If you haven’t heard of Bottle Rocket, we are a rapidly growing mobile development company at the forefront of the mobile app revolution. We have developed and released over 50 high profile, interesting apps for companies like NPR, PBS, Discovery Channel, Disney, American Express, AARP, Bravo, ESPN, SPIN Magazine, BET, History Channel, as well as extremely popular games such as Doodle Bomb and Annoying Orange Kitchen Carnage. Our apps are regularly featured by Apple, included in their national advertising campaigns, used in Apple Retail Stores on demo equipment and many have been awarded Apple’s coveted App of the Week. We estimate that over 15 million people use the apps we have built. These apps are just the tip of the iceberg. We continue to push the envelope of design and architecture and have literally dozens of new projects you may find very interesting.

We will be covering the basics of iOS development in Objective-C using XCode 4. This 6 hour bootcamp will begin at 10 am, and last until 4 pm. Lunch will be provided free of charge. If you have a MacBook or MacBook Pro, please bring it pre-installed with XCode 4. If not, we will have a limited number of computers on-hand for your use. We will be combining classroom instruction with hands-on development. We are only interested in serious candidates, and will be using our interaction and observations of you during this session to select the top candidates for our summer internship program.

If you are serious about a paid iOS development internship this summer, please respond to bootcamp@bottlerocketapps.com by Thursday, April 28th 2011.

Just two days after its release, The Civil War Today, an unprecedented iPad app created by Bottle Rocket Apps for A&E Television Networks’ HISTORY®, was named the iPad App of the Week on the iTunes App Store and rocketed to the #1 paid iPad app in the Entertainment category.

In a first for a non-news app, The Civil War Today brings the history of this tragic conflict to life by revealing the story in real time—beginning two days ago with the April 12, 1861 attack on Fort Sumter, and unfolding day by day over the next four years, exactly as the events happened 150 years earlier. The app weaves the iPad’s multi-touch interface together with original narratives, photographs (some never before seen), battle maps, diaries, letters, and other emotional first-person accounts to immerse the user in this dark chapter of American history in a way never before possible.

“This extraordinary app lets users touch and feel history, using gestures to explore and interact with original historical documents,” said Dan Suratt, Executive Vice President, Digital Media and Business Development for A&E Television Networks, the parent of HISTORY® and AETN Digital Media. “And experiencing the American Civil War in a serialized, ‘real-time’ manner provides a new and extraordinarily powerful way to understand one of our country’s landmark events.”

Every day, for the next four years, the app’s period-style “broadsheet” will deliver new feature stories, photographs, historical events, newspapers, and the personal perspectives of 15 actual individuals—from President Abraham Lincoln to ordinary soldiers on both sides of the conflict—tied to the events that occurred 150 years earlier. In addition, users can explore finely detailed battle maps, test their knowledge by answering a daily quiz question, accumulate “medals” for period-appropriate activities and share their achievements in Apple’s GameCenter, view in-app video clips wirelessly on their Apple TV through AirPlay, and even tap out Twitter “telegrams” in Morse code using a virtual telegraph key. And users who can’t visit the app every day need not worry about missing anything: a scrollable timeline lets them return to any previous day to see the events on that date.

When paired with an Apple iPad 2, The Civil War Today becomes a history educator’s dream teaching aid. The video mirroring capabilities built into iPad 2 allow an entire classroom to view the app on an HDTV or HD projector. Students will be captivated as they watch their teacher tap, swipe and flick through each day of content and pinch-zoom into high-resolution maps, period newspapers, handwritten diaries and photographs.

“All of us at Bottle Rocket were immediately captivated by A&E’s vision for The Civil War Today,” said Calvin Carter, president of Bottle Rocket. “We have been privileged to partner with A&E to craft an educational and engaging mobile experience that, quite simply, is unlike anything that has ever been done before. It’s a tremendous honor to have this revolutionary concept recognized as iPad App of the Week.”

The Civil War Today for iPad is available for download in the iTunes App Store at http://bit.ly/CivilWarToday. A single $7.99 purchase opens the door to four years of daily content and updates in this one-of-a-kind app experience.

