We’ve all watched businesses crumble around us over the past three years. Dozens of startups evaporate. Proud icon of the Canadian high tech industry, Nortel, in chapter 11. Hundreds more organizations downsize in a struggle to survive and prosper at new, lower levels of customer demand.

Well, one of the things I’ve been doing is teaching myself how to write iPad and iPhone software. I’ve bought and completed a half-dozen ‘how to’ books, ‘dummy’ books and even watched hours of the CS193p Stanford University Computer Science course on iTunes University. This was made a lot easier with my iPad on the treadmill in the depths of the winter of ’10-’11 (who likes to run in the snow? – not me).

I’ve supplemented the experience with a diary/notebook of sorts to track my errors, document the various deadends and software experiments and ultimately fortify the learning.

Yesterday, Digital Hermosa released my first product – KnittingQueen – and posted it in the Apple App Store.

Digital Hermosa is a kind of ‘business club’ brand with two other friends that I’ve known and worked with in the past. We formed the club in 2009 to develop a business idea that would get VC funding and had at least one promising project underway focusing on the intersection of smart devices (smartphones, smart TVs, tablets), software and consumers.

KnittingQueen is the first tangible, revenue-producing product of our collaboration, and there are more planned.

What we’re learning is that the really hard thing is to develop innovative ideas suitable for smartphone execution. Do you have an app you’re dying to see and ultimately purchase? Let us know and we’ll put it through our evaluation process.

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