myHomework Blog
Myhomework accounts free in usa, uk, canada and australia, posted 11 years ago.
If you’ve been using the iOS and Android apps, you may have noticed a few weeks ago we opened up free sign ups (with ads) in the USA, UK, Canada and Australia. This gives students free access to the website, iOS and Android reminders, syncing between devices and the ability to join Teachers.io classes. For those not wanting to see any ads, you can still pay $1.99 to remove them for a year.
As of yesterday, you can sign up for a free account on the website too, as long as you’re using a newer web browser and share your location.
So, if you’ve been waiting to create your myHomework account, now is the time! Just go to myHomework’s website and sign up!
If you don’t live in these locations, don’t worry. We plan to add more countries throughout the year. Follow us @myhomeworkapp or on Facebook for updates.
2012 Year in Review
2012 was an exciting year for Instin! We went from being a student app side project to a company focused on making a better education system.
Here’s a recap of some of the best moments of 2012:
12 months ago - myHomework iPad app is launched. Today the iPad is where we get the most visitors per day.
7 months ago - myHomework is launched for Kindle Fire.
7 months ago - The three of us quit our jobs to pursue Instin full-time.
6 months ago - We spoke at the first Kauffman Demo Day, introducing our company to the Silicon Prairie startup community.
4 months ago - myHomework was nominated for Silicon Prairie mobile app of the year and Rigo was nominated for Silicon Prairie Technologist of the year.
4 months ago - Teachers.io was launched to friends and family. A place for teachers to have a public profile and manage their classes where the assignments are shared to students using myHomework.
3 months ago - myHomework is launched for Windows 8. We built it in 2 weeks to have it available with the Windows 8 launch.
2 months ago - Teachers.io is launched to teachers around the world.
2 months ago - myHomework for web, iPhone and iPad is completely redesigned and starts integrating with Teachers.io.
1 month ago - We spoke at the second Kauffman Demo Day, giving an update with what we had accomplished since June.
1 month ago - Kansas senator Jerry Moran mentions Instin and myHomework in a speech on the the senate floor.
1 month ago - myHomework for Android is rebuilt and redesigned to work well with multiple screen sizes.
2012 Numbers
In 2012 myHomework had over 1.3 million new downloads, bringing the number to over 2.5 million since launch. Over 36,000 students went the extra step to pay for the ability to sync between devices, bringing the number to 47,000 since its launch.
On iPad we are averaging 40,000 uniques a week and 300,000 visits a week.
On iPhone we are averaging 36,000 uniques a week and 180,000 visits a week.
On Android we are averaging 9,000 uniques a week and 36,000 visits a week.
Since it launched last year there were over 6.5 million syncs averaging around 12,000 a day.
Last year myHomework was available for the iPhone, Web and Android phones. Today myHomework is available for the iPhone, iPad, Web, Android phones, Android tablets, Kindle Fire and Windows 8.
What’s next?
2013 is another year of excitement and growth. Now it’s not only on myHomework, but Teachers.io too. We hope by the end of the year we’ll have our products integrated in more schools, like this , as their preferred tools. You can expect availability of our products in more platforms and hopefully some new products too.
Cheers and Happy 2013!
A new myHomework for Android
We’re pleased to announce version 2.0 of myHomework for Android is available for download.
A couple of months ago we decided to rewrite the app from the ground up to take advantage of all that’s new and exciting in the Android world.
Some things to be excited about:
- works great on Jelly Bean now
- more responsive to user input
- landscape layouts
- action bar and holo theme for a more beautiful look
- great support for 7" tablets (with plans for 10")
- long press homeworks to quick complete/uncomplete
- numerous bug fixes
We’ll soon be adding bi-weekly and period-based schedule support. Joining Teachers.io classes will follow that.
