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Posts Tagged ‘App’

Publish.Ovi.com – get your app on it

Monday, February 16th, 2009

Nokia’s iTunes app store equivalent is called the ‘Ovi Store’.

publish.ovi.com is the address you need. You can register today.

70 percent revenue share to the developer and you can monetise across a whole host of countries. The first handset with Ovi Store pre-installed? The N97. But most of your recent Nokia handsets will be able to download it. That’s the slight arse – getting folk to download it. But from what we’ve seen here at the Ovi press conference, it looks like Nokia have got their stuff together.

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Posted in Mobile | Comments

Zit Picker – Possibly the Most Disgusting App for the iPhone

Thursday, January 15th, 2009

If you thought that the countless fart apps available in the App Store were disgusting, I’d advice you to stay away from Zit Picker. This app not only plays with with the audio, but the app’s visuals will make you cringe in your seats. This one’s so crazy, my 6-year-old niece ran off the moment she saw me playing the game.

What’s Zit Picker you ask? 

It’s exactly what it sounds like it is. You know what are Zits, don’t you? Zit Picket makes you pinch, pop, touch and pick the Zits off a beautiful girl’s face on the iPhone. The goal of the game is simple. Keep the girl’s face clean off any marks and she’ll be thankful to you. If not, all the stress and pain will make her cry.

The game makes use of the iPhone’s multi-touch screen, allowing your to zap the Zits with either one of two fingers, touching or pinching them. Do that and *ploop* goes one. You are awarded points for every single Zit you clear. There are 3 different types of Zits and based on their complexity, they carry different points.

Zit Picker is FREE for the first 2500 downloads, so get it in the App Store while you can.

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Posted in iPhone Apps | Comments

MySpace Blackberry App downloaded 400,000 times in 7 days

Friday, November 21st, 2008

You read that right.

400,000 downloads of the official RIM application for MySpace.

15 million messages have been sent using the app in the 7 days since it’s been live. 2 million mood and status updates already.

You know, somewhere in RIM, there’s a chap or lady who was nominally in charge of applications and encouraging third party developers.

Let’s assume it’s a man because I can call him a chap.

This chap has been going about his business signing up the odd company, now and again, to the RIM partner programme. I’ve been along to various RIM events and whilst it’s good news to see lots of apparent innovation on the platform, the reality is that whilst you fill the room with maybe 40 ‘partners’ in the UK, that’s actually shit. Really shit.

To become a RIM partner — to actually develop for RIM — total flocking arse. An unmitigated arse.

Nobody bothers, generally. Because RIM hardly encouraged it. Yes, they did the odd token head-nod to your bedroom developer. IF you can be arsed, IF you can find the documentation, IF IF IF, then yeah, you too can create a RIM application. Please send the required proof of degrees. You need a degree in brain surgery to knock up an application for RIM.

That’s how it’s been.

The developer support chap has been either highly underfunded or more or less ignored by the wider company.

They’ve been absolutely shit with the developer community.

Until Steve Jobs knocked up a half billion industry overnight in the form of the Apple iTunes App Store.

And you could see the folks at RIM positively choking with shock.

I can imagine the ‘you what?’ and the ‘Er? Seriously?’ comments around the various RIM board tables.

Whatever RIM were doing previously, it was rubbish. So the announcements of a Blackberry App Store began to trickle out.

Well duh.

With a massive, massive installed base of users who can do nothing but email or play that really STUPID pinball game by default — and with some reasonable capable devices out in the marketplace, many with GPS on-board — there’s a bit of pent-up-demand.

Here’s your next dagger-in-the-wall for RIM.

400,000 of their consumers have downloaded the MySpace app in 7 days. That is 57,000 per day. Or 2,380 downloads per hour. Super news. Absolutely super news.

But a fooking wake-up call for RIM.

Get off your arse and get a decent developer programme out the door — one that your average iPhone developer can grab with gusto and get developing. Get the marketplace store up and running pronto. The Facebook app wasn’t just an abberation. All of a sudden — with this MySpace news — there’s proof that the Blackberry user does actually want to do more than ping emails about the place.

