The Best Part about the iPhone App Thing

The best part of this iPhone/iPod touch/iPad yoga app thing isn't the apps so much. It's not the portability of the yoga class; it's not the supporting of the teachers who create apps so they can earn money from their classes in other ways; it's not the satisfaction of having my ideas become manifest in reality; it's not even promoting yoga to people who haven't tried yet and who are yet to experience the benefits. The best part for me is how much fun I get to have spending time with the teachers who are creating their own apps.

As a yoga teacher, I'm pretty much solo. I see other teachers in the hall and we say, "Hi. How are you. How was your class? Have a good class?" and stuff like that. It's the thing we do.

What working on the apps has done has made way more relationship possible. People come over to my house, I make outcalls to people to show them what I'm looking for, and there's just way more connection and communication. And it's all helpful and all on the same side and very creative. Working on a project together where it's low pressure and high fun and possibility is really great. So even if these yoga apps fail miserably, which they won't because they're already moving along nicely, I'm having a great time just getting to hang out with great people.

So in case you're wondering, Louise's Hot Yoga flow will be available in the App Store soon. Yoga with Jamine is available right now.

Everything Changes State

I got an email this morning from the iTunes store telling me that my application has changed state. Hmm. Even applications change. Everything changes.

So I watched the rest of the DVD that was loaned to me. The Buddha - by PBS. Everything changes. Of course.

Today's a funny day. Funny like tastes funny, not funny, ha ha. It's almost "siquid," which may be a word you haven't heard me use in a long time. (Siquid is a word I made up in a dream I had after meeting Mother Teresa, which really happened, and taking a long, strange trip in a bus outside of Calcutta, again, really happened, to describe a state of things changing but you can watch it.) So today's a bit siquid in my opinion.

(Oh, the application changed from Awaiting Review to In Review.)

Update: the app has changed state and is now available to download here! This version is free.

Getting There...

So the App I've been telling you about is undergoing a change and its new incarnation will be available any minute. We're uploading it to Apple as I type, so when they're through with their process, there will be a new, free app to try. It'll look a lot like the one I've been telling you about but that's because I'm using the same pictures and content.

What's happened is that I've been approved by IRAP (Industrial Research Assistance Program) to hire someone with skillz to do the programming for me. I found him a few months ago and he's been working steadily for the past few weeks while we've been waiting for the official word to come from Toronto that we'll really be okayed. He did not work on the original app. We found out last week that we've been approved and my programmer will actually be paid to build more apps as well as build an interface so you yoga teachers out there can create your own mobile apps for your students.

The new app will be available when Apple has reviewed it. The status we just saw on the screen said "In Review." Whoohoo!

Next steps are to finish my full app so my students can have the whole class as the free version will just have a few sequences. I need to find teachers who are willing to come up with content so I can provide them with apps. And we have to build the input system, but that will take quite awhile. It's a behind the scenes thing that when it's rolled out, will make so much sense. But for now, we've got our first one ready to go and it's cool!

Yoga on the go - really!

You can "like" Capital Yoga Publishing on Facebook if you want to follow the progress from there and see more screen shots :)

The App Store; Clean Sheets

I heard today that my app has been submitted to the App Store and is basically ready for sale. Whoohoo! As soon as I'm sure it's final I will blast you with the news and you can go and get your own copy of Jamine's Yoga for your iPod Touch or iPhone.

The thing that has me most excited at this moment though is that my sheets are in the dryer. And that means tonight I'll have clean sheets on my bed. And that, to me, is one of the best feelings in the world - climbing into bed after a bath or a shower that has clean sheets on it. Don't get me wrong - I don't normally have dirty sheets on the bed. It's just that there's something special about that not-slept-in-yet fresh bed feeling. It's the little things sometimes that make me happy.

I'm such a kid sometimes and my priorities are out of whack. Yea, I've got my own yoga app in the app store in a few minutes but tonight I get to slip into fresh sheets - that's exciting :)

And I realize that I'm nervous about it. Clean sheets are easy, but my app in the App Store? I can hardly relate. Open to discussion and critiques and comments and payments? Oh right, people can buy it? Right. That is exciting! So when the app's out, you can get a copy if you've got an iPod Touch or an iPhone.

You can call me President

I got a lot done today and it's not even half over yet. And what I did today didn't all happen today, it just sort of all coalesced today. And it's iPhone app-related, which is yoga related, which is why I'm telling you!

