- Cash Cow Disease — quite harsh on Google and Microsoft for “ingesting not investing” in promising startups, then disconnecting them from market signals. Like pixie dust, potential future advertising revenues can be sprinkled on any revenue-negative scheme to make it look brilliant. (via Dan Martell)
- Your Apps Are Watching You (Wall Street Journal) — the iPhone apps transmitted more data than the apps on phones using Google Inc.’s Android operating system […] Both the Android and iPhone versions of Pandora, a popular music app, sent age, gender, location and phone identifiers to various ad networks. iPhone and Android versions of a game called Paper Toss—players try to throw paper wads into a trash can—each sent the phone’s ID number to at least five ad companies. Grindr, an iPhone app for meeting gay men, sent gender, location and phone ID to three ad companies. […] Among all apps tested, the most widely shared detail was the unique ID number assigned to every phone. It is effectively a “supercookie,” […] on iPhones, this number is the “UDID,” or Unique Device Identifier. Android IDs go by other names. These IDs are set by phone makers, carriers or makers of the operating system, and typically can’t be blocked or deleted. “The great thing about mobile is you can’t clear a UDID like you can a cookie,” says Meghan O’Holleran of Traffic Marketplace, an Internet ad network that is expanding into mobile apps. “That’s how we track everything.”
- On Undo’s Undue Importance (Paul Kedrosky) — The mainstream has money and risks, and so it cares immensely. It wants products and services where big failures aren’t catastrophic, and where small failures, the sorts of thing that “undo” fixes, can be rolled back. Undo matters, in other words, because its appearance almost always signals that a market has gone from fringe to mainstream, with profits set to follow. (via Tim O’Reilly on Twitter)
- libimobiledevice — open source library that talks the protocols to support iPhone®, iPod Touch®, iPad® and Apple TV® devices without jailbreaking or proprietary libraries.
"apps" entries
Suggestion for Amazon: Open source the Kindle apps
Open source development could lead to a world class set of ereader apps.
Joe Wikert has some advice for Amazon: Turn the Kindle apps into open source projects and enlist the help of the community to enhance and improve them.
Four short links: 21 December 2010
Big Companyitis, Spyware Apps, Maturing Cloud, and Mobile Sync
Video pick: A real-time translating app
Word Lens translates Spanish text to English and vice versa.
It looks like the future of augmented reality has already arrived. Word Lens is an iPhone app that uses the built-in camera to translate Spanish text to English and vice versa. See it in action.
Anatomy of an ebook app
Lessons learned while building a top 20 ebook for the iPad.
"Rabbit and Turtle's Amazing Race" was featured by Apple (leading to a 3-5X bost in paid downloads) and for a time became one of the top grossing App Store ebooks. Mark Sigal discusses the lessons he learned while developing and marketing the title.
The expanding influence of apps and mobile
Ken Yarmosh on apps vs. web and the Mac App Store.
“App Savvy” author Ken Yarmosh weighs in on the current state of app development and the influence mobile devices and apps will have on the desktop.
"Shiny app syndrome" and Gov 2.0
Why governments need to start with mobile sites, not native apps.
Are .gov apps "empowering the empowered"? The consensus of a recent Gov 2.0 conference was clear: governments should start by building mobile sites and HTML5 apps to ensure access for the greatest number of citizens.
How augmented reality apps can catch on
For mobile AR to gain mass appeal, it needs a platform or an engine.
A recent interview with Lynne d Johnson at Web 2.0 Expo NY got me thinking about how augmented reality apps can gain widespread adoption with companies and consumers. Here's two ideas.
Apple's segmentation strategy, and the folly of conventional wisdom
Ten years after an iPod powered rebirth, Apple's run continues unabated.
While it is almost heretical to challenge widely-held beliefs about loosely-coupled, open strategies prevailing over tightly-integrated, proprietary ones, Apple's debunking of conventional wisdom continues unabated. Love them or hate them, it helps to understand why they are winning.
Amazon building its own Android App Market?
A look at the pros and cons of an Amazon-run Android market.
While the carriers see the Android Market as an opportunity to build tightly-controlled versions of the Market, non-exclusivity opens the door for companies that (a) know retailing and merchandising much better than Google, (b) aren't in the awkward position of having to play nice with the carriers, and (c) have a global presence independent of carrier coverage and relationships. Enter Amazon.
A bird app that adapts on the fly
BirdsEye shows what's possible when a reference app embraces mobile.
Sprucing up content and adding a search tool isn't enough for reference apps to remain relevant. Publishers should take a note from BirdsEye, a birding app that's tapping the real potential of mobile technology.