Having developed two of the most popular astronomy apps out there, which we are VERY proud of, we have learned a lot of interesting and inspiring facts about the stars. Star Walk and Solar Walk were born thanks to an astronomy enthusiast who wanted to develop astronomy apps that would implement all technical innovations of iPhone platform. It is safe to say that now Vito Technology is united not only as a company but also by a common hobby – we are all amateur astronomers. And we wish you would become one too!

That is why we decided to do something to engage our customers into a little astronomy adventure, which would be interesting for everyone regardless their age or occupation.

One of the many things we have learned is that summer is the best time for stargazing. What can be better than a summer night out – romantic dating, hiking, long evenings by a campfire. All these can be accompanied with stargazing.  July is very rich in events astro-wise. For example, meteor showers and impressive views on the planets.

So we suggest that you join us and be the part of Star Walk Month of Astronomy. We are planning to hold a couple of fun educative activities. Of course we have some free stuff to offer:

iPod Touch 8GB;

$20, $15, $10 iTunes cards;

10 Star Walk and Solar Walk T-shirts

10 FREE Promo codes for our astronomy apps

*Read on to learn how to get the prizes*

1.  Stargaze with StarWalk:

4 weeks of July:

2. Win an iPod Touch!

Firstly, we’d like to encourage our customers to stargaze with their kids and use Star Walk app as a night guide. Describe your stargazing experience either on your personal blog or Facebook, or any social media you are present at and send us the link! Here is one of the nice examples of how you can do it.  As a help guide you can use our tips which we’ll be posting on our Facebook page, blog, twitter. The prize for the BEST and MOST CREATIVE story is a brand new iPod Touch! Other participants will get either T-shirts or promo codes.

3. Learn about the Solar System with Solar Walk:

Secondly, we are going to run a quiz on our Facebook page, blog, twitter, where you can learn all about the Solar System and also win something.

From July 7th to August 1st we will be running a quiz. We will post several questions  on StarWalk Facebook Fan page every day. To enter the contest all you have to do is post answers in Comment box. For every right answer you will get a point. The participant who gets the most points wins.  The most active participants will get $20 iTunes Card + T-shirt for the 1st place, $15 iTunes Card for the 2nd place and a $10 iTunes card for the 3rd place.  All answers can be found (with some amount of creativity) in our Solar Walk app.

Let’s have fun together!

Customer review from iTunes AppStore:

We appreciate any feedback coming our way, so please don’t hesitate to send us any comments you or your kids have about our products!

Here is a comparison of Star Walk and Distant Suns by one of our users – Dave.

Did you ever look up at the night sky and wonder what you were seeing? Well, with your 3GS iPhone and a stargazing app, it’s easy to find out. Not sure if this is something that you would enjoy – try Distant Suns (lite), available free at the Apps Store. This freebie will give you an idea of how fun and easy stargazing with the iPhone can be. But understand that this lite version only gives you one of the three pieces of the stargazing puzzle. It lacks the ability to point the phone at the sky and automatically slew the display to identify the objects in your field of view. Also, it doesn’t have the ability to move forward in time to show when the planet or other space object you want to see will be visible from your locale.

To get full functionality as well as a wealth of additional data, options, graphics and ‘wow factor’ – you need a full version. Two of the most popular iPhone stargazing apps are Distant Suns and Star Walk. They have pretty similar feature sets and astronomy databases. Both utilize the phone’s GPS, compass and accelerometers to allow you to hold the phone up to the sky and show you an annotated display of the piece of the universe you are looking at. Both have night vision modes, sound effects and constellation images. There are some differences: display and graphics – Star Walk wins this one with amazing graphics and slick time animation. User interface – Star Walk wins this one for simplicity and lack of clutter. Price – Star Walk wins this one too, $2.99 vs $6.99.

Star Walk or Distant Suns? Frankly you can’t go wrong with either application, but for my money, the nod clearly goes to Star Walk.

Also here are a few suggested improvements:

1. 1. Spend some effort on the instructions, meaning of symbols, etc. for a help page – I think a lot of non-technical folks won’t understand all you present.
2. 2. Make a Wiki instructions/faq page and provide a link to it from within the Star Walk help page.
3. 3. Make a ‘Take Me There’ function – when you search for an object on the info page and select it, put azimuth and elevation arrows on the screen to guide you in the right direction until the object is in view.

Note from the developers:

Thanks, Dave, for such a nice review and for your suggestions that seem to be quite interesting and worth adding.

We’d be more than happy to receive more reviews like that. Therefore, if you use one of Star Walk competitors like SkyVoyager, PocketUniverse, Planets, etc. and would like to compare it to Star Walk and give us some precious ideas on further improvements of Star Walk contact us (olya at vitotechnology dot com)  for re-deem code, write a review and we’ll publish your review here on our blog, Facebook and twitter.

We’d be more than happy if you help us to win in these awards. Could you possibly follow these 3 links and press “Vote” button?

For the Best Educational App category

For the Best App for High School+ Kids category

For the Best Augmented Reality App category

A new window with new information and few more surprises to be discovered for the holidays are only some of the beautiful features of Star Walk new version 3.4 (free update), now also selected by Apple as one of the best app for 2009. If you like the sound of this try and play with our Star Walk Challenge, a new, free, easy to use but yet challenging game to augment your adventures in the universe from the developers of Star Walk.