The Good NET Guide

Posts Tagged ‘store’

Brands are increasingly prominent on the App Store and Apple tends to love featuring folks like Britney Spears and Coca-Cola on the App Store’s front page. But who’s actually succeeding and which brands have managed to maintain high download numbers?

PositionApp, the app that lets you track how iPhone apps are doing on the App Store rankings, might have the answer. They track and record the top 300 apps across all demographics and have provided us with details on the top 15 apps in the US App Store. Hit the jump for the list.

Read the rest at MobileCrunch >>

Every generation thinks that they are the first. The first to feel this way or that, the first to make this or that revelation, the first to do and make things that we find later have been done and made since before we could record their doing and making. But while these illusory and fleeting firsts are common to every generation, there are true firsts being achieved constantly, though they are often subtle enough that they are not noticed even by those in their midst. My generation has been lucky enough to be part of a very important first.

At no other time in history, and perhaps never in the future, will there be a group of people whose own growth and maturation is so perfectly reflected in the principal technological and cultural advancement of the age.

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Social commerce site Groupon is on fire. Everywhere I go, people are talking about it or trying to copy it. The Chicago-based startup just hired a big gun. Rob Solomon is joining as the company’s president. Solomon is a venture partner at Technology Crossover Ventures, which he joined after selling travel search engine SideStep to Kayak for $200 million. He was the CEO at SideStep, and prior to that was the VP of Yahoo Shopping.

Now will help lead fast-growing Groupon. Founder Andrew Mason will remain CEO. “Social commerce is something I have always been fascinated with,” Solomon tells me. He thinks that the virality that comes with online social connections will take e-commerce to the next level. Groupon offers group buying at the local level which is only triggered once a certain minimum number of participants agree to buy. As local businesses try to figure out what will replace the Yellow Pages and radio advertising, Groupon hopes to fill in that gap.

The company’s “growth is spectacular in revenues and users,” says Solomon, without going into more details (but the numbers are spectacular enough for him to move from sunny Silicon Valley to Chicago). The company operates in 45 markets, has made 2.5 million group purchases on behalf of customers so far, and says it’s saved them $117 million. Groupon recently raised $30 million at a rumored $250 million valuation. And, yes, it is still hiring.

At the most recent Mobile World Congress, Google CEO Eric Schmidt revealed that the company’s partners are now selling over 60,000 Android handsets on a daily basis. With that kind of growth rate, it’s no wonder that the size of the Android Market is increasing in its slipstream.

While Google doesn’t publicly show how many apps there are in Android Market, a Google rep this morning informed me that the store now serves approx. 30,000 apps in total.

TechCrunch50 2008 DemoPit company Shorthand Mobile (formerly Smart Touch) aims to help consumers who don’t use mobile data plans to access SMS and web content. Upon launch in 2008, the startup had developed a suite of basic widgets for mobile phones that visualize SMS services, allowing users to navigate through an intuitive menu. Today, Shorthand Mobile is launching TextApps, a new category of apps that deliver content from websites via SMS in a rich, interactive interface, aiming to expand the capabilities of non-smartphones and provide access to web content for mobile users without data plans.

Launching in beta today on select Motorola and Nokia handsets on AT&T and on Windows Mobile phones, Shorthand TextApps use SMS to expand access to top brands and mobile content including social networks, local search, sports scores, weather forecasts, movie times, news and entertainment. TextApps is an app you download which then creates a more intuitive UI for text-based apps.

Once you download Shorthand, it uses your SMS text messaging plan to connect you to the web content you want. Apps in the TextApps library include CitySearch, Netflix, Facebook Mobile, Twitter, The New York Times and Yelp. Of course, Facebook, Twitter and others have independently integrate with SMS for their sites but Shorthand claims to add more functionality by almost recreating a basic smartphone app. Shorthand is also now available in India on all major carriers and will launch in Brazil this spring. The starup will offer localized TextApps for these countries. Shorthand is free to download, but you will be charged for SMS messages via your SMS plan with your carrier.

As we wrote in our initial review, year, the technology behind is very basic so users shouldn’t expect to see a iPhone like Facebook-app on their phone with TextApps. That being said, the fact that Shorthand has struck deals with Nokia and Motorola to include its offering on their phones and could become a useful way to incorporate extra functionality into basic mobile phones.

The Linux Foundation, the non-profit that supports the growth of the Linux kernel, has launched a merchandise store where people can purchase a newly launched line of original T-shirts, hats, mugs and other items that reflect “geek culture.”

According a release sent out by the Foundation, merchandise available in the Linux.com store is “designed to reflect the unique and varied culture associated with Linux” and will support the work of Linux creator Linus Torvalds. For example, t-shirts contain phrases like “Free The Code,” “FSCK the Establishment,” and “Fork You.” All revenue generated from the store will go directly towards Linux Foundation activities, initiatives and events.

In conjunction with the launch of the store, Linux is holding a t-shirt design contest. Design submissions are due on the store’s site by April 11, 2010. The top five designs will be available for community vote at Linux.com through June 6, 2010 and the winning design will be included on T-shirts available for purchase in the Linux.com Store. The lucky designer will be awarded with travel to Boston to attend the Foundation’s annual conference LinuxCon in August.

