Developer, Jordan Magnuson has cracked the "AppUp" code! He's the latest Atom Developer Program member to win $10,000 for his app "Country Connect". Jordan won the best "Education & Reference application" category of Intel's Atom Developer Challenge. The app is an addictive! It's a challenging puzzle game! And before you know it you are immersed in a knowledge of world geography. It's almost like cheating, the education is so easy and fun here.

Let's examine this app as AppUp developers, because there's a lot to learn here. After a few of these winning apps, I'm noticing a common theme. Country Connect, My Little Artist and DJView Reader all have this concept of "beautiful utility". They have these extremely simple and uncomplicated user interfaces, while at the same time delivering a great app.

Country Connect could not be better designed for a sub 10 inch screen. There are no small bits of text to try and read. There are no buttons or mouse actions with scroll bars or toolboxes that challenge your track-pad skills (IMO too many Windows apps fail here when on a Netbook). It's got that "pretty to look at feel" while making the controls, menus, buttons and text easy to read and navigate. The app actually feels like it would be a puzzle game for a TV game console.

While being a simple interface it is also very attractive and smartly designed for the both the game theme and mobile usage model. The menu options are big but not clumsy making it easy on the eye for small devices. Jordan did a good job making this work because the graphics, menus and buttons were designed stylistically with the theme and style of the game. Thus the big buttons and menus look like a comfortable part of the app experience.

The game modes are designed for usage model of a netbook, allowing for a Relax mode (see my post on casual gamers want relax mode) while also allowing for challenge modes. The game action is mostly a very simple swapping of card tiles while allowing the hard work to be in solving the puzzle. And the game board feels like a table top card game more than an electronic tile swapping game. And as a bonus this is also one of the few apps on AppUp that translates perfectly for touch and stylus input which make it a great experience for convertible netbook / tablets that are becoming popular. I booted and played the whole game, along with setting new options with a stylus and touch. Works great!

I think I can summarize Country Connect as a fun and engaging app experience that doesn't have you think about the app. The game design and the game play have been well crafted for a mobile companion PC experience.

Well done Jordan. I'd ask you to put the $10K on another project because I'd like to see more apps like this, but I'm thinking you'd like to put your Country Connect skills to work and do some real travelling:-)