under the wire

May
13th

Wed

From iLightswitch to iBurrito, Stanford Students Concoct iPhone Apps

(Originally published 04/29/09 at Wired.com)

Stanford student Luke Ekkizogloy is writing an iPhone app that controls the lights in his house, but he has bigger dreams.

“I have what everyone has in mind, and that’s to make money,” Ekkizogloy told Wired.com.

Ekkizogloy, like many other students enrolled in Stanford’s iPhone programming class, is aiming to strike it rich by selling software through Apple’s prolific iPhone App Store, which surpassed one billion downloads last week.

Many software developers view the App Store as a digital Gold Rush, where companies big and small can potentially make millions with a single big hit. With 40,000 applications in the App Store to date, competition among iPhone developers is fierce. Still, even independent programmers like Ekkizogloy stand a chance, provided they have a good idea, cleanly written code and some luck. One of the most inspiring success stories involves Ethan Nicholas, an independent developer whose iPhone game iShoot earned him $600,000 in the month of January alone. What’s more, Nicholas taught himself how to code for the iPhone by reading websites.

But it’s probably easier to learn iPhone development if you have the resources of a world-class university at your disposal — and an Apple employee for an instructor. Stanford is so serious about training the next army of iPhone developers that the tech-savvy university hired Evan Doll, a senior iPhone engineer for Apple, to teach CS193P — a computer science course titled iPhone Application Programming.

Doll taught Stanford’s first iPhone class in fall 2008, and the current quarter is now running in its fifth week. In the class, students are building programs using the iPhone software development kit, which requires learning Objective-C — the programming language for iPhone. They’re also learning the basic fundamentals and principles of coding for the iPhone, such as memory management, interface construction and animation design.

In addition to the 60 students enrolled in the course and 40 squatters sitting in, thousands are taking Stanford’s iPhone class remotely via iTunes. In the iTunes U educational channel, wannabe iPhone developers can download video podcasts of the lectures along with the course slideshows — all free.

Stanford’s iPhone programming course is part of Apple’s iPhone University Program, which launched September 2008. Participating schools gain free access to the iPhone SDK and all the tools needed to develop apps for the handset, courtesy of Apple.

And as if offering an iPhone class weren’t enough, Stanford is expressing its enthusiasm in the device in its very own iPhone app “iStanford.” Free through the App Store, iStanford allows iPhone users to easily look up class schedules, the Stanford directory, the campus map and sports news.

When Wired.com visited the class last week, Doll was explaining the fundamentals of building an iPhone application interface. A common iPhone app interface, he said, is composed of a navigation bar at the top and a tab bar at the bottom.

“These are patterns for organizing your iPhone interface, but don’t reinvent the wheel,” Doll told the class. “At Apple our philosophy is if you do a lot of the same thing, make it useful.”

The Stanford brainiacs had plenty of useful ideas for apps. Mike Gao, a computer music technology student enrolled in the iPhone class, is best known for creating the Lumi, a digital console for mixing and remixing music on the fly. Gao said he plans to rewrite the Lumi interface for an iPhone app.

“The iPhone has millions and millions of people downloading apps through the App Store, so [Lumi on the iPhone will] definitely hit harder,” Gao said.

Other ideas? Student Patrick Costello is thinking about coding an app to help workers log their hours — a digital timesheet of sorts. Sports fan Sean Beausoleil is toying with the idea of creating an iPhone app for fantasy football players. Anand Madhavan hasn’t decided on an app yet, but he’s fermenting the idea of a simple tool that helps gardeners.

And Mike Fogel (above) is thinking about coding an app for users to take pictures of each other’s outfits to vote on how well they match — crowdsourced feedback, similar to the idea of Hot or Not? Fogel is also learning iPhone software development to code a burrito application. Just what about burritos, exactly?

“Burritos — that’s all I can say,” Fogel said. “I’m not liable to talk about it.”

Makes sense: How could he get rich if he gave away his idea?

Only halfway through the course, the students still have plenty to learn before turning their app ideas into a reality. Their assignment for the week was to design a basic app that updates social networking feeds for services such as Twitter and Facebook. Sounds simple and barebones, but learning a new programming language is more difficult than it appears.

Is 10 weeks enough to learn to code a quality iPhone app? We’ll find out in June, when the course concludes and the students will submit their final projects to the App Store.

Meanwhile, some examples of App Store apps that came from fall quarter’s iPhone students include Air Guitar, a virtual guitar app; Stress Bust, an app that plays a video of ocean waves accompanied by guided voices to help you relax; and Abodi, an app that searches Craigslist and enables users to bookmark their favorite listings.

See Also:

Photos: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

Gadget Lab Hardware News and Reviews Marathon Runners Tweet Their Way to the Finish Line

(Originally published 04/27/09 at Wired.com)

Two London marathon runners documented their cardiovascular treks in real-time, and they didn’t need a camera crew to follow them.

CNN news producer Peter Wilkinson and Latitude Group CEO Alex Hoye stood out among 35,000 runners at Sunday’s London Marathon — in the digital world, at least, where they tweeted their progress with their cellphones.

