So naturally, when I caught a tweet that looked like such (edit: link and username removed) I was eager to see what new site this Twitter user was pointing to … Until I found myself at Appulous. Sure enough, there in the directory, was the app that my business partner and I had invested *hundreds* of hours of hard work in – cracked and available free outside the iTunes App Store. “Maybe nobody’s noticed” I delusion-ally thought to myself, as I quickly logged into our Pinch Analytics account.

Bombora had been posted to Appulous on Thursday, April 30th, and Pinch Analytics was showing new unique users at 5x our average daily count for new uniques, starting on that very Thursday. Something was definitely amiss.

“Maybe we got some free marketing I don’t know about” I thought optimistically, as I logged into iTunes Connect to check our sales data. Unfortunately, my hopes were quickly dashed: our sales remained at or below our previous average daily sales. For every user that was buying Bombora through the proper channels, there were now five or six users getting it for free. Although it’s somewhat flattering to be cracked (somebody wanted Bombora bad enough to crack it) we are hardly jumping up and down with joy.

Over the last five days, this trend has continued… and our sales have declined. We don’t have a lot of data right now, given that this *just* happened last week, but our daily average sales have decreased by 30-40% in the last three days. Other influences, like placement on the Recently Released page for our category (Weather) surely have an affect on app sales, but the appearance of cracked Bombora seems to be more than a conspicuously unfortunate coincidence.

Fully 30% of our total user-base has “stolen” Bombora, which is priced at $9.99, and are now continually “stealing” our server utilization, for which we pay a monthly fee (Slicehost – good stuff.) It’s not just the development costs – tens of thousands of dollars in labor – but the cost of providing ongoing support that we are being deprived of. We think $9.99 is a pretty good deal for Bombora when you consider how much data we’re providing easy access to. The iPhone costs $200-$300, with a minimum $70/ month service plan, yet people still complain about a $9.99 app. But I digress – the app store ecosystem is another post entirely.

Of course, an illegal download is not the same as a lost sale – we’re not the first app to be cracked and we won’t be the last. Other developers have written about the problem and even devised some unique approaches. We will be taking some steps ourselves to prevent this from happening to future versions – Bombora calls home to our servers for data, and without data, the app is pretty worthless, so we’re fortunate to have this optional barrier built-in. That gives us the choice, as ugly as it may be, to change the server process to respond only to particular versions of Bombora, forcing an upgrade. Do we want to do that? Absolutely not. Will we? Probably not.

Both myself and my business partner have full-time day jobs, and work on Bombora in our spare time. So now, instead of just working on making the app better (which we’re constantly doing anyways, because it’s fun, and because we want to make money!) we have to invest time and effort into devising a method to protect our intellectual property. What a pain-in-the-ass.

Who do we blame? Apple? Somali Pirates? Having known the ‘net intimately for some time now, and being a couple of sharp cookies, we recognize the futility of pursuing action by legal means, or trying to have a server taken down only to have three more mirrors appear. It’s not like we want to willingly shoulder the burden of extensive legal costs to detract from our already diminishing sales revenue… So where does that leave us?

We will continue to be bummed that people are stealing our app. We will add some form of minimal copyright protection to our client-server communication process to try and protect future editions. We will hope that Apple takes some steps to remedy what appears to be a significant problem.

Most importantly, we’re going to continue to try and make the best app we can – there are plans to add some really cool features to Bombora and I would hate to be distracted from achieving that excellence.

Look for Bombora in the App Store Friday!

Bombora is an elegant, informative, and comprehensive ocean data application — built specially for surfers, boaters, and everyone else that loves the ocean.

Bombora contains a wide selection of tools that provide an arsenal of information for the amateur forecasting tool-belt. Take surf forecasting and buoy data to a new level, with Bombora for iPhone and iPod Touch!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=vvBAEGEMhMI

Or head over to YouTube for the full widescreen glory.