If you’re an Android user, thanks for your patience as we try to catch the app up with the iOS version. Today was a big step towards making that happen.
myHomework’s History & Design Evolution
We just finished releasing a major update to myHomework where students can now join a Teachers.io class and automatically receive assignments, tests, syllabus, attachments and announcements directly on their devices. Every major release I rethink the design and try to make it look better than before. This time was no different. myHomework has been around for a couple of years now, so I’ve gathered enough assets that I think it’s time to write about its evolution, where it came from, what it means, etc…
It all started with the iPhone app in 2009. I was still in college, the iPhone SDK had come out, people were starting to write apps and become successfull, so I decided to do the same. I thought to myself that even if the app didn’t become successful at least it was a great thing to have on a resume. So I went out to B&N, bought one of the first books dedicated exclusively to Objective-C and started learning. A few days later I started to get the hang of it and started thinking of what kind of app to build.
Since I was still in school my biggest problem was staying organized. Even though my school used to give student planners for free I would always forget it in my dorm room, or lose it. I remember going to the App Store searching for a student planner app but the ones available were all ugly and you had to pay for it. So why not a student planner app that was free and looked cool? Well that’s what I decided to build…
While looking for some design inspiration I noticed that some apps were trying to mimic real life objects. I remember thinking that those apps looked really cool, so instead of making it look like any other app in the store with a blue navigation bar and a black toolbar I decided to make it look like a notebook. So I whipped out my basic tutorial, learned photoshop skills and started designing. I remember having some issues with the navigation design, I really didn’t want to add that black toolbar for navigation. So my girlfriend (now my wife) had this amazing idea of having the navigation look like sticky notes, so I decided to do it.
After buiding the app I had to come up with a name. Instead of coming up with a new word in the dictionary I wanted a name that actually meant something. Around that time a lot of apps were following the Apple wording trend of putting the letter ‘i’ in front of a word. I remember seeing iHomework, iStudent, iStudy and etc… I also couldn’t use just the word because they were already claimed. So I thought to myself: I’m building this app for me, so I can keep track of my classes, so I can keep track of my homework so I decided to use the word 'my’ and I called it myHomework.
I launched myHomework, graduated from college, joined a really large corporation in Kansas City (Cerner) as a software engineer and left myHomework to the side. I then created a few other apps just for fun during my free time, such as the simple kids game called Touch Boom! and a 2010 world cup app called my Goal .
In 2010 I joined a team at Cerner to do web development for a new consumer product. While on that team I learned a lot about web development, especially from two guys: Ryan and Keith . Towards the end of that year the execs wanted a new product, but they wanted it to be built in only two weeks! So they put me, Ryan, Keith and a designer in a room and we got it done. After that we noticed that the 3 of us could work really well together so we started looking at some side projects to work on. Around that time myHomework was doing well, it had close to a million downloads and students were loving it, so we saw an opportunity there and decided to join forces and start a company and we called it Instin .
When that happened we decided to rebuild myHomework from scratch. I removed the sticky notes metaphor but kind of kept the notebook look and feel. The navigation was moved to a launcher view which kind of mimics the iPhone launcher. We noticed that worked really well and allowed us to add in new pages and features when needed. Around May 2011 we launched a new version of myHomework for iPhone, a website and an Android app.
During 2011 we got a lot more students using myHomework, a lot of feedback on how to improve it and a lot of requests for an iPad app. That’s when a new redesign of myHomework came to be, I ported the iPhone app into an universal app, improved the design to have a better texture and gradient and nearly the end of 2011 we launched myHomework for iPad.
2012 came around we noticed that by launching the iPad app we got a lot more downloads and users passing the 2 million download mark. While working on myHomework as a side project for nearly a year we learned a lot about the education space and how there is an opportunity to increase education with the use of technology. We also learned that the current offerings weren’t great and how students and teachers were not happy with what they had/have. So in May 2012 Keith, Ryan and I decided to quit our jobs to work full time on our company Instin and myHomework.
If you are wondering what Instin means, it stands for Einstein but without the 'e's
Since May 2012 we’ve been busy! We launched a Windows 8 app which you can read more about it here . We also launched a completely new design of myHomework’s website, iPhone and iPad app that’s a lot more crisp, clean and easy to touch. We also launched a new product called Teachers.io which is a place for teachers to organize their classes, assignments and resources and for students that are using myHomework to automatically download the teacher’s content on their devices and be reminded of when things are due.
