under the wire

Flash Lands on iPhone — One App at a Time

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 15:47:22 -0400

(Originally published 10/05/09 at Wired.com)

Adobe on Monday announced plans to roll out mobile versions of its Flash platform to several smartphones. Apple’s popular iPhone, however, is gaining a lesser Flash experience.

At its worldwide developer conference in Los Angeles, Adobe said it would be releasing Flash for mobile platforms including Microsoft Windows Mobile, Palm’s webOS and Google Android. But don’t expect Flash to come to the iPhone’s Safari mobile browser. Instead, Adobe is adding support to its Flash Professional CS5 developer kit to convert software written in Flash into standalone iPhone applications.

Let’s put it this way as an example: Ever watch videos on Hulu? If you own a Windows Mobile-powered phone, or the Google-Android G1, you’ll be able to watch Hulu videos through your phone’s browser. But for the iPhone, Hulu would have to use Adobe’s new development tools to create an iPhone app containing the Hulu experience.

Why the segmented experience for iPhone customers? Apple declined to comment, but some iPhone developers speculate Apple opted against a full Flash experience because of technical problems it could raise on the handset, such as battery drainage or sluggish web browsing. They also noted Flash apps could pose potential conflicts with Apple’s App Store policies. By requiring such applications to be submitted to Apple for inspection and approval, the Cupertino corporation retains control over the iPhone OS experience.

“These [smartphone] processors are going to become a lot more powerful now, but I think right now between battery and memory and raw processing power, performance is a major issue,” said Bart Decrem, CEO of Tapulous, developer of the popular iPhone game Tap Tap Revenge. “As an app developer I’m very focused on performance. I can see how Flash may not have the right performance characteristics yet.”

Many consumers have complained that the lack of Flash on the iPhone causes them to miss a major chunk of the internet. Several websites rely on Flash to support their streaming video, and a plethora of Flash applications and games are also available on the web. In the UK, two customers complained that Apple was falsely advertising the iPhone in a TV commercial by saying “all the parts of the internet are on the iPhone” when the handset does not support Flash. The UK’s Advertising Standards Authority deemed the ad misleading and pulled the ad.

In November 2008, iPhone developers told Wired.com they did not foresee a full Flash experience appearing on the iPhone at any point. The iPhone developers’ terms-of-service agreement prohibits Flash from appearing on the iPhone.

“An Application may not itself install or launch other executable code by any means, including without limitation through the use of a plug-in architecture, calling other frameworks, other APIs or otherwise,” reads clause 3.3.2 of the iPhone SDK agreement. “No interpreted code may be downloaded and used in an Application except for code that is interpreted and run by Apple’s Published APIs and built-in interpreter(s).”

Previously, iPhone programmers also pointed out that supporting the Flash framework would open a backdoor for Flash apps to appear on the iPhone, which could conflict with Apple’s approval guidelines for its App Store. Third-party software that Apple would prohibit from the App Store, such as apps containing malicious code, could possibly make it onto the iPhone via Flash.

Also, Flash apps could pose competition with Apple’s App Store. And while the App Store continues to flourish, recently exceeding two billion downloads served, there’s no economic incentive for Apple to rush to deliver a full Flash experience, said Scott Meinzer, co-creator of iPhone development house Tap Tap Tap.

Meinzer added that he wouldn’t expect a full Flash experience to arrive on the iPhone anytime soon. He said even on desktops, Flash is not a smooth experience, often causing sluggish browsing and frequent crashes. Thus, running on a phone, a full Flash experience would not be any better, he said.

“It seems like for Flash to work well on the iPhone, Apple has to bless it in some way,” Meinzer said in a phone interview prior to Adobe’s announcement that it would support coding Flash apps for iPhone. This compromise of Flash apps rather than a full Flash experience, then, appears to be Apple’s blessing.

Adobe said a public beta of Flash Professional CS5 will be available by end of 2009. Some Flash iPhone apps are already available in the App Store.

See Also:

False Hopes: Adobe Desperate to Install Flash on the iPhone …
iPhone Users: There Will Be No Flash Soup For You
Why Apple Won’t Allow Adobe Flash on iPhone

Photo: Steve Rhodes/Flickr

In-App Sales and iTablet: The Killer Combo to Save Publishing?

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 15:42:00 -0400

(Originally published 10/16/09 at Wired.com)

Apple on Thursday made a subtle-yet-major revision to its App Store policy, enabling extra content to be sold through free iPhone apps. It’s a move that immediately impacts the publishing industry, and it could pay even bigger dividends if the Cupertino, California, company indeed delivers its highly anticipated touchscreen tablet.

While the most obvious beneficiaries would be app developers, a market segment that can also benefit from the new in-app commerce model are people and companies that create content and need to set up shop in a way that doesn’t, in effect, charge someone for just walking in — like media publishers.

Newspapers and magazines are reportedly in talks with Apple about repurposing their content onto a “new device,” presumably the rumored touchscreen tablet Apple will deliver in early 2010. Numerous reports suggest an Apple tablet would have a strong focus on redefining print media. Enabling in-app commerce through free apps was a crucial move to help make this goal a reality.

Apple’s earlier in-app sales model wasn’t ideal for publishers. Previously, in-app commerce was a feature exclusive to paid apps; free apps were not permitted to sell content. Newspapers and magazines already struggle to sway readers to pay for content to begin with, and charging for apps cuts off potential customers. By allowing commerce within free apps, Apple creates the opportunity for a free media app to serve as a gateway for readers to get hooked on a newspaper’s or magazine’s content, which could help lure them into paying for exclusive premium content.

CNN is an exception: Its recently-released iPhone app costs $2. The Wall Street Journal will later this month begin charging for most of the content it delivers through its free app, and the Financial Times has an app that only offers up to 10 free stories a month without a subscription to the newspaper. But for the most part, publishers have loathed charging for an app, even if it then enabled them to try to charge for content within that point of sale. Reducing the cost barrier of that business model to zero changes things considerably. At least one small publisher, Scarab Magazine, has already taken advantage of the change.

Picture a free magazine app that offers one sample issue and the ability to purchase future issues afterward. Or a newspaper app that only displays text articles with pictures, but paying a fee within the app unlocks an entire new digital experience packed with music and video. This is an example of the “freemium” model that Wired magazine’s Chris Anderson explains in his book Free. It’s a model that some publishers, including Wired’s parent company Condé Nast, are already experimenting with on their websites. (Our sister publication Ars Technica, for example, offers its general content for free, as well as a “Premier” subscription option for readers to access exclusive content.)

If Apple does indeed deliver a tablet, the key for publishers is to create a convenient experience that readers will pay for, as opposed to the content itself. A free app would be the first step toward offering that experience. (And then the publisher will have to figure out what to do about ads, but let’s not get too ahead of ourselves.)

