Stress in small doses is a good thing. Given an achievable goal and controlled timeframe, stress keeps you out of the doldrums. If your boss gives you a challenging project within your resources and abilities, your day flies by. Stress mobilizes you appropriately if you are an antelope running from a lion, or if you are held at gunpoint.

Problems arise when the chase never stops, when your boss gives you tasks you do not have the resources to solve, or when you are stuck in traffic for hours and don’t know if it will end.

Technology is not usually seen as an optimal tool for handling stress. I was doubtful when I began producing Serenity. After fifteen years as a massage therapist, I was sure that technology could do nothing more than create more problems than it solved. But I decided to set doubt aside and suspend preconceived notions.

My first intention for Serenity was to give people a tool to help them pause. I’ve seen way too many folks tie their bodymind into knots — literally — for lack of pausing. I also wanted to help people who could use pleasant distraction from chronic pain, or who wanted to complement stress-reliving things they were doing already (like yoga and meditation).

From the reviews in the app store so far, it looks like the intention came through.

Overall, the reviews are amazing and, although Serenity lacks the mega-hit factor of certain other taptaptap apps, the people using Serenity are passionate about it.

On the website, I alluded to using Serenity to take a “sound bath”. If you just purchased Serenity and are wondering what to do with it, this is a good place to start:

Sound Bath Recipe

Ingredients:

• Serenity
• headphone set or airplay-enabled device
• You

Mix these ingredients in a quiet room. Minimize distractions by closing the door, making sure kids and pets are occupied, the lights are dimmed, ringers and TV off. Make sure that you won’t be too distracted by hunger or thirst. Lay comfortably on the floor or on a couch near the speakers, or put on headphones.

Put a blanket over yourself if you are cold. In a few minutes, your heart rate will start to slow to match, which may cause your body temperature to drop as you relax.

Select a screen that strikes your fancy and set the timer to 15-20 minutes. As the music plays, let the sound wash over you. Focus on your breathing, letting it become deep, slow and regular. Set aside any “to-do’s” that come to mind. Just take note of them and let them go. You can watch the movie play for a while and then close your eyes.

When you are done with your sound bath, get up slowly, stretching a little and transition back to life gently.

Call it the softer, sweeter side of tap tap tap. Call it techno-medicine. I hope you enjoy.

-Flo

The Team

Many talented individuals helped Serenity through its sometimes messy birth process:

Corwin Derkatch – Lead Programmer
Wolfgang Bartelme – Graphic Designer
Florence Arnold – Producer
Josh Mobley – Sound Designer
Art Gillespie – Binaural Beat Generator Programmer
Karl Baron – Web Programmer
John Casasanta – Executive Producer

For all the details on Serenity, please visit http://taptaptap.com/serenity/

We’ve just hit our 6 millionth sale for everyone’s favorite iPhone photo app, Camera+. It’s been a while since I’ve done a sales figures post with all the number/charts/etc. But after taking a look at Camera+ sales over time, I found it interesting to see how much they’ve increased over the past several months, with the bulk of this being attributed to the success of the iPhone 4S.

Here are the weekly sales after Apple’s 30% cut…

The app has earned us a grand total of $5,125,844 to date.

Over the past 6 months, Camera+ revenue has increased over 3x. Play along and fantasize for a second about that trend continuing over time… if it keeps going, by 2018 our daily sales would be twice the world population. Yeah, this growth might not be sustainable over time. Anyway…

The two most relevant things contributing to the large jumps on the right side of the above chart were the launch of the iPhone 4S in early October and the annual Christmas bump. Both were increases that were expected but what’s been surprising is how long each has lasted.

When the iPhone 4S came out, Camera+ sales have approximately doubled and have sustained that new level since then. And with Christmas, even though it occurred weeks ago, sales have increased by about 2/3 more than the level they were before the holiday.

In comparison to last year, even though Camera+ was ranked higher on Christmas Day then (#6 last year versus #8 this year), the app tanked and fell off the Top 100 by the middle of January. This year, it’s actually risen in rank since Christmas and is currently at #4. And the tail of the Xmas bump is looking like it’ll be very long… even weeks after the holiday, sales numbers are still up considerably and not tapering-off by much at all.

It’s pretty obvious that the iPhone 4S has been doing incredibly well since it debuted.

