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Tags > mobile
Four short links: 16 November 2009 - Visualizing Adventures, Droid Deployments, Fly Vision, and Mass Meat For You
November 16, 2009
Meat Band Aids and Mass Production of Living Tissue -- Apligraf is a matrix of cow collagen, human fibroblasts and keratinocyte stem cells (from discarded circumcisions), that, when applied to chronic wounds (particularly nasty problems like diabetic sores), can seed healing and regeneration. You'll find this Gizmodo Q&A is informative. This and more in today's Four Short Links.
Four short links: 10 November 2009 - DIY Diagnostic Chips, Genetics on $5k a Genome, Cellphones as Diagnostic Microscopes, AR-Equipped Mechanics Do It Heads-Up
November 10, 2009
A children's toy inspires a cheap, easy production method for high-tech diagnostic chips -- Microfluidic chips (with tiny liquid-filled channels) can cost $100k and more. Michelle Khine used the Shrinky Dinks childrens' toy to make her own. "I thought if I could print out the [designs] at a certain resolution and then make them shrink, I could make channels the right size for microfluidics," she says. This and more in today's Four Short Links!
Games Top the Charts in the iPhone and Android App Markets
November 3, 2009
While it might be true that the number of Book apps is growing at a faster rate, Games continue to dominate the list of popular U.S. iTunes Apps. Games accounted for about a fifth of all iTunes apps over the past week†, but the category continued to have a disproportionate share of the Top 100 charts, accounting for 52% of the Top Grossing, 56% of the Top Paid, and 50% of the Top Free apps.
What feature do you use most on your mobile phone?
By Rich TretolaNovember 3, 2009
With all of this talk lately about the Flash Player coming to mobile, I thought I would ask a very simple question. What feature do you use most on your mobile phone? Please take part in this poll.
Google Shrinks Another Market With Free Turn-By-Turn Navigation
By Brady ForrestOctober 29, 2009
Google has announced a free turn-by-turn navigation system for Android 2.0 phones such as the Droid. Read more about the features of Google Maps Navigation.
iPhone Killers, Blackberries and Chicken Parts
October 29, 2009
While a steady stream of so-called iPhone Killers are filtering into the market, Apple's momentum continues unabated. Inspired by his own experiences upgrading to the Blackberry Tour, the author ponders why so many solution providers confuse delivering a bunch of 'chicken parts' with producing an actual, living, breathing chicken. BlackBerry Storm, Palm Pre, the G2, and now Droid have all been touted as contenders to the mobile computing crown, yet the iPhone continues to kick butt.
The Right Stuff: Apple's Q4 Earnings Call
October 21, 2009
The Fourth Quarter was Apple's most profitable quarter ever. Yesterday's earnings call was about two things. One, the iPhone Platform continues to deliver the goods. Two, the continued impressive growth of the Mac, especially MacBooks. As such, it was about the power of the platform as much as it was about the device itself.
Should Apple Give a Rat's Ass that Developers Aren't Getting Rich off of the iPhone Platform?
October 8, 2009
Apple's iPhone Platform is a runaway success relative to just about any metric that you can throw at it, save for one. Where are the breakout successful developers for whom the platform is a 'True Wealth' inducing moment? On the one hand, it is humorous to listen to the woes of 'aspiring' millionaires quibble. On the other, there is a valid argument that Apple's push to drive volume and ubiquity via "cheap" comes at the potential cost of cultivating breakout, transformational apps that cost more, require a longer sales cycle, and thus, more evangelizing to find their beachhead.
The iPhone as a Gaming Platform: Share of Top Apps By Category
October 8, 2009
As a follow-up to my recent post on the Top Grossing Apps list on iTunes, I examined three lists highlighted in the app store: the Top Paid, Top Free, and Top Grossing Apps. Believing that many users scan these lists, developers covet a spot on any of these Top 100 charts. In my previous posts, I've highlighted that Games is the largest† category, accounting for about 20% of unique apps. Let's take a fresh look at the numbers.
Look through the AR window
October 7, 2009
The hottest applications for AR in the next year will closely resemble familiar human interactions with the physical world. We interact with objects in our environment. Then we move through space, get to where we are going with the fewest detours, or, perhaps to discover places and landmarks (points of interest) that would otherwise have been overlooked. We also enjoy interacting with one another.
