Mayday is an app that gives you non-emergency police phone numbers in the US. While it has the options to call 911 and the highway patrol, it comes with some 15,000 phone numbers of police stations around the country. For most of them, you can get directions to the stations as well.

It’s designed mostly for your convenient when you’re on the road, because 911 is not always the best choice. However, it should be noted that this app should only be used in non-emergency cases, and in all life-threatening situations, you should dial 911.

The best thing is this app does not require internet access to get to the information, and even if you don’t have GPS, you can enter your zipcode and it’ll work as well. When you do have GPS data, it’ll automatically locate you and find the nearest police stations. I understand the frustration of slow internet search, and this was definitely a top priority in the product design process,

You can read it up more about it here.

We’re delighted to announce that we’ve released 1 Click Call & BF Caller on the App Store. GF Caller was quite popular, but there were a lot of desired improvements, which we’ve added to these two apps:

-No more counter

-You can select any of a contact’s phone number

-A gender neutral selection

http://www.openxfer.com/sweetheart/

And something coming soon is the ability to change number without uninstalling. We’ve investigated the ability to change icon and picture for the application, but are as yet unsuccessful as it may not be possible given current constraints.

We hope you update your product reviews of our product appropriately!

Cheers,

As seen from the comments in the reviews of our applications, many people wonder (and hate us) for having the name Girlfriend Caller.

Put yourself in our shoes just for a sec. We’re developing a simple, free application. As an iPhone user, what do I want? I want something that is useful for me, easy to use, and cost nothing. Therefore, when we come up with a name, we intended on making the application for our own use. I’m a guy, therefore, I needed a button to call my girlfriend. But when we saw that there you could also use something like this, we decided to make it available free to everybody. So in fact, many can hate the name, but still appreciate the concept.

Of course, I apologize that we also didn’t have boyfriend caller, sweetheart caller, parents caller. Trust me, we thought of it. We didn’t expect the response to our application to be so positive (and we truly appreciate all the people with the encouraging words).

Give us time and your support, and we’ll continue sharing many great applications we have developed for ourselves with you. Just talk to us, we’re here and listening.

(I know I switch between I and we constantly. Mostly the opinions are mine, which I can be blamed for, but “we” is the collective that gets the job done.)

The iPhone user population is both easily definable but diverse in many ways. Many have deep interests and knowledge in technology, while some are just in the cool. Developing applications for iPhone customers is, therefore, a tough challenge.

With Girlfriend Caller, we saw many ratings of 4 or 5 stars, but also many 1 stars. Why? The answer may in fact be very simple. Free applications often have many more customers reviews, but it’s never perfect. In fact, it reminds me of a line straight out of Batman, “You’re either die the hero, or live long enough to see yourself become the villain.” Free applications either crash and burn, or stay around long enough to be hated by everybody.

However, I am in fact excited to see so many people download Girlfriend Caller, a first, but of course not last series of free (and some paid) applications coming from our team. More than anything, we want your feedback, your feature requests.

Let’s hear from you, the customer, in much more details than the simple reviews that is written quite quickly on the still imperfect iPhone keyboard.

We want to encourage feedback that are constructive. A 1 star saying “this app sucks” does not help make the next generation applications better. A 4 star, “here’s what I want” helps keep us motivated and serve your interests. We do what do we do because we enjoy it.

PS. Why was it called the Girlfriend Caller? Let me explain….

With many iPhone applications coming soon, I can’t expect that you would be able to try them all. I yet to have extended exposure to many developers and their applications, but I’m going to mention one here that I would strongly encourage you to try.

Zintin is a picture social networking tool. I have seen these guys at work from the early beginning and their application hit the spot in photo sharing on the iPhone. You can take pictures, share them with anyone around you, and also edit the pictures to add a little piece of creativity. It is these kinds of apps that makes the iPhone so useful, and I highly encourage you to check out their application when it releases. Zintin does these three things very well:

1. you can discover the people around you and know when your friends are nearby
2. you can share pictures and express yourself on your wall
3. you can engage new people, or just have fun with your friends.

It will be exciting to use Zintin, and it’d be even better when you and friends all use it, so be sure to check it out on the app store, or visit their site.

