Remedy iPhone Application

Remedy has finally made the big time. Nope, not Madison Square Garden, Royal Albert Hall, or the Grand Ole Opry; the Apple iTunes store! The official Remedy iPhone application is now available for free in iTunes and for an Apple fanatic like me, seeing the application in the app store was like gazing into the eyes of my children for the first time.

Sad, I know.

I’m still utterly shocked that I was able to secure the name ‘Remedy’ in the app store and that no one had previously snatched it up. Who knows, maybe someday Preparation H® will offer us $10,000 for the name and we can go buy Andy B. a second set of drums. A guy can dream.

So how’d we do it? With the help of 4 programmers, 3 graphic designers, 5 marketing gurus, 9 investors, and 1 Starbucks barista. Alright, alright, the honest answer is, without much difficulty or cost, and 1 Starbucks barista. Oh, that and a Scott McDaniel, who actually advised me on all of this stuff! Thanks Scott!

Here’s what you need if you want to do this for your band or business.

A Website
Sorry MySpace band page owners, that junk just won’t cut it. I won’t go into what a cyber train wreck MySpace is or my thoughts on it being an archaic wasteland for teeny-boppers and stalkers as I don’t want to appear judgmental.   That said, if you are currently hosting a band page there and directing your users to that location so they can digest your content, run away as quickly as you can, and bring your band equipment and followers with you to your own hosted website.

Now I know that building a website is not the easiest thing in the world for most people to do and I certainly won’t provide a tutorial on how to build one here, particularly because it does require some time, effort, and skill. But buying a domain name, securing a hosting provider, and building a website is easier today than ever before. You can either pay someone to build one for you (likely about $300 – $500 for basic sites), or purchase a template on one of the many template websites available online. With a little knowledge, effort, and skill,  you can typically modify a template and have it up for viewing within a few days.

The route I chose to go for construction of the Remedy site, thanks to the advice of my buddy Scott, is Wordpress. Wordpress is a free, open source web-authoring platform that is incredibly easy to install, use, and maintain. With thousands of developers contributing helpful plugins that make authoring a snap, it’s a no-brainer for folks looking to create a quick and easy website. For out-of-the-box implementation of a template, it requires no programming or .html skills and even the novice user can begin authoring content in minutes. The reason I chose it over other open source authoring tools, or .html, or flash, is because I wanted something that would be easy to maintain, help with search engine optimization, and allow our friends and fans to interact with the site.

RSS Feeds

After you have a site in place, you’ll need to make sure you develop RSS feeds so that users can consume your content without actually needing to be on your website. The iPhone app you develop will be heavily dependent on RSS feeds and the wonderful thing about using Wordpress is that most templates already have them built in! Remedy has RSS feeds for latest news, gigs, video, images, and user comments, as well as RSS feeds from external social networks like YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and Flickr. All of these RSS feeds are essential for feeding content directly from your website to your mobile device.

Build Your iPhone Application

You would think this would actually be the most difficult part of the process but in fact, it’s the easiest. Once you have your website and RSS feeds in place, building your iPhone application shouldn’t take you more than an hour or so. There are several websites available online that take the pain out of creating and submitting applications for mobile devices. My buddy Scott and I built our apps using AppMakr but there are others online that offer similar services. Upon arrival to the site, you can begin plugging in your RSS feeds and building your application, testing as you go along via their slick online ’simulator.’ When the application is complete and you’re thoroughly satisfied with the end result, AppMakr submits the app to Apple for processing on your behalf and you sit back and wait for it to be published. The application cost $100 to construct and was live in the iTunes store within two weeks following my submission.

Please feel free to leave comments for others on the page and ask questions if you’re looking for a little guidance. I’m always happy to help those in need of a little advice as I’m extremely thankful for having received it myself.

Good luck!

Remedy Widgets Now Available!

The Remedy Band now has widgets! Install these widgets on your website and keep up to date with all the latest news, events, comments and videos from Remedy. Click “Get Widget” below on a preferred widget, copy the code, and paste it into the appropriate application, including Facebook, MySpace, Wordpress, Blogger and more!