Review: Kerchoonz K-box Portable Speaker
October 7, 2009
Project Bar-B-Q is a great place to discover tomorrow's audio technology, so I was intrigued when someone on the mailing list mentioned the new Kerchoonz K-box portable speaker. Could "gel audio technology" really deliver unprecedented bass from a tiny box? The short answer is yes.
The Price of The Top Grossing iTunes Apps
October 6, 2009
In response to developer complaints that more expensive apps were getting buried at the bottom of popularity rankings, Apple recently introduced a separate ranking based on revenue. (The Top 100 Paid apps ranks apps are based on number of downloads.) In this post, I'll validate that compared to downloads, the Top 100 ranking based on revenues does contain pricier apps.
The Mobile Frontier - The Future of the Sustainable Network
September 30, 2009
The mobile network has created unprecedented opportunity for the world. It truly is pervasive - spanning out across geographies and socio-economic boundaries to enable sustainable participation, growth and potential prosperity on a previously unimaginable scale.
Mobile Banks in the Developing World Prove Simpler is Better
September 18, 2009
Recent initiatives designed to make U.S. consumer financial products simpler and intelligible to customers, reminds me of a study we did on Mobile Banks in the developing world. Designed to work on the simplest mobile devices and originally targeting the unbanked, mobile banks evolved from simple services to become widely used money-transfer and mobile payment systems. While it's technically easy to roll out a rudimentary mobile payment system, the most successful mobile banks in the developing world use complex software systems that handle more (near) real-time transactions than traditional banking systems.
iPhone, the 'Personal' Computer - Future of the Mobile Web
September 17, 2009
The iPhone is the first truly 'personal' computer; more personal to its owners than the PC ever was. Talk to iPhone owners (not to mention, the 20M iPod Touch owners), and this truth bubbles to the top again and again.
Resetting Expectations: Some Augmented Reality Links
By Ben LoricaSeptember 10, 2009
Mobile Devices and AR: Besides employing the location of users (Wikitude), there are generally two ways to overlay data onto the real world: through markers ( (2D) bar codes) or through automatic object/image recognition algorithms ("markerless"). The Economist gives a good overview of the different mobile applications that are starting to emerge and lists a few areas where AR makes sense such as shopping (letting house-hunters which properties are for sale) and events (giving sports fans access to stats and player bios).
Four short links: 8 September 2009 - Mobile jQuery, API to Google Book Search, Open Learning, Popularity Algorithms
September 8, 2009
jQTouch -- Want some help developing your mobile app for the iPhone, Android, PalmPre or other device? Check out jQTouch, a plugin for mobile web development that offers a library of pre-built functions. Visit the jQTouch site to get the plugin and explore a demo. This and more in today's Four Short Links.
Free Live Webcast - Palm webOS: Application Basics, Sept. 9 at 10am PT - Meet Palm webOS Expert Mitch Allen Online
September 3, 2009
This session, presented by author Mitch Allen, begins with an overview of the basic webOS application structure and a demo of the core SDK developer tools, and includes detail presentations on the application launch lifecycle, and Mojo controllers and methods. Attendance is limited, so register now! More Upcoming Webcasts - Meet Experts Online: iPhone Forensics: Live Recovery of an iPhone 3G[s] Energy Literacy Nuclear Energy: Future Directions Check out our Webcast page for on-demand videos of past webcasts and more upcoming live events!
Five Things to Consider When Buying a Netbook - Tips from J.D. Biersdorfer, Author of Netbooks: The Missing Manual
September 2, 2009
People buy new gadgets for every imaginable reason. In J.D. Biersdorfer's case, an apartment renovation prompted her to purchase one. "I wanted to have an extremely portable PC with me when I was living out of a duffel bag and sleeping on people's couches while my own place was unlivable," explains the author of O'Reilly's Netbooks: The Missing Manual. "It turned out to be a great solution because many of my friends have wireless networks (or neighbors that have unsecured wireless networks), so I could stay linked to the Internet even while couch surfing all over the city." Based on her personal experiences and research for the book, J.D. offers five important things to consider when buying a netbook.
