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Gas Cubby by FRAM: A Mutually Beneficial Partnership

Nick Santilli — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 00:00:54 +0000

Over a year ago I had the pleasure of profiling David Barnard’s App Cubby and their growing selection of iPhone applications. David’s attention to detail and the feedback of his many customers has allowed him to grow Gas Cubby into a great app for tracking your automobile’s maintenance, costs, and data. When it was selling for $10 I thought it was worth it, but now with Gas Cubby by FRAM, you can pick it up for free.

While the iPhone gains momentum like the juggernaut it appears to be, the App Store has continued to draw criticism, and yet, developers are still flocking to the platform. The result is that fart apps aren’t cutting it anymore, and every developer must bring their ‘A’ game if they want to have a chance at making it in this business. As with the rest of the business world in this economy, making it as an iPhone App Developer also means being able to evolve.

Gas Cubby evolved as many others have done, and began offering a Lite version that allowed the user to judge for themselves, while logging up to 5 records. But now they’ve taken it to the next level with the free version supported through targeted ads by FRAM (a division of Honeywell). Gas Cubby represents a solid and proven automobile maintenance tracking application for the iPhone platform — something that likely would’ve taken a company like Honeywell a significant amount of time to bring to market and cultivate to Gas Cubby’s level of accomplishment.

What makes this partnership interesting is that it’s one-to-one. The ads within the application aren’t coming from some ad service that rotates several ‘targeted’ graphics, but rather represent a unique collaboration of developer and product manufacturer. The graphics and landing page are all customized to coordinate with Gas Cubby, rather than trying to fit a square peg into a round hole with a link out to a general product page. Tapping one of the ‘Tough Guard’ ads for instance, loads an in-app browser page for FRAM oil filters with information on how to buy. It’s all very well integrated and doesn’t distract from the task at hand.

For Honeywell, they can now target users who care enough about their vehicles that they track all of its data. And thanks to the partnership with App Cubby, they’ve got an insider’s knowledge of the iPhone platform and the landscape of the App Store. The combination sure appears to be a solid match-up that will likely benefit both parties.

If you have yet to pull the trigger on Gas Cubby, you no longer have an excuse not to with Gas Cubby by FRAM. It’s a terrific way to track the health and maintenance of your vehicle, without missing anything important that could lead to more costly expenses. Of course the non ad-supported full version is still available for $6.99.

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Cold Hard Truth of the App Store

Nick Santilli — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 00:00:36 +0000

The design of Apple’s App Store has been receiving a fair bit of criticism from both developer and customers alike. I’m not here to rehash all of that, but rather, to point out the results of a pricing experiment that App Cubby founder, David Barnard performed.

To give a quick backgrounder, a few weeks back David decided to run all of his apps for 99 cents and let users donate what they thought the apps were worth after using them for some time. Well he’s crunched the numbers, and has now posted his thoughts on the experiment.

It’s a great read, and I definitely suggest you check it out in its entirety, but here’s the quick look. Essentially, Barnard has come to the realization that for the most part, the well thought-out and well-developed applications tend to be somewhat niche in nature. These apps are a gamble in the current iteration of the App Store, and represent the developer’s love for his craft, more than a realistic expectation of getting rich from the sales.

While the realities of the experiment may be a bit sobering (not just to David), App Cubby will forge ahead. David has decided to continue to support his well-crafted ‘Cubby apps, release near-term updates as well (as Lite versions for free evaluation), and price all three (Trip, Gas, and Health Cubbys) at $9.99. These steps may seem drastic, but he’s identified his audience and doesn’t care to scrimp on his design goals. A read of his post to see what the road map for App Cubby looks like are surely in order whether you’re a developer of potential customer of App Cubby’s.

David’s next steps seem bold, but clearly he has his customers in mind, as he’s considered the transition from Lite to Paid, with regards to bridging the user data. As I said when I profiled App Cubby a few months back, the prices may seem steep, relative to the rest of the App Store, but David knows the audience he’s targeting, and believes in his product. I think that’s a great stance from a solid developer.

The other side of this coin represents those developers who aren’t willing to duke it out, and turn out the kinds of apps they are truly passionate about. Many a great idea, as David relates in his post, may go unrealized in place of apps that produce a quick laugh but no utility. I’m not sure I fully believe this stance, as there are a lot of young, hungry, talented developers out there who will likely try their hand at the App Store. Their early attempts may be used as the trial from afar by more experienced and proven developers, or just maybe they’ll nail it themselves. Either way, I do agree that the current state of the App Store definitely has its flaws which will make it a longer, more difficult process for the great iPhone and iPod touch apps to shine. But until that changes, I wish David and other great developers like him, good luck as they forge ever forward in their battle to develop and sell quality applications.

