Greengar Studios

Smartboard has been getting lots of publicity recently, from the US to Singapore and Vietnam. It’s undoubtedly a great technology that we’re exciting to work on days and nights. For the last four months, each Greengar team members could not even get more than 40 hours of sleeping per week.

We have a team member who is getting married, who is still spending more time on his codes rather than his wedding project.

I personally don’t even have time to spend with my family in the entire Lunar New Year because of preparation for the Women 2.0 Conference.

But why are we doing all this? Here are the reasons:

• Nathan Smith: At the age of 3, he was diagnosed with Autism and Apraxia, two diagnose said more about what he could NOT do that what he could do. His remarkable inner drive and contagious smile encourage therapists, teachers, family and friends to believe in him and give him opportunities to learn and succeed. Speaking through typing on an iPad has given Nathan great opportunities to share his thoughts and excel. He will earn high school diploma this year and entering university. He has GREAT success in using Whiteboard among others in the iPad.

• South Shore Educational Collaborative: provides specialized education, counseling, and therapeutic services for approsximately 350 individuals with moderate to intense learning, intellectual, emotional, physical, and medical challenges. They have been using Whiteboard to enable their students collaborative on syllable game, multiple choices questions, tackle and analyzing the problems without have to share pen and paper. Moreover, they use Whiteboard to give direction for autism kids of what they need to do next.  They are demanding Bluetooth-collaborative on Smartboard and the Wi-Fi accessible in 8 schools in their district to enable 100 more students collaborative using Whiteboard.

They are the two stories among hundred of other stories that we wish to share about our users of Whiteboard and Smartboard. When Elliot developed Whiteboard 4 years ago, it was just a class project. The first version of Whiteboard, releasing on Cydia for beta users, has been put together within only one month. He hacked days and nights on the codes and Whiteboard hit one million downloads within the first 2 months on the AppStore. We have never thoughts about being the most popular collaborative drawing applications on mobile, but we are right now.

In the last four years, regardless how much the technology has been change, resolutions and displays have been changed, the commitment of Greengar team stayed the same with the Whiteboard product: delivering the most useful applications for people to collaborate on mobile productive and effectively.

Since the Women 2.0 Conference, our team finished as a Runner-up and have so much attentions from press, media, and investors from all around the world. It’s very exciting! However, what really made all of our efforts, lack of sleep and scarifying family-time are really the stories that shared by our users. Each lines of codes we are writing and each dollars we spend to bootstrap this company in the last four years are totally worth it.

I’m thrill for the future of Greengar and wake up everyday like our journey has just begun.

I really hope we could find a partner who are crazy enough to bring Smartboard to every classroom in the world and changing more people lives together

By Thuy Muoi - Co-Founder/CEO

Ho Chi Minh City, peaceful night at Central Garden Apartment

When I founded Greengar, I had a vision for a series of Simple, Fun, Useful apps. Indeed, we probably rank #1 if you search on Google for “simple fun useful”. It was with this goal that we created Brain Tuner, Color ID, Flashlight, Brightness, Today Clock, and Typing with Strangers.

The App Store has grown significantly since then, and our ambitions have grown right alongside it. In 2013, our vision is to push Whiteboard to the next level, creating a new expansion that we call Smartboard. We know collaborative drawing is the future of our company because Whiteboard is our biggest success to date, with over 8 million downloads and 500,000 active users.

Elliot and Thuy

Thuy Truong, my co-founder, has long had a passion for mobile productivity and connectivity. She’s eager to improve Smartboard to meet the needs of educators and students all over the world. Here’s why I’m confident that she’s the best person to be our CEO.

Every founder knows how hard is to attract and hire top talent. In recent months, Greengar has received a lot of publicity, from Women 2.0, e27, Tech in Asia, and more. But Thuy isn’t just interested in the fame; instead, she worries about things that produce results. A good CEO is constantly focused on producing results, not being famous. So Thuy is taking this opportunity to attract top talent to Greengar.