It’s plausible to imagine that a freemium strategy would be much more effective through a tablet app than a website. If the tablet is indeed designed like a 10-inch iPod Touch or iPhone, as insiders have described it, then publishers developing apps will be able to take advantage of features such as the accelerometer, GPS, live video streaming and multitouch to innovate the way they engage with their audience — and, ultimately, persuade them to pay.

Only now is the relevance of a touchscreen tablet becoming more clear. Scores of tablet devices have come and gone in years past, and many analysts and tech enthusiasts wondered why Apple would enter what is considered a failed product category. Clearly, Apple sees a gaping hole — the publishing industry’s lack of vision for a working digital model — and a touchscreen tablet, combined with the App Store and this new in-app sales model, would seek to fill it.

What’s in it for Apple? Primarily, squashing Amazon’s Kindle. Who would wish to read a digital newspaper or magazine on the Kindle’s drab e-ink screen if Apple delivers a multimedia-centric tablet? Wired’s Steven Levy shares my view in his assessment of the Kindle’s newspaper experience: “[The Kindle DX’s] plodding menu-based interface still made navigating newspapers difficult, and the rich graphic quality that makes magazines such an indulgence is totally missing. Even the flashiest print publication looks like The New England Journal of Medicine.”

Can Apple redefine print media to save the publishing industry? It probably has a higher chance than any other tech company out there. Apple is a market-shaper, and that’s the kind of a company the publishing industry needs to resuscitate it as the traditional advertising model continues to collapse. Daily Beast editor Tina Brown believes that, thanks to the powers of the internet and technology, we’re entering the “golden age” of journalism in the next three years. Perhaps Apple’s tablet will be an instrumental part of it.

See Also:

Everything We Know About Apple’s Touchscreen Tablet
Apple’s Tablet Could Be Print Industry’s Lifeboat
Rumor: Back at Work, Jobs Cracks the Whip on Tablet Designers
How an Apple Tablet Could Pit iTunes Against Amazon.com
Why 2010 Will Be the Year of the Tablet
Wall Street Journal Takes Paywall Fight to Mobiles
Financial Times iPhone App Worse Than Trialware
CNN’s iPhone News App Is Informative and Empowering

Illustration of an Apple tablet: Photo Giddy/Flickr

Android Army Pumped for All-Out Attack on iPhone

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 15:36:07 -0400

(Originally published 10/30/09 at Wired.com)

Soon, you’ll need more than two hands to count the number of Android phones on the market. At this rate, it seems inevitable that the number of phones running Google’s open source operating system will eventually outnumber the number of iPhones, which run Apple’s proprietary (and closed) operating system.

It’s a situation that has many observers thinking back to the 1980s, when IBM introduced its PC and eclipsed Apple in market share by betting on open platforms. In the end, Apple was left with a respectable business, but a single-digit morsel of the PC market share. (The Mac has since crept up to 9.4 percent, according to IDC.)

How could Google draft more customers into the Android army and diminish the iPhone’s market share? Focus on the iPhone’s weaknesses, of course. The iPhone’s lack of background-processing capability (i.e., the ability to run multiple third-party apps at once) could push multitasking professionals toward Android. And the notoriety of iPhone’s exclusive carrier in the United States, AT&T, could compel consumers to embrace Android phones carried by Verizon, which has a bigger network and a better reputation for service.

Then there’s the App Store. Despite harboring upward of 90,000 apps, and letting a few developers earn hundreds of thousands of dollars, the Apple’s App Store approval process has been roundly criticized for being opaque. Apple has rejected some apps submitted by third-party developers for unclear reasons. Programmers complain it’s difficult or impossible to communicate with the secretive Cupertino, California, company.

Did we mention the App Store is overcrowded? In a way, that’s a plus for consumers: the more choices, the better. But it can be a headache for third-party programmers, who have difficulty getting exposure for their apps in an increasingly cluttered space. The flaws of the App Store could drive away the people who create the element that makes the iPhone so appealing — its wealth of apps furthering the capabilities of the handset.

There’s a lot at stake. Research firm Gartner this week stated that worldwide smartphone shipments would grow 29 percent year over year to 180 million units, exceeding notebook shipments. That would suggest smartphones are shaping up to become the next major computing platform — and the companies who control the dominant platforms stand to gain billions in revenue.

Still, most analysts and developers polled by Wired.com aren’t too worried about Apple’s prospects in the smartphone space.

“This is not going to be a space with two giants,” said Raven Zachary, a technology analyst and owner of iPhone app-development house Small Society. “It’s going to be a healthy competitive environment for some time to come.”

Relatively young, the mobile platform ecosystem is a new kind of beast in the technology world. Unlike the PC industry — where Microsoft conquered the operating system market, claiming roughly 90 percent market share to date — the mobile space has multiple companies fighting for their fair share of the pie. Some of those players include Research In Motion, Palm, Symbian and Microsoft.

With an early start, Microsoft did have a chance to dominate the mobile landscape. The software titan launched its first mobile OS back in 1996: Windows CE, which served as the foundation for the Windows Mobile OS shipping with some smartphones today. However, in terms of market share, Windows Mobile has been in steady decline. In 2008, its market share dropped to 14 percent — down from 23 percent in 2004.

With 49 percent market share, Symbian is currently the dominant force in the smartphone platform space, according to Gartner. Gartner predicts Symbian will retain its dominance, and the firm is especially optimistic about Android: Gartner predicts Android will leap to 18 percent market share (up from 1.6 percent to date). Meanwhile, the firm has a less optimistic outlook for Apple: 2.9 percent growth by 2012, giving the company 13.6 percent market share.

These numbers lead Joe Wilcox of BetaNews to declare that “iPhone cannot win the smartphone wars,” in an article that has sparked much debate in the tech community this week. He argues that Android, which is expanding onto other mobiles devices in addition to smartphones (such as Barnes and Noble’s “Nook” e-book reader) is poised to conquer this space.

“Another ‘everyone else against Apple battle’ is coming, with Android looking to be the better OS around which an ecosystem grows and thrives,” Wilcox wrote. “There’s a Star Wars metaphor here somewhere. Apple lost out to DOS/Windows because of the attack of the PC clones. Now the droids are coming for iPhone.”

Tero Kuittinen, an MKM Partners telecom analyst, disagrees, and he isn’t as optimistic about Android because of its bumpy start.

“The key point about Android is the first few models haven’t really been doing great,” Kuittinen said in a phone interview. “Based on that there’s no real evidence that the demand of Android phones is rampant.”

Kuittinen noted that European customers already seem “cautious” about Android because of the sluggish, buggy experience of the earliest Google phones.