Download the Blackberry MySpace app at the Blackberry MySpace Hub.

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Posted in Applications | Comments

Ed Lea’s TV Plus storms the iTunes App Store Chart

Tuesday, October 28th, 2008

London mobile developer Ed Lea is, I suspect, smiling brightly.

Why?

Well, his second iPhone application, TV Plus, has stormed up the iTunes UK App Store charts and dominates the number one slot.

And we love it.

Big congratulations are due to Ed!

If you recall, we first covered Ed Lea’s services when he emailed to let us know about his ‘Over-Here’ mapping application for the iPhone.

Well, Ed’s been busy with TV Plus.

TV Plus is a gift from the Gods if you’re a TV fan based in the UK. We have a satellite provider by the name of Sky (owned by Fox) who provide a home recording box as part of their premium package called Sky+ (“Sky Plus”) With Sky+ you can ‘Tivo’ television programmes — record a series, or just a one off event or show.

Of course this brilliant functionality is rather useless when you’re sat on the train and some bright spark mentions the name of that programme (“I’m OK, I’m recording Spooks” for example). You slap your forehead in annoyance and know that although the show starts in 20 minutes, you won’t be home for at least 50 minutes. Spend the next 50 minutes getting really annoyed.

OR download TV Plus for £2.99. It’ll interface with your Sky+ box and allow you to control it from your iPhone, anywhere.

Now, the concept isn’t new. Back in 2006, I downloaded a Symbian application from Sky themselves that did this. But it wasn’t nearly as sexy nor as easy as TV Plus.

With this app, you simply browse the television schedule on your device (that, in itself, is really useful) then when you find a programme you’d like to record, bish-bash-bosh, simply click record:

And you’re done.

If you’re new to remote recording, you need to setup your account for the facility — it takes no more than 15 minutes and you simply follow the instructions on Sky’s site here.

This is the type of application that will keep folk locked to their iPhones. 212 folk have, to date, written reviews, the vast majority of them topping out at five stars:

Super work Ed. TV Plus is a winner!

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Posted in Applications | Comments

iPhone App Review – Zippo and iPint

Tuesday, October 7th, 2008

Michael Selvidge is back giving us some more iPhone App reviews, two that are great, and one…not so much.

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So everyone, including Barack Obama, knows that the slickest way to market your product (or candidate) is with a native app for the slickest phone ever, the iPhone.

As traditional forms of advertising like TV, radio, and newspaper slowly die-off, perhaps innovative measures like this are the next solution.

But you have to do it right. Two apps that get it right are Zippo Lighter and Carling’s iPint.

Zippo Lighter, “Lit by Moderati” as it says on the launching screen, is no joke. You get to pick from a selection of colors/patterns for your lighter, the flame moves as you move your phone, and the flame even turns blue and makes the phone vibrate when you hold it upside down. Flicking the lid open gives you a satisfying “click,” and spinning the wheel of the lighter produces a nice flinty “thwick”. It’s actually a genuinely cool app, and even though it’s simple, it’s an app that I haven’t just used once, it’s something that I play with a lot. It came in handy for last week’s Neil Diamond concert (seriously).

Carling’s iPint was actually available at the launch of the App Store, and kudos to them for being on the leading edge. The actual “game” within iPint is only mildly amusing, but pouring and drinking a beer is awesome, and like the Zippo app, it draws “Ooohs” and “Awwws” from all the iPhone uninitiated I show it to. There are several paid beer app called iBeer, but why do we even care to pay when we have iPint for free? Actually, people might pay, because for some reason that I don’t know, iPint is no longer in the App Store. Maybe Apple was thinking of making a competitive beer app and had it pulled?

Living in the US, I had never even heard of Carling. But I Googled them and found out that they are a top UK beer. Even if I may not become a loyal Carling customer, they reached someone in another market and got them interested enough to Google their product. If you’re trying to build awareness for your product, reaching people for the first time who don’t know you is always the hardest.

