Reporter: Greg Avery
Thursday, January 21, 2010, 1:50pm MST | Modified: Thursday, January 21, 2010, 1:55pm
Headed to the Vancouver Olympics next month, but lack a cowbell to clang slopeside like those rabid downhill fans? Don’t worry, now there’s an app for that.
A virtual cowbell developed by Rage Digital started selling on the Apple app store Jan. 19. It’s the first paid app the Boulder iPhone and iPod Touch app company has launched and branded for itself.
Timed to coincide with the winter games — which must mark the high season for cowbell sales, one would think — the company’s 99-cent Cowbell2010 turns people’s iPhones and Touches into digital cowbells that clang realistically when shaken.
“We really think the cowbell is a really fun thing to have,” Ted Guggenheim, Rage Digital CEO and founder.
The four-person company creates iPhone apps for other businesses. The products usually appear in the Apple app store under the client’s brand with Rage Digital’s involvement obscured by non-disclosure clauses in their contracts, Guggenheim said.
The idea for the Cowbell2010 app arose during brainstorming for a client. Rage Digital decided create Cowbell2010 for itself.
It’s more than a novelty.
Rage Digital hopes Cowbell2010 generates 1 million downloads. (That’s $990,000 worth, for those keeping track; $693,000 after Apple’s typical cut).
Cowbell2010 is not the only bovine bell for the iPhone. Cowbell2010 tries to distinguish itself by adding things useful to estimated nearly 1 million people expected to attend the Vancouver games, too.
The app keeps a running medal count by country during the games, collects tweets from a growing roster of more than 200 athletes who post updates to Twitter and lets the user post their updates to Facebook from the Cowbell2010 app.
But Rage Digital is careful not cast Cowbell2010 as some sort of semiofficial virtual cowbell of the Olympics.
That would cause licensing issues, plus the company sees uses for Cowbell2010 beyond the winter games. Guggenheim envisions updating it for this summer’s Tour de France and other events.
Guggenheim worked hard to get the bell’s sound just right.
He bought one from the a music store to record. Unsatisfied, he scoured eBay to land a brass, Swiss-made one to record for Cowbell2010.
In an iPod Touch, the app doesn’t produce the decibels of an actual cowbell. But Rage Digital worked hard to make the app as loud as a the device’s small speaker could manage, and as authentic.
“Let’s just say, if you crank it up all the way in a room with somebody, it can be annoying,” Guggenheim said.
He points out Cowbell2010 a serious advantage over its folksy, analogue inspiration.
“Last time I checked, you can’t make a call from a cowbell,” Guggenheim said.