Next, Thuy is always ready to jump in and get her hands dirty every single day. She’s not content with leaving things to someone else. I remember a scene from years ago, when I was observing her at work in Parallel Frozen Yogurt, her previous company. The store sign had a loose light bulb or something, and the sign was too high up to reach. The only thing readily available to boost one’s height was a wobbly chair. I would not have taken the risk of falling over in order to change that bulb, but Thuy didn’t even hesitate. She got up on the chair and fixed the sign, ignoring the danger and making sure that things got done.

At a startup, there’s nothing more important than hustling and getting things done.

Furthermore, Thuy is focused. She knows that she must focus our time and resources on the most impactful initiatives.

Last but not least, she nurtures and works with the team. It’s critical that team members work effectively with each other, so there’s no choice but for the CEO to be on-site with the team in Ho Chi Minh City. Even with Skype and Smartboard, nothing beats the bandwidth of face-to-face communication.

The title of CEO is hard to earn and hard to keep. The CEO has to lead a team that brings a product to reality and builds on it over time. Thuy is undoubtedly up for the challenge, and I’m proud to have her as CEO.

Elliot Lee
Founder, Greengar

Happy Lunar New Year!

It’s a coincidence that Valentine’s Day and the Lunar New Year have come at about the same time for the past few years. This year, the Greengar team is pleased to have a big celebration.

Today, we’re very excited to announce our newest application: Smartboard, the best real-time collaboration app for mobile devices. During many sleepless nights in our Ho Chi Minh City development lab, we completely re-designed the drawing and connectivity functions of Whiteboard, our most successful application.

Whiteboard has set a track record that few other productivity apps can beat:

• Achieved 1 million downloads after only 2 months on the App Store
• Featured over 500 times by Apple
• Over half a million monthly active users worldwide
• Over 8 million downloads to date

However, we decided to take the challenge of beating ourselves! In 2013, the Greengar team committed to build Smartboard into the best collaboration app for our users. We appreciate their support over the past several years. The new Smartboard app arrives to the iOS App Store and Android Google Play today with many awesome features:

CROSS-PLATFORM COLLABORATION

Connect 5 smartphones and tablets with Smartboard over the same Wi-Fi network. Join a canvas and collaborate in real-time. When people draw on their device, Smartboard instantly transfers their strokes to the other collaborators’ devices. Smartboard enables people to draw together in real-time, with changes reflected on all collaborators’ screens.

SKETCHING ON THE GO – iCLOUD, EVERNOTE, GOOGLE DRIVE

Smartboard also features a simple, intuitive UI and fast, smooth drawing. It includes a lot of nice design features, like undo and redo, the ability to quickly Start Over on a new canvas, and an amazing color picker with adjustable opacity and width for each stroke.

Smartboard can save your drawings to multiple cloud storage services including iCloud, Box, Evernote, and Google Drive!

✮ Special iPad Features ✮
· Text Tool: Enhance your photos and drawings with many special fonts, plus rotate and resize your text!
· Layers (not available when collaborating): Import photos from Facebook, Photo Albums, and iCloud on different layers, merge them together and enhance them with your awesome artistic skills.

DEEP SOCIAL INTEGRATION – SHARE WITH THE WORLD
Share your awesome artwork with the world:
· Submit to Smartboard Gallery
· Save to the Facebook Album of your choice
· Twitter and more!

Smartboard is also selected as a finalist for the Women 2.0 SF PITCH COMPETITION. Greengar’s Co-Founder Thuy Truong will be presenting Smartboard at the Women 2.0 Conference on February 14, 2013. This event will feature successful women entrepreneurs who reached milestones of billions, including a Facebook case study, and best practice presentations from some of the most successful female startup founders and executives in the technology industry.

We hope you like Smartboard. We look forward to your feedback!

By Thuy Truong - Co-Founder

February 12, 2013 – a sunny afternoon in San Francisco at Philz Coffee on Berry Street

Greengar is competing in the Women 2.0 PITCH SF 2013 Startup Competition. There’s a People’s Choice Award: the winner “will be selected by our community identifying the finalist company that appeals to the widest range of our community.”

Click this button to vote:

Tweet

Want to customize the tweet? To vote for Greengar, send tweet with the following:

• The word “vote”
• The hashtags “#w2conf” and “#w2pitch”
• Mention @greengar and @women2

Here’s an example:

“I vote for @Greengar for @Women2 People’s Choice Award at #w2conf – Please Retweet!”