“To you’se enjoying marathon w/ a beer, a) chers! b) cam u shield your beverage as I pass for 9 more mls? Mi 17 http://twitpic.com/4173o,” tweeted Hoye with his iPhone.

Launched in 2006, Twitter is quickly gaining momentum in the Web 2.0 universe. Though its core premise is simply to answer the question “What are you doing?” in 140 characters or less, many Twitter users have thought outside the box when answering that question. One of the most significant incidents involved November’s deadly Mumbai attacks, which were documented tweet by tweet.

Wilkinson and Hoye’s “tweet-a-thon” is a light-hearted example of creative tweeting; the two even managed to raise money for charity via Twitter. Both runners’ tweets were ridden with typos and juvenile abbreviations, but could you do any better during a 26-mile marathon?

“Raising the pace now nearly there twittering really given me something to take mind off running feels more like a car journey are we there yet?” tweeted Wilkinson near the end of the race. “One mile to go”

Hoye, whom Twitter fans dubbed “the Twunning Man,” told Wired.com he wasn’t even planning to tweet his run; the idea occurred to him when he saw amusing spectacles from the race that he thought would be interesting to share, such as a runner dressed up as a rhino.

“My biggest fear was it would be boring — mile 1: running; mile 2: still running,” Hoye said. “But I gave it a try and people were talking about it on mile 9, retweeting it, and I said fuck it. And the great thing is, every mile you have to get your milestone of what you’re going to tweet. You have to think of something mildly amusing every mile.”

Wilkinson completed the race first at 3 hours and 30 minutes, and Hoye finished at 5 hours and 12 minutes. However, it’s worth noting Hoye’s tweets were more entertaining thanks to his pictures — so at least he wins the “Twunning” race.

Photo: Alex Hoye/Twitpic

Via Susan MacTavish Best [Twitter]

4 Reasons Apple Should Share the iPhone With Verizon

(Originally published 04/17/09 at Wired.com)

Apple is more likely to bring the iPhone to Verizon once the cellular company deploys its fourth-generation network, claims Verizon’s chief executive.

That’s because Apple was never very interested in Verizon’s current CDMA
cellular standard, which is less popular among cellphone networks outside North America, Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg told The
Wall Street Journal.

Therefore, Verizon’s upgrade to 4G
in 2010 should rectify the issue. Verizon will adopt a standard called Long Term Evolution (LTE), which many domestic and international carriers plan to use for their next-generation networks as well. For Apple, that should mean more potential iPhone customers and fewer troubles in terms of hardware production.

But wait. Didn’t Verizon say in 2007 that it rejected Apple’s iPhone, rather than the other way around? Then, Verizon complained about
Apple’s control over distribution, which is a non-issue now that iPhones are being sold in Wal-mart, Best Buy and AT&T stores.
Verizon also moaned about Apple’s desire to handle all the customer care — but that shouldn’t be a problem anymore, either, since Apple is the big leader in the latest customer satisfaction survey.

Still,
Verizon spurned Apple. And Apple could lose face if it warms up to Verizon so easily after such an emphatic rejection. We’re not satisfied that scoring the iPhone will be so easy for Verizon, but we definitely think it would be a wise, crucial move for Apple. Below is a list of reasons why we think a deal makes sense. If you agree, we encourage you to add your own reasons. If you disagree, well, we welcome those comments, too.

Verizon’s Reputation for Its Superior Network
Let’s start with the obvious: Everyone will agree that Verizon generally has better call and data quality than AT&T. Surveys say so, too. Many Verizon customers resist the iPhone because they don’t wish to sacrifice reliable call reception and consistently zippy downloads.

We’re not taking sides here, but AT&T has the opposite reputation. “Dropped calls” and “no signal” are phrases commonly heard when discussing AT&T’s service quality. By expanding to Verizon, Apple will undoubtedly further its iPhone penetration in the United States.

Sharing Is Caring
AT&T will never, ever admit this, but its current 3G networks are evidently overloaded, due in large part to the iPhone’s booming success. In August, Wired.com conducted a global study showing that iPhone data speeds were suffering on the U.S.
AT&T network, when compared to Europe’s fine-tuned 3G networks. And several iPhone customers have been so dissatisfied with network issues that they filed lawsuits accusing Apple of making false advertisements about the iPhone 3G’s performance.

Why not share the responsibility of carrying the iPhone? It’ll amount to less money for AT&T, but less trouble for Apple and less anguish for customers. Better service equates to more satisfied customers and fewer lawsuits. It’s your basic win-win.

Polygamy = More Control, Power
For manufacturers, working with multiple partners is strategically wiser than working with only one. Take the iPhone’s components, for example. Apple doesn’t rely on a sole supplier for each part of the iPhone; it buys from various suppliers so one doesn’t have too much bargaining power. If one partner is asking for too much money, you threaten to ditch it because you have multiple partners. Simple, right?

So here’s where a ménage à trois with AT&T and Verizon would be great.
Apple could potentially ask for a bigger slice of the pie when it comes to iPhone revenues, because it could threaten to leave either of them for the other. Ultimately, this gives Apple more control over how it handles the iPhone. And we all know how much Apple loves control.