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Health Cubby Tracks Realistic Goals

Nick Santilli — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 14:00:50 +0000

From the coders who brought you Trip Cubby and Gas Cubby (both of which I use weekly), comes Health Cubby.

If you’ve used either of the aforementioned iPhone and iPod touch apps from App Cubby you’re already aware of the kind of data collection they are known for, and the subsequent graphs of that data. After playing with Health Cubby over the past couple of weeks, I can honestly say that it carries on the tradition of quality design.

After some hang-ups in the App Store approval process, Health Cubby is now here to help you track your New Year’s resolutions. But unlike many of the other Exercise/Health tracking applications for the iPhone and iPod touch, Health Cubby focuses on less detail and more realistic goals (more on this later). The feature that makes Health Cubby the most interesting of the Health apps I’ve tried, is the ability to sync your progress with friends, using it as a sort of buddy support system — or bragging rights, if you want to use the built-in messaging feature for such things.

Health Cubby’s trackable metrics are sort of an enigma. On the one hand there are very specific bits of data that you can track, such as weight (obviously), body fat percentage (if you have easy access to that sort of data), and various body part measurements. These are all very specific metrics that will help you have a full understanding of the progress (or lack there of) that you are making in your diet and exercise regimen.

On the other side of this coin are Meals and Vices. Tracking meals is just a free form entry of whatever it is you’ve eaten, logging the meal type, a description, notes, and a rating. Vices are the other part — decide how many vices you’ll allow yourself each week, and then log them as you cave. Again, you’ll log the vice type (donuts, fast food, etc) along with a description or note if you see fit. From my perspective tracking such vague details does little good in helping me achieve my goals — I’m more the calorie counting type, but as with anything, your mileage may vary greatly from my own. Of course Health Cubby also tracks your weight exercises and cardio time too.

The true redeeming value of Health Cubby comes with the ability to share your results with friends, and track their progress as well. Whether you’re competing in some sort of ‘Biggest Loser’ competition, or just working out together, it’s a great way to see how the numbers stack up. Of course no App Cubby application would be complete without some snazzy graphs representing the data, and it does this very nicely — both with your personal data, or combined with any friends with which you’re syncing results.

If you prefer to count your calories and know specific numbers from your diet and exercise efforts, Health Cubby probably is not going to be for you. But if you just need to be reminded that you’ve already eaten a dozen donuts and had 15 Big Macs this week, and want to be able to share that with others (so they can either ridicule you or encourage you to enter competitive eating contests), then $4.99 for Health Cubby will be well spent.

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Keep Track of Your Vehicle With Gas Cubby

Nick Santilli — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 18:00:32 +0000

A couple weeks back, Weldon posted a great round up of iPhone Apps for your car. In it, he covered Car Care and AccuFuel, which handle car maintenance and fuel efficiency tracking, respectively. Well this week brings us Gas Cubby from the folks at App Cubby (who I’ve talked about previously), which handles both of these tasks.

The main functions of Gas Cubby are to track your fuel efficiency and maintenance work on your automobile. Due to the nature of this sort of program, it can take a while to actually get a feel for its use, but luckily a quick export from my AccuFuel application (R.I.P.) and I was busy putting the past couple of months’ worth of fuel history into Gas Cubby. Then the recent tire purchase, oil change, and some other random service records later and I had a good baseline with which to analyze this new application.

Fuel Efficiency

Because I was effectively trading out my fuel efficiency application, I’ll start with that part of Gas Cubby. The biggest difference is that when entering your data, you take the reading from the Odometer, not the Trip Meter. Tracking the Odometer makes it possible to keep up with the overall ‘age’ of your car, and allows Gas Cubby to also issue reminders about upcoming service you may need. But more on that in a minute.

I happen to prefer the Odometer reading to the Trip anyhow, because from time to time I forget to reset my Trip, and I’m anal retentive enough to be annoyed that my MPG tracking will be off (by maybe .05 gallons…). The somewhat jarring result in this shift is the fact that when entering the data for your current fill-up, you won’t be getting the MPG for the new tank, until you fill up again. Thinking about this, it actually makes sense – you’re not calculating the MPG on the fuel you’re just now putting in the car! But we’ve sort of been conditioned for instant gratification, and as such, this change may seem peculiar at first blush.

Auto Maintenance

Gas Cubby captures all automotive expenditures (as long as you put them in of course), not just your fuel consumption. So each time you buy new tires (as I just did), or change the oil, brakes, or any other work, Gas Cubby will keep track of it. Truth be told, it’s a little depressing seeing how much I’ve spent on my car over the past 2-3 months. Ah well.