Thuy Truong is a co-founder of Greengar and works with the rest of the team to develop awesome and connected mobile apps.

She is flying from Ho Chi Minh City to San Francisco to pitch Smartboard at the Women 2.0 Conference on Feburary 14, 2013.

The event will be streamed live, so look for it on the 14th.

Thank you!

Coming out as the winner of the Chartboost Hackathon 2012, Typing with Strangers is the most-wanted game from the contest. The game was put together in 48 hours by Kimberly Hsiao, Andy Jiang, Eran Davidov (CTO of SocialBug Labs), and Elliot Lee (Founder of Greengar).

Typing with Strangers is a real-time seamless multi-player game that lets you kill monsters by typing the words on them. When someone near you is playing Typing with Strangers, your games will automatically merge together. They’ll join your game, and you’ll join theirs! It’s one big world, with tons of enemies to conquer. In other ordinary games (even multiplayer ones), if there is another player who wants to join the game, the current player has to stop their current game and make an invitation for them to join. Not cool. But with Typing with Strangers, it just works like magic!

This game is also a very interesting educational tool for new users of iPhone, who aren’t yet ridiculously proficient with a touchscreen keyboard. Players can improve typing skills and also challenge their peers. The graphics are also nicely designed by Andy Jiang, Duy Hoang, and Hector Zhao, providing interesting looks for the creatures.

This is a short introduction clip of Typing with Strangers, when it was announced as the Winner of the Chartboost Hackathon:

Chartboost Hackathon- Winning team from Chartboost on Vimeo.

Download Typing with Strangers on the App Store!

Posted by ThuyMuoi @thuymuoi, Co-Founder and Managing Partner

Ho Chi Minh City, late Friday evening, Jan 11, 2013

I’m excited to share some news about what we’ve been working on at Greengar.

Since the introduction of the first iPad on March 12, 2010, Whiteboard on iOS has had a phenomenal few years. Whiteboard is among the top collaboration applications on the iOS App Store, and we’ve received more feedback and requests from users on iPad than any other device. Many users love Whiteboard, and are using it in many industries, including education, fashion design, communication, PR/advertising, psychology, and more. Here’s what they’re saying:

Fer800 (★★★★★): Excellent application where you can show creative work and develop your drawing skills, presenting pictures full color, I use this application to release stress and tension of the working day, I highly recommended it.

Spectacular concrete (★★★★★): I always carry a pen. I always have a phone on me too!!! Thus i use my phone. People see black and white easier fir some reason. This app has allowed me to show people where I figuratively want to put things for there yard. Also a great way to keep notes for later. I think there could be a couple of changes. With everything I do. Thus app is perfect to show a quick idea of what could be!!!! Creative “up-sellers” know what I speak of. This app can help out everyone in the biz:-) (no one calls it that)

Ali go (★★★★★): Although school is important I always look forward to drawing with my friends during class. It’s like texting but instead you don’t get caught because it’s on your iPad. This is my addiction:)

Tate Skinner (Good Back-Up in Classroom ★★★★★): I mainly use Note Taker HD on the iPad with a ceiling projector when teaching. But, I do use this app when my teacher’s aide needs my iPad. And I often collaborate with students who have this app on their iPhone.

Ballparkjosh (Me and my 4 yo love it ★★★★★): Don’t let the people who get confused by a revolving door get you down on this one. It’s a great app for drawing and just having fun on your I pad. If you have a stylus it makes this app about a million times better. Your not gonna be drawing fine art on it but it gets the job done for what it was intended. My daughter just loves the fact she gets to draw all over my I pad without getting yelled at. Besides that it keeps her art off my walls.

