Shifty Emails

MERICA IS A FUNNY PLACE

Hi from the Great Lakes of the United States. Well, not IN the Great Lakes, rather near them.

I notice you updated the already superb Pocket Casts program.It’s prettier, fancier and easier to use.

I don’t like that. Now my wife is using the program on my phone and doesn’t need to ask me how to use it and I end up with a bunch of Oprah and Doctor Drew podcasts clogging up my phone.

Please make your program ugly and more difficult to use for the sake of my marriage. You have a good head start with another inexplicable icon to represent Pocket Casts.Now make the program equally confusing.

Also,I still see that you don’t have a weather app for the US.Not sure if your aware but former vice president Al Gore invented the internet and as a result we deserve a good weather app. I tried to use the Australian app but there must be a bug because the temps were too high and it suggests we are in the summer when everyone knows it is the middle of winter. Also it is using a temperature scale I am unfamiliar with. Temps are supposed to have a suffix of F not C. Duh.Also I couldn’t find Chicago on the app. Lame.

Thanks for everything and if you can make the changes I suggested that would be great.

Sincerely,

[Name removed to avoid fanmail]

Lake in the Hills, IL USofA

P.S.

You misspelled the word “favorite” with a “u” by mistake.

Where is this USofA place? Is it the wonderland I’ve heard of where everyone is yelling “MERICA” and “FREEDOM” with flags and bald eagles everywhere? Sounds nice, except I don’t like yelling.

Now I’ve never been called a marriage counsellor before, but I’d suggest that what you have here is an opportunity to take your relationship to the next level. Your wife loves podcasts. You love podcasts. Let the love of podcasts unite you…and…well I really have no idea where I’m going with this. Perhaps for your wedding anniversary you could buy her an Android device of her very own? I heard chicks dig Samsung ones, though don’t get a ‘Galaxy Note’…you don’t want that giant thing setting her expectations too high. Next she’ll want a 150” TV, bigger oven and, well you follow my drift.

As for the weather app, we’ll consider it, but will you ever consider joining us in the metric system? It really is all sunshine and rainbows once everything is divisible by hundreds and ‘40’ is HOT.

Favourite. Colour. Aluminium. There I did it ;)

Not all of our customers are insane…only most of them

Greetings overlords of The Shifty Jelly Kingdom!

Round up all ye Jelly Shifters for I have a great tale to spin.

Once upon a time there was a fair princess who loved nothing more than listening to someone talk, so she longed for a prince that would never stop talking. She searched the land through and through and still could not find a prince that loved to talk as much as she loved to listen.

She found a prince that claimed he loved to talk, but he took so long to start speaking that the princess left before he even started.

She found another prince that claimed he loved to talk, but he only spoke for a few minutes before he just stopped and stared blankly at the wall until the princess slapped his face, and then he had to start at the beginning again because he lost his place.

She even found a prince that talked and talked and talked but he insisted on only wearing underwear and he never let the princess decide what he should talk about. So, the princess grew disgusted and bored and decided to go to the mysterious lands of the Shifting Jellies to see if the very last prince had anything good to say.

What she found at the mysterious lands of the Shifting Jellies she will never forget. EVERYONE never stopped talking even for one minute -unless specifically asked to by the princess- and they always invited the princess to suggest a topic of discussion. They never said anything boring and they let the princess listen as long as she wanted.

After staying for quite some time, she found the prince and invited him to come back to the castle with her where he never stopped talking and she never stopped listening and they lived happily ever after.

:P

Seriously, though, I searched through almost every podcast app out there and never found one that I liked until I found your app. I love it! I do have a suggestion, though. I think it would be great to be able to open a podcast and just be able to swipe to the next podcast rather than having to press back or press the tiled icon on the bottom and return to the home screen to pick the next podcast.

That way when I arrange the tiles to show podcasts with the latest episodes first, I can open the first one and just swipe to see the next one when I am ready.

