Monthly Archives: November 2011

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Microsoft Exec: We’ve Had Siri-Style Tech For Over A Year

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Software similar to the highly touted Siri voice recognition program featured in the iPhone 4S has been available in Windows-branded phones for more than a year, and is only being heavily promoted by Apple due to an alleged lack of other features in the company’s new smartphone, one Microsoft executive said during an interview last week.

In comments made to Eric Savitz of Forbes at the Techonomy Conference in Tuscon, Arizona, Microsoft Chief Research and Strategy Officer Craig Mundie pointed out that a similar system, in the form of a TellMe app, has been part of the Redmond, Washington-based tech giant’s Windows 7 Phone “for more than a year.”

Mundie added that people were “infatuated… with Apple announcing it,” and while he admitted that it was “good marketing,” he said that Windows-branded smartphones have had the capability to issue a verbal command to write a text message to someone, then dictate what you want the message to say, or conduct a search through the company’s Bing search engine using only your voice, since the Windows 7 Phone was initially released in the second half of 2011.

“Mundie is right, and Microsoft has won praise for the latest advances in its mobile voice recognition,” Todd Bishop of Geekwire said in a story Friday. “But does Windows Phone really live up to what Apple is doing with Siri? Based on my own experience, at least, Apple seems to be closer to the goal of offering an intelligent assistant, not just a voice interface, with a wider array of applications and the use of location awareness to make Siri smarter.”

According to Chloe Albanesius of PCMag, Microsoft acquired TellMe in early 2007. The company then announced their first app, a downloadable program which allowed users to dictate text messages, search the World Wide Web, or place a phone call simply by speaking, for Windows Mobile in April of 2009. Albanesius added that Mundie believes the strong focus on Siri was due to a lack of other features with the most recent model of iPhone.

“In a sense, many people were disappointed with the newest (Apple) phone because it wasn’t a completely new thing, so the only thing they really had to hammer on was that feature,” Mundie told Savitz, according to Bishop. “Maybe we need to pick a feature and hammer on it harder.”

The Microsoft executive also claimed that the demise of the Windows 7 line of phones had been grossly exaggerated, especially in the light of recently formed partnerships with other firms.

“At the point Windows 7 Phones were being introduced many people wanted to write the company off as not a survivor in the phone segment,” he said. “In a sense we’ve had to overcome our errors in the transition from the old phone model to the new phone model. Hopefully now that people are giving us some credit for the quality of the execution on the phone itself — Nokia has come on line now, that’s a huge thing. HTC and others.”

via Microsoft Exec: We’ve Had Siri-Style Tech For Over A Year – Technology News – redOrbit.

Siri: Your wish is its command

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If you grew up in the eighties and nineties like me, almost all your science fiction is a reality now. Information from far and wide, real-time updates, gadgets in diverse form-factors, and voice and touch interaction with these gadgets.

2011 is the next step as you control your Smartphones with your voice.One of the biggest advancements in mobile phone software over the past few months has been in voice control. Yes, your wish is the command. Give those twiddling thumbs some rest!

Sirion Apple iPhone 4S is clearly the flag bearer of that next leap. Siriis the intelligent personal assistant that helps you get things done just by asking. Currently in beta, Siriunderstands and can speak English, French, and German. Although, Siri can be enabled in any country and you can choose to speak to it in English, French, or German, it is designed to recognize the specific accents and dialects of the supported countries only. Siri works right out of the box, without any work on your part. And the more you use Siri, the better it will understand you. It does this by learning about your accent and other characteristics of your voice.

Apart from the technology progression, Siriallows you to use the paradigm of real conversations to control your iPhone4S, unlike the traditional voice recognition software that requires you to remember keywords and speak specific commands. It lets you use your voice to send messages, schedule meetings, place phone calls, and more just by talking the way you talk. Siri not only understands what you say, but is also smart enough to know what you mean.

Apple illustrates it through this example:

When you ask “Any good burger joints around here?”Siri will reply, “I found a number of burger restaurants near you.” Then you can say “Hmm. How about tacos?” Siri remembers that you just asked about restaurants, so it will look for Mexican restaurants in the neighborhood.

Siri also integrates with other services and uses almost all the built-in apps on iPhone 4S. It finds answers for you from the web through sources like Yelp and WolframAlpha and using location services, it looks up where you live, where you work, and where you are.Siri also uses information from your contacts, music library, calendars, and reminders to better understand what you say.

