The Good NET Guide

Posts Tagged ‘developers’

I think Gagan is at GDC but he’s clearly not getting the good meetings. Firaxis is showing off Civ V and Kotaku has a nice run down, including a few new features. For starters, your opponents have definite AI based on their strengths and weakness

Originally posted here:
Meet Civ V: The cities have health bars

In the wake of Apple’s sudden decision to remove nearly all “sexy” applications from the App Store, we’ve been hearing that the company is also clamping down on so-called “cookie-cutter” applications — iPhone apps that are built from templates using one of the many app-building services available. This would be yet another major change for the App Store, as it already features thousands of such applications. And, perhaps more important, quite a few companies have sprung up to facilitate building iPhone applications. I’ve reached out to Apple to ask if they’d like to clarify their stance, but given their lack of transparency in the past, I’m not betting on getting anything definitive. To try to get to the bottom of the current situation, I spoke with multiple developers (some of whom wished to remain anonymous) to find out what Apple was telling them.

Between the developers I spoke to, the consensus was this: Apple doesn’t appear to be opposed to ‘app generators’ and templates per se, but in the last month or so it has started cracking down on basic applications that are little more than RSS feeds or glorified business cards. In short, Apple doesn’t want people using native applications for things that a basic web app could accomplish. For some of these services that’s bad news, because that’s exactly the sort of application they produce; any new applications they submit are going to get rejected. But all hope isn’t lost for them, provided they can make their apps more useful.

Unlike the ’sexy’ app ban that took place a few weeks ago, when Apple gave developers no options to keep their apps on the store, over the last month the company has been reaching out to at least a few app building services to suggest what they should be doing.

The founders of Appmakr, which has been used by publications like The Atlantic to build iPhone applications, say that the process has been quite positive (though they are quick to clarify that applications built with their tools are more full-featured than the basic RSS apps described above). After some suggestions from Apple, the service is integrating new features like in-app purchases, instant notifications, offline access, and landscape viewing modes to their app templates. Another developer mentioned that they might include a tip calculator for restaurant apps. Appmakr’s hope (and one that I’m sure is shared by other developers) is that applications generated using their tools will eventually be given an accelerated path through the App Store’s approval process, because Apple is familiar and happy with the kind of apps they produce.

However, from what I’ve gathered not everyone is having as much luck as the Appmakr team. Multiple developers mentioned that they’d heard of some app vendors that Apple wasn’t being nearly as accommodating towards — I suspect services offering the most basic templates are getting hit hardest. That said, the developers I spoke to said that they’d only heard about Apple blocking newly submitted applications, and that there wasn’t an indication that Apple is going back and removing all of the overly-basic apps they can find.

So why is Apple doing this? Here’s what Medialets CEO Eric Litman had to say, which I think perfectly summarizes the situation.

This is the ongoing balance point between encouraging innovation and growth on one side and wanting to tightly control user experience on the other. Apple wants iPhone apps to be superior to Web experiences because they are extremely sticky and drive people specifically to buy the iPhone over competing smartphone platforms. Apps that are too simple or largely indistinguishable from the Web, other apps or particularly other apps on other platforms send the message to end users that the iPhone app ecosystem might not be particularly special.

Now the challenge for Apple is that the app building platforms are extremely attractive to a wide swath of the market that would otherwise be reluctant to bear the cost and complexity of developing an app from scratch. We have already seen apps from personal bloggers up to major media brands using some of these platforms, and many of the folks in that spectrum have content Apple would certainly want in the App Store. Interestingly, some of those same developers also have fully custom-built apps in the App Store, too.

So what are the platforms to do about the recent crackdown from Apple? There’s really only one choice if they want to continue to exist on the iPhone: invest in building out considerably more flexibility into their platforms to allow each app to differ from the others they build. Integrate more features and take the time to nail the design and UI elements to be representative of what Apple wants to see in every app.

For better or worse, Apple will be looking more closely at apps from the platforms than from individual developers. AppLoop, the first startup to announce and iPhone-specific app builder, is already gone. Others will almost certainly follow.