Competition Is Good
Economics
101: Throw Verizon into the boxing ring with AT&T, and both companies will likely reduce monthly costs for the iPhone for the sake of competition. I’m tired of paying $80 a month for my minimal iPhone plan, aren’t you? And, again, cheaper monthly plans will attract more customers to the iPhone. Even the naysayers might be tempted.

We’re going to leave you to continue this conversation. Do you think Apple should work with Verizon to carry the iPhone? Whether it’s yes, no or maybe so, add your thoughts in the comments below.

Photo: Seenya Rati/Flickr

Apr
19th

Sun

Apple Aggressively Pursues 'Pod' Trademarks

(Originally published 03/29/09 at Wired.com)

What’s in a name? A rose by any other name would smell as sweet, but if its name ended in “pod,” it might attract the ire of Apple’s shark-like legal team.

Apple’s obsession with the blockbuster success of its iPod has driven the corporation to chase down many companies attempting to use the media player’s three-letter suffix in their product or business names. Names that have come under fire include MyPodder, TightPod, PodShow, and even Podium. On Monday, Sector Labs, a small business whose Video Pod trademark has been blocked by Apple, took legal action to fight back.

“It appears that Apple is not only trying to put an iPod in everybody’s hands and white earbuds in everyone’s ears but to control the use of our language and most particularly the word ‘Pod,’” Sector Labs’ lawyers wrote in a 239-page response to Apple’s trademark opposition, which has blocked Video Pod’s development. “If we are not careful, in Apple’s quest for dominance, they will soon attempt to take over the words ‘Phone’ and ‘Tunes’ — let us hope they do not attempt a coup over the exclusive rights to the letter ‘i’.”

Apple’s trademark scuffle with Sector Labs is not unique. The corporation began cracking down on businesses attempting to use the word “pod” as far back as 2006. One of the earliest examples involved Podcast Ready, which developed a podcast-downloading application called MyPodder. Apple sent a cease-and-desist to Podcast Ready, claiming that “pod” has become commonly associated with Apple’s famous iPod, and using the three-letter word could cause consumer confusion. Apple subsequently took the same action against several other companies, including TightPod, an independent business that sold protective covers for notebooks, which later renamed itself to TightJacket.

A low-profile example involved a start-up called PodShow, a social networking web site for video podcasters. Though the start-up later renamed itself to Mevio to coincide with a site redesign, it’s worth noting that Apple in June 2008 filed an opposition to the company’s usage of PodShow. Seven months later, Apple withdrew that opposition [pdf].

A Hoovers search query turns up about 600 companies that use the word “pod” in their name, including Peapod and PODS International. But clearly, Apple hasn’t given up on the battle for this word. Just last week, Apple sent a cease-and-desist letter to Pivotal, a company marketing an iPhone stand called Podium. In that letter, Apple cited the same reasons — consumer confusion and protecting its intellectual property. Pivotal told Wired.com that it plans to file a formal response to Apple on Wednesday.

“I absolutely understand a company protecting their intellectual property,” said Scott Baumann, president of Pivotal, in a phone interview. “But to start taking ownership of the letters P-O-D — a word that’s in the dictionary — certainly seems far-reaching to me. It certainly seems like a stretch.”

Though Sector Labs’ response to Apple was published only Monday, the start-up’s trademark scuffle with Apple over Video Pod began March 6, 2007, when Apple filed an opposition to the registration of the Video Pod trademark. In the face of that opposition, Sector Labs halted development and funding of the product. Apple then filed a motion for summary judgment — asking for a ruling to be made without going to trial.

But rather than throw in the towel, Sector Labs owner Daniel Kokin filed a response to Apple’s motion for summary judgment, continuing the fight. In its response, Sector Labs claims the Video Pod, a video projector designed to work with a DVD player and other input devices (not the iPod), has been in development since 2000 — a year before Apple launched its first iPod. Sector Labs’ legal team added that Apple has the burden to prove that a probability of consumer confusion exists.

“The ordinary reasonable consumer must be confused about the source of the Video Pod itself,” Sector Labs’ response reads [pdf]. “Apple’s opposition falls far short of establishing that it is probable that consumers would actually be confused.”

Pinnacle Law Group principal Eric Farber, who is representing Sector Labs, said Apple’s intention is clearly to intimidate smaller companies who would more easily fold under the pressure of a corporation as large as Apple.

“Apple is using their power and strength to attempt to knock out very legitimate marks at a stage for start-ups that is very critical, where a great many of them don’t have the money to fight a behemoth like Apple,” Farber said in a phone interview.

Apple’s lawyer did not respond to requests for comment on this story.

Apple’s fans typically leap to defend the corporation, but Wired.com readers commenting on last week’s story about Podium unanimously disapproved of Apple’s actions.