A sneak peek of the Bombora buoy screen

As you can see, we’ve filtered the buoys to provide quick and efficient access to the buoys that are important to you. Curious to see what’s going on in the entire buoy network? Browse through the “All Stations” section; or mark your ‘Favorite’ buoys and get one-tap access to a wealth of excellent information.

Here we also reveal an exciting feature of Bombora… support for directional swell data, provided by CDIP at Scripps. We’ve created a section for just these buoys, being as supremely useful as they are.

Other aspects of the buoys tab are pretty self-evident; we’ve used the location-aware features of iPhone to present the buoys that are closest to you, and also filtered the buoys into regions to make for easy navigation. To top it all off, our beautiful icons make it impossible for a reasonable person to take their eyes off the screen.

Stay tuned for more sneak previews, screenshots, and the upcoming release of Bombora in Spring of 2009!

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

Moored buoys are the weather sentinels of the sea. They are deployed in the coastal and offshore waters from the western Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean around Hawaii, and from the Bering Sea to the South Pacific.

NDBC’s moored buoys measure and transmit barometric pressure; wind direction, speed, and gust; air and sea temperature; and wave energy spectra from which significant wave height, dominant wave period, and average wave period are derived. Even the direction of wave propagation is measured on many moored buoys.

NDBC’s fleet of moored buoys includes 6 types: 3-m, 10-m, and 12-m discus hulls; 6-m boat-shaped (NOMAD) hulls; and the newest, the Coastal Buoy and the Coastal Oceanographic Line-of-Sight (COLOS) buoy. The choice of hull type used usually depends on its intended deployment location and measurement requirements.

To assure optimum performance, a specific mooring design is produced based on hull type, location, and water depth. For example, a smaller buoy in shallow coastal waters may be moored using an all-chain mooring. On the other hand, a large discus buoy deployed in the deep ocean may require a combination of chain, nylon, and buoyant polypropylene materials designed for many years of service. Some deep ocean moorings have operated without failure for over 10 years.

In addition to their use in operational forecasting, warnings, and atmospheric models, moored buoy data are used for scientific and research programs, emergency response to chemical spills, legal proceedings, and engineering design.

Wind Direction (WDIR)

Wind direction (the direction the wind is coming from in degrees clockwise from true N) during the same period used for WSPD.

Wind Speed (WSPD)

Wind speed (m/s) averaged over an eight-minute period for buoys and a two-minute period for land stations. Reported Hourly.

Wind Gust Speed (GST)

Peak 5 or 8 second gust speed (m/s) measured during the eight-minute or two-minute period. The 5 or 8 second period can be determined by payload.

Significant Wave Height (WVHT)

Significant wave height (meters) is calculated as the average of the highest one-third of all of the wave heights during the 20-minute sampling period.

Dominant Wave Period (DPD)

Dominant wave period (seconds) is the period with the maximum wave energy.

Average Wave Period (APD)

Average wave period (seconds) of all waves during the 20-minute period.

Mean Wave Direction (MWD)

Mean wave direction corresponding to energy of the dominant period (DPD). The units are degrees from true North just like wind direction.

Sea Level Pressure (PRES)

Sea level pressure (hPa). For C-MAN sites and Great Lakes buoys, the recorded pressure is reduced to sea level using the method described in NWS Technical Procedures Bulletin 291 (11/14/80).

Air Temperature (ATMP)

Air temperature (Celsius). For sensor heights on buoys, see Hull Descriptions. For sensor heights at C-MAN stations, see C-MAN Sensor Locations

Water Temperature (WTMP)

Sea surface temperature (Celsius). For sensor depth, see Hull Description.

Dewpoint Temperature (DEWP)

Dewpoint temperature taken at the same height as the air temperature measurement.

Station Visibility (VIS)

Station visibility (statute miles). Note that buoy stations are limited to reports from 0 to 1.9 miles.

Pressure Tendency (PTDY)

Pressure Tendency is the direction (plus or minus) and the amount of pressure change (hPa)for a three hour period ending at the time of observation.

Water Level (TIDE)

The water level in feet above or below Mean Lower Low Water (MLLW).