I hope that makes sense, the more I read over it the less sure I am. But I’m not sure how else to word it. Just let me know and I can compose a slide show to illustrate what I mean visually.

Have a great day!

Daughter Dearest,

Your mother tells me that you have, at long last, found the a suitor, a prince no less. I hear that he’s a fine fellow, who will treat my little princess with the respect and give her the verbosity that she so deservers. As your dad, I can’t tell you how happy this makes me, it really warms the depths of my bowels. You are after all 19 years old, and entering the twilight of your years. I do hope that we’ll see some fine grandchildren next year.

Well…that kinda got awkward really quickly. Anyway glad you’re liking our app and welcome aboard. I assume you have the iOS version, and I like your idea. I think you’ll find that version 4.0 (that we’re currently working on) will give you all that and more. In the meantime we have an extremely clumsy ‘playlist’ feature, which you can add downloaded episodes to and have them play one after the other. Like I say, it’s a bit clunky at the moment. To add an episode either turn on the option that auto-adds downloaded episodes to it, or tap the episode in the list, tap the share button, then tap ‘Add To Playlist’. You’ll find the playlist itself on the now playing page.

By the way: thanks for the crazy email. Combined with your Google+ profile picture we really did all have a good laugh…and I think a few of us may have mouthed the letters ‘W T F’ as well. #winning!

SHIFTY SMASSSH

First of all, I want to say.. Fantastic work! By far the best Podcast app I have used. I wanted to let you know that I have been using this app on my android for a while. I also want to let you know that I have pirated your software. Im not proud of it, and I’m not bragging. I simply wanted to try it before I buy it type of deal. Aside congratulating your team on this awesome app I’m also coming to you on a sort of hopeful front. Hopeful that you may see in this bad economy, we cant pay for everything. I’m not asking for charity or a handout, more along the lines of a “discount”. As a former Apple employee, I understand the relationship a company like yourself would have with someone with my aptitude for communication and charm to the general public. Any help would be greatly appreciated. If not, I totally understand and will continue to use your product to the fullest and will definitely make the full purchase when my purse allows for it. Keep up the good work and thanks J

I’m always confused by emails like these. You run an expensive smart phone, presumably on an expensive phone plan. You do that because you probably feel like you need it. Our app costs $3. I’ll do you a deal, I’ll show you some magic whereby you’ll be able to afford to buy it yourself, restore your dignity, and get some self-confidence back.

The next time you go to buy one of the following:

- chocolate bar

- soft drink

- coffee

- lolly/chewing gum

- cake

- anything under $3

Stop yourself, put that change into your pocket. Pretty quickly you’ll save $3. Either that or search the couch while you watch Netflix with the wife or play Skyrim [Note: he linked his Twitter, Google+ and Facebook profiles at the bottom of the email and he certainly wasn’t doing it tough]. I’m a nice guy, but don’t kid yourself, there’s no excuse for piracy. You think you have it tough? We ran out of money last month, because, in no small part, people like you cost us money (server hosting and load) while not giving us anything back. I don’t pull punches, I hope you feel guilty as hell and man up and buy our app.

Bob delivers…

Love the weather app chaps, but I just have to say…

Please get rid of that bird next to the ‘feels like’ number. I keep thinking it’s a minus sign.

Hi,

We’ll remove those two rain drops from the next version, just for you Bob. We expect a xmas card though, chocolates would probably be asking too much, but a xmas card would be nice ;)

All the best from your new friends,

Team Shifty Jelly

Deal.

Some Animals are Beloved

BEST on the market, But I think it’s Terrible that 7 Animals were hurt during the making of this app. Keep up the great work.

Would it help if we told you they were rats? We ran them through mazes in an attempt to get them to predict podcasting trends. The experiment was a failure, and the Norwegian Scientist involved has been fired.

Strangely it does make me feel better, (rats don’t have feelings) And I gave you guys a 5 star review awhile ago, just thought i’d send an Email because at also works great on my Nexus 7.

