iPhone app created by Sacramento businessmen featured in iTunes Store

Friday, December 11, 2009

Greg Bauer, owner of Bauer 360 and Rack N Road, has created an iPhone application called Forget Me Not, with business partner Nathan Carnahan (not pictured).

iPhone app created by Sacramento businessmen featured in iTunes Store

Sacramento Business Journal - by Kelly Johnson Staff writer

Forget Me Not, which went live Nov. 28, aims to help users avoid those awkward moments of forgetting the names of business acquaintances, a parent from your child’s school or the spouse of an important client who you bump into at Starbucks. The app also allows users to recall company names or who is having a baby or just got a promotion.

The memory tool allows users to enter simple information into the app through a series of clues and associations, said Greg Bauer, who created Forget Me Not along with business partner Nathan Carnahan.

Users can download names from their contacts or look up people on Facebook or elsewhere, and then add a clue or association. Forget Me Not, which costs $3.99, is meant to aid short-term memory, but then also long-term memory by the repetition of looking up names through clues.

Such a tool, Bauer figures, is especially helpful during the holidays with all the social and work gatherings.

Bauer uses his app also to remember passwords, birthdays, special events and kids’ names. A woman providing a testimonial on Forget Me Not’s Web site said she uses it even to remember grocery items she needs.

As of Friday morning, without any advertising, Forget Me Not had been downloaded between 250 and 300 times, Bauer said.

Bauer and Carnahan need to sell 10,000 downloads to break even.

Bauer thinks the app will catch on because of its simplicity and intuitiveness.

Bauer and Carnahan also are building a Forget Me Not app for BlackBerry, Palm Pre and Google’s Android.

With millions of iPhone and BlackBerry users, Bauer said Forget Me Not’s potential is huge. If they attracted even 3 percent to 5 percent of users, the revenue potential is in the millions.

“By no means it’s guaranteed,” Bauer said Friday. “It has to get traction.”

With the added attention from being an Apple “staff favorite,” Bauer would love to land on the "Today" show, or better yet, on an iPhone commercial saying, “If you have a problem remembering names, we have an app for you.”

Bauer’s company, Bauer 360, is in beta testing for two other apps. One is based on a performance analytics program he customized for use in another of his companies, retail chain Rack N Road. That customized software allows him to analyze the effectiveness of his employees’ phone interaction with customers.

Bauer 360 also is working with the Sacramento Metro Chamber on a possible app that would provide a map overlay of chamber members that app users could patronize. That app still needs financing, Bauer said.

Check out it out!!  www.forgetmenotapp.com