For those of you who follow the support blog of iStethoscope Pro you may have already seen this message. In case you haven't, I thought I would place a copy here. It's an amazing story left by one of the users of my app. Many thanks for sharing the story, Sara.

I want to share my story with you. My husband and I are both RN's. So of course we have our own top of the line stethescopes. I found your app and thought it would be fun to have on my iphone. I was pregnant with our third little girl and thought I could use it to listen to her heartbeat. When I was 7 months pregnant she had decreased movements. I was concerned and tried using my stethescope to try a hear her heartbeat. I couldnt hear anything so I got the istethesope app out and was able to hear her heartbeat. Being a nurse I knew that it should be much faster than our so I was not concerned with the rate. I was more relieved that she still had a hearbeat. This was on the 4th of July. So the next day I call my OB and went in to have her checked out since she still was not moving. After the doctor listed to hear heartbeat with the ultra sound machine I was sent to the hospital. She was in distress. Her heart rate was well over 260. When I told them I had used your app to listen to her heartbeat the day before they did not believe that it worked. I was able to tell them that the rate was the same as what I heard the day before. So they were able to determine she was had been in heart failure since at least the day before. I was flown by helicopter to San Franciso where she was born by emergency C section. She was resusitated several times in the first 24 hours of her life. The doctors werent sure she would make it. But I had faith and knew God would answer my prayers. She was in the NICU for 4 weeks and came home a few days after her due date. I am happy to report she is now 18 months old and has been off heart medications for one year. She is truly a miracle and has no long term effects from her traumatic birth. Now all my friends have gotten the App you created as well as many of the nurses who took care of us. I want to say thank you for creating this App. It played a large role in saving the life of my little miracle, Emily.

I've been working with Soo Ling Lim recently on a computational model of the App Store. It's partly made possible by my experiences with the app iStethoscope Pro which has produced a lot of fascinating data. The work has just been featured in a magazine called SIGEVO, with the front cover showing one of our viral networks, see below. We're continuing the work by interviewing large numbers of people about their usage of App Stores. Please fill in the survey here and we will use your information to make our model even more accurate: http://tinyurl.com/mobi-user

A while ago I was interviewed for an article in the Polish magazine Focus. The writer just got in touch and gave me a link - looks like an interesting piece on mobile devices and health from what I can glean using Google Translate. If you can read it, the article is online here: http://www.focus.pl/technika/zobacz/publikacje/terapia-komorkowa/

Another week and another mention in New Scientist. After the review for my latest book Digitized last week, the work of myself and colleague Soo Ling Lim is featured as lead technology story this week. Paul Marks wrote a nice story describing our ALife model AppEco. He focusses on our forthcoming paper for GECCO 2012, where we explore which app developer strategies might be more successful than others. If you're wondering what the answer is - I'm afraid it depends on what everyone else is doing at the time... But in general the app store settles down into a stable state all by itself, with the more dodgy strategies (copying the successful apps of others, or milking a single idea endlessly) tend to be in the minority compared to more imaginative strategies (optimizing good ideas or innovating new concepts). So in general we found that it's better to innovate or optimize than be a milker or a copycat. Which is just as well, because Apple specifically has clauses in the developer agreement which are designed to discourage milkers and copycats.

It's an interesting piece of work and I enjoyed helping Soo Ling create the model. We're still working on it, and are looking at the effects of publicity strategies, different charts, and all kinds of other things...

The article is available online here, or below if you want a quick view.

The founder of wooshers, the Pulsatile tinnitus forum has been in touch again. It seems this time someone may have successfully used my iOS app iStethoscope Pro to record the elusive sound of her condition. This is what she said:

One of our group members has had success listening to the objective pulsatile tinnitus with your iStethoscope App. She gave me permission to share her experience with you, since I told her I thought you'd be interested!

She's been diagnosed with superior canal dehiscence and bilateral sigmoid sinus diverticulum. She has already had surgery on one side to correct it, and is awaiting surgery on the other side. Anyway, here is the post she shared on our Facebook page. I am fascinated by this and hope to again ask others --particularly those with a similar diagnosis-- if they too can hear their whoosh with the app. She is thrilled that she can now share the actual audio sound with her doctors and everyone. The doctor who performed the surgery --Dr David Eisenman in Baltimore-- is a doctor I've been in touch with for several years and he has corrected many patients' symptoms.

Do you have an iphone? The app is way cool! the Microphone at the bottom of the phone is used as the "stethoscope" you put earbud style headphones in and wear them. Then you open the app and crank the volume...be careful, just like a real steth if youve ever used one, it's LOUD...dont talk into it lol. You can listen to your heart with it by firmly pressing the bottom of the phone right where a stethoscope goes...same thing. Put it over you belly, you will hear your bowel. Put it one the sides of your ribcageor back, and you hear you lungs. Putting it all over different pulses in the body, I found my venous hum...which i already knew i had even though the doctors coudnt hear it. Right above the clavicles...I have it both sides and it goes away with certain head positions.

Emma Greenwood, Founder & Whoosher-in-Chief, http://www.whooshers.com/

Join our Pulsatile Tinnitus "Whooshers" Unite! Facebook Group

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=121285117907242