The Most Popular iTunes Apps Aren't Always The Cheapest
By Ben LoricaAugust 27, 2009
While the most popular aren't always the cheapest, on average, the Top 10 Paid apps† tend to be cheaper than less popular ones (those ranked 45 to 55 or 91 to 100): The situation varies across categories and in this post I'll briefly examine a few of the larger ones. In both the Books and Games categories, the mean price...
Why is HTML Suddenly Interesting?
By Simon St. LaurentAugust 27, 2009
After a decade of quiet, HTML is a hot topic once again. While there is pent-up demand for new features, the conversation reflects a more basic change in the Web's landscape.
Touch Traveler: London, Paris and only an iPod Touch
August 24, 2009
Recently, I spent two weeks vacationing in London and Paris with only an iPod Touch for communications and connectivity. Mind you, I am not suggesting that this was a wise thing to do, but it's what I did, and this post captures the good, bad and ugly of the experience. First off, the revelation (for me) was how much the Google Mobile Maps App on iPod Touch completely changes the equation when traveling. Moreover, Maps allows you to visually navigate in Real-Time (very different from the experience on my Blackberry), all the while push-pinning favorite destinations, and determining routes in just a few clicks. It is the consummate reality augmentation application for travel, a sort of "magic compass."
Four Short Links: 24 August 2009 - Distributed Version Control Systems, Ideas Tracking, OO Survey Results, New Barcodes
By Nat TorkingtonAugust 24, 2009
Making Sense of Revision Control Systems -- Bryan O'Sullivan, author of Mercurial: The Definitive Guide (aka Distributed Revision Control with Mercurial) offers a useful primer on revision control systems, with a focus on the best ways to work with a revision control system and the common problems software development projects encounter. This and more in today's Four Short Links.
Waze: Make Your Own Maps in Realtime
August 17, 2009
Waze (blog) is using mobile phones as sensors to collect data. The Israeli-based start-up (though now with offices in SF) is relying on users to create its maps, to report realtime traffic and to teach it how to route from place A to place B. Along their drives the user gobbles points for every action. Use the app and gain recognition within the Waze community. The company is doing all of this through its free turn-by-turn navigation apps (sorry, iPhone and Android only for now).
The iTunes App Store Rolls with the Travel Season
August 11, 2009
Sometime last week, the iTunes app store passed 70,000 unique apps (70K apps have appeared in the app store since it launched). One of the fastest-growing categories in the U.S. iTunes app store has been Travel, displacing Education to move into the top 5 largest categories. Welcome to summer vacation!
iTunes App Store Incubation Period Increases In Most Categories
July 31, 2009
Over the last few weeks, media coverage of the iTunes app store often touches on concerns about Apple's approval process. Some apps drew enough complaints that Apple pulled them off the app store. With thousands of developers wanting to launch apps and Apple unable to come up with a more efficient vetting process, I'm revisiting an earlier post on the duration of incubation periods by category.
Why attend InsideMobile?
By Steve WeissJuly 20, 2009
O'Reilly is presenting, in conjunction with 360 Conferences, the InsideMobile training and networking event in San Jose, Sunday and Monday, July 26 and 27th. We designed the program to cover the other parts of the story in this summer of...
The Promise and Peril of MobileMe
By Marc HedlundJuly 17, 2009
Anyone tried MobileMe? Last night, I signed up for the free trial, got it syncing between my laptop and iPhone, and was incredibly impressed by how well and quickly it worked. An appointment added on one nearly instantly showed up on the other -- so much better than having to fire up iTunes to have my schedule in sync. The power of the cloud! Or whatever. You know, useful.
News Providers are Embracing the iPhone
July 16, 2009
To mark another iPhone milestone (1.5 billion app downloads in a year), I checked our iTunes app store data warehouse. I was expecting the Books category to continue to register the fastest-growth but was instead greeted by an explosion in News (and to a lesser extent, Navigation) apps. News content providers increasingly need to have a strategy for delivering content to the iPhone and similar mobile devices. At least for the iPhone, many news organizations have done just that: during the week ending 7/12, there were over 1,500 News apps.