“Apple’s got a good point about such flagrant use of the syllable ‘pod,’” commented Max Beta. “Why, just last week I was tricked into going into the office of someone who claimed to be some kind of ‘doctor.’ The guy didn’t know anything about music or iPods®, and he had some kind of weird foot fetish. You shouldn’t be able to call yourself a podiatrist unless you are associated with Apple in some way!”

Apple must file a response to Sector Labs by April 1, and then Sector Labs will have the opportunity to respond as well.

Photo: Gaetan Lee/Flickr

Digitally Unlimited: Rushmore Star Embraces iPhone, Web to Sell Music

(Originally published 04/17/09 at Wired.com)

If the film Rushmore were made recently, Max Fischer would probably be founder of the Digital Music Society.

The actor who played him, Jason Schwartzman, would be at least. When he’s off the movie set, Schwartzman injects his creative mojo into his online music project, Coconut Records. Songs from his first album, Nighttiming debuted on MySpace before hitting the iTunes Store. And most recently, Coconut Records songs appeared in the free iPhone rhythm game Tap Tap Revenge.

Following Weezer and Nine Inch Nails, Coconut Records is one of several tech-savvy artists experimenting with the internet, gadgets and games to boost sales in a rapidly declining record industry. In an interview with Wired.com, Schwartzman and DashGo digital label manager Ben Patterson shared their philosophy on digital music, as well as the overall impact of tech-driven distribution methods.

Wired.com: Coconut Records is on Twitter, MySpace, iTunes and the iPhone. Do you plan to try out any other digital distribution methods to promote your music? I know Weezer’s Rivers Cuomo had a YouTube song-collaboration project, for example.

Schwartzman: That was so cool…. like a YouTube chain-letter song. That’s like the idea of collaboration on steroids. I had the exact same idea, but Rivers stole it.

Wired.com: Really?

Schwartzman: No.

I also had an idea — it was something called iSongs, and it was like this world where you could buy music and movies and audiobooks and all that stuff. And then Apple came out with iTunes, and I was like Steve, you fucked me on this. And you fucked me on the iPhone. It’s a touch phone and it’s called the iCaller.

Wired.com: Do you own an iPhone yourself?

Schwartzman: No. I can’t.

Wired.com: Why not?

Schwartzman: My thumbs are not agile enough. I’ve got little tumbler hands.

Wired.com: So you’re a movie star and a former drummer in a popular band. Why did you feel the need to promote Coconut Records through an iPhone game?

Schwartzman: I’ll let Ben go first.

Patterson: We started with just being an indie release and not having buckets of marketing cash. We wanted to get music out any way possible and one of the great things about working with Jason is he’s really embracing new ways to share music with people.

It’s increasingly crowded to get music in front of people; it’s super easy but super hard at the same time. You can compose on MySpace, but you have to get a lot of people to go there. So you can put things where it’s not quite as crowded and you have a little more shared voice and visibility.

We try to find opportunities to share channels like that, and one of the ones that’s become really strong in the past six months is the Tap Tap Revenge game. It really popped up sales for us on iTunes…. West Coast at some point was the second most downloaded track on Tap Tap Revenge.

Schwartzman: A more abstract way to support what Ben was saying is, it’s almost like a thesis for the Coconut Records project. The whole thing started in just a homemade, small way, and it was really just a joyful experience to make the first record. We wanted to release the music in the way that it felt to record the music — in a way that just felt fun and involved.

[The record] was made quickly, and it was made in a gut reaction. When I made the first record, I didn’t even know I was going to put it out. It was the first time I tried to record a bunch of songs in a blast. It was recorded just for my ears, my girlfriend’s ears, my brother’s ears, but certainly not for the public. And when Ben became involved and we talked about how to put it out there, we said we’d have to put this out in a way that it was just like how we made the recording — no hard work or restrictions.

That’s the great thing about releasing music in this way. [The internet] is like a big pond, and if you manage to do it correctly it’s astonishing, it’s this drop of a pebble and the ripples kind of go.

Patterson: To expand on that a little … what I find is awesome is every day I’m looking at a Twitter stream for Jason, and looking at blog hits and stuff. Every day you see people who are discovering Coconut Records for the first time. It feels really nice for me. It’s not something where you’re all about one release date. It’s all about continually introducing people to music and getting them to share with others.

Schwartzman: That’s ultimately the fun thing about doing it this way. I have released my second record [Davy], and we’re Tweeting it out for people, and it’s incredible they’re able to receive it. You can keep building and it’s so cool that someone can discover it.

That’s one of the odd things about the internet. It’s the most instant thing in the world, but you just have time with it. It’s been fascinating.

Another thing is, I don’t really tour. I don’t even play live. Really all I have is releasing music, and that’s kind of what I do. That’s why the internet is like my tour.

Wired.com: Coconut Records started out as a digital release, but eventually you started selling physical CDs. How did you get people to buy CDs if the album was available on the internet first?

Schwartzman: Another thing about Coconut Records is I know I’m never going to sell as many records as someone who’s a really big artist who has a lot of money…. I’m not in the same league as those people, and that’s fine. And when it came time to print up physical CDs, we were very modest with how much we wanted to print up.

