With printings from school, you often get short passages or short stories that are not in books or very difficult to find within books. But just being able to take a picture of it would make it so much easier.
I get startup ideas just from noticing things that are missing. For example if someone says "Man I wish there was a way to do that", I find opportunity in it and see if I can make a product for it.
But the question is, what did he do in December that jump started his downloads? Or, if he didn't do anything, what happened that started the rise in downloads/reviews?
I used JavaScript to make the apps. The only thing that was difficult about getting approved was making it support touch and keyboard inputs. Other than that, it was pretty easy.
I made the basic structure with scirra's construct 2 ( www.scrirra.com ), but I made the rest with JavaScript, HTML, and CSS. To learn those, I got some books. O'reilly has some really good books if you know the basics.
Because, I myself almost never buy paid apps. I do, however sometimes buy in app purchases because they offer cool features. I just couldn't see myself buying this.
I've made about 20 apps for Windows 8 for the price of $0. Although I am a student, and got $20 lifted from a year of membership, and free Visual Studio Pro, this seems to be a little biased. I think that if I work on it, and make a full-scaled app, I could make a good/successful app. This article seems to be intended for people who won't develop the app themselves.