Other than technical issues, Google has many areas to address before posing a serious threat, such as offering a compelling music substitute for Android smartphones to battle iTunes, Kuittinen said. Google is just getting started with a music solution: The search giant on Wednesday launched a new music-search feature, which automatically searches for playable music tracks.

Andreas Schobel, co-founder of Snaptic, which develops apps for both Android and the iPhone, said the Android OS has a lot of catching up to do in terms of user interface.

“The UI still sucks; it’s just not being able to pinch, not being able to use gestures, that makes it rough,” Schobel said. “It’s getting better, but it’s still not there yet.”

However, Schobel foresees a division occurring between consumers who opt for Android and those who stick with an iPhone. He noted that Android stands a chance to win over productivity-focused users due to its ability to handle multiple apps simultaneously, which the iPhone cannot do. He added that Android’s open API enables developers to easily create “mash-up” apps that can seamlessly integrate social networking services such as Facebook and Twitter into any app.

Though Android might become a popular platform for productivity, the iPhone will still be the primary handset for gaming, Schobel predicted. Game developers are more attracted to coding a game for the iPhone, because they’re programming a game to work with a specific piece of hardware and take full advantage of its graphic chip — an effort that would not be easy with an open platform like Android, an OS designed for multiple phones using different types of hardware.

In any case, Schobel said Android is gaining momentum fast, and Apple must continue to innovate in order to stay ahead of the smartphone OS curve.

“People on Android are going to be pushing forward in such a feverish pace, and Apple is going to have to start doing stuff really soon,” Schobel said.

Just what determines who “wins” a smartphone platform war? That’s subjective. Wilcox bases his argument purely on market-share numbers; whoever gets the biggest slice of the pie wins by his definition.

But Zachary said the iPhone is still a winner at its current size, and he’d be happy if it one day grew to grab 25 percent of the mobile-platform market share — not a dominating number.

In a space that’s crowded with several players, a definitive loss would be the complete failure and disappearance of a company. Zachary and Schobel are both betting Palm will be the first to go. Palm’s WebOS runs on the Palm Pre, and the company currently possesses 0 percent market share, according to Gartner, who predicts WebOS’ market share will only grow 1.4 percent in the next three years.

The company’s smartphone market share continues to shrink, and Zachary said he previously thought Palm would eventually be acquired by a larger company, such as Samsung, to develop mobile operating systems in-house. However, because Google hands out Android as a free, open source OS, this decreases the value of Palm as an acquisition target.

“Who I’m really scared for is Palm,” Schobel said. “They’re dead.”

See Also:

Verizon Drafts Developers Into Mobile Software War on Apple …
Microsoft Reveals New App Store Strategy
Android Welcomes App Store’s Rejects With Arms Wide Open
Nokia Ovi App Store Faces Turbulent Start
BlackBerry App Store Gets a Name
Paid Apps Coming to Android Phones This Week
‘Rogue’ Googlephone App Raises Questions About Android’s Open …

Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

My best friends energize me.

Sun, 23 Aug 2009 00:02:40 -0400

My best friends energize me.

Circles

Sat, 22 Aug 2009 23:44:00 -0400

(From my journal, Feb. 7, 2007)

I was the only member of my family with perfect vision. I could’ve used my gift to become an artist, a pilot, perhaps a dentist. But instead I find myself kneeling in front of a window, staring at you through a scope, my index finger resting on a trigger, my thumb ready to release the safety switch.

And you. You could’ve been a poet, an English teacher, a journalist — an inspirational figure devoted to something larger than yourself. But instead you decided to use your way with words and devilish good looks to become the talking head of the most hated man in this small village in northern Spain.

“You can’t kill the mayor,” one of them explained to me. “The authorities would be all over the place. What you have to do is you have to kill someone worthless, I guess, but close to him in an unobvious way, you know? He’ll get the hint. He’ll be scared that way.”

And so they told me about you. They didn’t give me a name — I never want to know names — but they gave me an address and physical description. And of all the women with black hair, brown eyes and oval faces in all the world, you had to walk in between my cross hair.

What are you doing here, Leila? I remember seven years ago when we were fresh out of college and chatting in a coffee shop in our home state, California, you said you realized how important it was for your work to be meaningful.

“I can’t stand the idea of my life being meaningless,” you said to me, your eyes infused with hope and utter confusion. “Death isn’t scary to me at all. What’s scary is the thought of my impression, my impact, my effect on this world, disintegrating after I die. I think I have to gain meaning by doing something that leaves a permanent indentation.”

Your words shook me that day — I never imagined that someone who barely uttered a word in class could be so full of thought and ambition. We saw the world in the same light — a grimy, miserable landscape inhabited by monsters that had nothing to leave behind but cracks. Happiness and the absurdity of existence were our everyday topics of discourse.

You had a lover at the time. Although when you spoke of him, you didn’t seem to hold much love for him.

“He talks as if my unhappiness is something I have to correct,” you said, the flat sound of melancholy escaping your lips. “I don’t want to be fixed if it means being corrected — as if my outlook on the world were wrong.”

I realized then that you and I were almost the same. We were content with being miserable because, given the sheer pain of living, we felt it was the proper way to feel.

My chest tightens as I release the safety switch.

I say we’re almost the same because our main difference, I recall, is your fearlessness of death and my inability to cope with its inevitability. Remember when I told you about the late nights I’d suddenly awaken, horrified by the notion of nonexistence? Those nights recur even more often now. I never understood how you grew comfortable with death staring you in the face. That single difference is what prolonged our friendship: I felt there was something I could learn from you that I could learn from no other.

We headed separate ways when you left the country. To where, exactly, you hadn’t decided yet; you just said you had to embark on a quest. For what, you didn’t know. You just knew that you weren’t finding whatever it was you were searching for in the sickly hamster wheel of American capitalism. I find myself here, too — trying to cope with my fear by getting as close to it as I can. Have you found what you were searching for? Is this your way of leaving your mark? I thought you meant a positive one. You were always a difficult one to read.

Your hair was longer when we were friends. You let it stream freely over your shoulders. You once told me you wished you lived as a Native American before the whites came and trampled on everything. You wished for a life of pure simplicity.

Perhaps you’ve realized, like I am realizing now, that no matter where you go, you travel in a sphere that encapsulates all your thoughts, memories and beliefs, so that every place morphs into a shape that fits your outlook. Perhaps by now you’ve realized your search is futile. Perhaps you’ve given up.

You live alone in a modest house, cluttered with books that serve as a fire escape to your imagination. You have Christmas lights hanging in June. You look beautiful in this mess.

I let out a soothing sigh as I take dead aim. I will not miss. My vision is more perfect than ever before.