The countdown is on. In just 3 days as of this writing will be the launch of the new 3G iPhone, and likely the Apple iPhone application store. It is hard to know what to expect, but I think there will be a flood of applications. The question remains as to how and whether Apple would evaluate the submitted applications: quality, stability, useability, security? These are all important points to look at, especially in the interests of the end user.

I expect to see at least 200 applications to be released, most of which will likely be free or cost $.99. I also expect these to be the most popular in acquiring early users, but likely also have low retention rates. It is likely a much smaller minority who will pay big bucks early on for major applications. It will be exciting to watch the evolution of the financial models here.

Unlike some previous platforms that have distributed applications (eg Facebook), people are used to paying Apple to download music files and plugging in their phones for application updates.

The following are some more guesses as to what the applications you will see. Of the applications,

1. 30% will be social networking, or have social network contents
2. 20% will be games, but it’ll be dominated by big players
3. 30% will be entertainment, music, lifestyle, environment
4. 10-15% will be productivity based.
5. 10-15% will be mobile versions of existing services

There may be much overlap between the various groups of applications. The business will be hard for those trying to take advantage of the long tail, particularly those going for the free application. I also wouldn’t expect many applications to survive more than a few weeks on the iPhone, I just hope Apple will do a good job removing the dead.

My relationship with the iPhone is one that is bittersweet. Like an ex-girlfriend that you just can’t forget about, I love my old iPhone, but I’m hating how the new one is so much better. Maybe that doesn’t even make sense, but I hope you get my point: the new iPhone is cheaper, faster and can do more.

The Android is coming at the earliest in September. By then Apple will have had at least 2 months lead in getting its phones out internationally and its app-store churning out third-party applications.

I feel a dark storm for the Android with the iPhone’s 3G and GPS capabilities. In a way, I think that the new iPhone, along with the third-party applications, would offer most of the capabilities that most ordinary users can want. I’ve checked out the 50 applications that Google selected for the Android, but the question remains how much of a niche these applications are.

Nevertheless, I believe that the fight is not yet over. If the Android could perfect the following things, and with the failure of Apple’s at a few other things, the phone market over the next few years could be very healthy and exciting

Here’s what Android has to do:

1. Make software distribution decentralized, but organized so that application distribution can become viral.
2. Improve and encourage consistency of design among Android applications. The 50 applications I have seen so far offer a suite of colors, button sizes, and design subtleties that will have users frustrated.
3. Focus on solutions, not features. I think many people make the mistake of adding features wherever they can, rather than solving the customer’s problems.
4. Encourage better and consistent hardware among phone developers. Good software is good. Good hardware is good. But great software married to great hardware will be the weapon necessary to slain the iPhone.
5. Target third-world countries. Forget developed countries. Think India. Think China. Apple has left China alone at least for now. Who cares for what reasons. The Android should be all over China like white on rice, and like termites on wood.
6. Think system.
7. Think sustainable. I believe people are going to become more and more self conscious about our environmental impact. I think it will be important to address those issues from a phone hardware and software developer’s perspective and create enabling technologies to make that possible.
8. Target trendy people. I think the Android is very geeky. Look at the name. Yes, there’s plenty of buzz now considering that people most tuned in are those with a technology background. But trust me, if I bring this up during a conversation at a party with a hot girl, I’d get a “what?”
9. Think young. As in 13-18 year old teenagers who figures out more uses of the phone than the rest of the population combined.
10. Design the Android (and applications) for the masses. Many people still think that Apple is exclusive. I think the Android can take advantage of that and corner the market outside of that. Imagine the people who says, “I don’t know, the Mac isn’t really for me.” They should be thinking “Yeah, I think the Android has just what I need.” This is a marketing job, and it’s all a matter of perspective.
11. Get carriers as allies. You need hardware and you need distribution. Apple already does the hardware and has great ties for distribution. Android will need as good a plan as well.

Those are at least 10 things that Android application developers should look at and consider over the next few months. But if I had one word of advice, I would say, I hope you’re also developing for the iPhone.

I’ll be in Europe for the next few weeks and will be studying user behaviors on mobile and use cases. If you are interested, be sure to keep in touch or subscribe.

Cheers,