The New New Email

Real-time email and search

Google Wave: Re-inventing e-mail.

People behind Google Maps are doing it. Application is open source.

He proposed this thing called “hosted conversations” (this is what we call waves now). He listed them in a big series of benefits over existing systems. The thing that caught me was with these hosted conversations, you could do both email type conversations and instant messaging type conversations, in the same tool.

A core part of the product is the “liveness.” And you can see what people are doing all the time. Waves become active and unread and pop-up in your search panel all the time, and you need to learn when that’s useful for people and when it’s not, and how to present information to them in a way that’s useful and so they know what’s important and what to deal with

South Korea Mobile

Charging your mobile phone bill

New York Times: All things mobile in South Korea.

Each month last year, four million South Koreans bought music, videos, ring tones, online game subscriptions and articles from newspaper archives and other online items and charged them to their mobile phone bills, without going through any bank or credit card. The amount totaled 1.7 trillion won, or $1.4 billion at current exchange rates, last year. South Koreans have done this since 2000.

Weekend video

Biz Stone's story about Twitter and micro status networks

Eric Ries : The lean startup

Nokia Ovi Maps

News from Where 2.0 conference

Nokia: Ovi Maps API

With the introduction of the Ovi Maps Player API developers can bring Ovi Maps to their websites, complete with cutting edge features such as 3D view, satellite and terrain views and customizable visuals. The Ovi Maps Player can also be mashed up with content from other services, such as the terrific content from the Associated Press.

Find and forget

Who wants to know or own my place under the sun ?

Where 2.0 conference presents leading trends about location aware tech.
Here are some interesting links spotted in my gReader about this topic:

* Yahoo Placemaker

* Google Maps API data

* Location data and privacy

* Day 1 and ignation

Non Disclosure AgreemenT - Parking Access

Publish at Scribd or explore others: Business & Law Law & Government Finance Law

4 shorts

Gizmodo: Comparison of all the smartphone app stores

Yahoo Mobile: Abandons BB app. Focus on iPhone

El Reg: Second-generation of BlackBerry Storm with pictures

Prototype: Good looking Android phones could change the game. Design please.

Guess game

Guess what ?

/**
* Table Definition for foreign_service
*/
require_once INSTALLDIR.'/classes/Memcached_DataObject.php';

class Foreign_service extends Memcached_DataObject
{
###START_AUTOCODE
/* the code below is auto generated do not remove the above tag */

public $__table = 'foreign_service'; // table name
public $id; // int(4) primary_key not_null
public $name; // varchar(32) unique_key not_null
public $description; // varchar(255)
public $created; // datetime() not_null
public $modified; // timestamp() not_null default_CURRENT_TIMESTAMP

/* Static get */
function staticGet($k,$v=null)
{ return Memcached_DataObject::staticGet('Foreign_service',$k,$v); }

/* the code above is auto generated do not remove the tag below */
###END_AUTOCODE
}

Does WolframAlpha knows more or just crunches numbers better ?

The first search engine calculator.
Could WolframAlpha be important as Google ? Overhyped ? Tuning to electronic brain ?



Champaign, Illinois, USA - Computational knowledge engine sounds bold and geeky. Are we talking about Web Service or desktop PC program ?
Are you willing to change your habit ?

But is it magic or too much mathematics ? We'll see. Wolfram Alpa sells the image of something important in the web age 2009 and anticipation of it is dosed in a clever manner ( blog, webcast, newsletter, email invitation, FB group, twitter, Youtube channel, screeencast ).

Google is boring, though. Many people are waiting for '' wow effect '' in web search.
Google is God.

First thing, domain name. WoframAlpha.com is too long. Alpha totally unnecessary.

Wolfram comes from founder's name. Capitalism tells us this is wise move since people tend to care much more about the products and company when they use their names directly.

Wolfram Alpha itself is limited liability company not corporation. Wolfram Research Inc. is a company that develops Mathematics software , a computation solution for many industries.

