This now brings us to an interesting dilemma:
“Do we keep it free?“

I initially decided to place it back to the launch price of £1.79 after the festive season but given the huge take up in downloads I’d like to keep this coming and placing a cost on the app no matter how small impacts this. People are willing to spend $5 on a coffee (myself included) but not $1 on an app and with this in mind and the fact that we want to update it with another 2000 words I’ve decided to add “AdMob” to the application and keep it free.

We already see from this site that people will consume the content you give them and do not click the Google ads (hint hint) but I guess the idea is that you have to appeal to the individual and not the masses and that’s why we’ve signed up to AdMob to keep the app free. Of course if you don’t want the adverts then you don’t have to update the app you have but I will be making updated and some corrections to it and the adverts themselves are at the top of the screen (see image) so they’re not intrusive at all. The idea of this app was for each download to pay for a small items in the house like a roof tile or a brick and at present this is just not happening with either the app or the Google ads.

We are looking for some feedback from the users on this as we are also thinking of tuely opening up the app to allow people to contribute and suggest words that’ll be automatically added at the next build.

What do you think of this ?

iTunes Link for Petite Assistante is : HERE

You can download your free app from iTunes or in your iPhone & iPod touch HERE

If of course you want to show us some Google add clicking love that would be great too… More shortly, lots and lots to tell you .

So a few bits of news …

1) Petite Assistante v1.1
Major word-base update coming out soon. I’ve been working hard on updating the word list even more and am hopefully over the next week i’ll get this submitted to Apple for approval.

Sales are going well considering it’s such a niche product and i’ve even made contacted a few “France / French” magazines to see if they can do some sort of editorial and we’ll do some sort of app giveaway with them. This will for the moment be UK based only but it’s a start. I’ll keep you updated on this. The very latest version of “Petite Assistante” will always be HERE

2) A few days away coming up soon
With the Christmas holidays coming up we are taking the dog on his first european holiday to the house. To do some prep for this me and my dad are off to the house for just under a week from next Thursday. This will just be getting the house ready for living in at christmas so there will be some videos, photos and posts for the work we’ll be undertaking. That said this is a few days away for us to chill out and will not be busting my nuts to work on the house. However here’s what i’ll try and achieve :

• Cow shed roof full removed and the wall taken down
• Pipping lagged in prep for the winter
• Interior wall pointed to help insulate for the winter

We’ll also be travelling on the new LDLines service that is now running from Dover – Boulogne route so i’ll post up as this will be yet another carrier we’ve been on so it’s time to do a comparison. So that’s it really, they’ll be more over the coming week. Also the irony of the timing of this post hasn’t gone unnoticed.. The last time i wrote a “No news is good news” post, we got married and yep we’ve just had out first wedding anniversary.. It seems September is destined to be a slow blog month

The video above shows you some basic functionality of the app running & how to use it just to wet your appetite. As we’ve said before this is no ordingary French dictionary, this is going to be an epic renovation and building dictionary of super super handy proportions.. No more worrying if you know exactly what a word says just look it up in seconds.

The great news is that we are constantly updating the word lists and we’ve already send an update to Apple correcting a (rather embarrassing) spelling mistake and we’ve added 1500 more words. As promised these updates are always going to be FREE, so don’t wait around CLICK HERE and go the App Store today & get the WORLDS 1ST French Renovation iPhone/iPod Touch App brought to you by us here at www.Montpillard.com

So here’s the skinny :
iTunes Link : Petite Assistante
Cost : Launch price £1.19 NOW FREE (see post for why)

Right now we can’t give any away as a launch special as Apple only allow this via the US store so we’ve dropped the price by 1/3rd for a week. Lets hope they fix that soon so we can do a small giveaway.

This is the one we’ve both dreaded, the episode where we try and talk French architect, bureaucracy and our current experiences… This tips Lee over the edge!  No worries though we found the beep effect in Garage Band but it also drew some angry responses on Twitter regarding my “Architects are the problem” tweet that was sent out with it, rather than “maybe it’s just the guys we’ve encountered etc etc”.. No offense intended but I’ve just about had my fill of unclear, contradictory and outright wrong information.

Listen to the low quality version now
Listen now with the below audio embedded low quality version or click HERE to go to iTunes to get it or subscribe
[audio:http://www.montpillard.com/wp-content/uploads/podcast_episode_six_stream.mp3]

Listen to the low quality version now
Listen now with the below audio embedded low quality version or click HERE to go to iTunes to get it or subscribe

[audio:http://www.montpillard.com/wp-content/uploads/ep5.mp3]

Episode 3 podcast covers

• Why the delay
• Waiting for quotes
• A book recommendation

and much more of me getting stressed at the whole situation

Listen now with the below audio embedded low quality version or click HERE to go to iTunes to get it or subscribe

[audio:http://www.montpillard.com/wp-content/uploads/podcast_episode3_stream.mp3]

What we’ve done is now made an mp3 streaming version available at the end of each post (example below). This mp3 stream will play straight from your browser just click the play icon.

[audio:http://www.montpillard.com/wp-content/uploads/slogger1.mp3]

At present these streams are only available to listen to online and not available for download but these will be available soon for you to add to your Zune, MP3 player, phone etc etc for you non iTunes users. It’s also noting that the iTunes podcasts are “enhanced” with artwork, links and chapters which isn’t available on the embedded version.

Also you’ll now notice that the “AUDIO” page at the top of the blog now has been populated. This is going to be a consolidation area for our audio streams, so if you think you’ve missed something or just want a 1 stop page to get to all our audio then THIS PAGE is it.

It’s London Marathon day in London so we did what all sensible Londoners do and that’s LEAVE LONDON

So we used the time in the quiet countryside to record episode 2 of the Montpillard.com Podcast where we talk about our process of finding and buying the house.

This Podcast is a little longer at 15 minutes but there is a fair bit to cover. We are getting the hang of this and the quality is improving and there are less “errrms” than before but we are still working on it.

Episode #2 is now live in iTunes, so either subscribe HERE (iTunes link), or go direct to the current episode HERE

We discussed the websites we used and the mortgage options very briefly in this episode and those links will appear here shortly and Dawn will be doing a full write-up of the mortgages we looked at.

Embedded Low Quality Online Version
[audio:http://www.montpillard.com/wp-content/uploads/podcast_episode2_stream.mp3]

Enjoy.