Siri does face competition from other mobile platforms – Windows Phone and Android.Both have their own voice command tools – Tellme and Voice Actions. Tellme voice command feature was released as part of the Windows Phone 7.5 Mango upgrade in late 2011 (Microsoft had acquired Tellme in 2007). These voice enhancements add some particularly useful features to the platform which pre-date both Siri and Voice Actions for Android, although restricted to communications and search since the text to speech functionality is only available in text messaging.

Interestingly, competing with the platform owners is a cross-platform app, Vlingo, which provides voice to text functionality to iOS, Android, BlackBerry, Nokia, and the older Windows Mobile devices. Siri stands apart with the ability to interact with natural speaking and only Voice Actions come close in terms of features. However, Tellme is a strong technology platform and it is anybody¶s guess that Microsoft would include Siri-like functionality in the upcoming Windows Phone releases.

via Siri: Your wish is its command – Hindustan Times ‹ Copy right ‹ 201 1 HT Media Limited. All Rights Reserv ed.

How Siri Could Make Collaboration Mobile

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Before collaboration software can evolve from document-centric systems to social-network-based comment streams, the client interface has to be set free from the PC. Sure, many systems, whether Facebook for personal use or enterprise products like Chatter, Podio, and Yammer, have mobile clients, but have you ever tried to use one? And that goes double for small-screen smartphones. Like mobile email, these interfaces are OK forviewing updates and occasionally posting a short reply but not so good for extended discussions–they generally represent a minor improvement over using the mobile browser but are far from replacing the full-featured, keyboard-based PC client. Tablets somewhat improve things merely by virtue of size–their larger touch screens are easier to navigate–but as with email, for anything requiring more than a short paragraph, you’re yearning for a keyboard. And as smartphones assume an increasing share of our connected existence, the disconnect between our preferred device form and our collaboration software interfaces will become more painful. Houston, we have a problem.

Here’s where Siri, Apple’s new anthropomorphic iPhone femme fatale, with her HAL 9000-like ability to understand and act on natural-language commands, likely portends the future of mobile collaboration. As I write in this InformationWeek report reviewing the iPhone 4S, Siri is already an amazing achievement, able to complete many common tasks, from sending text messages to performing location-aware Web searches. While Apple’s ad makes it all look a little more magical than it is in practice, have no doubt that Siri, with its combination of state-of-the-art voice recognition and cloud-based, AI natural-language parsing, is a technical tour de force. My colleague Jonathan Feldman agrees: “Mark my words: Siri will be as big or bigger than the iPad. It’s the beginning of actually useful natural language processing and associated automation.”

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“Automation” is the keyword. Yes, she “understands what you say” and “knows what you mean,” but so far, Siri’s repertoire is limited. At the risk of looking a gift horse in the mouth, Siri controls only apps embedded in iOS: phone, messages, notes, contacts, calendar, Web search. But she could, and undoubtedly will, do so much more. So far, and I definitely expect this to change in the next year, Siri is wearing a burqa in that she exposes no API. Thus, iOS apps, like the aforementioned mobile collaboration clients, can’t tap into Siri’s language-parsing, device-controlling wizardry. Although some apps, like the ingenious Siri Tunes, have figured out clever ways of using Siri’s ability to send text messages as a user interface to their back-end Web services, these are still just ingenious hacks working around an inherently closed system. What’s needed is a full API open to third-party app developers, and we think that’s something Apple will release, eventually. While the company hasn’t made a statement to that effect, Siri is just too compelling to wall off; it would be like not allowing third-party apps use of the camera.

What might a voice-activated collaboration client do? Siri’s current ability to make calendar entries, send text messages, and take dictation hint at the possibilities. For example, the standard way of sharing comments is Facebook’s wall metaphor–a comment stream threaded beneath an anchor topic. In the context of enterprise collaboration, the topic is likely to be a PowerPoint deck or meeting agenda. While it’s possible, although rarely pleasant, to read heavily formatted content like a slide deck on a smartphone, typing a comment is onerous, even with a client optimized for the smartphone’s small display. Wouldn’t it be nice to dictate your thoughts instead?

