#trensy

Thanks to the Startup America Sponsorship, I had the opportunity to attend TechCrunch Disrupt this week in NYC.  It has been great to meet so many interesting and smart people.  But I have to ask...WHERE ARE ALL OF THE RECYCLING BINS.  As with any conference, there are copious amounts of water bottles, juice bottles, cans, and paper.  Unfortunately, all of this is making its way into a landfill somewhere in NY instead of into the recycling.

Indianapolis, IN, May 8, 2012 - The Graham Rahal Foundation and trensy, a local social good startup, have partnered to help brighten the day of terminally ill children in hospitals. At this Saturday's 500 Festival Kids' Day on Monument Circle from 12-4, children and families can stop by the Graham Rahal Foundation booth to make a card that will be sent to children's hospitals through the organization, Cards for Hospitalized Kids. Cards are distributed to children in an effort to make their day a little better through such a tough time. 

Everyone who makes a card will have the option to check in their good deed on trensy to win great prizes. Some of these include: gift cards from restaurants like Weber Grill, signed Graham Rahal Merchandise, free haircuts at Cookie Cutters, free pizza, and more. Balloons will be available for kids along with everything needed to make a card, all that is needed is some creativity.

After making a card, kids will be encouraged to check out some of Graham's racing equipment available at the booth. This will be a unique opportunity to make a difference in a child's life and have a great time doing it!

About the Graham Rahal Foundation:

The Graham Rahal Foundation is dedicated to work for a cause that was significantly important to Graham’s former race team owner and friend, the late actor and philanthropist Paul Newman – helping children with medical conditions. Through various fundraising events and activities, the foundation helps Alex’s Lemonade Stand Foundation for Childhood Cancer (www.alexslemonade.org/), SeriousFun Children’s Network (www.seriousfunnetwork.org/), and various other organizations.

About trensy:

trensy is working to change the way people think about community service by making it fun, competitive, and everyday.  Through smartphone and web apps, users check in good deeds they do in their community to earn points and awards and compete with friends to see who can spread the most good. Visit www.trensy.com for more information and to get started.

About Cards for Hospitalized Kids:

March is a time of year marked by crazed basketball fans glued to their TV sets, cheering on their favorite teams in the NCAA basketball tournament.  This enthusiasm and passion is second to none and, as a fan myself, I LOVE this time of year. So it got us thinking, why not try to harness some of this enthusiasm and competitive nature with a challenge for good.  This is how the trensy Bracket Challenge was born.    

At its core, trensy is working to change the way people think about community service by making it fun, competitive and everyday instead of just when convenient. Using smartphone and web apps, users find and check in good deeds they do throughout the day to earn points and awards.  It's really a great way to get involved and make the community a better place.  

The trensy Bracket Challenge was launched as a way to energize fans of the 68 schools competing in the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament.  Each school is rallying their fans to do good deeds in the community to earn points and push their team to the top of the leaderboard.  The team with the most points at the end of the tournament will win the bragging rights of being the trensy Bracket Challenge Champion (hopefully this will accompany another championship for that school) and be known for the great amount of good they were able to accomplish. Now the only question remaining is which school can rally their faithful to join and check in enough good deeds to be the champion.  

Is your team dancing?  Get involved now to be sure your team is winning on the court and in the community! Take the trensy Bracket Challenge today!

On Friday afternoon we got the great news that Trensy had been approved by Apple and was ready to download in the App Store.  It had been quite a process going back and forth with Apple but our persistence with them paid off.  

See, as everyone knows, Apple is quite selective about how they approve apps that get submitted to the App Store.  I've heard several seemingly valid theories on this but certainly can't confirm any.  The issue they had with us seemed to be the fact they we didn't develop natively in Xcode.  Instead, we chose a more versatile route using a variety of web languages and used PhoneGap (a great program) to add iOS native functionality and make it a native app. There are certainly advantages and disadvantages of this choice but, for us, it has been perfect.  So essentially, we were getting denied because they didn't like our development choices.  After a resubmission, an appeal, and a conversation with an Apple reviewer; we finally convinced them we were competent and are approved to the App Store (app store link). 

We are excited to have you download Trensy and begin checking in good deeds in your community.  We look forward to your feedback (good and bad) so we can continue to improve Trensy and work toward our mission.  

After posting the screenshot of the profile page yesterday, we have had several questions about which platform(s) we are targeting for our initial beta. A variety of factors influenced our decision to start off with a mobile web app as opposed to native (iOS, Android, etc).  One of the biggest reasons is to simply get the most feedback in as little amount of time.  By going with a web app, we aren't limiting ourselves to friends and family in our circles that have that particular device.  Initial tests have shown success in multiple mobile browsers, plus it works well on a computer so we can get feedback from those who may not use a smartphone yet.  

There are certainly some disadvantages we are working through but, all in all, we are very excited with the results we are getting in the mobile browser using mostly HTML, JavaScript, and PHP.  We will give up some in the whole experience but, at this stage, it is worth the advantages.