Noelle Akemann, 6, had a job before she entered kindergarten. She was a beta tester for an I-Pad app called Snow Wonder, a virtual world where flakes fall at the touch of a finger.

“Well I like it because they put princess everything,” said Noelle.

The person who put the princess in everything was her mother, Lorraine Akemann.  Lorraine is an unlikely app developer. She’s a stay-at-home mom with a liberal arts degree and a home-based business.  Traveling the world on real life adventures with her young daughters sparked virtual inspiration.

“That ah-ha moment, oh I can make an app for that,” said Lorraine.

Lorraine’s apps, My Little Suitcase and Snow Wonder take kids on a trip.  She hired another mom to make the graphics, a dad to write the code, and enlisted her own children to test the games before they hit the app store.

“My app, you’re packing for a vacation, and they wanted to go to more exciting places,” said Lorraine.

The project took Lorraine on a trip she never expected, navigating the ins and outs of app development.

“So the barrier to entry is pretty low. You just need a developer’s license, the graphics skills, and the idea. And if you pull this together, you can see your product live on the apps store,” said Lorraine.

There’s a big virtual world out there. More than half a million apps are a just a touch away and that’s just for the I-Phone and I-Pad.

“The app store has tapped into an entrepreneurial spirit for the everyman,”  said Lorraine.  She helped start the group of budding entrepreneurs called Moms with Apps. The group doesn’t discriminate.   There are parents and cousins with apps for everything from doodling to encouraging healthy diets. Collectively they provide a support network to learn from each other’s mistakes and successes.

“Most of our good ideas are actually from other people in this coffee group,” said Mike Doonan who created the app, Speech with Milo.

What started as a small Bay Area consortium of moms with learning-based kid-friendly apps, now has 950 members with 25-hundred apps in more than 30 countries”

A software engineer by trade, Nirupama Bala took to developing her ocean-themed learning app like a fish to water.  But marketing her app has not been so easy.

“I have this app, but I don’t have downloads, so I don’t make money,” said Nirupama.

But it doesn’t dissuade her from trying — budding business or home-based hobby, these moms show if there’s not already an app for that, you can make one.

Reposted from KTVU.com Posted: 11:39 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 7, 2012