Of course, this text-to-speech example just hints at what innovative developers might do with a cloud-based speech-recognition engine. Siri already understands context, in that prior requests inform subsequent answers. Ask “Find me the nearest Mexican restaurant,” and Siri replies with a list based on your current location. Follow up with “No, make that pizza,” and Siri remembers both the context (restaurants) and location. Imagine if this same logical power could be applied to any application. Say you’re a sales rep and your manager has shared a spreadsheet with regional sales estimates. If you have updated figures for your territory, instead of hunting and pecking changes on the tiny touchscreen keyboard, wouldn’t it be nice to say, “Siri, change the sales estimate for the Northwest region from 750,000 to 900,000″ and have the update applied, along with a comment field indicating who made the change? Similarly, when reviewing a project manager’s task schedule on the road from your phone, wouldn’t it be nice to update it with a simple voice command? “Siri, change the completion date for software pilot testing to Feb. 9.”

Natural-language control of computer systems is not new; it’s been a staple of science fiction since Star Trek. But Siri, with its merging of client-side language processing and server-side meaning interpretation, has raised the bar on what’s possible. While talking to a laptop, with its expansive keyboard, never made much sense, talking to your phone couldn’t be more natural. Instead of having conversations with friends or colleagues, let’s just have a conversation with the device itself. Siri ushers in the era in which speech recognition doesn’t let devices just take dictation but actually engage in conversation–tell it what we want, react to the response, and modify our request–and use speech as a software UI.

The future of smartphone collaboration lies in vocal, not tactile, interaction. Siri blazes the trail.

How Siri Could Make Collaboration Mobile – Telecom – Unified Communications/messaging – Informationweek By Kurt Marko for InformationWeek.

App Economy – Hidden Story Behind the Rosy App World

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Apps Are Disrupting The Web

August 2010, Chris Anderson, editor-in-chief at Wired co-authored a controversial yet thought-provoking piece announcing the death of web due in large part to the prevalence of a new breed of simpler, sleeker service – aka apps, a shift driven fundamentally by the rise of the iPhone/Android model of mobile computing. It seems to him that the ubiquitous of apps would eventually strip away everyone’s needs to go through the Web to Internet. Aided by a disparate set of apps on different mobile devices, one now can hang up to Internet all day long without accessing to Web.

Case in point. You wake up to numerous emails on your iPhone/Android phone. On your way to the office you read Wall Street Journal and Economist for a while and then flip through Sina Weibo and Facebook and switch back and forth between those – of course – apps. The list can go on and on till you finally come to realize what I’m trying to get at – we’re already surrounded by apps that could virtually enable us to interact with technology, Internet and the real world around us in as profound a way as the Web could.

Apple App Store, which opened On July 2008 and currently hosts 425,000 apps for various iOS devices as well as over 100,000 native to iPad topped 15 billion downloads as of this July. Android Market, the late-comer curated by Google hit 7 billion download mark in this November with over 370,000 apps according to a latest research. Even Samsung announced in early October that itsSamsung Apps, the world’s first HDTV-based app store  made it to the milestone of 1,000 registered applications and crossed the 10 million downloads mark, signaling that the Korean giant is right on its way to build a global Smart TV ecosystem. Apps, be it on iPhone, Android, iPad or SmartTV, are growing rapidly in popularity and are shaping the world in a unprecedented way that never seen before.

With the wild proliferation of apps and momentous change in the way we connect with each other as well as the world, Apple and its iDevices (iPod Touch, iPhone, iPad) and Google’s Android mobile operation system is creating a new world in which apps are painting the future picture of mobile computing, while what behind the scenes, are the whole app ecosystem – be it Android or iOS platform – mobile vendors, operators and app developers.

Manufacturers and operators are covered in gold through contributing to the grand picture. HTC has successfully pulled off a transformation from OEM manufacturer to the market leader in Android phones in more than two years after the company launched the first Android phone in 2008 while MOTO turned around since the launch of its first Droid phone in late 2009. Operators also reaped big amounts from the data plan spawned by mobile connection.

The Revenue Dilemma

And, how about the app developers, those who literally crafted and perfected all these apps?

The convention wisdom tells us that there’re two major revenue sources for app developers, charge the app or give it out for free with ads.

According to a late report, it’s quite hard to charge users given the market condition and customer habits here. The pitfall was evidenced by s startup’s gloomy sales in one of the companies Android-based freemium video player which has over 3 million downloads for its ad-included free version whereas only less than 5% people pay for a ad-free version.