The Next Wave of iPhone Apps
June 18, 2009
This is the biggest week of the year for iPhone users, as Apple released iPhone OS 3.0 on Wednesday and will be launching the new iPhone 3GS on Friday. The iPhone OS 3.0 Software Update provides a significant number of enhancements to the operating system including spotlight search, cut, copy, & paste, voice memos, support for landscape keyboard usage in Mail, Messages, Notes, and Safari, MMS and tethering for carriers that support these features (AT&T late summer for MMS, tethering TBD), and dozens of other improvements.
Hands-On with the iPhone 3.0 OS; Search is the Winner
June 16, 2009
The iPhone 3.0 OS is going to be released this Wednesday. It will be available to all iPhones (for free) and iPod Touches (for a small cost). The iPhone 3GS will ship with it. The new OS became available last week to those willing and able to try it out a bit early (see Gizmodo for details). This is what I've noticed since updating...
Verizon Mi-Fi2200 Intelligent Mobile Hotspot
June 8, 2009
The folks at Verizon Wireless and Weber Shandwick Worldwide sent me a review unit of the Verizon Mi-Fi2200 Intelligent Mobile Hotspot. It's a great device that combines the broad coverage of EV-DO (the 3G cellular data system used by Verizon...
Sun Launches an App Store + Ellison on Sun's Future
June 2, 2009
As Schwartz touts the massive market penetration of Java on "Billions of PCs and Mobile Devices". Sun introduces a Java-centric App Store to bring the advantages of this distribution to Java application developers. Scott McNealy invites Larry Ellison to the stage to talk about the future of Java, how JavaFX is better than AJAX, and how he intends to compete with Google's Android.
Building Higher Performance RIAs for Smart Phones
By Robi SenMay 15, 2009
With the growing popularity of smart phones like the iPhone and Google’s Android, as well as new players on the market like Palm’s Pre, the idea of having an always-connected general computational device is finally being realized. Today’s smart phones are not only used for making calls, taking pictures, and listening to music; now people are using their phones to do business, build presentations, make quick edits to important files, and even surf the web. Yet contrary to what the commercials would have you believe, few smart phones provide a web experience equivalent even to a netbook.
The iTunes App Store and One-hit Wonders
May 1, 2009
Thousands of sellers created the 40,000 apps that have appeared in the U.S. iTunes app store. Measured in terms of apps per seller, developer and vendor engagement has gotten stronger over time. The above average (mean) is somewhat misleading: 52% of sellers have produced just one app, and 80% have released 3 or fewer. Certain types of apps (e.g. electronic books) are easier to create, thus inflating the overall average app per seller. The disparity in complexity across categories is captured in the chart below. Aside from Books, Travel and Education apps also tend to be easy to develop and launch. The number of apps per seller also depends on whether one is interested in Paid or Free apps.
When No News is GREAT News: Analysis Apple Earnings Call
By Mark SigalApril 24, 2009
Apple crushed it (earnings in the most recent quarter). So much for the recession prompting consumers to stampede away from Apple's "high-end" products, as the prognosticators predicted (and the stock market priced into Apple's stock). So what's the moral of the story? Read on...
Waiting for the Billionth Download
April 16, 2009
Over the next week, the iTunes App Store is set to record its billionth download, an impressive milestone given that it launched less than a year ago. Granted the actual usage of most apps is spotty. To mark the event, I'm updating a few charts that I produced for previous posts. Slightly over 35,000 apps have appeared in the U.S. app store. Over 31,000 were available in the last week alone, about 78% of which were PAID apps.
PhoneGap, the Mobile Platform Democratizer
April 8, 2009
There's a gold-rush happening right now in mobile marketplaces. However not everyone is able to participate and not all platforms are receiving equal attention. PhoneGap has the potential to be a great democratizer. It lowers the bar for developers to create powerful applications out of very familiar web technologies. It also enables sites to support versions of their apps for mobile platforms other than the iPhone. If you don't have an iPhone (or even if you do) you should be cheering this project along.
PC 1.0, iPhone 3.0 and the Woz: Everything Old is New Again
March 31, 2009
Taking a look back at a Steve Wozniak interview is a window into a time when the industry was completely and utterly dependent upon hardware innovation; before it became such a commodity at the hardware layer that the software could only be so differentiated. That is, until iPod and iPhone. The iPod accessory business itself is already a $2B market, and there has really been no such thing as "software value-add" to the hardware accessory itself. With iPhone 3.0, this changes.