Rejected By Apple, iPhone Developers Go Underground

Sat, 08 Aug 2009 02:42:00 -0400

(Originally published 08/06/09 at Wired.com)

Apple is the exclusive gatekeeper to its iPhone App Store, able to reject apps at will — as it did July 28 with Google Voice. But some developers aren’t taking the rejection lying down: They’re turning instead to an unauthorized app store called Cydia, where forbidden wares continue to exist — and even earn developers some money.

That store is operated by Jay Freeman, more fondly known in the iPhone “Jailbreak” community as Saurik. Only five months old, his app store Cydia specializes in selling apps that Apple would reject or ban (or already has). To use Cydia or the apps available through it, customers need to jailbreak their phones — hack them to work around Apple-imposed restrictions — a process that Apple claims is illegal.

Indeed, you can even get a Google Voice app, GV Mobile, through Cydia. After Apple pulled the app from its App Store, developer Sean Kovacs (who is not affiliated with Google) made it available for free through Cydia.

It’s difficult to get accurate data on how many customers have jailbroken their iPhones. But based on the number of unique device identifiers tracked on his server, Freeman claims that about 4 million, or 10 percent of the 40 million iPhone and iPod Touch owners to date, have installed Cydia. On a recent day, he said 470,000 people were connecting to the Cydia store, up from 350,000 per day just a few months ago. Among many free apps, there are also 15 paid apps in Cydia, and the store has earned $220,000 in overall sales in just five months.

“People are so annoyed by Apple and their shit, and if you give them opportunity to go around it, then they’ll even pay for it,” said Kim Streich, a developer whose app 3G Unrestrictor earned $19,000 in sales in just two weeks through Cydia.

Though Cydia is relatively young, the underground “Jailbreak” community has existed since the first iPhone launched in 2007. That year, Apple didn’t yet have an app store for its iPhone, stifling the true potential of the device. This limitation inspired digital rebels to hack away at the iPhone’s closed platform in an effort to free its mind. The result? An app called Installer, opening a door for early iPhone owners to add games, utilities and other third-party software coded by developers.

It wasn’t until 2008 that Apple offered a software development kit for third-party coders to make programs for its iPhone. That led to the opening of the official App Store in July 2008. Apple’s store grew rapidly, accumulating 65,000 apps and serving over 1.5 billion downloads to date. Many developers abandoned Installer for the more popular App Store, leaving behind an underground space where unauthorized wares could continue to exist. Installer died and became reborn as Cydia, which evolved from an app library into a store in March 2009.

To gain access to Cydia, iPhone owners must jailbreak their smartphones using some freely available tools courtesy of the hacker group iPhone Dev-Team. Given the nature of this procedure, it’s clear Cydia’s primary audience consists of nerdy rebels wishing to utilize the full power of their iPhones, restriction-free.

Cydia’s numbers appear small compared to the rare stories we hear about developers turning into millionaires with hot sales of their iPhone apps in the App Store. But the idea behind a store like Cydia is that you don’t have to be huge to make money. With a smaller market, fewer competitors and a reasonably large customer base, each developer has a higher chance for making a quick buck, Freeman said. Plus, you get more personal attention: Developers submitting their app through Cydia need only contact Freeman, and their app can be made available almost immediately. That’s an enticing alternative to Apple’s approval process, which can take months and is notoriously opaque: Some App Store developers have faced difficulty getting answers to simple questions from Apple about their apps.

It’s obvious what’s driving iPhone customers toward Cydia: Apple’s rejections and restrictions of major iPhone apps. Most notably, Apple recently banned apps supporting Google Voice, the search giant’s internet-based phone enhancement service that can provide cellphone users with free text messaging and transcribed voicemail.

Angry consumers and developers theorize that Apple banned the Google Voice apps so as not to detract business from its partner AT&T’s phone services. The incident has brewed so much controversy that even the Federal Communications Commission has gotten involved, sending letters to AT&T, Apple and Google inquiring about the reasons for the rejections.

“Looks like Apple and AT&T pissed off a lot of people,” Kovacs wrote in a July 28 blog post. “I’ll be releasing GV Mobile v1.2 on Cydia for free today or tomorrow.”

Another high-profile App Store regulation involves SlingPlayer, an app that enables iPhone users to stream video from a Slingbox device hooked up to a TV. When Sling originally submitted the app, it was capable of streaming over both Wi-Fi and the cellular 3G connection. However, Apple requested Sling to modify the app to work on Wi-Fi only. AT&T said this was a necessary move to prevent congestion on its 3G network.

That restriction spawned the most successful Cydia app to date, 3G Unrestrictor, developed by Streich. 3G Unrestrictor, a $2 app that has sold 9,500 copies, allows the iPhone to circumvent any network limitations imposed by Apple. For example, the app enables SlingPlayer users to stream TV over 3G as well as Wi-Fi; and when using the VOIP app Skype to place phone calls, customers can also use the cellular connection, whereas normally the app only enables users to dial over Wi-Fi.

“It’s just amazing what you can do on such a little cellphone, and Apple just forbids customers from doing these things, and it’s just a shame,” Streich said. “That’s why I’m so happy there’s a Cydia store.”

Another developer who reports positive experiences with Cydia is Jonathan Zdziarski, who said he has made more money through the unauthorized store than Apple’s App Store. In February, his app iWipe sold 694 copies in Cydia, compared to 91 copies of iErase in the App Store.

“I guess you could say the App Store is kind of like Wal-Mart, with more crap than you’d ever want to buy,” Zdziarski said. “And Cydia is like the general store that has everything you want and need, from fresh cuts of meat to those homemade cookies you can’t get anywhere else.”

Though some developers say they’re having better experiences selling apps through Cydia, it’s unlikely they will succeed on a longer term, said Rana Sobhany, vice president of Medialets, an iPhone app analytics company. She said the average consumer would prefer to purchase apps through a well trusted source such as Apple.

“There have been all these apps downloaded in the App Store because it’s easy for consumers to find, download and pay for apps,” Sobhany said. “This model is new because Apple has been training people how to download music to their iPods for years.”

However, even in the case of the App Store, developers who strike it rich still face challenges recreating their success, said Phillip Ryu, co-creator of the e-book reader Classics, which has sold over 400,000 copies to date.

“If you’re hoping to reach the mainstream, the best you can hope for is your app catches on fire and charts high enough for you to make a windfall,” Ryu said. “Essentially you aim for the jackpot, and if you don’t hit that, it’s not going to make you a living.”

Freeman said it was too soon to tell whether Cydia would provide developers stable incomes, but he recommends they give it a try, considering the successes some are experiencing. He admits, however, he isn’t making much money as the creator of Cydia: Like Apple, he takes 30 percent of each app sale to cover taxes.

“I don’t make much money off this project, but I value the community, and I look forward to how this changes the device landscape,” Freeman said.