The following graph shows Camera+ total sales over time. It’s interesting to see the increasing trend this way (not to mention the insane slope the last few months).

Various other Camera+ statistics

• on average, a copy of Camera+ is sold approximately every 3 seconds
• Camera+ was the top selling non-game app in the App Store in 2011
• over 5 million out of the total 6 million Camera+ sales have been in just the past 12 months
• Camera+ has had over 950,000 sales in the past 30 days alone
• even with the overall volatility of the App Store, Camera+ has consistently ranked in the Top 10 since early September
• in-app purchases of the “I ♥ Analog” effects pack only account for about 5% of Camera+ total sales, but this still adds up to over 340,000 sales to date, which on its own, would make for a highly successful standalone app

What’s the most surprising thing about all these stats? It’s that Camera+ has achieved all this and has never ranked #1 in either the US Top Paid or Top Grossing charts.

http://campl.us

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Happy New Year everyone! We thought we’d start 2012 with a fun photo project to get everyone shooting and sharing photos and discovering new awesome photography apps.

The Rules:

1. Take & edit a photo with your phone using three different photography apps.
2. Share your photo on Twitter, Facebook or Google+ and mention the three apps you used to take and edit the photo.
3. Add the hashtag #3photoapps

For the above photo of the Santa Monica Pier, I captured the photo in Camera+, added the Retro 70s FX, and cropped the photo square. I then brought the photo into the second app, Percolator which gave it those cool illustrated circles. My third app was Diptic where I combined half of the Percolated image and half of the Camera+ edited image in this collage.

I look forward to seeing all of the amazing photos you create!

Today marks the 1-year anniversary of Camera+ returning to the App Store and us releasing version 2. We’d like to send out a giant thank you to all 5.4 million of you who’ve purchased Camera+! We hope you enjoy using it as much as we enjoy creating it and bringing it to you.

We have a lot coming-up in the very near future with the app that I’m sure you’re going to love. We’re sticking with the the principles that we’ve stuck with all along and continuing to focus on the best photo quality and the best user experience with the app. The Hipstagrams of this world got the every-photo-should-look-the-same, asstastic-70s-retro thing down and we’re working extremely hard to try to truly innovate and do a lot better with Camera+.

http://campl.us

And for last-minute stocking-stuffers for your loved ones, you can give the gift of great photography for just 99¢ right here. It just takes a quick moment and you know how much they’ll appreciate it.

Holidays are the perfect time to capture magic moments with friends and family and take the time get creative with your photography. Here are some simple tips to get the best photos from your iPhone using Camera+.

1. Shoot outdoor lights before it gets too dark

The best time to capture outdoor festive lights with an iPhone is during “blue hour” just before it goes completely dark. Catching the lights while you have enough ambient light will help you avoid getting blurry photos. You can help by using both hands to steady your iPhone while using the stabilizer mode. If you plan on doing a lot of night photography consider investing in a little tripod, the Glif or the Gymbl Pro make great options. Avoid leaning your iPhone on walls or ledges unless you have a protective case, one gust of air or curious cat paw can send your beloved iPhone tumbling onto the hard, unforgiving concrete floor.

2. Capture the sentimental details

It’s the small sentimental things that make your holiday special. Take shots of your favourite ornament, candles, table placings, and bows on gifts. To get great macro shots, position your iPhone at least 2″ away from your subject and tap the screen to focus. Use a second finger to get the proper exposure. Make sure you don’t get too close or the iPhone won’t focus! Also, you may want to add a bit of external light. For the above shot, I held a small twinkle light in front of the ornament to get more light on Santa and the reindeer.

3. Change your perspective by shooting from a low angle

The beauty of shooting with an iPhone is that you can easily move it around and even position it on the floor to get really interesting shots. Changing the angle that you shoot from changes the size of your subject and also plays on the the light and shade and patterns on objects. Get low and make presents look huge as your kids tear open gifts. Play with perspective by shooting from underneath the tree or below a plate of cookies.

4. Use focus settings to capture amazing bokeh lights

One way to get “wow” holiday shots from your iPhone is to position an object in the foreground of a lit tree or some twinkle lights. The lights in the background will become small out of focus light circles called “bokeh”. The trick is to position the object at least 5-10ft away from the lights. Tap to focus on the object and make sure the lights in the background are out of focus, then adjust the exposure by tapping with your second finger. If you aren’t getting any bokeh, you need to move the object further away from the background lights.