My girlfriend’s idea that I stole was, if you’re going to only print so many CDs, and the artwork isn’t very elaborate, you can’t charge people so much money for nothing. So we took a Polaroid picture for each CD we sold [for the first 2,000 people who bought the CD]. So when people bought the record they felt like they had something special; no one else had the exact same thing they did.

I think it’s really cool to put out a record where on one hand, digitally anyone can get it in the world, and hopefully be able to as long as that lasts. But physically there are less copies of it and they are totally individual and special. It’s like traverse terrains simultaneously.

Wired.com: So what’s next for Coconut Records?

Schwartzman: I’d like to do some more stuff for this record, I guess in some ways like the first record. I made the record so quickly, and I would be really excited about putting it out and letting it build [virally]. I’d also like to do some videos and be a bit more connected to people than before.

In terms of music I just have to write some more songs. Hopefully, I’d like to make another record this year.

Patterson: I think Tap Tap Revenge has been a great platform. I look forward to continuing to work with those guys, and I think working with Jason has been phenomenal.

Schwartzman: It’s going to only get better, Ben.

Photo Courtesy of Boom

Pirates Board Apple's iPhone App Store

(Originally published 03/30/09 at Wired.com)

The iPhone’s App Store is becoming an increasingly juicy target for pirates, who have illegally cracked 20 percent of paid applications for free distribution.

Apple’s App Store offers about 25,000 paid apps, and iPhone analytics company Medialets estimates at least 5,000 have been pirated. The company also said it has tracked dozens of apps with as high as a 100-to-1 pirated-to-paid ratio.

“It’s a real problem that developers, Apple and the community need to address,” said Eric Litman, CEO of Medialets, a market research company that tracks app statistics and usage for developers.

Just how much piracy affects App Store sales is unclear and remains up for debate — since Apple, tight-lipped as usual, has not disclosed any numbers. Apple didn’t respond to several requests for comment.

Software piracy is rampant on the internet, with illegal, free downloads of expensive software just a Google search away.

The Business Software Alliance commissioned a study in 2008 that suggests the economic impact of software piracy is tens of billions of dollars. In the United States, if the amount of software piracy were reduced 10 percent over four years, the end result would be $41 billion in economic growth, according to the study.

So it was inevitable that the App Store would fall victim to piracy, too.

Pirated iPhone applications appear in a number of places. There is, for example, a 5.4 gigabyte Torrent file called the X-Mas iBrain Pack, which contains 808 cracked iPhone applications.

There are also websites hosting dozens of pirated iPhone apps, such as Appulo.us, which currently offers about 3,200 cracked apps. Another site, The Monkeys Ball, recently relaunched with 81 cracked apps. The Monkeys Ball promotes the cracked apps as “trial” downloads, encouraging users to buy the apps after they’ve tried them.

“We want people to think of these as trial apps since Apple doesn’t allow trials of apps before purchase,” said “Omar,” one of the creators of the site, who refused to disclose his real name to Wired.com. “It’s Apple’s fault for not putting up a trials system.”

Kai Yu, president of BeeJive, said he installed analytics software in his IM application BeeJive, and his company discovered 60 percent of activity comes from users who own pirated copies. BeeJive costs $16.

“We think that current piracy of content from the App Store is much more widespread than most people realize,” Yu said.

Since Apple has not installed security in the App Store to combat piracy, BeeJive has had to enforce its own measures to disable cracked versions of its software. In fact, when users try to log in to pirated versions of BeeJive, they are instead pointed to a video clip of Office Space about theft.

However, not all app developers say piracy is a problem.

Brian Greenstone, owner of Pangea Software, said he actively tracked piracy of his iPhone game Enigmo, and piracy made a very insignificant impact on sales. During the first week of Enigmo’s launch, only 5 percent of downloaded copies were pirated versions. After that week, piracy dropped to nearly 0 percent, according to Greenstone.

“Like any piracy scheme, it’s just a matter of time until hackers find their way around,” Greenstone said. “There are things we can do as developers, but since the piracy rate is so low, my thought is ‘Who cares? It’s not even worth the trouble.’”

Steve Demeter, developer of the popular iPhone puzzle game Trism, said he also saw little impact from piracy, even though his app was one of the first in the App Store to be pirated.

“When I first saw it on Pirate Bay I couldn’t decide whether to freak out or to say, ‘Whoa, cool!” he told Wired.com.

Demeter said his App Store sales decreased for about two weeks. However, he said eventually everything “evened out” and that he is not very concerned about piracy. (Demeter did, in fact, announce earning $250,000 in profit in just two months with Trism sales.)

Yu said he believes Apple is aware of App Store piracy and is working toward a permanent solution.

“This will hopefully be a temporary state, mostly due to the ‘newness’ of the App Store,” Yu said. “It is like the Wild West.”

Updated 5:25 p.m.: Medialets’ provided estimate for the total number of cracked apps was 5,000 — not 6,000.