See Also:

Photo: William Hook/Flickr

Hacker Says iPhone 3GS Encryption Is ‘Useless’ for Businesses

Sat, 08 Aug 2009 02:40:00 -0400

(Originally published 07/23/09 at Wired.com)

Updated 07/24/09, 9 a.m. PDT: Zdziarski taped videos demonstrating iPhone 3GS disk extraction, as well as removal of PIN and backup encryption passcodes. Both are embedded below the jump.

Apple claims that hundreds of thousands of iPhones are being used by corporations and government agencies. What it won’t tell you is that the supposedly enterprise-friendly encryption included with the iPhone 3GS is so weak it can be cracked in two minutes with a few pieces of readily available freeware.

“It is kind of like storing all your secret messages right next to the secret decoder ring,” said Jonathan Zdziarski, an iPhone developer and a hacker who teaches forensics courses on recovering data from iPhones. “I don’t think any of us [developers] have ever seen encryption implemented so poorly before, which is why it’s hard to describe why it’s such a big threat to security.”

With its easy-to-use interface and wealth of applications available for download, the iPhone may be the most attractive smartphone yet for business use. Many companies seem to agree: In Apple’s quarterly earnings conference call Tuesday, Apple chief operating officer Tim Cook said almost 20 percent of Fortune 100 companies have purchased 10,000 or more iPhones apiece; multiple corporations and government organizations have purchased 25,000 iPhones each; and the iPhone has been approved in more than 300 higher education institutions.

But contrary to Apple’s claim that the new iPhone 3GS is more enterprise friendly (for reference, see Apple’s security overview for iPhone in business [pdf]), the new iPhone 3GS’ encryption feature is “broken” when it comes to protecting sensitive information such as credit card numbers and social-security digits, Zdziarski said.

Zdziarski said it’s just as easy to access a user’s private information on an iPhone 3GS as it was on the previous generation iPhone 3G or first generation iPhone, both of which didn’t feature encryption. If a thief got his hands on an iPhone, a little bit of free software is all that’s needed to tap into all of the user’s content. Live data can be extracted in as little as two minutes, and an entire raw disk image can be made in about 45 minutes, Zdziarski said.

Wondering where the encryption comes into play? It doesn’t. Strangely, once one begins extracting data from an iPhone 3GS, the iPhone begins to decrypt the data on its own, he said.

To steal an iPhone’s disk image, hackers can use popular jailbreaking tools such as Red Sn0w and Purple Ra1n to install a custom kernel on the phone. Then, the thief can install a Secure Shell (SSH) client to port the iPhone’s raw disk image across SSH onto a computer.

To demonstrate the technique, Zdziarski established a screenshare with Wired.com, and he was able to tap into an iPhone 3GS’ data with a few easy steps. The encryption did not pose any hindrance.

Nonetheless, professionals using the iPhone for business don’t seem to care, or know, about the device’s encryption weakness.

“We’re seeing growing interest with the release of iPhone 3.0 and the iPhone 3GS due in part to the new hardware encryption and improved security policies,” Cook said during Apple’s earnings call. “The phone is particularly doing well with small businesses and large organizations.”

Clearly, the gigantic offering of iPhone applications is luring these business groups. Quickoffice Mobile, for example, enables users to access and edit Microsoft Word or Excel files on their iPhone. For handling transactions, merchants can use apps such as Accept Credit Cards to process a credit card on an iPhone anywhere with a Wi-Fi or cellular connection.

Several employees of Halton Company, an industrial equipment provider, are using iPhones for work, according to Lance Kidd, former chief information officer of the company. He said the large number of applications available for the iPhone make it worthy of risk-taking.

“Your organization has to be culturally ready to accept a certain degree of risk,” Kidd said. “I can say we’ve secured everything as tight as a button, but that won’t be true…. Our culture is such that our general manager is saying, ‘I’m willing to take the risk for the value of the applications.’”

Kidd noted that Halton employees are not using iPhones for holding confidential customer information, but rather for basic tasks such as e-mailing and engaging with clients via social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter. Halton also plans to code apps strictly for use at the company, Kidd said.

According to Kidd, a security expert performed an evaluation of Halton, and he said it was possible for any hacker to find an infiltration no matter the level of security. Therefore, Halton has measures in place to respond to an information security threat rather than attempt to avoid it.

“It’s like business continuity,” Kidd said. “You prepare for disasters. You prepare for if there’s an earthquake and the building breaks down, and you prepare for if there’s a crack in [information] security.”

But Zdziarski stands firm that the iPhone’s software versatility isn’t worth the risk for use in the workforce. He said sensitive information is bound to appear in e-mails or anything that can be contained on the iPhone’s disk, which can be easily extracted by thieves thanks to the new handset’s shoddy encryption.

Zdziarski said it’s up to the app developers to add an extra level of security to their apps because Apple’s encryption feature is so poor.

“If they’re relying on Apple’s security, then their application is going to be terribly insecure,” he said. “Apple may be technically correct that [the iPhone 3GS] has an encryption piece in it, but it’s entirely useless toward security.”

He added that the ability for the iPhone to self-erase itself remotely using Apple’s MobileMe service isn’t very helpful, either: Any reasonably intelligent criminal would remove the SIM card to prevent the remote-wipe command from coming through. (In a past Wired.com report, Zdziarski said the iPhone’s remote-wiping ability pales in comparison to Research In Motion’s BlackBerry, which can self-delete automatically after the phone has been inactive on the network for a preset amount of time.)

On top of that, the iPhone isn’t well protected in general usability, said John Casasanta, founder of iPhone development company Tap Tap Tap. He said though Apple’s approval process scans for malicious code, a developer could easily tweak the app to send a user’s personal data, such as his contacts list, over the network without his knowing.

“Apple can see if something is blatantly doing something malicious in the approval process, but it wouldn’t be very hard to do something behind the scenes,” Casasanta said.

Evidently, it isn’t difficult to sneak unauthorized content into the App Store. In May, Wired.com reported on an exploit demonstrated by the iPhone app Lyrics. Apple initially rejected the app because it contained profane words, and then Lyrics’ developer snuck the profanity into the app with a hidden Easter egg. Apple then approved the application.

Zdziarski added that there are other weaknesses with the iPhone: Pressing the Home button, and even zooming in on a screen, automatically creates a screenshot temporarily stored in the iPhone’s memory, which can be accessed later. And then there’s the keyboard cache: key strokes logged in a file on the phone, which can contain information such as credit card numbers or confidential messages typed in Safari. Cached keyboard text can be recovered from a device dating back a year or more, Zdziarski said.

Though Apple has declined to comment on iPhone security issues, the company has more or less admitted iPhones are vulnerable to security threats, because an emergency measure exists. In August 2008, Apple CEO Steve Jobs acknowledged the existence of a remote kill switch for iPhone apps, meaning if a malicious app made its way onto iPhones, Apple could trigger a command to delete the app from users’ devices. There is no evidence that the kill switch has ever been used.