ANALYSIS - iPhone 3.0 Developer Preview: Block the Kick Strategy
March 18, 2009
Today's iPhone 3.0 Developer Preview was what I call a "block the kick" announcement. What's a block the kick? It is an effort to do such a good job of persuading your core constituency that any perceived momentum of the competition pales in comparison to your own that you block the competition's nascent momentum in its infancy. With 30M units sold across the iPhone + iPod touch line of multi-touch handhelds, and 800M downloads across 25K developer apps, today's event is about running up the score BEFORE the competition finds its footing with developers.
iPhones, App Stores and Ecosystems
By Mark SigalMarch 17, 2009
On Tuesday, Apple is previewing its iPhone OS 3.0 to developers. While I have no idea what they will present, I will say this. The fact that Apple is stepping on the gas pedal and pushing 3.0, while the new kids on the block (read: Android and Palm Pre) are barely 1.0 suggests that they have learned the lessons taught them oh so painfully by Microsoft in the PC wars; namely, that he who wins the hearts and minds of developers, wins the war.
ETech: Mobile Phones Reveal the Behaviors of Places and People
By Robert KayeMarch 13, 2009
[Quinn managed to scoop me blogging about Tony Jebara's presentation! But after I chatted with her, we both agreed that I should continue with my blog post and see if I can augment her post a little.] Tony Jebara's presentation "Mobile Phones Reveal the Behaviors of Places and People" really opened my eyes to what amazing things you can...
What the recent Adobe mobile announcements mean for RIA
By Dale RankineFebruary 19, 2009
Funny how the perception of mobile can change almost overnight. In a flurry of announcements from Adobe in the lead up to the annual Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, the worlds of RIA and mobile were placed on a collision course.
The "O'Reilly Bump" and Bookworm
By Andrew SavikasFebruary 13, 2009
During his TOC Keynote, Tim O'Reilly talked about how the status he confers through "retweets" on Twitter are really just another form of publishing, not much different from the status...
ETech Preview: Living the Technomadic Life
February 9, 2009
One of the themes at O'Reilly's Emerging Technology Conference this March is nomadism, and no one is a better example of a technomad than Chris Dunphy and Cherie Ve Ard. Traveling around the country in a custom 17' trailer towed by a Diesel Jeep Liberty, they manage to run a consulting firm while satisfying their desire to see new places and meet new people. We took a few minutes to talk to them about what it takes technologically to make it work, and what a life on the road is life.
Safari Books Online Goes Mobile
By Allen NorenFebruary 9, 2009
Like much of the publishing world, I'm eager to hear about Amazon's latest version of the Kindle. But that's not the only news today. I'm sitting here at TOC and talking to John Chodacki from Safari Books Online and, with a smile on his face, he's showing me beta version of m.safaribooksonline.com. The smile is well deserved. It looks great, it's fast, and I love the stripped-down navigation and lack of clutter.
Setting Up Your Android Development Environment
February 3, 2009
Last week I excerpted a section from Jonathan Zdziarski's iPhone SDK Application Development, and today I want to give equal time to an excerpt from the Rough Cut (still in development) version of Android Application Development, by Rick Rogers and John Lombardo.
Palm's Third Act
December 30, 2008
2009 marks another year when Macworld and CES are scheduled for the same week. It'll be a great week for product announcements, but it'll also be a week of information overload. RSS feeds will overflow with gadget coverage. For those of us covering technology, it presents some logistical challenges, too. Which conference to attend? I'll be at Macworld again this...
iTunes App Store: The First Five Months
By Ben LoricaDecember 2, 2008
Taking a cue from Raven's recent post announcing the 10,000 iPhone app milestone, I decided to update some charts from earlier posts on the U.S. iTunes app store. First, the weekly growth in the number of apps was slower in November: the number of apps grew less than 10% on a weekly basis for all of November. During the last...
Daddy, Where's Your Phone?
By Tim O'ReillyNovember 17, 2008
I met recently with Vic Gundotra, formerly Microsoft's head of platform evangelism, and now VP of Engineering at Google, responsible for all their mobile efforts outside of Android. We were talking about Google's mobile strategy and the insanely cool new voice-activated Google search in the Google Mobile Application for iPhone. But what I really want to share is Vic's story...
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