Valparaiso students' iPhone app is a hit
3 college kids developed it as a summer project
You know how it goes -- you're a college student living rent-free in your parents' house for the summer, no internship lined up, gorging on the finest McDonald's Dollar Menu has to offer.
From time to time, you have to hit up the folks for a spare 20 bucks.
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But then, all of a sudden you're huge in Italy, big in Brazil, No. 1 in the Netherlands.
"I still can't comprehend it myself, to be honest with you," explained Cameron Banga, a 21-year-old economics major at Valparaiso University.
With only a vague plan to do something fun this summer, Banga and two other Valparaiso students capitalized on worldwide iPhone mania and developed an ingeniously simple app called "Battery Go!" The app lets users know what percentage of their iPhone battery has been used up, and estimates how much time is left for Internet, phone, music or video use.
Banga, who is from Hobart, Ind., said he and his two college buddies, Michael Phelps and Jeff Lange, knew next to nothing about computer programming before they decided in early May they were going to develop their own app. So, like any resourceful college students, they crammed. They spent 12 hours a day getting to know their subject, which included taking online tutorials.
One night in late May, Banga came up with the idea for "Battery Go!"
"I was lying in bed, about to fall asleep, when I had the idea for the app," Banga recalled. "I almost said to myself, 'That's stupid, no one would buy it.'" Instead, he got up and went to work on his computer.
In mid-June, Banga and his pals submitted a zip file to Apple Inc., and by July 5, their app was on the market. In less than 48 hours, Battery Go! had broken into the top 100 out of a list of about 25,000 or so paid apps, Banga said.
Banga estimates he and his co-founders have sold "thousands" of copies of the app, and they expect to get their first check, either by the end of the month or in early August.
"We'll have our summer paid for, for sure," said Banga, anticipating he, Phelps and Lange will make "tens of thousands" from Battery Go!
And Banga and his friends have moved on from the dollar menu. They recently went out for a celebratory meal at Culver's in Valparaiso.
"We added onion rings, which was our big splurge," Banga said.