The Best Family iPhone App for Summer

SnowGlobe Maker: Beach Edition

New SnowGlobe Maker Beach Edition is the best family iPhone app for summer. Create an iPhone beach globe for Father’s Day, tropical travel, summer vacations, and family reunions. Choose from high quality art–like a beautiful conch shell, a sporty surfboard, or a relaxing beach chair–to reflect any mood or occasion. With SnowGlobe Maker, creativity, expression and family interaction all come together. 

Reston, VA, SnowGlobeMaker.com kicks off summer beach travel with the release of a new, family friendly entertainment app that’s available on the iPhone app store for $.99. SnowGlobe Maker Beach Edition is fun and entertaining for adults and kids who love to create and share.

With SnowGlobe Maker Beach Edition, iPhone and iPod touch owners can choose from high quality art to create globes that celebrate an occasion, express a mood, or are just for fun. The Beach Edition’s simple mix and match interface makes it easy to create custom snow globes for friends and family.

“As a Mom to twins, I wanted to create a fun entertainment app that we could use to occupy our time creatively. Parents and kids can build a globe together, or take turns creating and sending globes to each other. Our love of summers at the beach inspired the new Beach Edition,” said Julie McCool, Founder, SnowGlobeMaker.com.  “As an executive at AOL, I created the Expressions features that let people personalize their instant messaging experience. I saw how people of all ages love to mix and match art to express their personality and passions. With SnowGlobe Maker, creativity, expression and family interaction all come together.”

Additional product information and a video demonstration of Beach Edition are available at http://SnowGlobeMaker.com.

SnowGlobe Maker includes:

  • a library of unique, lifelike inserts, backgrounds and bases
  • an editable text label 
  • two zoom levels
  • a custom tropical theme song
  • auto or shake snow styles (with beach sand instead of snow)
  • a random option for auto-customizing
  • an integrated snapshot menu
  • support for Shake, Touch, Tap, and Pinch gestures on both the iPhone and iPod touch 

SnowGlobeMaker.com is created by Hawk Ridge Consulting, which develops family-friendly iPhone and iPod touch apps that encourage creativity and fun, and offers custom iPhone development services. Company founder, Julie McCool, has over 20 years experience leading products at major software companies including AOL, Symantec, and Lotus.  


SnowGlobe Maker Winter Edition 1.1 Available

SnowGlobe Maker: Winter Edition 1.1 was released on the App Store on April 22nd. Everyone who purchased SnowGlobe Maker: Winter Edition should get this free update which provides:

- improved stability

- a faster interface

- a new Customize design which will allow us to easily add more art in future updates

Please add a comment on our Support page if you have any feedback or suggestions for this new update. Stay tuned for a new art collection (coming soon) and thank you for supporting SnowGlobe Maker.


Examiner.com covers SnowGlobe Maker

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“Every now and then I find a really fun and interesting product. The iPhone SnowGlobe Maker is a great example.”    Examiner.com


Washington Post covers Hawk Ridge Consulting

Hawk Ridge Consulting and our SnowGlobe Maker app were featured on page one of the Business Section in the March 22nd Washington Post: They’re Apps to Make Money. Mike Musgrove wrote this round-up about iPhone app developers in the greater Washington area. We were excited to give Mike our perspective on the market and our app development efforts. Here’s a bit from the article: 

“Fresh ideas are precious commodities in this space, so developers tend to keep mum about exactly what they have in the works.

Julie McCool, a former AOL executive who lives in Reston, designed a program in which you create your own virtual snow globe. Shake your iPhone, and you set the program’s virtual snowflakes in motion.

Good idea, right? Well, she wasn’t the only one who thought of it. “When I first started thinking about snow globes, there was already one in the store,” she said. “By the time I started working on it, there were 10.”

McCool’s start-up, Hawk Ridge Consulting, has a few projects in the works in which she has paired up with entertainment companies wanting to connect with consumers on the popular App Store. You’ll understand if she keeps the details of those projects to herself, for now.”

Mike also gives a few examples of local developers who have hits big enough to turn into a full time occupation. Todd Moore, for example, hit it big with the White Noise app which made it to the top 20 list. Getting featured in the top 20 is key and tends to drive apps into the thousands of downloads per day region.

The get rich quick stories make good press, but this article also captures the reality of what a crowded market the App Store has become. It’s hard to break out of the pack and get noticed, though if you make it to the top 20 the momentum will carry you.


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