Wolfram search engine has academics background.
Stephen Wolfram is founder - british physicist and mathematician. He thinks knowledge should be extracted from the Web in an easy-to-use interface.
He claims The Wolfram|Alpha engine differs from traditional search engines in that it does not simply return a list of results based on a query, but instead computes an answer.

Doug Lenat was impressed.

According to public information, there are no investors in the company as of today.

New York Times described search engine .

While search engines like Google, by and large, find things that already exist on the Internet—Web sites, photos, videos, blogs—Wolfram|Alpha answers questions, often by doing complex, and new computations.”

But how to get started searching ? What's ahead after homepage ? There are screenshots about this. Looks like you need to go deeper and refine your search. Maybe this data and answers are powerful indeed, but is this information layer usable and easy to navigate ?

More questions pop up. Is this search engine for consumer market or power users ? For serious researchers only ?

There are 150 people in the launch team and huge cluster of computers ready to go live and load all those queries. Everything sounds very ambitious.

Math to rule or to kill ? That is a question now. May 18th is the only way to know this. Countdown begins for launch of this ''rich search engine'' :))

Who knows the answer ? Machine or human ?
It certainly isn't replacement for Google. Better at numbers, but worse at words.
Here's a screencast.

Bonus link:
John Dvorak's second opinion
What's Google worried about ? No click-throughs as before...

TERM SHEET NIRVANA

Term Sheet

Publish at Scribd or explore others: Business & Law Term Sheet venture capital

4 shorts

Very sober article about unmaintained iPhone apps and slowdown in development:

Developers may depend on static libraries for which they don't have source code. This prevents them from rebuilding their applications using the 3.0 SDK. According to Snyder, this "effectively denies them the ability to take advantage of the new 3.0 APIs, and possibly permanently limits the lifetime of their app." Fortunately, he points out, most static libraries in use are either distributed with source or are maintained by companies like AdMob who very much want to keep them up to date.

This introduces a brand new puzzle into the iPhone development equation. Business plans that were predicated on getting applications ready for the 3.0 launch, whenever that should happen, must now start building 3.0 compatibility into their 2.x products. If a company wants to release a bug fix or offer any updated features over the next few months, they'll need to task their engineers with a whole new development effort. There's no way to keep programming for 2.x until 3.0 debuts.

Strategy Analytics: 900 % growth for Android phones in 2009. iPhone's growth 79 %. Still, I can't grasp how Google benefits directly from Android...

“Android has fast been winning healthy support among operators, vendors and developers. A relatively low-cost licensing model, its semi-open-source structure and Google’s support for cloud services have encouraged companies such as HTC, Motorola, Samsung, T Mobile, Vodafone and others to support the Android operating system. Android is now in a good position to become a top-tier player in smartphones over the next two to three years.”

How netbook revolution looks like ?

Whatever else netbooks bring to the table, the category's strongest selling point has been its low cost. Where once speed was everything, today's recession-rattled customers are willing to trade the power of full-fledged PCs for rock-bottom pricing.

Lenovo: What kind of future for netbooks ?
Touch, Win 7, bigger

So, there is still going to be a need for notebooks: some people will see netbooks as second devices, as companion devices – I just want to grab this when I go off to do whatever – but, other people are going to say, well, why own two things where I’ve got to worry about syncing them, where I need to make sure that the data is the same as on my other notebook. So, some people just don’t want that hassle either.

Bonus link:
Palm Foleo's rise from the death

WEEKEND IDEA

Google clone


I am in a search for Google clone hahahaha
Can someone recommend open source script for it ?

APP SPONSORSHIP

Great example of sponsorship in an iPhone app

Adidas creates free iPhone guide to Berlin's street art.

The app’s interactive elements including rating and commenting functionalities, and letting users upload their own snaps of new art, which keeps the map cutting-edge at no extra cost to Adidas. Berlin is currently the only city on the Urban Art Guide's map, but plans are underway to develop similar guides for other cities.

Powered by Android

Soon to be released new phones.

Mobile store

What's in the shop for mobile apps ?
Crowded market. An old but good article with overview of AppStore competitors.

Samsung i7500

Too late my darling came. Sing !