5. Compose and fill the frame for great holiday portraits

Photographs of your friends and family are the most precious holiday memories. It’s easy to forget to compose shots with an iPhone, so turn on the grid mode and fill the frame with your subject by getting close and cropping out any background distractions. Since my friends and family are shy, Squatchi agreed to pose for me amid a fervent present wrapping session.

6. Focus on one point of interest

Holiday photos can often get cluttered with people, colours, and lights that all distract from what you are shooting. Use the Depth of Field FX in to blur out the distractions and bring your subject to the forefront. Tap on your photo in the Lightbox and hit FX. You’ll find Depth of Field in the Special FXs.

7. Use Photo flash light to capture beautiful food photos

In between eating plates of cookies, brightly wrapped chocolates, and delicious buffets of yum, snap some photos of your holiday treats. iPhone food photography can turn ugly pretty quickly if you don’t light things properly, so if you are in a dimly lit room or restaurant, instantly add light by using photo flashlight (a continuos light source). Just tap on the flash icon in the shooting screen and choose the photo flashlight icon. Tap on your subject to get focus. Tap again with a second finger to get a second exposure point to get the perfect exposure.

8. Use your headphones as a remote to snap shots in low light

One of the challenges with taking great holiday shots in low light is camera shake. If you are shooting ornaments in a dimly lit room use a tripod and your headphones as a cable release.

9. Tell the story with captions

Make sure you capture the “story” of your holidays from decorating cookies to putting up decorations to loved ones arriving at holiday gatherings. Tell the story of these moments by adding fun captions. First, add a border and then tap the captions button.

10. Head outdoors for winter nature shots

You can capture some of the most spectacular sunsets during winter. Photograph barren frozen landscapes with stark silhouetted trees, or snow covered winter berries. It’s hard to get good photos if your hands are cold! Get some touch-screen compatible gloves so you can use your iPhone outside in cold temperatures. When your hards aren’t freezing you can spend the time to compose and focus on taking great shots.

Magic memories only happen once. Good thing you always have your iPhone and Camera+ in your pocket!

The most thrilling part about working on Camera+ is seeing all the amazing things people are creating with it. It was always our goal to create a tool that would inspire people to take and share their photos.

Don Williams, Editor of Ultimate MotorCycling, set out on his Harley-Davidson Switchback to conquer the open road on Route 6, the longest continuous highway in the US. Instead of weighing himself down with his bulky professional dSLR, he decided to travel light, capturing his entire journey on his iPhone using Camera+.

Don says in his article, “Just as painting is not about the brushes and paint, neither is photography about the camera. It’s about the person operating the camera and what he does with the images.” I couldn’t agree more.

“Everything happened with a camera phone and a 99¢ app from the Apple App Store.” Read about Don’s epic adventure here.

I hope this story inspires you to head out on your own iPhone photography adventure with Camera+. You might want to leave the Hog riding to the experts though

One of the challenges with taking great iPhone photos is trying to take clear photos with minimal camera shake. Using the on-screen shutter button was challenging and extremely frustrating, especially in low light or whilst eating chicken wings. To solve this problem, especially the “greasy fingers on screen issue”, Camera+ added the ability to take a photo using the volume controls on your iPhone. After a few initial “hiccups”, we are thrilled to have VolumeSnap back in Camera+!

VolumeSnap allows you to hold your iPhone like a real camera steady your shots with both hands and quickly snap shots avoiding camera shake. The great part about VolumeSnap is that it also works with the volume up control on your headphones. Just plug in your headphones and snap photos with the volume up “+” button.

While we’ve seen some huge improvements on the low light capability of the iPhone 4S, sometimes it’s necessary to use a tripod to avoid getting blurry photos when there isn’t enough ambient light like in a dimly lit room, outside at night, or shooting macros. For these shots, you can use your headphones as a cable shutter release to snap the photo without touching your iPhone creating camera shake.

Ahh, the iPhone self-taken shot. I think we all tired of our seeing giant out-of-focus arms in self-taken iPhone shots of us and our bf/gf/bff/frenemy. Just pop in your headphone and trigger the shot from a distance that’s flattering your your arm as well as your face. Remember you can also tap to get a better exposure if your shot is blowing out.

