Huntingtown ‘geek' creates motivational iPhone program

Friday, Oct. 9, 2009

Ray Wenderlich of Huntingtown is a self-described computer and video-gaming geek. As such, he has become used to games that frequently reward him with points, levels and power-ups as he spends time playing.

Unfortunately for Wenderlich and many other gamers, similar points and "levels" can come few and far between in real life.

In search of a little motivation, Wenderlich, a computer software programmer, put his techie talents to task and created "Level Me Up!," a simple application that can be used on the Apple iPhone or iTouch.

The program is one of more than 85,000 "apps" available for download from Apple's online App Store, according to Apple's Web site.

With "Level Me Up!," users can designate skills for the program to track as they spend time working on them. For example, Wenderlich is tracking the hours he spends programming and designing Web pages.

"You basically make a profile of yourself and stick your picture in there and select whatever skill you want to develop personally," he said.

A Calvert County native, Wenderlich first came up with the idea after reading about the "10,000 hour rule" on an online forum. The rule was derived from Malcolm Gladwell's book "Outliers," in which Gladwell uses The Beatles and Bill Gates as examples of what can be done when people spend 10,000 hours perfecting their craft.

The book inspired Wenderlich to think about the time he had previously spent working on his skills and how much longer it would take him to reach his goals.

"The problem with it is, as you go along, maybe you work eight hours on something, you feel like it's a drop in a bucket," Wenderlich said. "I was thinking, ‘Wow, I wish you could make growing your skills in real life as fun and rewarding as when you're playing a video game.'"

For every 10 hours a user spends on a skill, "Level Me Up!" grants them one level. Once that user reaches 100 levels in any particular skill, they reach what Wenderlich calls the "epic" levels. To advance one epic level, a user must dedicate 90 hours to their skill. Once all 100 epic levels have been reached, the user will have spent 10,000 hours developing that skill.

The epic levels, he said, are for a person's life "passions," the activities they plan to dedicate their life to. The normal, 10-hour levels can be used for hobbies or pastimes.

"The reason I did that is because for most skills you're only going to get to a certain percentage of the 10,000 hours because there's only so many hours in your lifetime," Wenderlich said.

One person happy with the motivational app is Wenderlich's wife, Vicki, a local ceramic artist. Vicki keeps track of the time she spends sculpting, making plaster molds, glazing and photographing her work. "What I really like about it is I kind of have a tendency to expect myself to be really, really great," she said. "What [the app] does it kind of let me cut myself a break and let me know I'll get there eventually. It kind of gives me a reality check."

After graduating from Cornell University with a computer science degree, Wenderlich spent more than four years as a programmer with the National Security Agency. He then moved on to become manager of the operations engineering department at Mythic Entertainment in Fairfax, Va., where he worked for more than two years. Mythic Entertainment is owned by gaming developer Electronic Arts.

Wenderlich just recently decided to become an independent software developer, and is currently focused on creating iPhone apps. He spent about two weeks developing "Level Me Up!," and it took another two weeks for Apple to approve it for sale.

He is currently working with a couple friends on a new app that he wouldn't disclose but said should be "pretty cool once it's all done."

He also plans to make a few improvements to "Level Me Up!," including adding a feature that will allow users to attach notes to their hours explaining what they actually did during that time. He also wants to add a timer that a user can start when they begin working on a skill and can turn off once they are done. The app will then record the time for the user.

"Level Me Up!" can be purchased from the App Store for $1.99. Since the app has only been available for a few weeks, Wenderlich does not yet know how many people have purchased it, but he said Apple keeps 30 percent of the app's revenue while he pockets the remaining 70 percent. People who buy apps can leave comments behind for developers to read, he said.

"I've gotten positive feedback from people so far because I don't think there's a lot of similar apps like this out there," Wenderlich said. "For people who are really geeky like me, they enjoy that positive reinforcement for reaching goals and stuff."

jnewman@somdnews.com