Samsung announced Android phone. i7500.
First look. As of yesterday , I got my new business phone Samsung SGH- J700V.

The phone will include all the smartphone essentials found on the G1, including Wi-Fi, GPS, HSDPA Internet and 8GB of internal storage – but like the HTC Magic, this model won’t have a QWERTY keyboard. It does get a healthy 3.2-megapixel camera with autofocus, though, and room for up to another 32GB with a microSD card.

Bonus link
Android getting some steam
Video demo for i7500

WEEKLY EDITION : 4 SHORTS

Wall Street Journal: Apple apps ahead

ReadWriteWeb: State of the smartphone

Video: Google profile

Facebook's threat already there ? : Google falling revenue

Bonus link:

Small business in Rome do their marketing on Facebook

Interview with Ivan Kalaica, croatian iPhone developer, about iPhone Apps

iPhone gold rush

OSIJEK, Croatia - I had a opportunity to talk with Ivan Kalaica, croatian iPhone developer at Osijek's Inchoo startup about various aspects of making and releasing iPhone apps for this magical phone.


One of the most interesting software sales environments on the planet is iPhone. Why programs on the phone ? Do these small programs/apps on the phone make our World better place ? Is this a secret for success ? Why now and not before few years ?

Answer is fairly simple. It’s simple and it is Apple’s. You can make very good money programming software for iPhone and have fun at the same time. Just like I do now. Apple makes world better place. :-) Just kidding but there is still some small amount of true in that sentence.

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Why iPhone mobile platform is your choice and since when you are developing apps for iPhone ?

Inchoo company gave me a chance to work along with Surgeworks company on iPhone development in October last year. I accepted the offer and I’m satisfied now I made that decision then. In beginning it was maybe little hard but now I can say I am happy I have then decided to work along with these great people.

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How many iPhone app developers are in Croatia according to your knowledge ?

I have heard that there are few guys but newer met them.

How long it takes to learn iPhone programming and what are your basic tools ? You do it alone or as a team play ?

It is really quick thing to learn it if you are determined. At inchoo.net and inchoo.hr you can find a few of the posts I have written about this topic. Well, in the beginning I have been learning alone but when I became sufficiently independent I started to work with Surgeworks iPhone dev team.

How many apps have you made to this date and how long it takes to develop an app? Is it expensive ?

As a part of Surgeworks I participate on few projects like DivineOffice, Prayer, projects that we do for many clients and for now only one app I have finished alone and that one is Dose.

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How do you find projects or ideas for iPhone development ?

We have two approach on this topic and those two are our internal projects and client projects. For example we have two internal projects: DivineOffice and Prayer application that is part of DivineOffice Ministry (you can check it out on divineoffice.org ) and rest are projects for client.

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Do you think we are right now in the middle of an iPhone gold rush just like it was in 1999 with dot.com projects ? How to stand out from the crowd ?

Don't be silent. There are many of great developers everywhere, but most of them work in busy environments and do not present themselves. I write about the things I work on and this helps me build a business network. Some of my readers are comrades developers and some of them are potentials clients who send inquiries.

Apple established marketplace for these apps with App store. What kind of apps are the most popular ( genres ) in Apple store and what's the quality of most apps ?

I don’t know much about this but I think that games have a big lead in App Store.

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After you make an app, how long it takes for an app to be approved by Apple and ready to go on sale ?

We had a really good experience with approving app issue. Longest time we had to wait was 7 days.

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Is there any marketing push needed when selling your app ? Marketing strategy ? Promotion ?

Some of the applications sell themselves by word of mouth and some need a promotion. We are mainly using online promotional methods like Google Adwords or other PPC marketing methods. In some cases, client had an established business network where spreading the word was much easier.

Great thing is that you can decide how much you would charge for your program ? Can an individual programmer live just from developing apps for iPhone, I mean make a living ?

That is the best thing about iPhone dev story. Yes, man can make an iphone app and live of it. Even better - Man can get rich. But I think it is better to form a team then be just an, how you say, individual programmer.

