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. read more

In a few weeks, the Facebook application platform will mark its second anniversary. While it garnered lots of press coverage in the months after it launched, the arrival of the iTunes app store shifted attention away from Facebook's vibrant ecosystem. The media glow is understandable: among other things, the younger iTunes platform is adding apps at a much faster rate than Facebook or Myspace. read more

Most of you (43%) agreed with me that Android would be the first mobile OS to be rocking Flash Player 10. Next we have 18% voting for Windows Mobile and 18% for iPhone. There doesn't appear to be much hope... read more

How To Use An iPhone To Fly RC Airplanes and Helicopters -- So I had my basic idea down. iPhone joins the Linksys router network. It gets an IP address. Then, I open up my pilot program. The pilot program interfaces with the router via SSH (I couldn’t think of a better way that has redundancy, and speed, and...... read more

There are scads of piano-keyboard apps for the iPhone, but I find the lack of tactile feedback frustrating. With Apple opening the dock connector to outside developers in OS 3, couldn't someone create a true music keyboard?... read more

In this interview with Rob Sheridan (@rob_sheridan), Nine Inch Nails' Artistic Director, Rob discusses the experience of getting the rejection letter from Apple, and what effect it has on the band's plans to build community applications on the iPhone platform. You'll hear Sheridan express an uneasiness that Apple can act as judge and jury without providing any transparency into the approval process.... read more

It hasn't been a good year for Apple's iPhone App Store. Child welfare advocates threw a fit over the notorious Baby Shaker application. App Store developers started to complain about slow payment of royalties from Apple. The ubiquity of iPhone flatulence applications became a running joke. And now comes word that popular industial rockers Nine Inch Nails have had their iPhone app turned down, because of naughty language. Which all leads to the question: Why is Apple in the business of selling iPhone applications anyway? One possible answer is that Apple needs to gate-keep iPhone applications because otherwise they could screw up their deal with AT&T.; ... read more

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. ... read more