Whiteboard on iPad has been one of the Top 50 Productivity apps since its release:

At WWDC 2011, Steve Jobs announced iCloud. Today, we’re thrilled to bring iCloud integration to Whiteboard, with version 3.2.1. We’ve submitted this update to Apple, including these awesome features:

• iCloud Integration: Open & save drawings to iCloud, access them on any device (iOS or Mac), and continue drawing your awesome artwork.
• Deep Facebook Integration: Open & save photos from any album on Facebook.
• Better Text Tool & Layers for iPad, better performance on iPad with Retina display.
• Upload to & visit Whiteboard Gallery right from any Whiteboard app, via the Settings view.
• Crop photos to fit your screen’s aspect ratio before editing: no more stretched photos!

While waiting for the version 3.2.1 update, check out our new Whiteboard Gallery to see some awesome artwork created by our beloved Whiteboard users.

Thuy & iCloud at WWDC 2011 – in remembrance of Steve

There are people who make things happen, there are people who watch things happen, and there are people who wonder what happened. To be successful, you need to be a person who makes things happen. - Jim Lovell

Posted by Thuy Muoi @thuymuoi, Vice President, Greengar
Ho Chi Minh City, late lonesome working night

Engineers create and build great products that make life better.

When I was in college, my most joyful moments were when my code worked, and my programs ran smoothly. College life is only four years, but engineering is a career for life.

After graduating from USC, Elliot and I decided to continue developing fun, simple, and useful apps for mobile platforms. Unlike college, in the real world we don’t have professors giving us problems to solve. We have to really figure out the problems we want to solve for the people around us.

We created an app called Color Identifier. Although it doesn’t reach millions of people like some other Greengar apps, I’m the most proud of this app. The app originates from the SS12: Code for a Cause event at USC. SS12 is a Hackathon to develop software for disabled people. Elliot Lee, the Founder of Greengar, attended that event in the role of Mentor. Leveraging the open source code developed at the event, he developed it into the most useful color identifier app on iOS.

In September 2010, Color ID gained world-wide attention for being an interesting and helpful application for color blind and visually-impaired people. Austin Seraphin’s blog post about his experience with Color ID collected 257 comments and 111 trackbacks.

Today, we are thrilled to release a new update for Color ID. The new release is fully optimized for the iPad. This update has taken a while, so we’re glad that it’s finally available.

Currently, I’m looking into new technologies to synthesize speech so that the app can be available in more languages. If you’re an engineer interested in contributing to this app, please contact me.

Color ID is also available for Android on Google Play.

Color ID is now beautiful on iPad.

Download it on the App Store now!

Posted by Thuy Muoi @thuymuoi, VP of Human Resources
Ho Chi Minh City, rainy late night, September 6th, 2012

I would like to introduce you to the latest Greengar app: Today Clock.

Today Clock is an alarm clock, so you can set it to sound a bell or buzzer at specific times. It has standard alarm functions like snooze, repeat, etc.

However, what makes Today Clock special is that you can see the current date in your device’s Notification Center! This way, you can find today’s date without opening Calendar or going back to the lock screen.

What’s today’s date?

Simply swipe down the screen of Notification Center and you can find the answer:

Today Clock offers a digital clock with adjustable brightness for your own comfort, day or night, for indoor or outdoor viewing.

Convenient and elegant alarm setup:

 Simply swipe to delete any alarm from the list.

Enjoy the landscape view.

Download Today Clock now! Today Clock is FREE for a limited time.

We would love to hear what you think about this app. Contact us or stop by the Greengar Facebook Page to leave your comments

Enjoy our simple, fun, and useful Today Clock!

I’m pleased to announce that we’ve released a new update to Brain Tuner 2 Pro.

Brain Tuner is the world-renowned math game for players of all ages. It has been ranked #2 overall on the App Store, and it has been enjoyed by over 3 million delighted players.

Changes in this update:

• Earn Stars for your score. Stars replace Brain Cells.
• Improved performance.
• A Setting to turn off interstitial ads.
• Bug fixes.

Keep tuning your brain!

Buy Brain Tuner 2 Pro for your iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad!

Idea Thirsty. Brainstorms. Work hard. Play hard. New ideas appear at the time we less expect.

To fresh up minds, say hey to Samunagi – Greengar’s new app – released on Mar 29th, 2012.

Arcade (Single player mode with current 8 levels)

 Multi player on a local WiFi connection

Posted by Angela Huynh

Customer Support – Greengar Studios