Last spring, Will told me: "I want an iPhone app."

After I told him about the Lincoln Bobblehead and the cute little Clean Kitties apps, he clarified: "No, what I meant was...I want us to have an app."

Ohhhhhhhh......

Flash forward to late June and we released our iPhone app.

And a companion mobile site for all the other smart-phone users, so they wouldn't feel left out.

Whew!

That's when the Attack of the Automatons began. (That's my little pet name for Android users.) They wanted an app and they wanted it yesterday. Some scoffed at iPhones and quoted swelling sales figures of Android phones. Others just posted little sad-face emoticons on Facebook and Twitter.

It was a trying time.

Since we created the first app as a cooperative with our county visitors bureau, we checked to see if there was interest in doing the same for the Android users.

Happily, the answer was "yes." In fact, we fast-tracked the thing to get it ready for the town's big Santa Claus Christmas Celebration, which gets underway this weekend.

And here's our little stocking stuffer for our Android-using pals: 

There's an entire section with info about Holiday World & Splashin' Safari, including ride and slide information and photos, ride videos, twitter feeds, menus, maps, weather and more.

We're working on a really cool interactive map, too. Hopefully this summer, if you want to find the closest Pepsi Oasis (or, a half hour later, restroom), just press the Near Me button and you'll get all that and more.

The apps and mobile site also include a Santa Claus, Indiana, section with info about all the other fun theme attractions, events, lodging and shops in town.

And there's a Lincoln's Indiana Boyhood Home section, which includes info and photos about the many historic sites here in Spencer County, including the farm where our 16th president grew up (from when he was 7 years old until he left for Illinois when he was 21).

Young Lincoln grew up just four miles from where the town of Santa Claus would eventually be, did you know that?

So maybe instead of planning two days for your next visit here, you might want to add another day or two to catch a little history and more fun.

As an aside to the less techie among us: I tweeted a question, asking if Droid was just a shortened version of Android. Got my answer: Heavens no! A Droid is a brand name of one of the phones that uses the Android system. Android is an operating system and is used in a number of phones.

 And speaking of techies, do you know what this is?

 It's called a QR Code.

Or a matrix barcode.

Or a two-dimensional code.

If you do recognize this, you know you can use your QR Reader app to "take a picture of this" and it will take you directly to the webpage where Android users can download our new app.

Cool, huh?