What takes this iPhone application to the next level, is its ability to give you maintenance reminders. My automobile isn’t the newer kind that yell at you and blink a million lights in your face when it’s time to change the oil, so it’s easy for me to forget — especially if that little static sticker in the corner of the windshield falls over prematurely. So now I’ve got Gas Cubby which allows me to configure the duration (in miles or months) before I need to have my next service performed. It defaults to the average timeframes (3,000 miles for oil changes or 12 months for tire rotation, for instance), though these values can be customized to your liking.

My biggest gripe about AccuFuel was the lack of historical information about my data entries. It gave nice graphs of my MPG over time, but nothing more. With Gas Cubby just turn your iPhone to the landscape view and you get a series of graphs representing your mpg over time, price per gallon, total gas costs (tank fill-ups), and total service expenses. Perhaps not all important information, but it’s nice to be able to take a look (especially these days after fuel prices have been declining!). And of course you can track multiple vehicles with Gas Cubby too.

It’s another solid offering from App Cubby. It’ll cost you about two gallons of gas (these days!), that is to say, $4.99 in the App Store.

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AppCubby: iPhone Apps On The Go

Nick Santilli — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 14:18:07 +0000

App Cubby is an Application Development shop out of San Marcos, Texas, that jumped into the fray of iPhone programming back in March of this year. Focusing their attentions squarely on the iPhone-toting worker on the run. Their first offering, Trip Cubby, easily handles expensible mileage, and the already announced Cash Cubby will handle full expense reports. They’ve already begun work on a 2.0 version of the former, while juggling the latter along with a new project as well.

Approaching their products from the user’s point of view helps App Cubby to rely on carefully crafted features and clean interfaces to provide maximum functionality and ease of use to anyone interested in their applications. While many developers are pushing the bleeding edge, often using gimmicky features, the Cubby apps are straightforward and seem to be fully thought-out by the time they come to market.

Trip Cubby (iTunes link) captures all of the mileage information you could need in order to be reimbursed for any travel you may incur. While the entry screen may appear to be lengthy at first glance, most fields are optional and up to you to fill out. Better yet, Trip Cubby is kind enough to remember the useful stuff for you (like last odometer setting, date/time, and even frequent trips you take), making entry even quicker the more you use it. The app even allows you to keep track of whether the reimbursement has been reconciled or not. Add a very tweakable search feature, and the ability to email the results in .csv format and you’re talking about a real winner of an iPhone application. Oh, and version 2 is supposed to let you track mileage using the 3G’s built-in GPS. Slick, eh?

At a regular price of $9.99 (through the end of September – that’s today folks! – you can nab it for a bargain price of $4.99), Trip Cubby tends to ride the edge of the ‘higher’ priced apps available for the iPhone (everything relative of course, many apps seem to reside in the $.99 – $1.99 price range). I asked lead man David Barnard about their pricing decisions, seeing how lower prices generally bring more buyers. Proud of his team’s work, David described Trip Cubby as a “premium product.” He goes on to say:

“I’d rather provide an incredible product and attentive support to people who see value in a polished iPhone app, instead of growing market share on price alone.”

An honorable and well thought-out plan from someone who clearly believes in their product.

Cash Cubby has already been revealed on the developer’s website to be to expense reporting what Trip Cubby is to mileage tracking. As it turns out, Cash Cubby is temporarily on the back burner to make time for Gas Cubby, a forthcoming catch-all for your auto maintenance records. I currently use some MPG-tracking iPhone app (they’re all named the same, so who knows which it is), and it works well enough. But based on my experiences thus far with Trip Cubby, and my new insights to the App Cubby ‘Mission’, I’m hopeful for the upcoming release.

The opportunity for developers to get any old program out on the App Store and make a few quick bucks is surely an enticing one. But the guys at App Cubby are happy to toil on one thing at a time, making sure they’ve thought it all out before moving forward. David explains the difference he feels that App Cubby is capable of, being comprised of a team rather than a singular coder:

“Had either of us [Jon Johnson, being the "Master of Code"] attempted to code Trip Cubby on our own, it wouldn’t be anywhere near as functional and polished as it is today. Had I not contracted with several designers, the icon, website, and UI would be no where near as beautiful as they are today. I’m thrilled to be selling a product that meets my own high standards for what an iPhone app should be. But, I’m even more thrilled that others seem to use and love Trip Cubby as much as I do!”

As a paying customer, I very much appreciate such a methodology, and feel these guys will reap the rewards in the long run rather than making a few quick sales and petering out.

If you’re in need of an easy way to keep tabs on mileage, head on over to App Cubby’s website for a thorough demo (screencast) of its features. (A nice option to have before plunking down your hard earned cash, if you ask me.) If you like what you see, grab Trip Cubby at the bargain price of $4.99 until October 1st.

Thanks to David for taking the time to answer my questions – best of luck to you and your team!

Writer’s note: I am not affiliated with App Cubby, nor do I benefit from a profile of their company. Such coverage will hopefully be a new and regular appearance on The Apple Blog.

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