Overall, this will almost certainly result in a better experience for users as they have to deal with fewer spammy apps. But, as I wrote when Apple launched its war on sex apps last month, the policy change may also scare developers. After effectively sending a message to developers that basic applications were okay, Apple is again changing its mind.  Some developers may be hesitant to build their businesses around the iPhone, knowing that at any moment Apple could change its mind and cut off their only mode of distribution.

Thanks to Robert Strojan for the tip
Photo by Goosmurf

Neil Young, the CEO of iPhone game startup ngmoco, wants to “amass enough scale” to accelerate “away from the pack.” He just raised a $25 million series C round and acquired Freeverse, another top iPhone game developer, to help ngmoco keep moving forward. The round was led by Institutional Venture Partners, and existing shareholders Kleiner Perkins, Norwest Venture Parters, and Maples Investments also participated. The new round brings the total raised to $40.6 million.

The startup consistently pumps out new iPhone games which have been downloaded millions of times. Two of its games alone—TouchPets and Eliminate—have been installed 9 million times, and hundreds of thousands of people play every day. Last year, ngmoco switched to free-to-play games with in-app purchases for virtual goods through its Plus+ social game network.

All of Freeverse’s games, such as Skee-Ball, Flick Fishing, Flick Bowling, and Moto Chaser, are paid apps. Skee-Ball is the No. 4 ranked paid app in the App Store. But Young plans to move the Freeverse games over to the free-to-play model, and then make money off in-app purchases. Young also acquired the $0.99 game Charadium from another game developer and plans to convert that over to free-to-play as well.

The model is working well for ngmoco. Young says TouchPets had “its biggest revenue day” last weekend, and its next two games, We Rule and GodFinger (a “social god game”), were designed specifically with the free-to-play model in mind. “On any given day, you have about 2% of your audience paying you money,” he says. He expects ngmoco to put out about about 20 new games this year, and the newly-acquired Freeverse team to nearly match that.

In addition to rolling out wave after wave of new iPhone games, Young also plans to open up an SDK to ngmoco’s Plus+ system so that other developers can more easily tap into it. The Plus+ system can manage virtual goods payments, player-to-player messaging, and other social aspects of iPhone games.

Microstock photography giant Fotolia is launching a new site, called Flixtime, that allows users to create simple video slideshows. Similar to the simplicity of Animoto, Flixtime allows you to produce 60-second videos from your photos easily and quickly.

Once you register for a free account, you’ll be upload your own photos or stock photos from Fotolia’s selection of images. You can also upload your own music, or choose from Fotolia’s stock music collection. And you can add text to any slide as well.

Once you create a video, you can share the file to Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and other destinations. You can also choose to download the file to your computer for further editing. Check out the video I created in a matter of minutes here. Flixtime actually offers a considerable amount of stock photography and music to choose from; so it’s easy to make a pretty slideshow combining your own photos and Fotolia’s offerings. The music is powered by AudioMicro, a music startup that helps license stock audio files.

In my opinion, Flixtime is a more basic version of Animoto, which has been steadily ramping up its offerings. Fotolia took a massive round of investment last year from TA Associates last year and has been steadily growing its userbase. It reached one million registered users and five million images for sale last February, introduced microstock video in April, hired an iStockPhoto co-founder in May, and launched a royalty-free photo site called PhotoXpress. The site also rolled out an add-in ribbon for Microsoft Word and PowerPoint 2007 that gives users instant access to the company’s vast library of images and vectors from within the application.

AccelGolf, a startup that looks to help golfers perfect their game with the help of mobile applications and an online analytics platform, has raised $600K in angel funding. The company was part of the TechStars class of 2009, which was held in Boston.

AccelGolf offers native mobile applications for iPhone, Android, and BlackBerry users. Using them is pretty straightforward: rather than jotting down your score for each hole on a piece of paper, AccelGolf’s apps allow you to also record both the club you used and the terrain type (tee, rough, green, etc.) you were hitting from. The whole process only takes a few seconds, so it shouldn’t slow down the speed of play much.

CEO William Sulinski says that over time, this information can be used to help players identify what their weaknesses are, which clubs they should be using, and other key information. I’m not much of a golfer myself (it seems like it should be pretty intuitive to figure our your weaknesses), but Sulinski says that this data can be extremely valuable, and will be even more so once AccelGolf fleshes out its web-based analytics platform, which features various graphs and tables tracking your performance.

