Launch Balloons From Your iPhone To The World
10:22 am, November 5th, 2009, Giles Turnbull
This is a great idea, and bound to go down very well with your kids.
Balloons is simple: you launch a virtual balloon into the air from your phone. You add a photo and a text message to the label that dangles below the balloon, and send it off.
Anyone with the Balloons app can catch that balloon and add their own message. If you shell out for the paid version, you can track the balloons you’ve launched and see what other people have added to them.
To celebrate and set things off, we’ve created a Cult of Mac balloon for you to catch. It’s purple with green stripes, and has a photo of the Cult home page at the top. If you catch it, let us know what you think about Balloons.
This is a particularly friendly application. I can see school classes all over the world launching balloons to make contacts in other schools. And Shiny development have wisely kept the choice of balloons fairly limited to start with; I wouldn’t be surprised to see custom balloons appearing soon, as an in-app purchase.
Posted by Giles Turnbull in Reviews, Software, iPhone | Comment on this article
Balloons! is great! Such a clever idea, although a lot of balloons just talk about the weather.. One thing that could be improved is tracking balloons that you add to, not just balloons you launch. I added to the Cult of Mac balloon, and I’d have liked to track it to see what other people said.
Matt Longman, on November 5th, 2009 at 10:02 pm
Matt: thanks! I agree about the tracking idea. On the tracking screen, it’d also be nice to see how many people have caught each balloon, as well as when it was last caught. Another feature I’d like to see is, having caught one balloon, a control that says “Catch another”, so that you don’t need to return to the home screen.
giles, on November 6th, 2009 at 4:12 am
I’m so addicted to catching balloons now, but I agree with what the others have said, just a few small additons please!
LadyBanana, on November 6th, 2009 at 2:09 pm
Dave Verwer from Shiny Development told me that “you will be able to favourite balloons in the next release”.
It will also be better when more people use it. At the moment, you see a lot of balloons more than once if you don’t add to them.
(Hi LadyBanana, your name pops up on a lot of balloons!!)
Matt Longman, on November 9th, 2009 at 8:10 pm