About Bottle Rocket Apps

Bottle Rocket Apps (www.bottlerocketapps.com) is a full-service mobile app development firm, focused on creating mission-critical, premium brand experiences for the Apple iPhone and iPad and Android devices. Since its founding in early 2008, Bottle Rocket has completed more than 50 iPhone, iPad and Android apps for leading brands such as NPR, PBS, Disney, ESPN, The Seattle Times, Discovery Channel, BET, SPIN Magazine, American Express and AARP. The company’s apps have won numerous industry accolades for innovative and user-centered design, and frequently appear at the top of their categories on the iTunes App Store. The Bottle Rocket team of senior strategists, architects, developers and artists work their magic from the company’s offices in Dallas, Texas.

About AETN Digital Media and HISTORY®

AETN Digital Media, a division of A&E Television Networks, LLC, is a leading provider of digital content for properties including HISTORY®, Lifetime, A&E, Biography, Roiworld, DressUpChallenge, Lifetime Moms and MothersClick. More than 14 million unique visitors per month engage with the company’s digital brands across 14 properties, and millions more consume the content via syndication, social media and mobile.

HISTORY® and HISTORY HD® are the leading destinations for revealing, award-winning original non-fiction series and event-driven specials that connect history with viewers in an informative, immersive and entertaining manner across multiple platforms. Its programming, which has been recognized with a total of 23 Peabody and Emmy® Awards, covers a diverse variety of historical genres ranging from military history to contemporary history, technology to natural history, as well as science, archaeology and pop culture. The HISTORY website, located at www.history.com, is the leading online resource for all things history, featuring over 20,000 videos, images, audio clips, articles and interactive features that allow visitors to dig deeper into a broad range of thousands of historical topics.

As a follow up to Apple’s iPad 2 and iOS4.3 announcement at the beginning of March, Bottle Rocket was proud to have Discovery Channel HD featured at the event for users and the press to experiment with AirPlay, where you tap on the AirPlay icon and the video begins playing on your Apple TV.

Read, listen and watch more of your favorite quality programming on some of these great iPad apps developed by Bottle Rocket:

• Disney CraftFinder
• ESPN The Magazine
• NPR
• SPIN Play

Calvin Carter, president of Bottle Rocket, founded the company on March 7, 2008, literally the day after Apple CEO Steve Jobs announced that the company planned to open the iTunes App Store and the new iPhone 3G to third party apps. “I knew immediately that the iPhone would redefine the way we live our lives,” says Carter. “It was a game-changing platform that united information, instant access and unlimited range like no other tool in history.”

Realizing the new platform’s potential, however, required experimentation, innovation, careful design—and mistakes. Lots of them. “To learn quickly, we had to make our mistakes fast,” Carter says, “so rather than jumping directly into writing code, we began designing our apps with pencil sketches on graph paper. The ‘pencils’ were fast, inexpensive, and easy to erase and change. And they allowed us the creative space to explore unlimited new ways to make an app both intuitive and emotionally engaging.” The pencil sketch phase continues today as a hallmark of Bottle Rocket’s highly-regarded app strategy and design process.

By the end of 2008, Bottle Rocket had released nine iPhone apps—ranging from productivity tools to utilities to entertainment titles—while most developers had only managed to field one or two during the same period. “We wanted to send a clear message that Bottle Rocket had arrived. We weren’t just dipping out toe in the water. We were fully committed, regardless of the outcome,” says Carter.

The robustness and user-centered design of Bottle Rocket’s early apps got the company noticed by Apple—with which Bottle Rocket maintains a close business relationship to this day—and began to generate inquiries from prominent companies looking for apps of their own. Bottle Rocket’s first custom development client, early in 2009, was NPR. “We competed fiercely against eleven other capable developers to win NPR’s business,” Carter is quick to point out. “We were successful because we were truly passionate about the platform, approached the project as though it was our own app, spoke frankly and honestly with NPR, and worked tirelessly to develop something truly remarkable.” The resulting app, NPR News for iPhone, debuted in August 2009 and quickly became the top news app in the iTunes App Store, garnering praise from both critics and users.

The success of NPR News for iPhone brought Bottle Rocket new requests for custom app development, and the company quickly proved to the industry that it wasn’t a one-hit wonder. In late 2009 and 2010, ESPN, HD Radio, Disney, PBS, The Seattle Times, the National Science Foundation, SPIN Magazine, AARP, Discovery Channel, BET, Philips, American Express and more all selected Bottle Rocket over every other app developer to bring their brands to Apple’s mobile devices.

