Last week I had the opportunity to have a chat with Dennis Wilkins, author of the webOS Twitter app Twee. Dennis and I got to discuss his new apps, webOS and the future of his company Delicious Morsel.
Please introduce yourself and tell us about your current apps, Twee and Feeds.
I am Dennis Wilkins and I started Delicious Morsel as my mobile focused application development company.
Twee was the first project I made for the webOS platform. I created it as a way to see how the platform would work. I am a lover of Javascript and so I thought webOS would be a good platform to venture into, after already doing a few iPhone apps.
Feeds was created as a test to see if I could use the Palm webOS built-in visual widgets to create a pretty and usable app. It was actually in progress for awhile but I never really started putting much time into it, until I talked to the great guys at Pivotal Labs and they said they were working on a Google Reader application, so I decided I should ramp up my production time on it, so that I could compete with theirs, seeing that their twitter app, Tweed, was first to market and it has been an uphill battle trying to get users to convert to Twee.
Is there a story behind the name ‘Delicious Morsel’?
The story behind Delicious Morsel is that I was looking for a good open domain name and I couldn’t find one. I just started thinking different types of names and I really liked Del.icio.us and Juicy Development and for some reason I kept on thinking “Delicious Morsel” which now is pretty apparent why it stuck so well. First off Delicious Monster and the fact that my friend’s subtitle on instant messenger said “Delicious Morsel, give me my bib” for a few years. I didn’t actually put any of this together for a few months until my friend logged in again and had that as his subtitle. It is a quote from Final Fantasy VII, something I never noticed while playing that game. One problem with it is that I am always having to spell it out to people and getting asked whether I make candy or cake.
What attracted you to Palm’s webOS?
This might age me a little but when I was in elementary school to high school I always had a Palm Pilot. My dad would give me all of his old handhelds, so I had the Palm Pilot, Palm V and a Palm 505. They were always fun to play with so I grew to know the brand. Palm dropped off the map and I started getting into mobile devices and when the iPhone came out I became involved in the development aspects of mobile devices. I love the iPhone but I wanted it to have competition. Android wasn’t impressive. Then this forgotten company Palm shows up at CES with the Palm Pre. The device is beautiful and runs amazingly and is, in my opinion, the only true competitor to the iPhone at this time. Reading about the SDK I new I should be able to easily create apps for it. I think Palm may have been 6 months too late for release and still slow on releasing updates but I still feel like there is a huge potential to take up some smart phone market share.
The way the Palm Pre UI looks and interacts with the user also made a huge impression on me. I think this is the key for why I think it will be successful in the mobile market. iPhone was amazing when it came out but it looks the same 2 years later. Palm’s release is just as innovative as iPhone’s was.
What made you decide to develop Twee when Palm already had two Twitter apps?
The common UI components for navigation on both the apps were lacking. I personally use Twitter. On my iPhone I needed 3 apps to switch over, which were a good stock app, Twitter app and e-mail app.. The only thing Palm had was an adequate e-mail app so I created Twee.
As for a stock app, I am debating whether it is worth making one since the one out right now, which I do not use because I dislike it, seems to have everything most people want. I personally would re-work their UI and user experience, probably tie it into Google Finance for portfolio management then call it a day. I don’t think there is a big enough market for me to spend the time doing that though.
Did you find it difficult to develop with the Mojo SDK or did you find it simple to get started with?
The SDK was extremely easy to start with, but you hit a wall pretty quickly into development when you want to start doing stuff like storing data. Data doesn’t always belong in a database and doing asynchronous database calls should be a sin. I personally have some hang ups about the SDK’s power and lack of good documentation, but for building simple apps, it works great.
Given the recent JWZ debacle, how have your interactions with Palm been?
To be honest, I had to do everything he did, I had to jump through same “hoops” but to me it was not a big deal. I distribute my code via the homebrew gallery anyways because I know Palm wants me to continue to develop for their platform. I think JWZ may have over reacted and I personally find him to be a little be on the whiny side. I don’t mean to offend him, but I went through the same things with Apple and you would assume you’d have to go through the same issues with any company that is distributing your product. Distribution isn’t an easy business. Palm has however left me out in the dark a few times and even back in August gave me a 09/09/09 release date. It’s October now and my users are extremely anxious to buy my products. I am glad they are and I want them to have the product and not be mad at me for something I expected to happen 4 weeks ago. I had pulled a beta for Twee a month ago because I expected it to be on the Catalog within a week and got a ton of negative feedback for doing that.
I take it then that Twee has been well received by the Palm Pre community?
Twee has been extremely well received. I know Pivotal will argue this, but on PreCentral my app was rated the best Twitter client with 75% of the votes. [ed: Twee vs. Tweed] That poll did happen to omit Spaz.
What new features will be arriving when Twee hits the App Catalog and how will it be priced?
In comparison to the last public beta, Twee will include the ability to view followers/following of a user. It also allows you to do notifications for mentions and direct messages. It has WhatTheTrend integration. I also just submitted another update of Twee to Palm with landscape mode and photo posting, without the need of email, but I am not sure if that will be approved before the AppCatalog adding paid apps. It will be $2.99 with free updates for life.
What more can you tell us about the forthcoming RSS reader Feeds?
This app will come in 3 tiers. A free version that only does stand-alone feeds, no Google Integration. A normal version that does Google Reader integration and a little while after a pro version with notifications and offline reading. The pricing isn’t set but will probably be $1.99 and $4.99 for the pro version.
Feeds has been fun to develop. The beta users have really been giving me excellent feedback, just like they did with Twee. It has been awesome.
What’s next for Delicious Morsel? You mentioned a stock app above, is there anything else you’re thinking about?
I started writing a game a few months ago, I might finish that up. I also have a Location tracker, like a few out there already, that I wrote in July, which I code named Prevent, that has been running on a few peoples’ phones. I just haven’t had the time to do all the server upkeep, even though it shouldn’t be that hard. I do plan on doing some more iPhone development since the stuff that I’ve done for DM is actually really terrible and the good apps I’ve done have all been consulting work, so I don’t show them off. If my webOS apps take off, I want to work on my Social Evolution platform that I have been writing for a year and a half.
I start many projects and never finish them. I am slowly changing that though.
Thank you very much for taking the time to talk with us.
It was my pleasure. Remember to visit deliciousmorsel.com and check out any new updates to my projects.
Other links you may be interested in:
- The Palm Pre Challenge
- Engadget’s “perfect phone” is actually a Palm Pre
- Interview with Palm’s Chuq Von Rospach