VERY VERY VERY Disappointing…

I used to love Pocket Weather AU for the iPad lads, but paying for updates now? VERY VERY VERY disappointing
I will avoid ALL Shiftyjelly Apps in future

Regards

Rob

I used to know a Rob Brown, he was a great guy, I’m guessing you’re not him though (from SA, used to work at Saab)?

Anyhoo I don’t think there’s any shame in us charging for an update after 4 years of free and constant updates. You may not have made the connection, but we pay for Bureau of Meteorology data and we run very expensive servers. We also have kids to feed and send to school, and this is our full time job. $2 is not a lot to ask for an optional update. If it’s a choice of that or go out of business and turn off all access to our apps, then we’ll take the $2 every 4 years option anytime.

You can read more about it here:

http://blog.shiftyjelly.com/2012/08/02/announcing-the-new-pocket-weather-australia/

I’m in WA, my comments may mean you think I’m a not such a great guy, but I am giving frank feedback, which is probably better then none? Yes you have costs, but you are competing in the apps marketplace, and you are the first instance in which i have experienced payment for an update as being required. Perhaps the marketplace needs to change, perhaps updates at a cost lower then buying the app from “new” would be the way to start?

I do appreciate the feedback, and I really did know a Rob Brown, but we have to be honest with one another. $2 is very cheap for anything. You can’t even buy a coffee for that these days. As developers we have a responsibility to ourselves, our users and our families to stay in business making great apps. Releasing updates for free forever is simply not sustainable. I realise that’s the expectation out there, but if we don’t change it, then all the good developers will eventually disappear, and you’ll be left with the EA Sports of the world milking you for $5 of in-app currency, and apps that let you stretch your belly to make you look pregnant.

Our app is already cheaper than it’s predecessor, when you consider you can now run it on your iPad and iPhone for $2, vs $4 that it cost before. But upgrade pricing on a $2 app? That just strikes me as ridiculous.

At the end of the day, I don’t mind if you buy our app or not, but we have to face facts, this is unavoidable. Either you will give that $2 to a company that goes out of business, and turns off their servers, or you’ll give it to a company like us who is actively planning to be around in 2 years time. The choice is yours. I think if you were to examine all the dealings we’ve ever had with our customers via email, twitter, Facebook and the App Store, that we’ve always been open, honest and reliable. If that’s not something you want to support, then that’s up to you, but that’s the kind of business we run.

Update #2 on the puppy saga

Very funny! I’m still pissed off with the crappy app!

Sent from my iPhone

Are you actually being serious? If so what exactly about it is crappy? Don’t leave us hanging.

I’ve attached a picture of one of our iOS coder thinking deeply about what on earth you could possibly think was bad about our app.

Defuse Bombs With Puppies

This is the worst weather app ever! And I paid $1.99. Really pissed off. My email is [email removed]

Hi Kathryn,

Is this one of our friends trying to be funny (we have a lot of want to be smart alecs we know) or do you have an actual complaint? If so we’re all ears ;)

In anticipation of your complaint, we’ve attached a picture to help get you in the right mood.

Don’t Make Shifty Cry

The new app is hands down outstanding. Chapeau to the team! $1.99 feels like stealing candy from a baby—way too cheap for an app of such quality, care, thought and love. Fantastic work to team shifty jelly—the real olympic champions.
Thanks for all your work!

More emails like this! (this one is about http://www.shiftyjelly.com/ios/pocketweatherau)

Ahhh little brothers…

Please right back

Hi,

We do reply to emails. Are you in need of assistance? :)

Come on

What dose that mean please right back now

Hi,

You’ve completely lost us. What is it you need?

Sorry for all those e-mails because my brother rote it so I’m so sorry

No need to be sorry. Enjoy the rest of your day :)

Sorry but I think no thanks or I will get in trouble by my parents thanks tho

Followed by:

Please right back

And

Are you going to right back

Then

Can you talk to me again like on the email please right back yes or no and do it right now now

and finally:

Did I miss out on it please right back