Lastly, let’s talk about a company who got it all wrong: Audi. I could go on about the Audi A4 Driving Challenge and everything that’s wrong with it, but it’s so awful that I don’t even want to dissect it. Let’s just say that the controls are so wonky that it’s more painful than fun. Between this game and reading the recent tweets from Carlo Longino of MobHappy, my opinion of the Audi brand is at an all time low. Re-badged Volkswagens they are!

So nice work, Zippo and Carlings, two brands with which I now associate the warm fuzzy feelings that come from a slick iPhone app!

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Posted in iPhone Apps | Comments

How to build an SMS notification app in 20 minutes

Thursday, September 18th, 2008

I came across this absolutely fantastic overview from Webmonkey that shows you how to create an SMS notification application in no time. I reckon it would take me about 20 minutes, using their code samples, to knock it together.

If you’ve got a working knowledge of PHP, I challenge you to take 20 minutes and knock this together. You don’t need to be a programming demigod. If you setup your own Wordpress account on some webspace, you can probably do this, no hassle.

The How-To uses mobile services company, TextMarks — one of my favourite American services. They take care of all the texting stuff.

All you need to do is a bit of code hacking. (i.e. cut, paste, publish, test).

I think this is brilliant, brilliant stuff. You too can create a Twitter clone, basically. The How-To (it’s actually a wiki page, so it’s editable if you’d like to improve it) takes you through creating a service that lets you query the sunrise and sunset times based on you texting a keyword and providing a city, state or zip.

This is exactly what UK companies Esendex and AQL should be doing. Wiki-how-tos that really let folk innovate without forcing too much thinking.

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Posted in Mobile, SMS | Comments

The Over Here iPhone App – by Ed Lea in London

Thursday, August 7th, 2008

I had a note in the other day from Ed Lea. Ed has knocked up a new iPhone Application, now available in the iTunes store. He wondered if we’d be interested in reviewing it. Of course! In fact, here’s what he wrote:

I’ve been reading the various commentaries you guys have been writing about iPhone experiences and I was just wondering if you were thinking of doing any form of reviews of applications?

As a London-based developer I’m basically being very cheeky and asking for a plug for my app, “Over Here”. I appreciate it falls a bit outside the sort of stuff you normally write about but “if you don’t ask…”, etc

It’s not cheeky, Ed. We’re well up for plugging. To any other developers out there: Do send us details and we’ll do our very best to get a piece up about on the site.

I wrote back to Ed and told him ‘bring it on’ or words to that effect. He sent me back this description:

It’s a pretty basic app, but one that I’ve personally wanted for a while. It uses iPhone’s location services (so works on the original or 3G phones) to locate you, shows you the position on a simple map, allows you to fine tune the position and then email it someone as a Google Maps link. That link opens on an iPhone straight into the Google Maps application so the receiver can see where you are and hopefully come and meet you.

The version on the App Store at the moment is 0.99. I’ve got a more polished version, that allows you to change the default email text from my slightly cheesy one, pending approval from Apple. Hopefully that will get reviewed and released by them soon, but unfortunately there’s no telling how long it might take.

You can download Over Here at this address. (It’ll pop up iTunes on your machine, or, if you’re on the iPhone, it’ll pop you straight into the iTunes App page for Over Here).

It is £0.59.

Here’s how it works.

1. Run the application and tap the pin.

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2. Give the application permission to access your location.

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3. Let the map briefly load.

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4. The map loads and magically shows where you are. Joy. I’m in Essix.

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5. Then simply click the pin to email your location.

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6. This fires up an email with some default text — including the Google Maps link to your location.

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Genius.

I can think of so many uses for this. If your friend is trying to find you. If you want to show someone where the BBQ is. If you want to tell your mates to meet you at this Starbucks or what not. Brilliant.

Good work Ed!

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Posted in Apple, Applications, Feature, iPhone | Comments

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