The Linus Foundation has launched a number of unique initiatives to help raise funds for the organization and its open source initiatives. Last year, the Linux Foundation launched a branded Visa credit card.

About the Linux Foundation

The Linux Foundation is a nonprofit consortium dedicated to fostering the growth of Linux. Founded in 2007, the Linux Foundation sponsors the work of Linux creator Linus Torvalds and is supported by leading Linux and open source companies and developers from around the world. The Linux Foundation promotes, protects and standardizes Linux by hosting important workgroups, events and online resources such as Linux.com. For more information, please visit www.linuxfoundation.org.

Over the last month or so, Apple has clearly been on a mission to trim down the App Store to applications that are useful and family friendly. First, it removed thousands of sex-themed applications, and it’s also been making moves to crack down on overly simplistic ‘cookie cutter‘ apps. But there may be yet another segment of the App Store on the chopping block: Books. According to a recent report, books represent 27,000 of the App Store’s 150,000 applications, making them the most abundant type of application on the App Store. And they’re becoming increasingly redundant.

Before developers get alarmed, I should make it clear that I haven’t heard anything about Apple removing the myriad book apps from the App Store. But given the impending release of Apple’s own iBooks app alongside the iPad, and the recent App Store cleanup spree, I won’t be at all surprised if they do something to change the way books are treated on the platform.

There are a few reasons why Apple might want to do this. First and foremost, there’s the user experience for new iPad users. One of the iPad’s highly touted features is its ability to read books using the new iBooks application, which serves as both a book store and a very nice looking eBook reader. But according to Apple’s website, iBooks won’t come pre-installed on the iPad. You can be sure that Apple will give its own application top billing on the App Store, but there will still be plenty of room for confusion.

Imagine what will happen when a new iPad user boots up the device for the first time and decides to buy Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, but instead of doing it through the iBooks app, they simply run a search on the App Store. There are at least 25 different standalone applications featuring the book, selling for between 99 cents and five dollars. Each of these applications has its own book reading interface, many of which aren’t nearly as polished as the iBooks app Apple has shown off. And every time the user downloads a different book from the App Store, they’ll be using yet another new interface. That doesn’t seem like the sort of user experience Apple typically strives for.

And then there’s the issue of App Store clutter. As I mentioned before, Apple seems to be focused on eliminating many of the frivolous applications from the App Store. There are plenty of high quality book applications available, but there are also quite a few — perhaps even the majority — that amount to little more than a Project Gutenberg text wrapped in an overly basic reader. Which is exactly the sort of thing Apple is tired of. Books already make up the most popular category of application on the App Store; if they keep growing at this pace, they’ll eventually represent the majority of applications available.

To be clear, I don’t think Apple is going to ban book markets like Amazon’s Kindle reader or Stanza. These generally have much more functionality than a basic book app, and eliminating them would be blatantly anti-competitive. That may not have any legal repercussions, but Apple badly needs high quality applications on the iPad to make it a success — it would be unwise to scare off major developers wary of having their app blocked because Apple has a competing product (this is one reason, I think, that iBooks is not included with the iPad).

All of that said, there are some reasons why Apple may not do anything on this front. For one, Apple is probably making a decent chunk of revenue from paid book applications, so it may not particularly care whether it gets its revenue cut from the app vendor or the publisher itself through iBooks. And then there’s the PR cost. Apple got away with unceremoniously removing thousands of ’sexy’ applications because nobody is going to stand up and defend their right to view titillating bikini photos. But if Apple pulled thousands of books from the store, the headlines could be more damaging, with imagery of book bonfires abound (despite the fact that the same content would likely be available through iBooks).

Or Apple may find some middle ground. It could hide book apps from iPad search results and keep them iPhone-only  (though the iPhone will probably get a version of iBooks, too). It might just start blocking new book submissions but leave the existing apps be. Or perhaps it will include some kind of banner on relevant searches like “Did you know this title is also available on iBooks?”. In any case, while I am by no means advocating such a change, I suspect that if you want to download one of these standalone book applications in the not-so-distant future, you’re going to have to go out of your way to do it.

Update: As commenter Peter Cooper points out, iBooks is only going to be available in the US at launch, and some developers are working towards books that can do far more than ‘normal’ book readers (including iBooks). So there are clearly reasons to keep the Book section intact, but I still suspect changes are coming to the way Apple handles book applications (at least the basic ones).

Apple’s iBooks

Top image by Austinevan

Solid state hard drives are increasing in popularity mainly because more are reaching the consumer market, therefore driving down prices. But most are still a bit pricey.

Originally posted here: 
Active releases a new set of SSDs

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

You’ll have to make do with this until April Get thee to the clickery! The iPad is hitting the streets on April 3 and you can start pre-ordering on March 12. As far as we can tell there was no real “delay” here, per se

See the rest here: 
iPad to be released on April 3, pre-orders on March 12