First, let me say that this was the most fun I’ve ever had doing software development.

In8Mobile contracted with Verizon to do all the exclusive content. I was the product manager/owner at in8Mobile. I conceived most of the app and wallpaper ideas and oversaw the design and development.

We were given access to Lucas Films holy-of-holies asset vault. (I picked a light saber I wanted to use and they chided me for not realizing it only appeared in later films). I recall spending 3 hours replaying one scene endless times to try to catch some of the subtleties to translate it to the app (I believe it was the wallpaper we did where Luke was levitating boulders for Yoda… you had to hold the phone perfectly steady to levitate… any movement and the boulders dropped)

I worked directly with Lucas Films on initial approval of the various concepts and got their final approval once done. I worked with Motorola on pre-loading all the software and content on the phone.

I developed a good relationship with the Lucas Films people. So much so that when I started my own company they had me in to the office in the Presidio to pitch them on an early Augmented Reality idea (animating lobby posters… something they did 10 years later)

I had the most fun with a weather widget. 1/2 of it was the weather at your earth location pulled from the NWS. The other 1/2 was ‘equivalent’ weather on Star Wars planets such as Hoth. Lucas Films has extensive planetary data on these worlds such as speed of rotation, average temperatures in various seasons etc. We did a mapping table that mapped say ‘warm and sunny’ from the NWS to season-based phrases such as ‘Ice Monster bone-chilling’