That’s why a vast majority of Android developers and even some iOS developers resort to mobile ads platform and mobile ads.

In a concerted report by market researcher iResearch and mobile ads optimizer Guohe Ad, there’re currently three types of different mobile ads platforms in Chinese. The first one is in-app-store ad platform by operators or mobile vendors who own their own app store, typified by Admob(Google), iAd (Apple) and 189Works/Ad (China Telecom) while mobisage, Vpon, SmartMAD, Adwoand domob are the post child for the second group, mobile ad platforms. Adwhirl, mobClix andGuohe Ad fall under the third category, mobile ads optimizer and optimizer aiming at generating more revenue in apps through optimizing  ads impressions. Some other means include automatically switching between different ad platforms when one fails to maximize revenue.

Mobile Ads Optimizers To The Rescue


Founded in early January, Guohe Ad is one of those optimizers trying to help app developer getting rid of the revenue dilemma as well as to facilitate Chinese app ecosystem.

According to Neo Zhang, head of Guohe Ad who mainly engaged in financial business in his early career days, the main purposes of mobile ad platform are to serve the best interests of the advertisers while for optimizers their major targets are to serve app developers, to help them get the most value of their apps, by displaying as many impressions as possible to make more money.

On top of displaying more ads, Guohe Ad also introduced a bunch of innovative algorithm and well-devised mechanism to max out app’s revenue potential. For instance, Neo said that Guohe Ad could learn to match app users’ tastes and display more relevant ads – through understanding users’ likes and hates by learning their clicking behavior.

Although as compared to single ad platform, optimizers can bring in more revenue by ways of showing more ads. But users won’t click on them if the ads aren’t suit their preference. Guohe Ad is trying to solve the problem, by understanding users’ app usage and click history. Hence Guohe Ad could show more relevant ads in apps per user. More relevant means more clicks which eventually leads to more revenue.

Apart from Guohe Ad, there’re several other players like Adview, AdsMogo and so on that each are trying to grab a bite from the lackluster-for-now-yet-promising app economy, and the concerted efforts by ads platform, optimizers and developers could be taken as a significant sign that bodes well for a more encouraging app ecosystem here in China.

 

App Economy – Hidden Story Behind the Rosy App World by Ben Chiang.

Apps Help Hunt for Holiday Shopping Deals

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Deal hunting while holiday shopping? There’s an app for that
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‘Tis the season for shopping, officially beginning with Black Friday in the U.S. – something retailers are trying to push in the Great White North –and continuing on to the all-important gift-giving holiday season.

Whether you’re shopping for family, friends or colleagues (or hey, even yourself), your smartphone can be an invaluable companion as you wander the aisles at your favourite retailer or shop online (or a bit of both).

In fact, a number of free applications (“apps”) — for iPhone, Android, BlackBerry or Windows Phone 7 — can help you save cash by telling you if what you’re about to buy is a good deal or not.

Barcode that bargain

With apps like Red Laser (for iPhone and Android), ShopSavvy (for iPhone, Android and Windows Phone 7) and UPC Price Check (for BlackBerry), for example, all use your smartphone’s camera to take pictures of product barcodes and within a second or two you’ll see which retailer has the best price online or at retail around you, via the smartphone’s GPS technology.

Scan a barcode of, say, a $20 DVD in your hand, and you might see it’s only $13 down the street at another store – and you’ll also get turn-by-turn directions there, if you like. Or you’ll see that same movie as low as $10 on the Internet, with links to buy it on the spot.

Some work better in Canada than others – especially when it attempts to find good deals around you – but more Canadian retailers are supported now than in previous years, I’ve found.

Picture this

Some apps can also take a picture of the product packaging itself to give you competitive prices, reviews, related YouTube videos, Wikipedia pages, and other information.

That is, along with barcode scanning, apps like SnapTell (for iPhone and Android) turn on your smartphone’s camera and encourages you to take pictures of DVDs, Blu-ray discs, video games, books and music CDs – to get the information you seek on the spot.

This won’t work with a sweater or television, of course, but ideal when shopping for entertainment media. If you’d like to see it in action, I demo the SnapTell app on the Marilyn Denis show.

Location, location, location

Other money-saving apps work a little differently by looking around your area for deals and alerting you to them, based on your location and/or preferences.

