something in the way

It’s a fact that mobile is one of the big trends for technology and lifestyle for 2010 – specially due to the rise of applications via iPhone and the subsequent follow up done by competitors to engage their audiences on their mobile devices. The Mobile Phone is becoming less a phone and more an application desk that connects the users with the world around them. This means that the whole choice process for the purchase of the new mobile phone has new key variant – application viability and potential. True, every year there has been some buzz regarding the mobile technology and how it will impact society sooner or later. So it is natural that the demand for professional mobile developers is rising – and ad agencies all over are up for the run.

With this in mind, we have come to the attention of the launch an interesting platform – TheyMakeApps – in which you can find a portfolio of the best App makers you can find close to you (or not!).

While being a simple idea, TheyMakeApps is quite ingenious. Most agencies have been up to their hairs in finding ways to answer to the client’s demands regarding mobile applications for their brands (and as part of our Big Bet for 2010, the demand is only sure to rise) so the agencies can have one of two solutions – either develop the know-how inside the company by hiring professional App Developers or by hiring App Developers per job. In any case, where do you find someone with such specific skills for something as important nowadays as mobile applications? TheyMakeApps solves the problem by providing a directory of App Developers by Geographic localization and even price range. You search for the App Maker of your liking, check his portfolio and contact him – all in the same website.

For now the big focus of TheyMakeApps is the IPhone – which is the granddaddy of Mobile Applications, thus has the biggest Programmer Base. But it’s looking for the opportunity to spread to other Platforms like the Blackberry, Android or Palm that, while a little more difficult to enter at this moment, are very relevant on the global mobile business. But one thing is for sure – this is another strong indicator on the strength of mobile applications today and how the App Making skill’s importance is growing. So if you are an App Maker or know someone who is, make sure you direct them to TheyMakeApps – I’m sure they’ll thank you.

First there were rumors about Apple using bing as their official search provider. Then there was the rant by Steve Job’s calling Google motto bs. Then Google struck back adding multi touch to the Nexus One, now this.

An iPhone developer has received a letter from Apple stating that it can not use the word “Android” in their app. In fact Apple wants to remove that word from all its apps in the app store. Idiot moves like this is the prime reason more and more people are choosing Android and this will only lead to the demise of the iPhone. Nobody wants to be under a dictatorship and that is what Apple has been. Here is a copy of the letter.

“Dear Flash of Genius, LLC,
Thank you for submitting Flash of Genius: SAT Vocab 2.2 to the App Store. During our review of your application, we found that your application contains inappropriate or irrelevant platform information in the Application Description and/or Release Notes sections.
Providing future platform compatibility plans or other general platform references are not relevant in the context of the iPhone App Store. While your application has not been rejected, it would be appropriate to remove “Finalist in Google’s Android Developer’s Challenge!” from the Application Description.
Please log into iTunes Connect to make appropriate changes to the Application Description now to avoid an interruption in the availability of Flash of Genius: SAT Vocab 2.2 on the iPhone App Store.
Regards,
iPhone Developer Program”

[via eurodroid]

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I released Simple Metronome app that runs with Package for iPhone technology, CS5’s new feature. I just got permission to talk about the app.

Seems this is the first Flash made iPhone app from Japan.

This app is originally made for technical research, to understand animation speed and interactivity of flash for iPhone. The reason why I made metronome is simply it needs accurate and smooth frame rate. Version 1.00 is minimum implementation, it will be updated step by step.

Some people said that flash is too slow for iPhone, however as far as I see this app, Flash is enough fast for actual project. It may be not for 3d game, but for utility app. Flash CS5 is still under development and I believe it will be much much faster when it is actually shipped.

The biggest advantage of Flash made iPhone app is that you can easily build both iPhone app and online demo. In iPhone app market, many people looking for the way to promote their application, however only flash developer can promote their app with working demo on the web site!!. It’s quite strong feature, isn’t it?

This is sample project and I will make the source code open. It will be available when Flash CS5 is released.

The app store may be crowded with games, but don’t let this one’s title deceive you. The Font Game, produced by ilovetypography.com, is a brilliant exercise in typography, right on your iPhone.

What is it? You’re shown a word “fargo” in a particular typeface, and given for options to choose from. The ‘test’ runs for around 30 such slides, and you’re judged according to how many you answer correctly along with the time you’ve taken. There’s three modes of difficulty, picking from a selection of over 600 fonts.

The thing that stands out in this app, is the beautiful typography and design layered on by Justin Stahl, a designer I had no idea even existed. Stahl’s design is gracious, unique, and exhibits the best of typography in any app on the iPhone. It generously uses italics where needed, and does away with the standard Helvetica in favour of Whitney by Hoefler & Frere-Jones. And it’s not just the static design; the animations also have the most gracious way of presenting new menus and fonts.

While the gameplay would have been boring [speculating here], the design lends to the experience making the whole experience a a treat in typography. I even discovered a few new fonts for my little collection! It’s an app of typography, for typographers, and most importantly, by typographers. At $0.99, it’s a steal.

I know this one is going to hurt those who drink too much iDon’t koolaid, because they never, in their most wildest dreams thought about any other phone beating the iPhone. But it happened, TIME announced their “Top 10 Everything of 2009″ list, and the Motorola DROID ranks on number 1, and the iPhone 3GS took number 4 on the gadgets category.

As a matter of fact, the Barnes & Noble nook is the device that took the second place, and Dyson’s Air Multiplier bladeless, nonbuffeting fan took third place. Now, as we all know, many upset iPhone followers will not believe this, but who cares now. Do you? TIME, of course, is just one magazine saying this, for now anyway, there might be more coming down the pike.