So, what kind of business should you do with an iPhone if the device is not very secure? Zdziarski said there are some business-savvy apps that have managed to integrate better security (such as secure data fields to prevent key-stroke logging of credit card numbers, for example), but he warned companies to be cautious about investing too much trust in the iPhone and the apps available for it.

“We’re going to have to go with the old imperative of ‘Trust no one,’” he said. “And unfortunately part of that is, don’t trust Apple.”

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Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

Why 2010 Will Be the Year of the Tablet

Sat, 08 Aug 2009 02:36:00 -0400

(Originally published 08/03/09 at Wired.com)

After years of enticing rumors, ambitious prognostications and flat-out blather, 2010 may finally be the year that the tablet PC evolves from being a niche device to becoming a mainstream portable computer.

The tipping point comes via word to Wired.com from a well-connected industry executive that mainstream heavyweights Dell and Intel are collaborating on a touchscreen tablet due for release next year. Though our source has learned little about specifications of the device, what’s apparent is that the tablet will serve as a subscription-based e-reader for displaying newspapers, magazines and other media, giving Amazon’s Kindle — particularly, the nearly $500 large-format DX model — a run for its money.

As notable as the format is the business model: The tablet will be free for consumers who opt into a contract subscribing to one or more digital media subscriptions, according to our source. That’s similar to how telecom companies currently subsidize cellphones when customers agree to two-year contracts.

Our source, who requested to remain anonymous due to a non-disclosure agreement, said the companies are aiming to launch this product in about six months.

Dell and Intel are just the latest examples of a growing trend. MKM Partners analyst Tero Kuittinen said he, too, has heard rumors about not just Dell, but also handset makers Nokia and HTC delivering tablets by end of first quarter 2010. Nearly everyone has now confidently reported that Apple is launching a tablet by early next year. Singapore start-up Fusion Garage and TechCrunch are rushing to release the CrunchPad touchscreen tablet by this November.

Market research firm Display Search now projects the touchscreen market will triple in the next few years, from $3.6 billion to $9 billion.

“The iPhone was a big catalyst for the whole touchscreen industry, even if it’s just from a 3.5-inch mobile phone,” said Jennifer Halgrove, an analyst and director of display technologies with Display Search. “It encouraged people’s imaginations, and now companies are saying, ‘Oh, I can make a bigger one, and I can also have this user friendly interface.’ That really opened this industry.”

The idea of the tablet computer is nothing new to the tech industry. The development of tablet PCs can be traced as far back as 1888, when the United States Patent office granted a patent to electrical engineer Elisha Gray for an electrical-stylus device for capturing handwriting. In more recent years, plenty of hardware companies, such as Hewlett-Packard and Acer, have presented tablets that have only succeeded to fulfill a niche. Controlled with a stylus on a touch-sensitive “digitizer” screen, tablet PCs have traditionally been tailored toward artists and designers, failing to break into the mainstream.

But in recent years, costs of touchscreen components and software have been declining, and new types of touchscreens are emerging in the display market, Colegrove said. After stylus-controlled digitizer touchscreens came resistive touchscreens, which were very cheap to produce but suffered from low durability and poor transmittance. Then, a newer technology called capacitive touch became available, in which electrodes sense a user’s fingers on the X and Y axes, negating the need for a stylus.

In 2007, Apple featured capacitive touch technology (which it marketed with the more friendly term “multitouch”) in its iPhone and iPod Touch, which have sold 40 million units worldwide to date. Clearly, there is a mainstream audience for these keyboard-less computers, and Apple opened the doors with a superior user interface.

“The touch-based user interface is something we got from the handset market,” Kuittinen said. “And now that you have this innovation, it’s easier to go back to the tablet concept, and say, ‘Wait a minute, let’s add this.’ All of a sudden the device is a lot more appealing and sexier, especially since you have multitouch.”

A $0.00, media-centric tablet from Dell and Intel would certainly be competitive against Amazon’s Kindle in terms of price. Who would buy an Amazon Kindle reader if a free tablet were made available? The Kindle 2 costs $300, and the large-format Kindle DX runs for $490 — and even after purchasing a Kindle, consumers must still pay for content.

At Amazon’s Kindle DX launch event in May, The New York Times teased the idea of subsidizing longer term subscription commitments, but only in areas where “home delivery is not available.” Still, no such subsidy model has yet come into fruition for Amazon’s Kindles.

The idea of opting into a contract might initially sound like a turn-off, but Kuittinen told Wired.com that for cellphones, carrier-subsidy has been an extremely successful method to reel in customers. He said he would expect similar results with a subsidized tablet.

Kuittinen added that he has heard the Dell tablet would measure 5 inches — slightly larger than an iPhone but smaller than a Kindle. However, he said he is skeptical about Intel’s involvement with the product. Given the nature of the company, Intel would provide the guts of the device — perhaps a low-powered processor such as the Atom, which is currently used in netbooks. Kuittinen said this processor is not adequately energy-efficient to power a tablet PC compared to the ARM-based chips used in iPhones and devices running Google Android.

“There’s really no other viable alternative,” he said. “Android has such a strong moment right now. It’s going to be so much easier to develop for it.”

The low cost of Intel’s Atom chips would help keep the a rumored device’s overall price down in order to make subsidy not too hefty for content providers involved. But the software would be the key ingredient to drive the success for this device, and an Intel-based machine would either have to run a Windows or Linux-based operating system.

A tablet produced by Dell and Intel would most likely run a mobile version of Windows 7. In presentations marketing Windows 7, Microsoft has been heavily promoting the upcoming operating system’s support for multitouch. Windows 7 is slated for an October 2009 release.

The challenge for Dell and Intel is unlikely to be the creation of the product, but rather cementing negotiations with content partners. The companies will find it difficult convincing large newspaper companies to convert from being an advertisement-based business to a fee-based business. However, they might be more open to the idea if Dell and Intel keep their tablet at a low cost.

Intel and Dell declined to comment on this story.

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A MacBook modified into a tablet: Jim Merithew/Wired.com

Netbooks Mutate to Meet Market Challenges

Sat, 11 Jul 2009 22:30:35 -0400

(Originally published 06/16/09 at Wired.com)

The word netbook may soon vanish into irrelevance, but the products that resulted from the category are not going away any time soon. Indeed, they’re on the verge of injecting their DNA into a broad swath of the PC market.

Despite their shipments slowing down in the first quarter of 2009, inexpensive and low-powered netbooks are poised for rapid growth as their feature sets continue to mature. Research company International Data Corporation forecasts that the netbook market will more than double by the end of 2009.