One is called ShopCatch (for iPhone), developed by Torstar Digital, a division of  The Toronto Star,  the same parent as Moneyville.ca. It taps into your smartphone’s GPS to establish your whereabouts once you open the app. Then, ShopCatch shows you deals within a few kilometres – and a map on how to get there, if needed. (Note: ShopCatch is from TorStar Digital, a division of TorStar, the same parent company as Moneyville.ca).

Now supported by many cities across Canada, ShopCatch also includes exclusive mobile coupons that can be redeemed quickly at the point of sale. You can also sign up for notifications when the retailers you like have sales on.

Push it good

But what if you want deals pushed to you?

Imagine you’re walking down the street and you feel your smartphone vibrate or chime while it’s in your pocket or purse. You pull it out, glance at the screen and see there’s a special on sweaters at Old Navy across the street. Apps like Push A Deal (for iPhone, Android and BlackBerry) and Shop To It (for iPhone) can let you know about hot deals based on your geographical location.

With these apps, you can also select the kinds of deals you’re interested in – such as fitness apparel, restaurants or consumer electronics – so you’re not constantly blasted with deals on products you don’t care about.

Similarly, ShopWise Canada (for iPhone) by Yellow Pages Group says they offer the largest deals database in the country, plus the app can also alert users about deals in the area — even if the app isn’t open on the smartphone.

You can search for nearby deals by product (e.g. “baby monitor”), by entering a specific brand name (“Sony Cyber-shot camera”), or browse by popularity or date of expiration.

via Apps help hunt for holiday shopping deals – moneyville.ca Blogs by Marc Saltzman.

Building a Mobile App Is Not a Mobile Strategy – Jason Gurwin – Harvard Business Review

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Everyone wants their own mobile application. In the last year, I have heard this consistently. In fact, mobile analytics firm Distimo claims 91 of the top 100 brands have their own mobile app (up from 51 just 18 months ago).

On the surface this sounds great, right? I can use my big brand name to get people to install my application, and then I can market to them via the palm of their hand whenever I want. If you’re a big brand, I have no doubt you will get a ton of downloads. But downloads are a vanity metric; they don’t measure success.

Most brands treat their mobile applications as an advertisement. No one wants to download an ad. I’ve seen it with grocery stores through my experience building a mobile grocery coupon company, Pushpins. They often underinvest in mobile and choose a form-fitted application — a cookie cutter white label that gets the job done but isn’t a great solution for their consumers — to quickly get their brand in the hands of shoppers. Then they think it’s enough.

Building a mobile strategy is more than just having your own application. It means working with third-party mobile apps, mobile ad networks, and using offline marketing to drive further use in mobile.

Here are four things to remember as you consider a mobile strategy — and some reasons why you should expand your mobile strategy past just your mobile app.

    1. You don’t launch a television station so you can market your brand on television. Imagine you’re Dr. Pepper. You want to make sure that everyone knows about your new Dr. Pepper 10 soda. Do you launch Dr. Pepper TV? No! You find television networks and more specifically programs that can reach your relevant consumers. Why? Because even if you did launch your own TV network, it doesn’t mean people are going to watch it. Don’t build an app just to get downloads; build something people will actually use.

    1. Building a mediocre app is just as bad as selling a mediocre product. The power of mobile is that you can interact with a consumer at any moment. However, would you want someone buying your new cereal if it tasted bad? No! They would never buy it again. So why would you want them to download a mediocre mobile app? If you are a billion dollar company, you shouldn’t only be investing $50,000 in mobile. It’s like airing a bad TV commercial; it will not end in the desired result.

    1. It’s ok to give up a little bit of control. Control is tempting. I get it. Creating your own app lets you control the message, and you don’t have to worry about a third-party partner creating a bad experience for your customers. And yes, there are big brands that have made some amazing mobile applications. But just because you are big and have a brand name doesn’t mean that youneed to control the customer experience. For instance, P&G sponsored third-party bathroom finder app called “Sit or Squat” to reach Charmin users. Can a toilet paper brand find anything more targeted than this? There are successful third-party mobile apps that can reach your users better than you can. Embrace them.

  1. Building your own app is not the only way to reach your consumers. Some people are going to use your app, and others are going to want to use third-party ones. It’s like having a website. Just because you have your own destination doesn’t mean you shouldn’t use other channels to build relationships with your customers. United allows Expedia to sell tickets, even though you can book on United.com.