Snapping photos with your headphones is an excellent way to get incredibly candid street shots or in places where some mean security will yell at you for taking photos which happens to me almost every day. No need for full ninja gear anymore, you can listen to music while surreptitiously snapping shots with your headphones. Works like a charm!

Do you have any useful tips for using VolumeSnap to get great shots? Let us know in the comments below!

Check out Camera+ if you don’t already have it!

Apple has just put out their “Rewind 2011” feature in iTunes and Camera+ is the top selling app of the year (as Apple did with some of their lists, I’ve taken the liberty of separating games from non-games). With well over 5 million copies sold to date, this undoubtedly makes Camera+ the top selling non-game app of all time.

I’d like to send out a big thanks to all the members of our Camera+ team here who’ve worked their asses off for the past 2.5 years on the app to make it what it is today. And I’d also like to send a big thanks out to all of you who’ve supported us by purchasing Camera+ and providing us with feedback on it, which has greatly helped us set the direction of the app over time.

We have many, many great things planned for the future of the app. I know that there are several things that many of you really want in the app and I, as the producer of the app, assure you that we’re working extremely hard on bringing many of them to you. We’d rather give you something truly great than something half-assed so sometimes things take a lot longer than anyone likes, but we strongly feel that this is the right way to do things. All we ask is that you have some patience and I promise that we’ll continue to deliver to you the best photography app ever.

http://campl.us

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In my last post about Camera+ 2.3.2 being available, I somehow managed to offend most Satanists (along with a Britney Spears fan or two). So I’d like to start this post off with me expressing my deepest, most sincere apology to all the sensitive Satanists of the world (screw the Britney fans). To make-up for the gaffe, I sacrificed a virgin the other day.

And now, onto the update news. Yet another bug fix release. Here’s the list…

Since we’ve lost about a week’s worth of I ♥ Analog FX Pack sales over the bug mentioned above, I figure that now’s a great time to throw-in a shameless plug for it. That’s right, you can make your photos look this cool for just 99¢…

As mentioned in my previous post, this version of Camera+ is the last version that will support iOS 3. This doesn’t mean that iOS 3 users won’t be able to use Camera+ any longer… this current version should serve them well until the end of time… it just means that they won’t be able to use any future updates. This is great for the 99.999% of our users who are using iOS 4 and iOS 5 since this means that we’re now able to make faster progress on the app and will help reduce the chance of bugs creeping in the app (the first two bugs in the list were a result of us still supporting iOS 3 in the app).

So on that note, I’ll leave you with this to prepare you for the upcoming Camera+ 2.4…

http://campl.us

Camera+ 2.3.2 just made its way into the App Store. I’d love to be announcing a big, new version loaded with hella-features, but this bug-fix version will have to suffice for now until the upcoming version 2.4 is out. The great thing is that this version addresses a bunch of issues that have been plaguing many of you and, until now, have been very elusive to us.

Grab it now at http://campl.us

Here’s are the release notes…

BREAKING NEWS: A new bug ☹

Shortly after releasing 2.3.2, we found out that there’s an issue when attempting to purchase the I ♥ Analog FX Pack. We’ve already submitted a 2.3.3 update and hopefully it’ll get approved quickly (2.3.2 got approved blazingly fast compared to the past, so it looks like Apple may have recently streamlined their app review process).

iOS 3: die, die, die!

It gives me great pleasure to announce that version 2.3.3 is the very last Camera+ version that will work on iOS 3.x. To put it bluntly, supporting iOS 3 a huge pain in the ass for us. It takes resources away from actually moving the app forward because we often need to special-case the code so that the app will work with the mostly obsolete OS. And this causes us to have to test many code paths. It’s simply not a good use of available resources, especially since there are so few people still using iOS 3.

In fact, the aforementioned I ♥ Analog FX Pack bug was caused by us having to deal with legacy code issues. It’ll be really nice to see iOS 3 support go away so that we can focus on adding cool things to the app and not supporting ancient history.

Some made-up statistics about iOS 3 users…

• 76% of iOS 3 users are Satanists
• 59% of iOS 3 users own at least 3 Britney Spears albums
• 82% of iOS 3 users hate puppies, kitties, and bunnies
• 67% of iOS 3 users secretly want to get an Android phone
• a whopping 94% of iOS 3 users believe in Creationism

I’m sure there are scads more. And that’s exactly why we have comments…

I’m very happy to announce another major Camera+ milestone today with it hitting the 4 million sales mark. To put it lightly, Camera+ has sold far beyond our wildest imaginations and there appears to be no end in sight.

