Jeremy Olson, a student in the College of Computing and Informatics (CCI), and his mobile app design company, Tapity, have a hit with its newest offering Languages. Following on the successful release of Grades 2, the company’s inaugural application, Languages has climbed to the fifth-highest selling app in Apple’s App Store, only a day after being released.
“We are totally blown away,” said Olson. “It’s hard to fathom, one day there are just a few dozen people testing and refining it and the next day thousands of people are using the app, and the next day thousands more. The fact that it is being used by people all over the world and is useful for them is both mind-boggling and a really good feeling. It’s also good to beat out Angry Birds in the App Store, which has always been a goal of mine.”
Olson’s company was approached about a year ago by Sonico, developer of the iTranslate app, a cloud-based translation tool primarily for phrases only, which to date has been downloaded over 30 million times. However, Sonico developers learned there was a real need for an app that can translate single words and is offline so it can be accessed anywhere in the world.
The partnership between the two companies resulted in Tapity handling the design work while Sonico worked on all of the coding for the Languages app.
In 2011, Olson and his company, Tapity, won an Apple Design Award for Grades 2, an iPhone app that shows students what they need to score on their upcoming assignments, tests, and finals in order to get the grade they want. It also includes due dates and a GPA calculator.
“Grades showed we could build neat stuff but with a limited audience,” said Olson. “Languages afforded us the opportunity to do something more universal that almost anybody would want to use.”
Olson formed Tapity along with his brother, Josh, and father, Todd. Fellow UNC Charlotte CCI student, Christian Billings, was instrumental in the development of Languages, too.