“The mini notebook is doing what the notebook did,” said Richard Shim, an analyst with IDC. “It went from a very targeted niche into something that appeals to a greater audience with specialized configurations…. The industry gradually changed and moved away from ‘performance is king,’ and now they want a more personalized experience. Now, customization is king.”

Netbooks — 8- to 10-inch notebooks that typically cost between $200 and $500 — saw a boom in 2008 when manufacturers shipped 11.6 million units worldwide. Last year, netbooks were considered some of the hottest gadgets in the tech industry, with several major manufacturers including Toshiba, Dell, HP and Samsung rolling out offerings in this device category. Some analysts say the poor condition of the economy was the primary factor driving the success of netbooks.

However, netbook sales have already slowed down in 2009, and shipments are falling below manufacturers’ expectations. Taiwanese manufacturer Asus, for example, expected to ship 1 million netbooks in the first quarter of 2009, according to a report in DigiTimes. But IDC’s tracking indicates Asus shipped only 700,000 units that quarter.

Shim noted, however, that first-quarter numbers are generally low compared to the rest of the year for any tech manufacturer; most sales come from the holiday and back-to-school seasons. Also, companies are beginning to shift focus onto a category called “consumer ultralow-voltage notebooks” — notebooks with 12- or 13-inch screens containing the same low-powered, inexpensive guts as netbooks. These devices compensate for some of the shortcomings of netbooks — cramped keyboards and small screens — while offering impressive battery life and a light weight of about 3 pounds for a modest price range of $500 to $700. (See our review of Samsung’s $550, $12-inch NC20 notebook as an example.)

If CULV notebooks are considered in the same device category as netbooks, then the netbook category is on track for massive growth. Shim clarified IDC’s definition of a mini notebook: 7- to 12-inch notebooks powered by an Intel Atom processor, capable of running a full operating system such as Windows XP. IDC forecasts manufacturers will ship 26.5 million “mini notebooks” by the end of 2009, or more than double the 11.6 million units shipped in 2008. The mini notebook category has claimed roughly 17 percent of the worldwide notebook market, and IDC expects this number to remain consistent over the next few years.

Michael Gartenberg, a technology strategist at Interpret, has high expectations of these new notebooks. He explained that the more netbooks’ capabilities increase, the more people will buy them. And bigger screens and full-size keyboards definitely add to capability, he said. The notebook space will get very interesting once CULV notebooks drop to $300 or $400, Gartenberg added.

One could say the netbook is “failing” if one doesn’t consider a CULV notebook to be a netbook — but it’s purely semantics at that point. The least that everyone can agree on is that CULV notebooks evolved from netbooks.

“We may just be beginning to see the end of the pure ‘netbook’ era, as vendors start bringing devices to market with 12-inch screens, full-size keyboards and larger hard drives,” Gartenberg said. “The concept of the netbook is beginning to vanish as a thing itself. By the end of the year it’s just going to be called a cheap PC.”

At the recent All Things Digital tech conference, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer called netbooks “revolutionary” devices. But perhaps they would be more accurately described as evolutionary.

In addition to CULV notebooks, netbooks are inspiring other product types as well, said Brad Linder, owner of Liliputing, a blog devoted to compact notebooks. For example, some manufacturers are experimenting with the concept of the “smartbook”: netbook-like devices that run smartphone operating systems such as Android. Given the little power required to run a smartphone OS, the smartbook concept could lead to even thinner notebooks than the ones we see today, as well as incredibly long battery life.

“Netbooks will probably stop being called netbooks at some point: The lines [between netbooks and notebooks] are becoming less distinct as the days go by, and there’s going to be a continuum, “Linder said. “What really happened in the last year or so is [manufacturers] delivered good-enough computing at low cost. And It’s what a lot of people have been waiting for.”

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Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

Want to Fool Apple’s App Store? Plant an Easter Egg

Sat, 11 Jul 2009 22:28:53 -0400

(Originally published 05/19/09 at Wired.com)

Despite Apple’s reputation for being a notorious gatekeeper with its iPhone App Store, there’s a way to sneak in content such as porn, profanity or potentially malicious code, with no hacking required: Easter eggs.

Apple initially rejected Jelle Prins’ iPhone app Lyrics, which displays lyrics for the songs in your music library, including the profanity contained in some song lyrics. Apple cited that fact as the reason for turning Prins down. So Prins installed a profanity filter and Lyrics got approved.

But he also secretly planted an Easter egg (programmer parlance for a secret feature) into the app for users to unlock the dirty words if they so pleased. All users have to do to unlock the filth is go to the About page, swipe downward three times and select the option to turn off the filter.

“It’s almost impossible for Apple to see if there’s an Easter egg because they can’t really see the source code,” Prins said. “In theory a developer could make a simple Easter egg in their app and provide a user with whatever content they want.”

The Lyrics app’s Easter egg points out the inconsistency and incompleteness of Apple’s approval process. When Steve Jobs introduced the App Store on June 9, 2008, he laid out a simple set of rules: No porn or malicious apps that invade your privacy. But Apple has kept the details of its approval process shrouded in secrecy, and as a result, little is known about how it works.

Apple declined to comment on this story.

Many iPhone developers do, however, agree on one thing: Apple’s approval policy is inconsistent. Here’s an example: The novelty fart app Pull My Finger was initially rejected from the App Store, and then later approved, but the game Baby Shaker, which involved shaking a baby to death, was initially approved before it was pulled down amid parental outrage.

Part of the problem may be that Apple lacks the manpower to review every app carefully, which is not surprising. The App Store has published 46,000 apps since it opened in July 2008, according to iPhone analytics company Medialets.

According to Prins, his server logs show that a single Apple employee tested his app prior to its approval. (His application works in conjunction with an online database, which logs activity from the app.) All Apple did during that testing, Prins says, was perform a search on profane words, which went undetected thanks to the Easter egg, and to check if the app worked when connected to the internet. A few days later, Lyrics appeared in the App Store, Prins said.

Prins said it would be technically possible for Apple to discover a hidden Easter egg, but it would require intense inspection and perhaps asking developers to hand over their source code, which Apple doesn’t currently do.

Secret features could adversely affect the iPhone and iPod Touch platform, says Nullriver CEO Adam Dann.

“If people start putting in naked pictures of their ex-girlfriend as an Easter egg to get revenge, or something like that, that isn’t quite right,” Dann said. “It has the potential to really mess things up for everybody.”

Dann has had his own run-in with App Store inconsistency: He developed the iPhone tethering app NetShare, which was approved and then banned after Apple discovered the app violated AT&T’s terms of service.

Speaking on security matters, Jonathan Zdziarski, author of the book iPhone Forensics: Recovering Evidence, Personal Data, and Corporate Assets, said the iPhone’s API is mostly secure and that it would be difficult to harm a user through an Easter egg unknown to Apple. He noted, however, a few areas where users’ privacy could be violated: audio, the camera and the address book.