If you know me at all you know that I'm a yoga teacher/student and that I'm also a bit of a nerd/geek. Okay, I'm a lot of a nerd. I love my gadgets and sites and connections and doohickeys. It runs in my family and when my 11-year old called me from her cell on the school bus this morning to warn me that she had left her speech on the desk in the office and could I get it to her, it wasn't surprising that rather than getting in my car and driving it over, I picked it up and put it in the scanner, sending it to her teacher's email address.

The call from the school came that she needed it and when I told her that I'd emailed it to her teacher, she said he wasn't in today and could I send it to her. "Which email address? Oh, that one? K," was my reply. So that's who you're dealing with here.

What happened today is I incorporated Capital Yoga Publishing Corp, which is hopefully going to be the name of the company that is making the iPhone/iPod Touch app that I've been on about, in addition, some other things for yoga teachers. I say hopefully, because I only submitted my request and paid the money to incorporate, but the government's approval of the name and all of that is pending.

Once that happens, then my application for funding can proceed and I can put my new programmer guy to work, which he is excited to do. So it's underway. And I'm actually a bit excited about it now that I'm writing it out. Normally, these sorts of things just wash over me and I get all excited by guys and phone calls and ups and downs and all of that sort of drama. But I'm training myself to enjoy the pleasure of just having something go well that doesn't fit into my samskara grooves and is just something going well!

More will be shared when there's more to share. On another note, someone asked me recently if my Mandate is over because it seems I've gone all quiet about relationships and like maybe I'm tucked in someplace. I guess I'm just not blaring out that I'm still single and it bugs me sometimes and I'm not online dating, even though I have in the past and I may return to that. So I don't have a list of people I'm working through to have you vet for me as I may have done some years ago, posts which are probably hidden from this blog. And if you're like, "but what about all of those trips to Florida?" just know I have a good friend. Watch 500 Days of Summer and know I'm Tom in some ways, I'm just faster.

My daughter is at an adorable age that I want to continue to enjoy in peace, without the added drama of me purposely dating someone new. I'm getting some work done, probably in lieu of dating, but it's okay to be productive instead of seductive - hey - that's funny - it rhymes!

So there you have it. The full update.

Schedule Change

There has been a recent change in my schedule and it has me thrown off a bit. I used to teach a Hatha Intermediate class at 5:45 and then whip over to the Hatha Beginner class down the hall that begins at 7:30.

A new room is opening up at Rama Lotus this "term" but not for another week. I decided to try a new class that will begin at 4:30, which means I won't be leading the 5:45 Intermediate class anymore. But the schedule started before the room was ready, which means I'm feeling like I'm supposed to be somewhere but I'm not. Next week I'm supposed to be somewhere, but today I'm in the right place, which is at home at my computer working on the business plan for the iPhone thingee and blogging to y'all.

I could have just gone to the class and taken it, thereby keeping myself in a schedule and I even really thought about doing that, but then I stayed where I was, all warm and at home. I did some yoga right here in my livingroom, in my jeans I might add (I tell you, you do not need fancy clothes for yoga), and now I'm about to get ready to head over to lead the class at 7:30. Weird.

Posture Project

The Prayer Project continues, so if you want to join me, just read below and get in touch.

On another note, there's a Posture Project underway and today we made some progress. I still don't know how it's all going to go, but it has started to take shape and I can see that we'll actually have a finished product in a little while. Like maybe really soon. It's still in development and it's still just a baby thing, but it's a thing, and it's out of my head and it's in an iPhone Simulator at least.

You may remember a long time ago I said I wanted to make an app for my iPod Touch. More recently there was some movement towards it. It turns out it's really hard to do if you don't know what you're doing and less hard if you do know what you're doing. So I've teamed up with some people who know lots more than me about it, and voila. An app is born. Or will be. It's still gestating.

Yoga App

I'd really like to get some of my pictures into a little application that would run on the iPhone and iPod Touch so you could buy it and have it on your devices and I'd make a little money doing something fun and creative. I mentioned awhile ago that I'd love to be an iPhone developer but that to do that properly would take a lot of training. So I'm working on an idea to make it so that I wouldn't need so much training to get my stuff up into an app that you could download from the iTunes app store.

I've got some help and I'll tell you more about it when there's something to say, but just know I think it would be neat if you could put your own content into this application or you could at least have me or someone else you know, not someone from Yoga Journal (although I realize that sometimes, that's someone you may know, like when Lucy was on the cover).

I'm a gadget girl and I love my little things and I especially love it when I can customize them or make them do cool things. So hopefully this little idea I'm cooking up will turn into something you can see!

I found a video of The Edge doing some kind of yoga with his BlackBerry. If you get to about the 7th minute in, you'll see him holding his device while doing some moves. It isn't how I imagined people using the program I'm working on, but it gave me a good idea of how it could be used!