With this new version of myHomework we are taking it to a new level. We are no longer just a student planner. Along with Teachers.io, myHomework is starting to become a classroom tool that hopefully will improve the experience that students and teachers are having in class and the current frustations will go away. With this new version we also have a more beautiful logo. The blue background represents the cover of the notebook where the pencil and eraser are placed on the top.
I’m extremelly exited about how far myHomework has gone and about what is yet to come. As we grow we are commited to making the life of students and teachers easier. Hopefully one day we will be able to look back and see what a great job we’ve done.
Teachers.io integration in myHomework!
When we’ve asked students that aren’t using myHomework yet why they’re not, the most frequent answers are:
- My teacher already hands out their syllabus and assignment sheets, I don’t want to enter that all into an app.
- Entering all of my assignments is too time consuming, I’d rather just use paper.
We understand not wanting to enter all of the information each teacher hands out or puts on the (often outdated) school website, into an app. That’s why we’ve created Teachers.io , a place where teachers can enter all of their class information in a way that’s easier for students to access.
If your teacher uses Teachers.io , you’ll get due dates, the syllabus, files and announcements right in your myHomework app, without having to enter anything! Then, you can use myHomework more for staying organized than for data entry.
In the latest release of the iPhone and iPad apps and on myhomeworkapp.com, getting your teacher’s class information into myHomework is extremely easy:
Accessing information about your class has never been simpler. Tell your teachers how myHomework makes it easier for students to stay organized. Have them sign up for a free account by visiting the Teachers.io website today!
P.S. - We’re working hard on bringing these new features to the Android and Windows 8 apps too. Watch for those updates soon!
This video demos some of the iPad changes coming on version 4.0 which should be available it about a week or so when it gets approved to the App Store. Here is the full list of changes:
★ New visual design. ★ Added Teachers.io integration. You can now simply join your teacher’s class. ★ iPhone 5 support. ★ Added period-based schedules. ★ Added alternating week schedules. ★ Added ability to associate the calendar with block days. ★ Added 2 extra block days (up to 10 now).
✔ Fixed usability issue when saving class schedules. ✔ Several bug fixes.
This video demos some of the iPhone changes coming on version 4.0 which should be available it about a week or so when it gets approved to the App Store. Here is the full list of changes:
Posted 12 years ago
Here is a little sneak peak of myHomework version 4.0 that will be coming for iOS in the next few weeks. More specifically the video shows a change that we made around class times that several people has been asking about. Let us know what you think!
Free myHomework in the Silicon Prairie!
Last night we attended the 1st annual Silicon Prairie Awards , where myHomework was nominated for “Mobile App of the Year” and the creator of myHomework, Rodrigo Neri , was nominated for “Technologist of the Year”.
We were thrilled to simply be nominated out of the Midwest’s finest apps and developers. We’d like to send a big congrats to the winners of those two categories: FrontFlip and Brandon Weber of Dwolla .
We’d also like to thank Silicon Prairie News . SPN is our go-to source for learning about all of the exciting things happening in the Midwest tech scene. You should follow @SiliconPrairie if you’re not already.
To show our appreciation to the place we call home, we’re going to be offering free myHomework accounts to students in the prairie via our iPhone, iPad, Kindle and Android apps. On Tuesday, September 4th if you share your location and are near Omaha, Des Moines or Kansas City, you’ll be offered a free account.
We’re working hard on the next release of myHomework, which has some new features we’re really excited about. Stay tuned!
50,000 Downloads in Google Play
Last night we eclipsed the 50K download mark which puts us in the top 4.5% of all google play applications[1].
It’s been just a little bit over a year since we first introduced myHomework for android to the google market ( now known as play).
We’re happy with where we’re at but we’ve still got a long ways to go.
Thanks to all of the students who have helped us create a better app by providing feedback.
We’re planning some big updates before the fall so stay tuned!
[1] Stats from http://www.androlib.com/gd/stats/downloadrepartition.aspx
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