My advice is this: It’s ok to have your own app, but your entire mobile marketing strategy should not stop at building one. But if you are going to invest in your own app, make it something that you would want to use. No one wants to download an ad.

Take a deep breath and look at the broader picture. It’s ok to give up some control. Third-party apps are going to engage your consumers whether or not you are involved. Why not be a part of it?

via Building a Mobile App Is Not a Mobile Strategy – Jason Gurwin – Harvard Business Review by by Jason Gurwin.

Personal Thanksgiving Dinner Coach for your iPhone

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Summary: A free iPhone app that walks you through making Thanksgiving dinner is something to be thankful for.

Everybody looks forward to Thanksgiving, but some of us have noticed that our grandmothers seemed to have a special, secret Thanksgivng-dinner-making knowledge that didn’t quite get passed down to us.

If this applies to you, and you’ve been yearning to try your hand at making a complete but basic Thanksgiving dinner, you won’t need to go over the river and through the woods — you simply need to turn to a higher power. By that, I mean your iPhone.

As it turns out, other sites on the CBS Interactive network have editors just as brilliant as the ones we have here, and the CHOW team put together a wonderful iPhone app that is sure to make your Thanksgiving successful.

It’s like having your own personal Thanksgiving coach standing by to cheer you on and help you out.

The CHOW Thanksgiving Dinner Coach app has a friendly, accessible feel. It takes you by the hand and leads you through the Thanksgiving process. First, you you choose from eight dishes (plus the turkey, of course) to grace your feast table.

The app then gives you a shopping list based on those choices. The list even includes the cooking equipment you’ll need to pull off a great meal. You can go over the list ahead of time and check off the stuff you already have, so you don’t need to overbuy.

After that, the app tells you what to do each day leading up to Thanksgiving. For example, if you bought a frozen turkey, you’ll want to put it in the fridge to defrost on Monday. You can precook some foods on Wednesday, leaving the turkey to take up the oven on Thanksgiving Day.

I really like this app. Although it isn’t uber-gourmet, and there seems to be some dispute among reviewers over the very best way to make gravy, it does teach basic, simple ways to make the popular Thanksgiving foods, pretty much from scratch, with real ingredients. That seems pretty healthy to me! It beats the instant mashed potatoes, for sure.

Also, anything that provides encouragement while cooking, helps with specific step-by-step instructions along the way, and lets us de-stress about something that’s supposed to be fun but is often dreaded and scary has got to contribute to a healthier experience.

But wait, there’s more! There is also a contest. If you visit the Secret Smartphone Sweepstakes Page and Like the app on Facebook, you’ll be entered for a chance to win a brand new smartphone.

Oh, and did I mention that the CHOW Thanksgiving Dinner Coach app is free? Now that’s something to be thankful for.

via Personal Thanksgiving Dinner Coach for your iPhone | ZDNet by Denise Amrich, RN.

Stanford’s latest iPhone and iPad apps course now free on iTunes U

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Stanford’s popular iPhone and iPad app development course for Apple’s iOS 5 is now available to the world through iTunes U.

Students may covet seats in Stanford’s popular iPhone and iPad application development course, but you don’t need to be in the classroom to take the course.

Anyone with app dreams can follow along online.

Stanford has just released the iOS 5 incarnation of iPhone Application Development on iTunes U, where the public can download course lectures and slides for free. Some of the most talked-about features of Apple’s latest operating system include iCloud, streamlined notifications and wireless syncing.

When Stanford’s first iPhone apps course appeared online in 2009, it made iTunes history by rocketing to a million downloads in just seven weeks.

Alberto Martín is an engineer and independent iOS developer in Salamanca, Spain. He has been a diligent student of the online app development class since it first appeared.

He has created applications, now for sale in Apple’s App Store, that organize your photos and make navigating while driving less distracting. Or, for fitness fans, an app that counts your pushups.

His apps provide him with extra income. “I hope some day I can live off this, because I love doing it,” he said.

“Although it’s not impossible, I think it’s hard to make a lot of money in the App Store,” Martín said. “But I think it’s a beautiful process because it gives you the opportunity to develop your own ideas, sell them and fight for them.”

Martín has been eagerly awaiting the release of the new course and says that he will follow the classes for as long as they keep coming.