The company currently has around 45,000 active users on its mobile applications, many of which are on BlackBerry. The apps are currently free, but AccelGolf plans to roll out a premium service in the near future. Sulinski also says that AccelGolf eventually plans to expand to provide analytics for other sports (though it sounds like that’s still a ways off).

The company has also recently opened an API that allows other developers to tap into the platform.

Oh my god, are you serious?

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Run Ubuntu Hardy Heron on your Sony Ericsson Xperia

Love it or hate it, everyone is talking about Google Buzz right now. And, judging from my account, a ton of people are actually using it too. The main use envisioned for Buzz was sharing, but the problem is that for content, you still need to copy a URL and then head over to Buzz to share it. Not anymore.

We’re all used to tweet buttons (like the one built by Tweetmeme), Facebook buttons, Digg buttons, and even Yahoo Buzz buttons on many posts around the web. These make it easy to share without having to leave the content. So we made a Google Buzz button.

When I say “we,” I actually mean one of our developers, Andy Brett, who hacked this together with amazing speed. He could do that because it’s actually a simple piece of code derived from a button you would use to share an item on Google Reader. And that’s an important thing to note: for this to work, your Google Reader shared account has to be hooked up to your Google Buzz account. The good news is that assuming you use Google Reader, Google did this link-up automatically for you.

So there you go, Buzz away.

Once the iPad SDK is released, many developers will be in a mad rush to create apps optimized for Apple’s tablet device. Already, developers are flocking to update their apps with the new iPhone SDK optimized for the iPad. But it’s not only the developers of games and apps who are participating in this gold rush. Motally, a startup that provides analytics on mobile devices, is launching the extension of their user-action tracking services for mobile web and apps to include content developed on Apple’s iPad. Their analytics will automatically work for iPhone apps accessed on the device with further support to be released specifically for the iPad SDK once it is available from Apple.

Motally’s offering allows developers to receive daily reports, web-based dynamic reports and user statistics such as unique users, page views, engagement time search keyworks, average pages/visit, etc. Currently using the iPhone SDK, Motally will support the iPad SDK once it rolls out.

Motally offers more advanced features that allows developers to troubleshoot and debug their products from anywhere in the world, without having to re-deploy apps and games to the Apple iPhone store. For a young startup, Motally has seen significant traction as a mobile analytics provider. Backed by renown investor Ron Conway, Motally’s clients include Twitter, Yelp, Fandango and Verizon.

Acer has big plans for 2010. Sometime within the coming months the world’s second largest computer maker will launch a 6-inch monochrome ebook reader, cross-platform application store and a Chrome OS netbook — along with probably a crapton and a half of computers under its Acer, Gateway , and EMachines brands

Read more from the original source: 
Acer has an e-reader, app store, and Chrome OS netbook prepped for ‘10, working on a tablet

E-commerce has become a vast ecosystem that pumps billions upon billions of dollars through the web and easily connects consumers what their objects of desire at a single click. On the backend of e-commerce sites, there is plenty of opportunity for tech giants and startups to help power retailers’ online storefronts. Google, IBM, Microsoft and many others offer various technologies to help online retailers seamlessly sell their products on the web. One notable startup in the space, Shopify, which provides a turnkey e-commerce technology that lets anyone create a storefront online, has acquired MNDCreative, the developers of StoreSync, a mobile e-commerce management platform. The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Unsurprisingly, Shopify’s acquisition of StoreSync aims to help expand its existing offerings onto mobile devices. StoreSync will be available exclusively to Shopfiy customers, and will be integrated tightly with its web platform.

StoreSync mobile application lets users tap into online store sales statistics, order processing, shipment status and product and customer information from an iPhone. Shopify’s web-based platform allows anyone to set up a store in moments, add items to sell, upload images, add tags and group items, and integrate PayPal or other credit card processor for payments. Storefronts and shopping carts can be customized and the platform assures security for all transactions. The startup has a staggered price range for various offerings starting at $24 per month.

The acquisition makes sense for Shopify; retailers will need to have mobile access to their e-commerce information and StoreSync provides this technology in a simple and efficient way. However, it will be interesting if the company will soon roll out functionality for the Android.

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