Photo: Gregg Fuller/3G Ahoy

Apr
8th

Wed

MacHeist's League of Extraordinary Dropouts Reinvents Software Sales

(Originally published 04/07/09 at Wired.com)

A white Subaru WRX chases a silver Mercedes out of a parking structure and down a country road. They pull over outside a brick building, and the target steps out of his car. He’s wearing charcoal New Balances, dark blue jeans and a Jobs-ian black turtleneck. He pulls his weapon out of his pocket — an iPhone.

It sounds like a scene from a geeky James Bond parody, but it’s actually the video conclusion to MacHeist, one of the most bizarre — and most successful — software-sales stunts to date. And it’s being run by a league of extraordinary college dropouts.

“We were perfectly sober when we came up with the idea,” said MacHeist co-creator Phillip Ryu (right), a 21-year-old who dropped out of Dartmouth College when the first MacHeist became successful in 2007. “It’s really weird, but we’ve all had interest in crafting entertaining experiences … and we found a way to make [a software sale] actually fun and exciting.”

Running for its third year, MacHeist consists of a series of online missions, and the completion of each stage unlocks access to a free Mac application. The difficulty of the puzzles encourages community collaboration in MacHeist’s forums. And the entire scheme is designed to promote the sale of a Mac software bundle.

A quarter of this year’s $3 million in revenues goes to charity; the rest is divided between participating software developers and the MacHeist team.

MacHeist’s success underscores a major challenge that independent developers face: the struggle to get attention for their apps in an increasingly cloudy ecosystem of Mac software. To gain exposure, most developers rely on offering shareware versions of their software, but this is proving an ineffective method. As a consequence, quality software from independents gets obscured by the fog of marketing from big-name publishers, and consumers miss out.

Priced at $40, the MacHeist bundle includes 14 applications valued at about $1,000 overall. Though that may sound like robbery for the participating developers, they actually keep the biggest piece of the pie from the bundle sales.

Ambrosia president Andrew Welch is selling his audio app WireTap Studio through MacHeist. He also participated in MacHeist 2 with his screen-capturing app Snapz Pro, and he said the revenue he earned was decent. But that’s not the point, according to Welch.

“I think a lot of people really misunderstand what MacHeist is,” Welch said. “It’s really a promotional event before it’s a sale. The value we get out of the promotion involved — getting our name out there, our product to people who may have never heard of it or seen it — is more valuable than any revenue that comes out of the sales of the product.”

“What MacHeist has accomplished is amazing,” he added. “They’ve created their own national [shopping] holiday for Mac users … like Black Friday.”

Putting on MacHeist is neither cheap nor easy, but the payoff is big. Overall, MacHeist 3 sold more than $3 million worth of bundles, earning about $750,000 for charity, $1.25 million for independent software developers, and $1 million for MacHeist. After $400,000 in marketing and production expenses, that leaves a fat payday for MacHeist’s founders.

The team, which currently consists of about 30 members, spends five months planning the two-week sale; in the months in between they jot down ideas for the next MacHeist.

The staff’s duties are a strange mix of mission planners, puzzle creators, programmers, video producers, web developers, graphic designers, copy editors, community moderators, screencast producers, actors and so on. And the majority of them don’t even work in the same room. For example, 23-year-old Karl Baron (pictured above, right) lives in Sweden, and at night he hops on iChat video conferencing to work with the Mac Heist team.

“What I really love about it is it’s not like we’re at work,” Baron said. “Everyone’s at home.”

MacHeist is the brainchild of 42-year-old software developer John Casasanta. He and Ryu formerly worked with a software retail web site called MacZot, where they learned that software bundles sold in much higher quantities than discounted individual titles. This discovery would inspire the MacHeist sales model.

As one would expect, MacHeist has seen its share of controversy. When the first MacHeist launched in 2007, it operated with a different sales model, giving developers a flat payment for their participation in the bundle. However, MacHeist was much more successful than Casasanta anticipated, and some developers felt they were getting shafted while MacHeist was greatly profiting off their work. As a result, MacHeist doubled the developers’ payment. In the MacHeists that followed, the group revised the method so developers had the option to take a percentage of the bundle’s overall sales rather than a flat rate.

Aside from MacHeist, Casasanta makes a living off his iPhone application company Tap Tap Tap. His previous work history included positions at IBM and Kodak, jobs he described as “extremely boring.”

Casasanta said putting together MacHeist is much more trouble than it needs to be, but it’s worth it for the excitement it stirs in the Mac community.

“If we got rid of missions, we’d probably make the same amount of money, but a big part of my soul would be killed,” Casasanta said. “People love what we do, and people are so passionate that they’re addicted to it — they go through ‘MacHeist withdrawal.’ That’s the best part.”

The MacHeist sale ended midnight eastern time Wednesday.

See Also:

Top photo: John Casasanta (left), co-creator of MacHeist, stands next to web developer Karl Baron. Photo: Jonathan Snyder/Wired.com
Second photo: Phillip Ryu, co-creator of MacHeist, dropped out of Dartmouth College when he was 19 to focus on MacHeist. Photo courtesy Phillip Ryu

Apr
4th

Sat

The Funniest E-mail I've Ever Received

From Brian Chen <chenbri2000@yahoo.com>
to bedawgy@altavista.com
cc me@brianchen.com,
bchen15@comcast.net,
brian@brianhchen.com,
chenbri@gmail.com,
bc2272@columbia.edu,
jacketseason@gmail.com,
brianxchen@gmail.com

subject Brian Chen webpage

Hello to all the Brian Chen’s out there.