Next, for your reading pleasure, is what TIME had to say about the DROID and the iPhone:

1. Motorola Droid
Everybody likes Android, Google’s open-source smartphone operating system. But a smartphone operating system isn’t all that satisfying without an actual kick-ass smartphone wrapped around it. Now Android has one: The Droid is a hefty beast, a metal behemoth without the gloss and finish of the iPhone, but you don’t miss it. The Droid’s touchscreen is phenomenally sharp and vivid, it has an actual physical (not great, but good enough) keyboard, and best of all, the Droid is on Verizon’s best-of-breed 3G network. It’s Android’s first credible challenge to the iPhone. Price: $300.

4. iPhone 3GS
Take the iPhone. Make it faster. There, you’re done. Yes, the 3GS has a better camera — with video. And it has a compass and voice control. Those are all improvements over the original. But the main point of, and the best thing about, the new iPhone is speed. It has more of it. Period. Price: $200 to $300.

[Via SlashGear]

Adobe's seemingly tried everything in its fight to get Apple to tear down enough development barriers to get Flash ported to the iPhone, culminating in a native compilation option in CS5 that... well, really doesn't solve much of anything. So far, nothing's worked. What's next? Get the masses fired up with some old-fashioned propaganda and let 'em riot down at One Infinite Loop, of course! Visiting Adobe's Flash download page from an iPhone now shows a pretty tersely-worded message informing the user that they're getting short-changed simply by Apple's refusal to budge, so yeah, if you hear an occasional cry of "this is outrageous, I'm writing Apple immediately!" while sitting at an airport gate or a coffee shop, you can safely guess what just happened.

[Via Gear Diary]

Filed under: Cellphones

Adobe engages Apple in passive aggressive warfare with iPhone's Flash message originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 02 Nov 2009 14:58:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Well good news for Flash developers, Flash CS5 will finally compile to native iPhone and Touch Applications. This is great news for many developers out there who have stuck with the Flash platform.  I am sure there will still be limitations to what you can do with Flash on the iPhone and it will probably be mostly 2D games and apps but this is a great start to getting the Flash platform truly mobile and up to the rest of the industry.

Flash Professional CS5 will enable you to build applications for iPhone and iPod touch using ActionScript 3. These applications can be delivered to iPhone and iPod touch users through the Apple App Store.*

A public beta of Flash Professional CS5 with prerelease support for building applications for iPhone is planned for later this year. Sign up to be notified when the beta starts.

I have been questioning why they have not moved to this model before when others are doing so such as haXe, Unity3D and MonoTouch.  Getting Flash on the web browsers on a mobile is hard because Flash is pretty CPU intensive on embedded devices which is really where computers were in the late 90’s and close to 400-600 MHz processors.  Today these machines wouldn’t be able to run Flash very well and that is the same effect you get on a mobile phone.  But cross-compiling to native, similar to how Unity 3D does it or other solutions like MonoTouch and XNATouch, this is the best solution until mobile/embedded devices have 1GHz processors and more than 500MB of memory. Adobe is using LLVM, much like the Alchemy model, to achieve getting AS3 content onto an iPhone/Touch with AOT or Ahead of Time compilation rather than JIT compilation.

So how do you build an application for the iPhone? It’s simple, really. The forthcoming beta of Adobe Flash Professional CS5 incorporates the ability to create an iPhone application. You have access to nearly all the AIR 2.0 and Flash Player 10.1 APIs. For example, you can use APIs such as RTMP, Remote Shared Objects, and AMF as well as AIR APIs like SQLite and filesystem access. For more information see the developer FAQ on Adobe Labs.

I am glad to see Adobe finally moving on mobile platforms beyond Flashlite.  Flashlite is a poor solution in most cases on embedded devices because they really need native apps to perform, again due to the hardware limitations and it is a whole new platform to learn. Adobe is doing the hard work to make it easy to get developers content on the new embedded devices that are storming the world such as the iPhone and Touch.

• Info on the CS5 Beta
• Sign up for the beta of CS5
• FAQ on Flash iPhone Applications
• Developer article on how the LLVM cross compiling will work
• Flash 10 full version on all phones by Q2 2010 except iPhone

At CES, Microsoft has introduced its second iPhone app after dipping its toe with the release of Seadragon Mobile last month. The name of the application is Microsoft Tag, and it enables users to instantly access mobile content, videos, music, contact information, maps, social networks, promotions, etc. simply by pointing the device’s camera to a custom tag.

If this makes you think about the principle behind QR codes, you’re not the only one. Like QR codes, Microsoft Tags are unique two-dimensial codes that can be used to open URLs or multimedia files. The big difference is the tech behind it: Microsoft Tag is based on a whole new technology developed in-house by Microsoft Research called High Capacity Color Barcodes (HCCBs), and offers a significant twist.

Microsoft Tags are smaller than QR codes and uses triangle shapes and colors to store data instead of square pixels. Actually, Microsoft Tags doesn’t actually store any information, except for a unique ID which can fetch more data stored on Microsoft servers. This allows way more information to be attached to tags than with QR codes.

Microsoft Tags are available for the iPhone as well as Windows Mobile, J2ME, Blackberry, and Symbian S60 phones. The application can be accessed by visiting Gettag.mobi using your mobile phone browser; for the iPhone, search for ‘Tag Reader’ in the App Store.

(Thanks to Neowin for the heads up, image above found on istartedsomething)