Linked List: October 15, 2009

Thursday, 15 October 2009

Marco Arment on the New In-App Purchasing Policy ★

Good overview of what the changes mean for developers.

Strongest case I’ve seen yet for what Google Wave might be good for. One quibble with Tenner’s argument, though. He writes:

Wave is built for the corporate environment. It’s a tool for getting work done.

I think you can replace “corporate” with “team”.

Apple Now Allowing In-App Purchases for Free iPhone Apps (Link Requires iPhone Developer Account) ★

Just got a mass email from Apple to iPhone developers, which states:

In App Purchase is being rapidly adopted by developers in their paid apps. Now you can use In App Purchase in your free apps to sell content, subscriptions, and digital services.

You can also simplify your development by creating a single version of your app that uses In App Purchase to unlock additional functionality, eliminating the need to create Lite versions of your app. Using In App Purchase in your app can also help combat some of the problems of software piracy by allowing you to verify In App Purchases.

This is a major policy change. Prior to today, free apps were not allowed to use in-app purchasing. As of 10 minutes ago, developers can now make “lite” apps that are free which let you pay to upgrade to a full version from within the app itself.

The App Store has been hard to predict so far, but I’ll go out on a limb and say that this is going to be a very big deal. I think soon, many (most?) apps will be free in “lite” form, with an in-app upgrade option to a full version.

Jonathan Stark’s ‘Building iPhone Apps With HTML, CSS, and JavaScript’ ★

It seems mostly under-publicized and under-utilized, but Apple fully supports a way to publish iPhone apps that doesn’t involve the App Store at all: optimized-for-the-iPhone web apps. You can get an icon on the home screen, operate off-line, store data locally, and more. For anyone who wants to use JavaScript and other web technologies to develop for the iPhone, this is in many ways a better route than the upcoming Flash CS5 compiler.

Jonathan Stark is writing a book for O’Reilly on iPhone web apps, and the contents (currently in “beta”) are available for free on the web.

Update: Fireballed. Here’s Google’s cached version.

Collaboration Is Not Communication ★

Nice insight on Wave’s live-typing feature from SubEthaEdit co-developer Martin Pittenauer:

Google Wave is — in its current form — “next generation wiki”, not “next generation email”. That’s way unsexy as a marketing slogan, but would emphasize collaboration instead of communication.

Nokia Posts Third-Quarter Loss of €559 Million ★

Bloomberg:

Nokia Oyj, the world’s biggest maker of mobile phones, had its first net loss since the company began reporting quarterly in 1996, hurt by costs related to a joint venture with Siemens AG and weaker demand.

The net loss totaled 559 million euros ($834 million), after a profit of 1.09 billion euros a year earlier. Sales declined 20 percent to 9.8 billion euros, missing the average estimate of 10.03 billion euros in a Bloomberg analyst survey. Analysts had anticipated a profit of 367 million euros.

Uh-oh.

Exploded iPhone Settings Icon Shirt ★

Fantastic t-shirt design by Sebastiaan de With, now available for just $20.

Amazon Introduces Same-Day Delivery ★

Brad Stone:

On Thursday morning, Amazon.com took another step in its effort to bring instant gratification to its customers, introducing a new “Local Express Delivery Option.” If an eligible item is ordered between 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. (depending on the city) Amazon will have it delivered on the same day. To start out, the e- commerce giant is rolling out the service in seven cities — New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Washington, Baltimore, Las Vegas and Seattle. (With Chicago, Indianapolis and Phoenix to come soon).

Costs just $6 if you’re a Prime member.

Sublime Text ★

A new Windows text editor with clever original features and a graceful UI. Never thought I’d write those words. I’m particularly intrigued by the “minimap” — a zoomed-out view of the entire file. (Via Alex Payne.)

Chris Ziegler’s Motorola Cliq Review ★

On the other hand, reviewing the Cliq for Engadget, Chris Ziegler doesn’t like the on-screen keyboard:

The screen can only be characterized as the strangest capacitive screen we’ve ever used, because it feels… well, resistive. We found it usable but perhaps the balkiest of any Android phone to date, giving the user plenty of motivation to slide open the keyboard rather than trying to deal with the virtual one. Although it’s nothing more than a reskinned version of the default Cupcake keyboard, it was basically impossible to use without injecting enough mistakes to make it more trouble than it was worth — a problem we haven’t had (at least not to this extent) on the myTouch.

Mossberg Reviews the BlackBerry Storm 2 and Android-Based Motorola Cliq ★

Two notes. One, I’d imagine neither BlackBerry nor Motorola is feeling good about the fact that their phones had to share a single review with each other, a clear indication that Mossberg considers both to be also-rans. Two is this bit on typing on the Cliq:

My biggest gripe was with the physical keyboard, which I found cramped and hard to use. The top row is too close to the bottom of the screen and, on the bottom row, I kept hitting the symbols key when I was aiming for “M” or “N.” So I found myself constantly resorting to the virtual on-screen keyboard, which worked pretty well.

So for all the wailing and gnashing of teeth over the iPhone’s on-screen keyboard, here we are two years later and Walt Mossberg is pretty much saying that the Cliq’s hardware keyboard is a waste of space.

Microsoft Confirms Data Recovery for Sidekick Users ★

Roz Ho, vice president for Microsoft’s division in charge of the Sidekick:

We are pleased to report that we have recovered most, if not all, customer data for those Sidekick customers whose data was affected by the recent outage. We plan to begin restoring users’ personal data as soon as possible, starting with personal contacts, after we have validated the data and our restoration plan. We will then continue to work around the clock to restore data to all affected users, including calendar, notes, tasks, photographs and high scores, as quickly as possible.

Great news. Perhaps their statements last week, that the data was “almost certainly” lost for good, were along the lines of under-promising and over-delivering.

We have determined that the outage was caused by a system failure that created data loss in the core database and the back-up.

Well, that certainly explains it.