This email concerns bedawgy@altavista.com and his website: “Brian Chen Is Sexy” (http://circuitboy.tripod.com), the #2 hit if you Google: Brian Chen

My name, like all of you, is Brian Chen. You can see where this is going.

To the owner of Brian Chen Is Sexy, bedawgy@altavista.com, I actually have followed your website since it’s inception as your school project (much to my dismay) a long, long time ago, almost 10 years now. Now that it is almost a decade later, and you must be around twenty-something by now, I am simply asking you to please take down your webpage.

I didn’t ask you to take it down all these years because you seem like the type of guy that would probably think I am a “biter”, and I am just hatin’ on you that you are “baggin’ on peeps”.

But please, on behalf of all Brian Chen’s out there, please take down your site.

If you don’t there’s nothing I can do. I’m not even giving you a reason why you should. It’s not a bad site. I’m just asking you to take it down. It’ll be on Google forever anyway. But please take it down.

There are probably a couple thousand of us Brian Chen’s out there. Maybe we could someday all get together. I’m sure if we took a vote, 75% of the Brian Chen’s would ask you to take it down.

Good luck to all of you guys in your life with our shared namesake.

Dr. Brian Chen

Apr
3rd

Fri

Digg This URL Grey: Tea Is the New Coffee

(Originally published 04/02/2009 at Wired.com)

The drink of choice for Web 2.0 zillionaires isn’t a quad espresso anymore. It’s a soothingly steeped tea harvested from a shaded mountainside half a world away.

Captains of the internet like Digg’s Kevin Rose and business guru Tim Ferriss (pictured above) are gravitating to the ancient drink, and enterprising retailers are stepping up to fill their every need.

“We’ve had the Red Bulls, coffee and everything else,” Rose says of Digg, which spends about $1,000 a month just on specialty tea for employees. Rose himself favors a cup of Pu-erh imported from China’s Yunnan province after a tough day at the office.

“It’s one of those things where you want to turn to something really natural and from the Earth — and from something that isn’t going to give you a big crash,” Rose told Wired.com. “Once you start consuming tea it makes sense: This is the best of all worlds.”

In Silicon Valley, specialty tea is quickly becoming a phenomenon. Specialty shops, stores and tearooms devoted to the leaf are sprouting up all over the Bay Area. In San Francisco, tea businesses have gone beyond Chinatown and Japantown, spreading to Hayes Valley, the Castro and SOMA.

Tea is the new coffee — the tipple of choice for the Twitteratti. The culture that brought us pizza as a food group and $20,000 coffeemakers has now discovered tea. And its internet-savvy boosters like Rose and Ferriss are leading a movement in the United States to promote the leafy beverage as a trendy drink for new-age geeks who are as obsessed with having energetic bodies as they are with fast computers.

“It’s the new social lubricant,” said Jesse Jacobs, owner of Samovar Tea Lounge, a popular mini-chain of high-end tea rooms in San Francisco. “You’re never hung over and you can never drink too much.”

Rose, Ferriss and Jacobs are hoping to see specialty tea hit the mainstream just like coffee. And it’s certainly possible: Many credit Alfred Peet for single-handedly spearheading the specialty-coffee movement when he opened the first Peet’s Coffee & Tea store in Berkeley in 1966. Starbucks soon followed, and today their coffee shops are omnipresent.

Tea is so ancient that its exact origins are impossible to trace. In one popular Chinese legend, emperor Shen Nung, who drank only boiling water for hygienic precaution, discovered tea by accident 5,000 years ago. According to the tale, some dry leaves fell from a bush into the emperor’s boiling water, and the first cup of tea was created.

Today, fine teas are taking their place in the center of the digital universe. Specialty shops like the Samovar Tea Lounge are virtual emporiums of the beverage, carrying teas from cities, villages and gardens all over the world for guys like Rose and Ferriss, who use it to find respite from their endlessly busy, overly connected lives.

Jacobs, owner of Samovar, which opened three locations in the past year, explained that technology and the internet have changed everything for the tea industry.

“Technology, commerce, shipping methods, storing methods — all these things come together so that today we have access to the best tea ever,” said Jacobs, who has a background in technology himself as a former user interface designer.

He added that the emergence of social networks like Facebook and Twitter are bringing exquisite, obscure teas to the tech-driven world.

Digg founder Rose, for example, who is hailed as one of the most influential people on the web, is playing a large role in bringing obscure teas to the mainstream. He said he quit drinking soda as a New Year’s resolution in 2000, and he turned over a new leaf for tea.

Rose often tweets about new teas he’s trying out to his nearly 400,000 Twitter followers and even created a separate Twitter account — @goodtea — devoted to tea. He also started a Facebook page about the ancient beverage, where he posts videos and information. To top it off, Rose links to Samovar Lounge’s web site on his personal blog, and he plans to make videos with Jacobs showing geeks how to brew loose tea.

