tequila bomb

We hadn’t given much thought to who would play Dolphin Hero; we just made it. This was a big mistake. Dolphin Hero earned just $300 in its first 6 months on the App Store, but we persevered.

Spoiler : Things works out for them in the end.

Moral : It’s all about planning, hard work and marketing. Oh and a million other jobs that probably never occurred to you.

Lots of cold hard facts, and painfully open figures in there too.

Tens of thousands of people in Chinese cities, who have procured iPhone 4 since it was launched on Saturday, will learn from the map function that the area that Indians know as Arunachal Pradesh is entirely Chinese territory.

…Geens, who blogs (at ogleearth.com) about how “neo-geographical tools” like Google Earth influence geopolitics, points out that India too plays similar cartographic games.

“On iPhones sold in India, the base map shows Jammu & Kashmir as wholly India, without acknowledging the Line of Control.” Or the fact that Aksai Chin is disputed territory under Chinese control.

Fun and games. One wonders what the point is, and why the people in government in these countries feel the need to delude themselves and their people in such a public and embarressing way. Our new wired world is just too small for this kind of censorship.

Google very obviously just wants to do business with everyone. But it is interesting that on the iPhone 4 China’s link to map data is hardwired, so that a Chinese iPhone 4 operating outside China will still show their unique world view.

There is a lot in there for $99.

An Apple A4, 8GB of Flash and 256MB of RAM. And space for more Flash in future on the PCB…

Sure the Flash is for stashing data that has been streamed to the device. But I also think it is for apps in the future.

Wired’s iPad App is 500 MB, and The New Yorker is some 173 MB!

Both the New Yorker and Wired have the same weight problem for the same reason: They are built on the back of an Adobe (ADBE) program that essentially functions as an image reader.

That is, each page of the magazine is turned into the equivalent of several big photos.

This still doesn’t really explain why they are so enormous. If I was to ship software like this as a solution for a client I would expect to be sacked.

The New Yorker could fix that overnight by presenting the text using HTML code. That would use much less memory and allow the magazine to do things like resize the type. But for the moment, Adobe doesn’t have the ability to break up HTML text into individual pages.

No comment.

So people aren’t going to be pulling these things down over 3G anytime soon. Not with Apple’s 20MB limit for apps over mobile connections.

If I was behind this debacle I would be very embarrassed.

Not the geeky stuff we really want. But some clarity from Nintendo on the 3DS package consumers can buy, and what it is capable of.

The new system, which features a 3D display and does not require separate glasses, will retail in Japan for ¥25,000 ($298 / £188).

I think it’s a little expensive.

It was also confirmed that the Virtual Console store will sell Game Boy and Game Boy Advance titles for the system.

Shock!

First-party software for the machine include re-imagings and brand new titles in the Kid Icarus, Animal Crossing, Paper Mario, Star Fox, Mario Kart, PilotWings and Nintendogs franchises.

Apple has determined that certain ATI X1900 XT cards sold for use in Mac Pro and Mac Pro (8x) computers between approximately August 2006 and January 2008 may experience distorted video. Affected graphics cards have “V6Z” in the last 4 digits of the card’s serial number.

Would be nice if they would also acknowledge the problem with the ATI X1600 in Mac Book Pros from the same period.

Earlier this month Apple started sending out emails to developers telling them that they will delete inactive apps in iTunes Connect within 30 days unless a binary is uploaded. I emailed them at the time about a couple of apps I have in development that they wanted to purge from the App Store.

This initiative was hailed by some as a first step towards addressing something of a non-problem that many imagine exists in the App Store. The non-problem is “App Name Squatting”. As far as I can tell the only people who have been bitten by “App Name Squatting” are those that are stupid enough to spend a few months developing an idea, then complete their website and artwork design *before* trying to register their app name with iTunes Connect. Or that don’t understand that if someone thought of the name “Blobble” before they did, then it’s fair for them to have first dibs on it!

To be clear, there is absolutely no way in the App Store for someone to grab the name “McDonalds” and then sell it on, or hold the crud food manufacturer of that same name to ransom for some cash.

In my case I have one very important App Name which has been registered for about 18 months. It is for a long term project, which I have already invested considerable time, effort and IP in. I even own the URL of that name, and it is active and linked to from the App entry in question from iTunes Connect. Sure, I am behind schedule. But the project is ambitious, and has been re-factored twice since its inception. But the name, and much of the artwork remains the same. And I am committed to producing it. Surely Apple can relate to that, right?

Taking a laid back approach to this, and assuming that Apple would open a dialog with me on the specific app name, I dropped them a line explaining my position.

To date I have not had a reply, other than a quick note telling me that they “are looking into my request”. That was two weeks ago. I am sure you can understand I would quite simply like Apple to judge my request on its merits and then fill me in on their decision. Seems reasonable, no? Oh, and I’d like that decision before the app name actually gets deleted! With two weeks having passed now, that deadline is getting perilously close for me!

During this period I have also received another notice telling me of a second app name that will be deleted. This is one I registered less than two months ago for an active project. It’s a partner product to another app with a very similar name I am already selling in the App Store. I registered both names at the same time. It’s a kind of forward planning. You know, so that my two apps have a synergy in terms of their look, feel, and name. But this second app name will apparently also be deleted within 30 days if I don’t upload a binary.

Just to be clear, I have three apps in development, alongside a couple of apps on sale. The latter are all actively updated. I am not sitting on a hoard of app names and doing nothing! The app store review gnomes who receive binaries from me regularly (and then sit on them for a week or two) are presumably also the guys thinking of deleting my app names. Or at least in contact somehow. So they should be able to work out if I am an app name squatter or a real dev. fairly easily, I would have thought.

Much as I love Apple, for a company that is consistently late delivering its products, and prides itself on producing quality over quantity I would have thought that it is obvious to them that some projects take a little longer than 60 days to complete. Unless they are your own App Store Czar’s fart apps.

Of course, I could work around this problem by just uploading a simple binary for the two important app names I have pre-registered with Apple. But why should I have to do that? It seems an untidy and dishonest solution to the problem. And it takes up my time!

Aren’t we partners Apple? Even just a little bit!?!

And how hard is it really for Apple to check out a URL and see that these apps are genuinely in development. It is probably as easy to do that as it is to fire off a “we are looking into it” email, and then forget about you.

The bottom line is that it is perhaps appropriate for Apple to clean house from time to time. But it is not appropriate to use the threat of App Name deletion against registered developers who have one or two app names in their portfolio simply to protect IP they are working on, and then ignore them.

That is all.

If you’ve never written a game before, but have always wanted to, this is probably the best starting place.

As with most things these days, it’s free to try.

There are currently two application development approaches for the BlackBerry Tablet OS:

• Web Applications with HTML5 — Developers will be able to create compelling applications using HTML5, CSS and JavaScript®, which leverage the WebKit rendering engine.
• Web Applications with Flash — Leveraging Adobe’s tools, developers will be able to create visually rich applications using Flash 10.1.

Oh dear. Sounds like Palm all over again.

• Reliable, high-performance kernel engineered for multi-core hardware
• Multi-threaded POSIX OS (Portable Operating System for Unix) for true multitasking

What is going to be inside this thing (exactly)? And how long is the battery going to last?