When Apple released the iPad on April 3, 2010, Bottle Rocket was ready with not just one, but four original apps designed specifically for the new tablet, including the award-winning NPR for iPad, one of the most popular iPad apps of all time. And later that year, Bottle Rocket brought its disciplined methodology to bear on Android devices as well, with several new custom apps for Android phones and tablets coming to the Android Market in the first half of 2011.

Today, users recognize that the “Developed by Bottle Rocket” label on an app means they are in for an experience of extraordinary quality and depth. Because of their popularity, innovation and user-centered design, Bottle Rocket’s custom creations quickly vault to prominence in the App Store, achieving rankings and accolades such as the #1 Free iPad App (Discovery Channel HD), #4 Entertainment App and Apple’s iPhone App of the Week (PBS for iPhone), #2 News App (NPR for iPad), #1 News App (NPR News for iPhone), #3 Music App (NPR Music), and #4 Business App (AMEX OPEN Forum).

As of its third birthday, Bottle Rocket has completed and delivered more than 50 premium apps, with almost 20 additional titles under development. The company is unique in that it continues to work its magic on its own apps, such as the wildly popular Doodle Bomb physics puzzle game (which reached the #1 Free iPhone App spot in 2010), alongside the blockbuster apps it crafts for its clients. “As we enter our fourth year in business, Bottle Rocket is ready for even more explosive growth,” says David Goldstein, Bottle Rocket’s director of business development. “We have barely begun to explore the potential for these exceptionally innovative mobile platforms. There’s a lot of history yet to be written in this industry, and we feel privileged to have a hand in writing it.”

Want to know what PBS programs are available or coming up? No problem, just check out the Programs section which lists videos from all PBS programs or the Previews section of the app to view clips from several upcoming shows.

Want to watch a PBS program you love right now? The Spotlight section is where you can find full episodes, short clips and highlights of your favorite PBS programs.

Don’t want to miss the PBS shows you love? Then check out the app’s Schedule where you can set a reminder and invite family and friends to watch with you by sharing through Facebook, Twitter and email.

What makes this app great is that all video content streams nicely over wifi as well as 3G so you have access to video of your favorite PBS programs whenever you’re connected.

The PBS iPhone app can be downloaded for free from the App Store so definitely download it if you haven’t yet.

Guess what app is the only one appearing on the mobile twice?

This article from Gartner is dense with statistics on mobile phone sales, smartphones in particular, during Q3 2010 vs. Q3 2009 — there are definitely some comparable numbers in here. But what we found to be particularly interesting is the following excerpt about the competitive smartphone market Apple continues to provide with iOS.

Apple’s dramatic expansion of iOS with the iPad and the continuing success of the iPod Touch are important sales achievements in their own right. But more importantly they contribute to the strength of Apple’s ecosystem and the iPhone in a way that smartphone-only manufacturers cannot compete with,” Ms. Milanesi said. “To a developer, the iPod Touch and iPhone (and to a lesser extent the iPad) are effectively the same device and a single market opportunity… Apple claims it is activating around 275,000 iOS devices per day on average — that’s a compelling market for any developer. And developers’ applications in turn attract users.”

In its review, Appolicious says that Doodle Bomb  “is surprisingly difficult…. There are 65 levels in all, and your goal is to open doors by bombing various switches. Of course, there’s a lot more to it than that. You encounter guards who will shoot your bomb before it gets to its intended target and, at times, you’ll have to utilize anti-gravity switches and roll bombs on ceilings to complete the level. You control your bombs by simply tapping an area on the screen and, once it’s landed, by tilting your device to roll the bomb left or right.”  The author goes on to warn–and we’ve heard this same lament from hundreds of addicted Doodle Bomb users–”just be prepared to devote some time to this gem”.

Doodle Bomb is one of Bottle Rocket’s most popular iPhone games ever, with more than 500,000 downloads to date.   MacWorld gave Doodle Bomb its Editors Choice Award and rated it “5 Stars”, and Apple has recognized Doodle Bomb many times, most recently in July 2010 as one of the “Best Doodle Games”.

If you haven’t tried Doodle Bomb yet, what are you waiting for?  Download this famous physics puzzler today from the App Store, and join the fight today!

Some reasons why users might download more iTunes paid apps could be:

• iTunes has an easy purchasing system.
• Popular paid apps are easily highlighted.
• The iPhone is positioned as a premium phone so your users are more likely to be the type of user who buys paid apps.

Are there other reason you think people might be more willing to purchase paid apps from iPhone over Android?