Another active member of the tea resurgence is Ferriss, an angel investor and a former owner of a supplements company who became a Silicon Valley star with his bestselling book The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich.

In the book, Ferriss plays the role of motivator-in-chief, instructing businesses to adhere to one rule of thumb: Cut out all excess information, such as e-mail, Twitter, Flickr and so on. And when something crops up that could potentially stifle productivity, such as a work crisis, hire someone else to deal with it.

So it comes as no surprise that Ferriss, a man who preaches paying more while dealing with less, prefers tea over coffee. He doesn’t want the jitters, the increased anxiety or the bouncy high. He just wants the energy. And he admits that being a tea connoisseur requires spending a bit more than the stuff you’d get in bags. At Samovar, patrons spend anywhere from $10 to $50 each to enjoy a small cup of exquisite tea — such as Mu Za Tie Quan Yin, if they’re feeling extra fancy, which runs for $140 per ounce.

“Tea shots of gyokuro for $50 a thimble full?” Ferriss used as an example. “It ain’t cheap, and it’s certainly not for everyone, but that’s the key: It’s affordably indulgent. A way to show off your insider knowledge instead of distasteful displays of wealth, much of which has been lost.”

How long will it be until you can stroll down a block just about anywhere, sit down and enjoy a cup of Ryokucha imported straight from Japan? Rose is optimistic that the tea renaissance is just five years away.

“There’s a reason tea has been popular for thousands of years,” Rose said. “I have a feeling we’re getting closer and closer to the tipping point.”

See Also:

Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired.com

Mar
22nd

Sun

Apple's Next iPhone Will Rule at Gaming

(Originally published 01/29/2009 at Wired.com)

The next upgrade to Apple’s iPhone will have a strong focus on gaming, analysts and developers agree.

That’s because the gaming market is an increasingly juicy segment of the mobile multimedia space — and it’s one that Apple’s phenomenally successful iPhone is well-positioned to dominate.

“The iPhone and iPod Touch are becoming a major new handheld gaming platform, and if you look at the App Store and look at what’s doing well, that’s reflecting,” said Bart Decrem, CEO of Tapulous, developer of the popular Tap Tap Revenge iPhone game. “I would look forward to improvements in the device as a gaming platform both for the phone and iPod Touch.”

Apple made clear its plans to seize the gaming market in November 2008 when Apple marketing executive Greg Joswiak called the iPhone and iPod Touch “the future of gameplay,” posing a serious threat to dedicated gaming consoles such as the Nintendo DS and Sony PSP. The reasons? A few things: The quick, electronic distribution method of games and apps via the iPhone’s App Store; the accelerometer and multitouch display, which are introducing new approaches to gameplay; and the iPhone’s lighter, more portable form factor compared to its rivals.

Numbers say the iPhone is indeed in a position to assault the gaming market. Analysts predict Apple is on track to sell 40 million iPhones or more per year. By way of comparison, Nintendo sold 42 million DS consoles from January 2007 to June 2008.

Add to that the fact that the iPhone App Store has already got the DS and PSP beat in terms of game titles available: When the App Store was just three months old, it had 1,500 games; the PSP and DS had about 600 and 300 titles, respectively.

There are just a few weaknesses the iPhone needs to address before it’s truly acknowledged as a serious game device, said Steve Demeter, developer of the Trism iPhone game: Processing limitations, graphic capabilities and memory management. For example, the PSP’s advantage as a dedicated gaming device is that its application programming interface (API) is geared toward loading complex textures — a task the iPhone falls short on.

If Apple is serious about making the iPhone a gaming platform, it’s a good bet that the next upgrade to the iPhone will address those limitations.

Tero Kuittinen, a Global Crown Capital analyst, agrees that the next iPhone will have enhanced graphics and more powerful processing capabilities. And those improvements will likely be incorporated in a new ARM chip that Apple is developing in-house. In April 2008, Apple acquired semiconductor company PA Semi to manufacture ARM chips for future iPhones.

Other than introducing graphical improvements it’s unlikely the iPhone will see dramatic changes. Kuittinen noted that Apple enjoys keeping its interfaces consistent to ensure software is backward-compatible — so forget about a slide-out keyboard or a screen that’s either much smaller or much larger than the current iPhone. Developers Decrem and Demeter agreed that Apple will likely be conservative with changes so as not to require software coders to rewrite applications to be compatible with the next iPhone.

One minor change Apple will likely introduce in the third-generation iPhone is an improved web camera with video-recording capability and a flash. Kuittinen said the camera will have to sport at least a 3.5-megapixel resolution in order to compete with Research In Motion, Samsung, HTC and LG, which are already selling handsets with superior cameras to the iPhone.

When can we expect the next iPhone? Considering the first iPhone launched June 2007 and the second iPhone shipped July 2008, the third-generation iPhone should land no later than summer 2009.

Let’s hope this one has copy and paste.

See Also:

Photo: Erik Veland/Flickr