Mobile app development Gorham, Maine

Small drops. Big waves.

Umbrela designs, builds and runs the mobile apps people keep on their home screens: six flagships, all under one canopy.

Explore the apps Drop us a line

The canopy

Six flagships. One Umbrela.

Each app is its own world, with its own voice, colors and people. Underneath, they share one studio, one standard and one address in Maine.

01 News aggregator Private beta

Your America Now

Of the People. By the People. Right Now.

A location-aware news aggregator. National, international and local news is gathered into “Your ___ Now” communities, and members follow the places and topics they care about for a feed built from exactly those, ranked by rules published for anyone to check.

  • Unbiased. Nonpartisan. Objective. A written charter that overrides growth and revenue.
  • Ranked in the open. The ranking formula is published, and every item carries the numbers behind its place.
  • No political advertising. Not now, not ever.
  • Real public records, labelled. Meeting agendas, school calendars and weather alerts seed each community. Nothing invented.
Request early access Web · youramericanow.com
9:41

Your Gorham Now

Public record Town of Gorham

Town council agenda posted for Tuesday’s meeting

▲ Helpful 128Discuss 34

Weather alert National Weather Service

Coastal flood statement for the evening high tide

▲ Helpful 96Discuss 12

Discussion Your Gorham Now

What should the new library add first?

▲ Helpful 61Discuss 88

Poll Your Gorham Now

What time should the Saturday market open?

8 am 58%9 am 42%

Ranked by published rules · Why this order?

Illustrative preview

02 AI trip planner Live

ZipTrip

Your whole trip, planned in a zip.

Say where you’re leaving from, where you want to go and when. ZipTrip does the research and hands back a finished itinerary: the neighborhood to stay in, hotels at three price points, museums scheduled only on the days they’re open, and the dishes a place is known for with the restaurants that do them best.

  • A neighborhood with a safety score and three hotels at three price points.
  • Museums on the days they’re actually open, plus day trips and kid-specific plans.
  • A map for every day, a printable packet, a lock-screen wallpaper and reminders while you’re there.
  • iPhone, Android and web from one codebase.
Plan a trip iPhone · Android · ziptrip.net
9:41
ZipTrip

FromBoston

ToFlorence, Italy

WhenOct 14 – 18 · 2 adults

  1. StayOltrarnoAcross the river, walkable, safety-scored
  2. Day 1Uffizi GalleryBooked Tuesday: it’s closed Mondays
  3. EatBistecca alla fiorentinaThe dish, and who does it best
  4. Sunset6:35 pm from the PiazzaleBring a light jacket
Slide to zip your trip

Illustrative preview · the sample trip from the founding memo

03 Restroom finder Live

The Ladies Room

Find · Rate · Review bathrooms.

Clean, safe restrooms near you, rated in plungers by women, for women. Search by ZIP code or your location, then see the plunger rating, a smell score from Stinky to Lovely, what women said about safety, and what’s inside: stalls, changing tables, vanity mirrors, period products.

  • Five plungers earns a Golden Plunger. The best restrooms become Porcelain Approved.
  • Members rise from Fresh Roll to Silver Flush to Gold Toilet.
  • Free accounts, no email needed, and you can hide your name on any review.
  • Installable on any phone as a web app.
Find a restroom Installable web app
9:41
The Ladies RoomFind • Rate • Review

Harbor Street CaféRestroom · 0.2 mi

Golden Plunger
Fine
  • 3 stalls
  • Changing table
  • Vanity mirror
  • Period products

Women said they felt safe here

Fresh Roll
Rate to rise: Fresh Roll → Silver Flush → Gold Toilet

Illustrative preview · tap the plungers

04 Astronomy tool Live

What’s My Sky?

Read the sky before you read the signs.

A digital astronomical instrument that shows the real, computed sky: planet positions from a validated ephemeris, with every coordinate frame labelled. Readings are layered on top and clearly labelled as interpretation, not science.

  • The Orrery: an interactive 3D solar system with alignments and the precession of Earth’s axis.
  • Tropical or sidereal, always labelled. No assumed zodiac.
  • Time Machine: what would Ptolemy have seen? Precession across 26,000 years.
  • Astronomy tested against NASA JPL Horizons.
Read your sky Web · iOS · Android
9:41
The OrreryToday
Sun · tropical
—
Sun · sidereal
—
Moon
—
Moon · tropical
—
Retrograde
—

Live: planets placed from JPL mean orbital elements for this moment

05 Tide companion Live

What’s My Tide?

For people who live with the water, not just next to it.

Live NOAA predictions for 3,499 US tide stations, turned into twenty screens: a tide you can feel through your phone, a daily tide myth, the creatures that care about low water, dock and mooring stress, access windows, and the tide played as music. No backend, no accounts, no tracking.