Here’s how it all breaks down, week-by-week…

iPhone sales downward slide?

What’s interesting to note about the graph is the slight downward trend for the last several months, even though we’ve managed to hold approximately the same place in the charts over that time period. I would’ve expected an overall upward trend, but I suspect that all things iPhone have been on somewhat of a downward trend with all the anticipation for the iPhone 5… I mean 4S. And the fact that it’s being released about 3 months after Apple typically releases a new iPhone model surely hasn’t helped things in this regard.

This all being said, with today being iPhone 4S launch day, I’m pretty confident that we’re literally just moments away from the next explosive trend that should last a very long time.

The future of Camera+

With iOS 5 and the iPhone 4S out now with a much improved camera, we have a ton of awesome things upcoming in the app. And beyond utilizing what Apple gives to us in the OS and the hardware, we have some incredibly cool things that are being developed and are planned for the future. I don’t want to show our hand just yet, but you’re going to be very excited about what’s coming down the road.

Camera+ and VolumeSnap

[THIS SPACE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK]

…for now…

The real legacy of Steve Jobs

With the passing of Steve Jobs last week, much has been said and written about his legacy. It’s impossible to talk about this in any form without mentioning his many contributions to the tech world like the Macintosh, the iPod, the iPhone, the iPad, etc, etc, etc. But, in my opinion, his real legacy is about the values he imparted onto his company.

The thing that will last infinitely long is that he drove and inspired people, both within Apple and outside Apple with companies like ours at tap tap tap and countless other peers, to strive for excellence in what they do. That’s what will live on from Steve Jobs far, far beyond any particular piece of hardware or software that he helped create. That’s the real legacy of Steve Jobs and that’s how he contributed to putting a lasting dent in this universe.

We try our hardest to build teams here that possess these values and qualities and we do everything we can to try to create incredible products for you, especially with an app like Camera+. It’s how we got to this milestone and how we’ll continue onto the next ones.

The Camera+ video mosaic

Lisa made a video mosaic to commemorate our 4 millionth sale which is made up of thousands and thousands of photos that were taken and shared by you with Camera+. Be sure to check it out because it’s pretty damn cool…

Thanks to all of you for helping us reach this huge milestone!

http://campl.us

Congrats to Alex Ferdean for winning this week’s Photo Contest showcasing our new captions feature with this breathtaking wedding shot. Big thanks to everyone for entering this week! As always, there were so many amazing shots to choose from!

Here are my honourable mentions:

Stay tuned for our next Camera+ photo contest!

There are so many incredible artists creating such moving images with Camera+. We wanted to start showcasing some of our favourite photographers who have inspired us with their creative and breathtaking photos.

Our first featured artist is Scott Wise. Scott is a multi-disciplinary designer from Toronto, Canada. He and his wife, Elizabeth, visited Iceland in June of 2011 during the summer solstice, here are the spectacular results of this journey:

http://campl.us/iceland

We’ve just released Camera+ 2.3.1. What’s new this time around? Honestly, not much.

The bulk of this release revolves around us fixing a bunch of elusive crashes… well, more like crashes that were previously elusive to us since we either didn’t know of their existence or we didn’t have enough info on them to be able to fix them.

But ever since adding HockeyApp, AKA “The Crashinator” to Camera+ 2.3, we’ve been able to gather far more data on crashes than we’ve ever been able to in the past. This, in turn, has helped us to identify and squash a ton of crashes that have been affecting some of you.

Is 2.3.1 a totally crash-free version? It’s doubtful… Camera+ is a fairly complicated app, and it’s close to impossible to guarantee that nothing will go wrong with it. But we’re confident (and very hopeful) that this version is the most stable one that we’ve ever released. And because of this new crash reporting system, future releases will likely become even more solid.

In addition to Operation Crashy Fixie, we’ve made some tweaks and fixes to the newly added captions feature. Here are the full release notes for 2.3.1…

Go grab the Camera+ 2.3.1 update now in the App Store. And if you’re one of the few who don’t yet have it, here’s your chance to own it while it’s still on sale for a paltry 99¢!