“You learn a lot by watching the lectures on iTunes U,” he said. “If you want to have success you need to keep on learning new things.”

L.A. CiceroStudents check the results of their coding on their iPhones in the Developing Apps for iOS taught by Paul Hegarty

Students check the results of their coding on their iPhones in the Developing Apps for iOS taught by Paul Hegarty

Online learners hear the same lectures as classroom students, but do not get Stanford credit or access to instructors.

Instructor Paul Hegarty attributes the course popularity to the appeal of Apple products and the instant gratification of creating apps for mobile devices. “There’s something about developing for the iOS platform that’s really exciting and fun because it runs on devices that everybody has in their purses or pockets, ” he said.

“There aren’t a lot of courses you can take that when you get to the end, to your final project, you can take it out of your pocket and show your friends.”

Hegarty said that his students develop a wide array of applications for the iPhone and iPad, including many that improve or automate their daily lives. Those include apps that manage laboratory experiments, keep track of food choices at campus eateries, or access the works of Shakespeare. Games and social networking applications are also popular.

John Cast, an electrical engineering student who is taking the class in a Stanford classroom, said that he learned about the course by watching earlier versions on iTunes U. Cast is working on applications that archive historical memorabilia and improve FM radio tuning.

“One of the coolest things about teaching this class is just seeing the creativity that gets applied,” Hegarty said. “It’s really quite amazing.”

Developers unfamiliar with Apple’s operating systems must learn a new programming language, Objective-C, if they hope to master the apps course. Stanford students take a year of computer science classes and learn the technique of object-oriented programming before tackling the iOS development class.

Two Stanford prerequisite courses, Programming Methodology and Programming Abstractions, are available on iTunes U.

Nikil Viswanathan, a computer science student, said that the class is “really, really, good” in large part because Hegarty doesn’t just teach students a new language, he teaches the “philosophy of how we program in Objective-C” and “puts it into the context of entire computer science program.”

Most introductory computer science classes are abstract, but Objective-C is used to build applications for mobile devices, so students learn the programming basics and apply them right away. “I don’t think that what I’m doing is just teaching them programming,” Hegarty said. “It’s an opportunity to teach them some computing fundamentals in a real world environment.”

Hegarty said he enjoys that so many people benefit from the work he puts into preparing the course. “You really feel like as an instructor that the work gets leveraged,” he said. “It’s really rewarding.”

via Stanford’s latest iPhone and iPad apps course now free on iTunes U BY Sarah Jane Keller – a science-writing intern at the Stanford News Service.

Test suggests iPhone battery issue not a hardware problem

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Summary: Software or configurational issue to blame, not hardware.

According to research carried out for my by an iPhone app developer, the battery issue that some iPhone 4 and 4S owners are experiencing is not, as some have suggested, related to the hardware.

The developer, who at this point wishes to remain anonymous, approached me late last week to discuss the issues he was experiencing with one of his two iPhone 4S handset. The problem he was seeing was pretty much along the lines of what others are reporting – rapid drop in battery when the handset is doing little or nothing.

Nothing new there, but what I thought was interesting was that he had two handset, one that was displaying the battery problem that some people are screaming about, and another that wasn’t. He admitted that the two handsets were very different in their configuration and had different apps installed. One was a test bed for apps he develops, the other was his day-to-day use handset. It was his day-to-day handset that was displaying the battery problems.

Both handsets were bought at the same time (direct from Apple for delivery on launch day), both are connected to the same network (AT&T) and both handsets are now running iOS 5.0.1. This to me was strong evidence to suggest that the problem affecting iPhone handsets was not a hardware issue. However, so that we could totally rule out this being a hardware problem the developer took things a step further. He factory reset both handsets and then recovered then from a backup. However, rather than reloading them with their original backup, he swapped them over. He reloading his day-to-day handset with the backup from his development handset, and loaded the development handset with the backup from his regular day-to-day handset.

Would the battery problem stay with a specific handset or swap over with the software?

The problem jumped handsets. Now the handset that was his development test bed (but loaded with the apps and settings from his day-to-day handset) is displaying the battery drain problem. The other handset (the one that was displaying the problem), is showing excellent battery life.

Note: This is a sample of one so bear that in mind. Ideally I’d like to try this with multiple handsets, but I don’t have access to armloads of iPhones.

