It’s great to have customers again!

You can become one, too!  See Runmeter, Walkmeter, and Cyclemeter.

1.  You should have already sent the developer your device ID.  If not, follow these instructions, and wait for the developer to send you an application configured to run on your device. 
2. Unzip the file sent to you by the developer.  You’ll see two files, one that ends in “.app”, and one that ends in “.mobileprovision”.   (On Windows, the “.app” unzips to be a directory, but carry on as if it were a file.) 
3. Open iTunes and attach your iPhone. 
4. Sync your iPhone.  
5. In the panel on the left, click on Applications, under the Library section.  
    
   
    
6.  Drag the “.app” file and the “.mobileprovision” file to the Applications window. 
    
7. Sync your iPhone again. 
8. You’re ready to start Beta testing! 

This is a (fake) example of a device identifier: 7c8f223423cb1be7995591d2a21232a80c331313

Here is how to find your device identifier.

1. Launch iTunes and connect your iPhone or iPod Touch.  (Mac or PC.)

2. Click on the “Serial Number” label on the iTunes window.  (See picture below.)

3. “Serial Number” will change to “Identifier (UDID)” followed by the device identifier.

4. Choose the Edit menu, then click Copy (or use Command-C  on the Mac or Control-C on Windows).  The device identifier is now on your clipboard.  (There is no need to select anything beforehand.)

5. Paste it into an email and send it to your favorite developer.

You’re done!

Click on "Serial Number". It will change to "Identifier (UDID)". Then copy and you're done!

We spent a few days on a “buy every domain name that sounds halfway decent” binge. Kevin says his goal is simply to watch me spend lots of money, but in reality, he has standards, too. Like “don’t pick a name that people will laugh at”, and “don’t pick a name that sounds like an erectile dysfunction drug”.  If he weren’t a brilliant engineer, he’d be working at Landor.

So like any CEO in engineer’s clothing, I decided to run a survey to get some data.  And given that this is 2009, I thought I’d post it on Facebook to ask my friends to help me. Thanks to you all for your help.

Here are the results of the survey.

I used SurveyMonkey (a fine product) to publish the survey, and posted it via a tinyurl link to my status.  I kept the survey open on Sunday through Tuesday, ending up with 40 total respondents. I included some discourse on brand aspirations, and also noted we didn’t want the company name to connote a particular application area.

Here are the results of the survey:

This doesn’t tell the whole story, though. Of the first 20 respondents, 8 of them chose “Wowja” as their top choice. I was beginning to think it was going to be a rout. But apparently people who answered on Sunday were more favorable to Wowja, while those at work on Monday were looking for something less like the exclamatory chorus to a 1970’s Commodore’s tune. Wowja fell back in in the standings.

The hard part was using this data to decide a name, because after all, we’d have to live with it. Here was our decision process, in order of the list above:

Acturi – REJECTED – Too much like “Atari” or the name of a Roman Gladiator.

Aviolo – REJECTED – Nice, but more appropriate for the Napster of classical music, or for a antioxidant olive oil.

Wowja – REJECTED – Tempting, but kind of like an AMC Pacer, fun to drive around for a few weeks, but after that, it is just embarrassing.

Abvio – CHOSEN – 5 letters, no implicit meaning, and about as close to the beginning of the alphabet as you can get without naming your company “Aardvark”.

So that’s it, we chose Abvio as our company name.  Thanks to the 40 of my friends who spent the time to take the survey. And thanks to Doug Kent for suggesting abvio.com, he is now named the official godfather of the company.

Some final notes:

• Two of my friends, Jay and Nate, offered up their own cool domain names if I wanted them. Thanks!
• One of my friends, Jarid, nailed the fact that the company name really doesn’t matter for iPhone apps, anyway. The product name will be the primary brand, and what the customers will typically see.
• Abvira caused Kevin and me to laugh for days: “Abvira, for those special moments”.