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Free app or app for a small fee ? When it is justified to ask for money for your app ?

This is the question you need to ask yourself before the development. If we plan to invest a lot of time and energy, we'll create a free app only if it will create promotional result. In other case, small fee is just fine.
There is one interesting fact. Free apps get much lower rates from visitors than $0.99 ones. Some people download and try just to give the lowest rate.

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Good thing is that you as a developer don't have to worry about billing . Is Apple good or evil when taking its cut ( 30 % ) for selling apps through Apple store ?

They are good guys because they do all of comercial job for you so you don’t need to bother with that. I think they deserve it.

There are more than 25.000 apps in the App Store. How do you think average user will find relevant apps in the future? How to solve discovery of apps on the iPhone ?

It depends on users interests. There are few of app’s that help average user to find an app for them. Actually, one app of that kind we have made for a client.

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What do you think about iPhone as mass market platform ( new editions of mass market phones coming maybe ) ? Is it doable in the future ? It seems iPhone is getting first mover advantage and gains tremendouse market share all around the world in the smartphone arena ?

iPhone is first of that kind and that is a big advantage ahead of all other. However, like similar devices, it will not last forever. In a few years, we will speak about it in the same way we are speaking about Commodore 64 now.

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What are the things you would like to be better in this whole Apple iPhone ecosystem ? What are shortcomings and stumble blocks for the platform ?

I think there is space for improvement in Apple's appy sales reports. The reports are not very user friendly.

Should web publishers optimize their websites for iPhone ? What's the relation between iPhone optimized web ( WebKit browsers ) and mobile web in general ? Iphone web pages are more usable then mobile web in general , IMHO.

Of course they should. For example, there are many plugins and themes for the Wordpress that can converted site to fit iPhone web browser which one can implement in his website.

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Is there correlation between iPhone on-device apps and iPhone web apps? Which one is more usable and is there any overlapping ?


It depends what you need. Pure logic. I think that in general both of them are winning combination.

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What's the future for Inchoo, a startup company from Osijek, in regard to iPhone development ? What's your target market ?

I hope that number of iPhone developers in Croatia will grow up and when that happens I honestly hope that there will be few brave ones that will try to work as a part of Inchoo iphone dev team. We are waiting. Our target market are a good business in all the world. We do not have any localized promotional activities.

Should croatian companies ( media companies, publishers, software firms ) pay attention to this booming market and how ? For marketing purpose perhaps ?

I think that the answer to this question must or will be found out by every preferable company owner soon.

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What do you expect from future iPhone releases ? Do you think there will be more access to device capabilities which will lead to new breath of amazing apps ?

Well, 3.0 SDK has came out and I've seen enough. I will be atrocious and will say no more then just amazing. If guy’s from Apple continue to develop things like they did so far, iPhone might become something like tricoder from Star Trek. :-)

Do you see Google Android project as a serious competion to iPhone ? Google Android Market / RIM AppWorld /Nokia Ovi / Windows Mobile vs. Apple store ?

Nope.

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What would you do differently when looking back at your released apps ?

Good job. :-)
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How do you keep up with developer news ? Where to look on the Web for staying up to date with iPhone development ?

There are many sources on the web where you can find fresh news but the main source is the Apple’s iPhone Dev Center.


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Describe iPhone in one sentence as an iPhone owner ? What it means to you ?

Great thing and everything - tricoder!

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Ivan, thanks for your time and great insight !

GOOGLE BELIVES IN WEB APPS

Different aproach. Not the AppStore




Technology review: Gmail sidesteps the AppStore

Google took advantage of features of the browsers running on both platforms to create a Web application that looks and feels like one that has been downloaded onto the device.

It's even possible that more-powerful mobile Web apps could undercut some of the business of Apple's App Store

The user won't care whether the app is running out of a browser or is running directly on the phone, Sharma says, "as long as you get the same sort of experience." A developer also has much more control over the distribution of the software, and she can keep the revenue it generates instead of splitting it with a third-party distributor like Apple.

IPHONE AND RFID

iPhone RFID: object-based media from timo on Vimeo.