  • 3,499 NOAA stations, with predictions from the 1920s to 2100.
  • Tide as Music: a real Web Audio synth, not a description.
  • The Tide That Raised Me: the water on any date back to the 1920s.
  • Every derived number carries a source and a confidence badge.
Check your tide Installable web app
9:41
Portland, MaineNOAA station 8418150

Reading the water…

—ft

 

Range, next 24 h—

Moon—

Tides—

NOAA CO-OPS

Live: today’s predicted tide in Portland, Maine, from NOAA

06 Facial symmetry Live

In Your Face

Eight faces from one photo.

Upload a portrait and see eight generated variations: mirrors, left- and right-dominant symmetrical faces, a “perfect average” blend, a morph and an asymmetry heat map, plus an optional AI-written analysis. All image processing happens on your device.

  • A face geometry report with symmetry scores for forehead, brows, eyes, nose, cheeks, mouth and jaw.
  • Portrait Studio: you as a Renaissance oil, a Victorian daguerreotype, a 1920s studio shot or an ’80s Polaroid.
  • Photos never leave your device unless you ask for the AI read.
  • A desktop studio and an installable mobile app. For entertainment only.
Face yourself Web · iOS
9:41
In Your FaceSample portrait

Symmetry91.4%

BrowsEyesNoseMouthJaw
Mirror LMirror RLeft²Right²AverageMorphHeat mapAI read

Camera mode runs on this device only: nothing is uploaded or stored

6flagship apps under one canopy
3,499NOAA tide stations, live in What’s My Tide?
26,000years of sky you can scrub through in What’s My Sky?
8faces generated from one portrait in In Your Face
5plungers to a Golden Plunger in The Ladies Room
0political ads on Your America Now. Ever.

The studio

Everything an app needs to weather the real world.

We are a small mobile studio that ships whole apps: the idea, the brand, the interface, the backend and the store listing. These are the conditions we work in every day.

Scattered launches, all platforms

iPhone & Android

Swift, React Native with Expo and Capacitor. One codebase where it helps, native where it matters, and ready for the App Store and Google Play.

Clear path to the home screen

Installable web apps

Apps that install straight from a link: offline-ready, updated the moment we ship, on any phone, no store required.

Clear, with honest limits

AI that shows its work

Claude and Grok, wired in with structured output, written frameworks and evals, so a model never quietly makes something up.

Always-on, low pressure

The backend behind the app

Accounts, sync and APIs on AWS (CloudFront, Lambda, DynamoDB, RDS): fast everywhere, cheap to run, locked down by default.

Live conditions, every minute

Camera, maps & sensors

GPS, camera, haptics and motion, plus NOAA, Open-Meteo, OpenStreetMap and Google Places, turned into screens anyone can read.

A bright spell for every brand

App icons & design systems

Icons, logos, motion and full design systems. Every app gets its own voice, and every voice gets a rulebook.

How we build

  1. Start from the voice memo. ZipTrip and The Ladies Room each began as a founder’s voice memo, and every feature traces back to it. Tell us the idea the way you’d tell a friend.
  2. Write down the honest limits. What’s My Tide? says it is not for navigation. In Your Face says it is for entertainment. Every app ships knowing what it can’t do.
  3. Private by default. Faces are processed on the device, tides are saved on the device, and nothing is tracked that a feature doesn’t need.
  4. Real data, labelled. Sky labels every coordinate frame, Tide badges every derived number, and Your America Now labels every public record.

The process

The five-day forecast for your idea.

Every product we ship moves through the same weather. Forecast not to scale: some storms take longer than a day.

  1. Mon

    Drizzle

    The idea

    A voice memo, a sketch or a sentence. We turn it into a written framework: what it is, who it’s for, what it must never do.

    01 Framework

  2. Tue

    Cloud cover

    The design

    Brand, icon and a design system before a single screen, so the hundredth screen looks like the first.

    02 Design system

  3. Wed

    Downpour

    The build

    iPhone, Android and installable web apps, plus the backend behind them, built with tests from the start.

    03 Ship-ready code

  4. Thu

    Clearing

    The proof

    Real devices, real data, evals for every AI answer and a written list of honest limits before anyone else sees it.

    04 Verified

  5. Fri

    Ripple

    The launch

    The App Store, Google Play and the home screen. Then the part most studios skip: we keep it running and keep it improving.

    05 Live

Contact

Got an idea? Let it rain.

Tell us about the app you can’t stop thinking about. A paragraph is plenty; a voice memo is even better.

Umbrela LLC
PO Box 1033
Gorham, ME 04038

Drop us a line

Opens your email app with the note ready to send to contact@umbrela.us.