, and I plan to move to a new game right after, hopefully by August. I’m also planning to work on my first non-game app, if my schedule allows it.

10. On a lighter note, if a song were to play when you enter a room, what would it be?

Staying Alive by the Bee Gees. This is also my ringtone. :P

Streetfood Tycoon is Erick’s 8th app in the 3 years since KuyiMobile so really (and I don’t want to be Captain Obvious here), success doesn’t happen overnight. His 8th product might be your 10th, 23rd, or for us… maybe 2nd? HA! Now that would be THE dream. If Erick was able to do it, why can’t we all?

Now for those still wondering what Streetfood Tycoon is, (first of all, where have you been?) it’s an addicting iPhone game based on the very Filipino concept of owning a street food cart and selling (no surprise here) street food items like kwek-kwek, fishballs and french fries. AppsManila wrote a good review on it that you can check out.

I hope you had fun reading his answers! Do you know of any other local entrepreneurs we can bug?

NowShowing.ph iPhone App Review

You don’t have to think hard about what this app does as you can tell by its name but to be extra clear, this is an app that you use to check out what movies are (surprise!) now showing.

NowShowing is a Days of Thunder project by ProudCloud, a Manila Ruby on Rails shop. (I once asked what a dev shop is so if you’re asking the same question, that basically means they do dev work, in this case RoR, for clients.) Days of Thunder happen every Thursday and Friday at Proudcloud when engineers get to work on what I call “side projects” that are not for their clients. This one is from their website:

Thursdays and Fridays are Days of Thunder at Proudcloud dedicated to internal projects, dangerous experiments, and building stuff we can contribute back to the community.

Giving back to the community is a cool idea that somehow reminds me of Taxikick and TrafficDito. (Disclaimer: I work with the team behind TrafficDito so you can consider this as my mini-product placement for the 2 readers of this blog.)

NowShowing the iPhone app isn’t the first movie guide app in the Philippines. I, together with a couple of iPhone-using friends, have been using ClickTheCity to check movie schedules. So when this came out, my first question was, “How is this different from CTC’s app and why will I add more apps to my phone when I already have one that does the same thing?”

Ask no more! Here’s a quick list of things I found more interesting about this app:

1. Movie reviews come from Rotten Tomatoes. I like this because I trust the Tomatometer and that’s how I decide whether I should see a particular movie or not. I know that CTC also has their own “Critics Rating” by Philbert Ortiz Dy but yeahh… Not a lot of people know him. Plus points for integrating Rotten Tomatoes with the app. But wait, what is this I see?

   

   How can there be zero ratings for those 2 really popular movies in the US? A quick look at RottenTomatoes and I see Alvin and the Chipmunks got a terrible 13%. Not sure what went wrong here but there goes their first advantage.

2. You can watch movie trailers within the app.This is something CTC doesn’t have and something that’s really useful. This is actually how I saw the trailer for A Mother’s Story and thanks to this app, I have decided I will not watch it.Except for that minor issue with the message that tells me I have to watch it on YouTube (I thought it will launch the YT app), everything was okay.

   

3. You can access the map for mall addresses right from the app. CTC doesn’t have this either. Some people might not find this too useful though since it’s likely that you already know where all the malls are but for the noobs out there, it’s a pretty cool feature.

   

I downloaded this app a couple of weeks ago and so far I have been using it mainly because CTC’s app is annoyingly slow (they show you their mobile ordering ad first before allowing you to access the app). Only then do I remember I have a faster loading app but then I see the faulty RottenTomatoes review rating so I end up going to RottenTomatoes.com to check. Aside from that issue, it does what it’s supposed to do. It’s a good app for movie buffs. :)

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If you’re interested in the nascent “tech scene” we have here in Manila, I found out about NowShowing from an article on StartupPhilippines.com. You can also check out StartupDigestPH headed by John Arce.

 

My Experience with ClickTheCity’s Mobile Ordering App

I’ve been trying out ClickTheCity’s iPhone app for 2 weekends now. Except for some minor glitches, it actually works!

When I tried it out last Saturday, CTC’s mobile ordering had only been running for a  week (they officially launched this feature just this 25th of November). I knew it was really new so I wasn’t expecting much from it. The fact that there aren’t a lot of restaurants to choose from even though they’ve already partnered up with QuickDelivery is something I was expecting. For fast food fans, they only have McDonald’s and Shakey’s for now (not sure if they’ll be adding more).

Their app may not be as cool as Pizza Hut’s iPhone app in the US (launched 2 years ago btw), but I think we might just be getting there. Okay fine, maybe 25% but this is progress anyway!
 

Registration

I was expecting this process to take forever since I already encountered a problem with their “just drop the pin to add your address” feature. I knew that sounded too good to be true!

See, here I picked a random location and dropped the pin there BUT when you click Next, the address fields are all still empty. So uhh, what was the point in doing that again?
 

But aside from that, the registration process was pretty smooth.
 

Ordering

Remember, you will only be able to view the list of merchants once you’ve added your address in. Without it, you have no other way of seeing the list of merchants and their menus (I’ve spent a good 5 minutes trying to figure this out so that’s minus points for UI).

You see that minimum order of Php 500? Remember that too. Because once you order, the QuickDelivery rep will try and tell you that you haven’t bought enough to qualify for delivery and that you should buy at least Php 750 worth of food. Just cite this page on the app and that it says it’s just supposed to be Php 500 and they will quickly say “Okay ma’am.” So I’m not sure if they were just trying to upsell in a really really bad way or they just didn’t know. Either way, it happened to me all 3 times I’ve ordered. So don’t forget that part unless you want to be suckered into ordering more food.
 

Timeline

It takes about 15 minutes after you’ve placed your order for QuickDelivery to call you. The first time I ordered, I was sure they didn’t get it so I ended up calling them not realizing I also received an email confirmation 2 minutes before I called. They will email you first and then within 5 minutes, you’ll be receiving a call confirming your order. If you’ve ever ordered from QuickDelivery via phone, you know that it takes about 5-10 minutes to place your order. So if you’re starving, do not take this route.
 

Wishlist

Overall, my experience using this app wasn’t so bad. I’ll use it again and will recommend others to try it out too. Although I do have some things on my wishlist for this app:

1. I’d order more often if there are more restaurants to choose from.
2. There should always be images for all food items. This one is self-explanatory. If I’m ordering from a new restaurant, it would help if I can see how that “Seafood Hofan” looks like.
3. I should be allowed to add details regarding my order because it would be easier to just have the customer rep recap all that instead of me explaining it every single time. (I’m the customize-my-order type when it comes to food. No mayo, no lettuce, please have the sauce on the side, etc.)
4. If I’m a regular customer, it would be nice if I will just receive my order without getting a confirmation call. Because really, what’s the point in ordering online or through your phone if I still have to talk to someone to confirm my orders.
5. I should be able to add my credit card info in so I no longer have to worry about preparing cash.

 

More Screenshots

I took some screenshots so I can show them to you. It’s not bad I tell ya. Go try it out if you can. :)