The problem, it seems, is down to software. What exactly (whether it’s an app or set of apps, or a setting somewhere), we’re still not sure. However, I am now convinced that this problem ISN’T a hardware issue and will eventually be fixed by a software update.

via Test suggests iPhone battery issue not a hardware problem | ZDNet By Adrian Kingsley-Hughes.

Read This Before Planning Your Next App Startup!

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There are a bunch of iPhone apps I own though I have no clue what they do. These apps include but aren’t limited to; FLUD, Apptitude, Cartoonatic, Can’t Wait!, Punch, Pah, Prize Claw, Traveler, Concur, Jajah, Fast Customer, Pimple Popper and many more whose names I can’t even remember.

Occupying my valuable homescreen real estate are also a bunch of apps whose purpose I remember only because they were built by people I know or am friends with, but that I sadly never use. And in some cases I really wish I did, because it would make my friends happy and the world a better place.

The few apps that I actually open daily (Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Foursquare, Spotify, Reminders, Safari, Messenger, and Yammer sadly enough) are securely fastened to my homescreen. For those relegated to the “app ghetto” I usually either substitute Google or SMS because I’ve forgotten that I’ve downloaded them and am too lazy to swipe past my first screen.

Dispersed throughout my app ghetto, or the neighborhood ten or so swipe screens past the iPhone homescreen, are things I’ve downloaded for work, apps that people joke about not using (Color, Path), new apps that people are still trying to figure out (Batch, Oink) and perfectly legitimate apps that lend themselves to more casual usage (Uber, Quora, Yelp). And all the apps that fit into one or more of those categories. Oh, and I just bought Camera+ (not to be confused with Camera Plus) — it’s  not homescreen worthy just yet though it might just be the best 99 cents I’ve ever spent.

If I ever want to use an app ghetto app I just use iPhone search (a swipe right) because there are just too many! There should be some sort of app that makes your app ghetto apps disappear if you haven’t used them in a while.

Sure we’ve written before about app fatigue, but it seemingly hasn’t discouraged app makers from continuing to churn out countless useless apps or SocialMobileLocal offerings that would be better suited as sub-features of Foursquare. And it doesn’t look like they’re going to stop anytime soon; Android growth is insane, iOS influence is crazy. Coupled with minimal development costs, you get the fact that the Bump app has 50 million downloads. Yes, Bump, that thing that lets you “bump” contact info over your phone and nobody I know uses.

If Bump’s existence proves anything, it’s that many SoMoLo apps are basically competing with SMS. Why go through another tiresome two-second increment of human communication and exchange your contact info WHEN YOU CAN “BUMP”? YES THERE IS INDEED AN APP FOR THAT.

I realize that asking y’all to stop making apps is a quixotic endeavor (so go ahead and have at me in the comments); 74% percent of you think that the world needs more mobile apps even though we’ve already got over 500K of them with 18 billion plus downloads– on iOS alone.

The app economy is/will be huge and is inexorable, and I don’t want to deprive anyone of the jobs it will eventually create, even though a lot them will be building things that will eventually fail. Oh well. The truth is that if you imagine the homescreen of your phone ten years from now, your favorite apps will be ones that don’t even exist yet. And that’s pretty amazing.

So if you can’t beat them join them. But if you join them I’m going to ask you to consider one thing; rethink the notion of an app versus a service; Stop making apps, or gimmicks, things that don’t solve problems. Don’t build something silly and ill-thought out just because you have a celebrity co-founder and/or lots of investor money that will help you scale initially no matter what.

The truth is that the hardest part is hanging onto that first spike of users, and there is no number of TechCrunch posts about your every-single-decimal point update that will get you there, you actually need to solve a problem – even if that problem is “How the hell do I entertain myself for the next fifteen minutes?”

Focus on building a service not just an app; a service may have an app component — like Spotify, for example — but that app component must only exist to make life easier for the user of your service, exist to add value not just to be cool.

Listen to PG; start with a problem, then let your mind wander just far enough for new ideas to form. It’s pretty simple, solve a problem and focus on solving that problem across as many platforms as you can, even if one of those platforms is an app store.

This whole “solving a problem thing” is why people are liking Batch, even if they’re skeptical at first, because it solves the real problem of, “What do I do with all these random photos on my phone?” Maybe that’s not enough to be a long-term business? Well, at least it’s a start.

via Stop Making Apps | TechCrunch.

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