Want $1,500? A free app by Cloud Genki can help

So earlier this week an app was released called “One Year Free Service”. Doesn’t quite roll off the tongue there, but it definitely is descriptive. The purpose of the app is to provide a sweepstakes of sorts. Download the free PDK app and you can enter to win a year of free phone service (in the form of a check for $1,500). Sounds pretty simple right? Well, when the app was released a firestorm of vitriol was unleashed on the developer. People on various forums and app reviews jumped on the dev calling them swindlers, cheats, etc. etc.

Since these guys were new to the community we wanted to get to the bottom of things. Here’s what we found out.

Cloud Genki is a group of friends based out of California who like to develop apps (contrary to popular belief they are not “foreigners”) . Here is what they have to say about themselves:

As a company, collectively we stand for great design, creations that inspire taking a second look, creating value with technology, traveling, worldly cuisines, good health physically & mentally, cubicle-less work environments, vegetarianism, social justice and compassion for all beings.

As you can tell from the quote above, they are a diverse group who don’t like meat. Actually, they are a good group of guys just getting started in the mobile game.

Wait…What?

What the heck does this have to do with WOR? No worries, I’m getting there…

Cloud Genki’s first app is “One Year Free Service”. They wanted to create an app that represents a new type of sweepstakes that doesn’t require an email address and wouldn’t spam you ard be obnoxious. In the end they had three goals with the project.

• Create goodwill with users quickly
• A chance in Hot Apps
• A chance to do something interesting with limited time.  

The problem is they hit a big speed bump with bullet one there…as soon as their app launched people immediately decided that they were up to no good. The biggest complaint was the fact that these guys came out of nowhere and no one could be sure that in the end the $1,500 would ever get paid out. That’s where we come in…

Part of WOR has always been to help developers join with the community. Once we learned that Cloud Genki wasn’t a bunch of crooks we decided to help out. The end result is that we have become the brokers for the sweepstakes that is behind the app. The prize money is safely sitting in our accounts so you can be sure that if you win, you will get paid. When the winner is chosen at the end of the competition, you will go directly through us so that there is no confusion.

Also, to prove that they are here for the long haul and not just for a quick try at hot apps, they have agreed to run the contest at least one more time and, if they can keep it profitable, on an ongoing basis.

To be clear, WOR is not endorsing the app. If you do not like sweepstakes apps or the idea of it, then don’t download it. No harm, no foul. However, if you have been hesitant to download it because you were afraid that the company behind it was a bit shady, then we are here to tell you that it is all legit.

If you want to learn more, check out the app’s page on appSpotlight.

The future of Genki

Aside from this app, the guys at Cloud Genki are hard at work on several apps (there is a concept shot to the right). Here is, in their own words, what they are working on.

We’re working on several projects but the main focus is on a suite of health apps.  We’ve seen the health & vitality of people around the world & frankly we don’t feel that the US is in the best standing.  We believe that helping people to live healthier lives in terms of their diet, mental & physical health will be a major step in the right direction for this country and the world.  So these apps will provide basic knowledge, encouragement and dynamic, user shared knowledge around targeted health topics.  We aren’t ready to go deep into specific details as we’ve got a ways to go before we’re ready to release, but something we thought the development community might be interested in is what we’re working on around the community aspect of these apps.

We want to make it easy for users of these apps to ask each other questions and share knowledge.  We’ve been looking into various Q&A systems to integrate into these apps and while we love the Stack Exchange design with its cool community aspect, their decision last Spring to move to a well..uh unique model of operation is not something we’re incredibly excited about.  So we took a look at our options & we’re pretty settled on OSQA – http://www.osqa.net/ We’ve been experimenting with whether to just create a mobile site template or to go the route of using an API to really get full in-app integration.  We’re 90% sure that we’re going the API route, however unfortunately there isn’t an API…  So we’re starting to work with/look at Piston to help address this need but we’ve still got plenty of work ahead of us.  If anyone is interested in collaborating here please hit us up – or of course if there are any other suggestions here that we might have overlooked.  We feel that mobile forums just haven’t been done well yet for the most part.

Another approach we’re taking with these apps that might be of interest is that we want to make them as portable as possible.  This is actually one of the reasons that we became very interested in webOS since as we all know HTML5, CSS & JS are the most intriguing options right now for cross platform development and Palm’s SDK is exactly that.  It’s a hard decision at this time as to which framework to base an app on, if any & we hope that webOS will be a leader in this area since they’ve got the platform for it.  It’s a shame that frameworks like Sencha Touch, JQuery (soon JQuery mobile) and heck even just features like cache manifest files aren’t yet easily or fully supported.  We think that Palm could be an even more interesting platform for developers if they had a stronger cross platform story.

So there you have it…The sweepstakes is legit and Cloud Genki isn’t going to rob your house and steal your children. They are new devs just like most of the webOS community. I, for one, wish them the best and look forward to their future apps.