For example, an audio app with a malicious Easter egg, Zdziarski explained, could potentially allow a developer to record a user’s conversations without him or her knowing about it. And a harmful photo app could snap photos with your camera even when a user is not pressing the shutter button. Third, a malicious app could steal your address book contacts.

“It’s not impossible to write code that looks innocent and acts innocent until you throw some kind of switch,” Zdziarski said. “It’s not hard to get that sort of thing past Apple…. It’s the equivalent of a doctor using a magnifying glass to try and find germs.”

However, Zdziarski said just because an application is approved doesn’t mean Apple won’t revisit it and pull it down later. That means a developer might only get away with shenanigans or harmful activities temporarily, only to be caught and banned by Apple later.

Prins said he was aware this was a possibility, and that if Apple pulled down Lyrics, he would install a better profanity filter.

Until then, Lyrics has slipped in a quiet “Screw you” to Apple’s App Store gatekeepers — albeit one mumbled behind their backs.

Update: Lyrics is no longer in the App Store. The developer removed the app temporarily because of licensing issues.

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Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

How Apple, AT&T Are Closing the Mobile Web

Sat, 11 Jul 2009 22:08:58 -0400

(Originally published 06/22/09 at Wired.com)

A growing chorus claims that Apple’s questionable approval policy for its iPhone application store raises issues with net neutrality.

Free Press, a group that advocates the idea of an open internet — that is, one in which consumers have the right to browse the web and run internet applications without restrictions — is the latest of several organizations to call out Apple for its inconsistencies. Free Press alleges that Apple crippled SlingPlayer, a TV-streaming application for iPhone, so that it would only work on a Wi-Fi connection; the initial version worked with a 3G cellular network connection as well as Wi-Fi. The SlingPlayer restriction is inconsistent with Apple’s approval of the Major League Baseball application, which provides live-streaming of sports events on both Wi-Fi and 3G connections, the group said.

“That strikes us as odd and potentially nefarious because it really represents a carrier picking and choosing applications for consumers as opposed to letting consumers decide which videos they want to watch,” said Ben Scott, policy director of Free Press. “It’s exactly the sort of thing you’d expect in an internet experience that’s controlled by the carrier.”

Now nearly a year old, Apple’s App Store has received as much praise as it has criticism. Featuring more than 50,000 applications, the App Store has made some programmers quite wealthy with sales of their apps while leaving others penniless when their software met the harsh fate of rejection. Apple has said that iPhone and iPod Touch users have downloaded more than 1 billion apps from the store since it opened in July 2008.

IPhone application developer Ben Kahle also feels that Apple is overreaching in its role as a gatekeeper to the mobile internet. In May, Apple rejected Kahle’s app “Me So Holy,” which would have enabled users to fashion their faces into portraits resembling Jesus Christ. Apple said the app contains “objectionable material,” and when Kahle asked if he could modify the app to gain approval, Apple said it would never appear in the App Store under any condition.

Why? Apple said it has a “worldwide market” and must “protect the sensitivity of the customers,” according to Kahle.

“It’s definitely hypocritical,” Kahle said of 3G-capable live-streaming for MLB in relation to SlingPlayer, which is Wi-Fi only. “There needs to be a better system for people to choose the type of content they can download.”

Free Press’ beef has to do with the apparently arbitrary nature of Apple’s choices. In May, SlingMedia told Wired.com it had to modify the SlingPlayer application to work only with Wi-Fi in order to gain Apple’s approval. Apple made that request on behalf of AT&T, whose terms of service states television signals may not be viewed on an device whose internet is provided by AT&T:

downloading movies using P2P file sharing services, redirecting television signals for viewing on Personal Computers, web broadcasting, and/or for the operation of servers, telemetry devices and/or Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition devices is prohibited.

An AT&T spokesman explained that a 3G-capable SlingPlayer could potentially strain AT&T’s 3G network. However, Major League Baseball’s streaming video, which provides the same game coverage that you can find on TV broadcasts, can also be considered live television. Thus, the MLB iPhone app also violates AT&T’s terms of service, Scott said.

“If you’re going to allow video to stream on the 3G network, you can’t pick and choose which video services operate,” Scott said. “You have to let them all operate, otherwise that’s not the internet.”

In response to Free Press’ allegations, AT&T said the MLB app streams video from MLB’s website, while SlingPlayer streams from the TV set-top box Slingbox. AT&T also said the company is only trying to ensure all users on its network get the best possible service.

“We’re certainly not crippling any apps,” an AT&T spokesman said. “This is an issue of fairness…. While we would like to support all video services across our network, the reality is that wireless networks simply lack the capacity to support customers streaming hours of cable, satellite or IPTV video programming to individual users.”

AT&T added that an app such as SlingPlayer would create congestion, allowing Sling users to use “more than their fair share” of available network capacity. AT&T added that later this year it will begin upgrading its 3G networks to High Speed Packet Access 7.2 Mbps, which will theoretically double peak speeds of the current network from 3.6 megabits per second to 7.2 Mbps.

However, Ken Biba, founder of wireless consulting firm Novarum, said the rejection of SlingPlayer is clear evidence that AT&T’s network is overloaded, and the problem is likely going to get worse.

“I interpret AT&T’s actions as less about being closed and more about having not enough network capacity,” said Biba, noting that the new iPhone 3GS introduces video recording and uploading — which will clog the network even more.

Biba added that even when carriers roll out the fourth-generation Long Term Evolution cellular network, AT&T’s network capacity will still be insufficient because by then, smartphones will be even more sophisticated and affordable, creating even more congestion.

Shortly after the 2008 launch of the iPhone 3G, Sam Greenholtz, founder of Telecom Pragmatics, told Wired.com that AT&T and Apple were not prepared to service the tremendous growth in iPhone users. Greenholtz stressed that data traffic is the main cause of spotty reception, especially in major metropolitan areas where 3G is being used the most. When a 3G tower gets overloaded with requests it dumps data packets; some users’ phones get no signal at all while others’ default to the slower EDGE network on a less overloaded cell tower.

“AT&T may have had 10,000 users in downtown, and the cell site may have been engineered to handle that many calls, but with this phenomenal buying there are now 20,000 people out there that have AT&T service on the 3G iPhone,” Greenholtz said in 2008.

Free Press’ suggestion to Apple and AT&T for video-streaming applications? Either ban anything that provides live streaming, or approve them all under the condition that developers install code to temporarily disable live-streaming whenever the network doesn’t have the capacity to handle it.

Biba said an even better solution would be if more cities deployed free Wi-Fi coverage to offload the stress from carrier networks.

What should AT&T, Apple and other carriers should do? Add your thoughts in the comments below.

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Photo: MagnusK/Flickr

Child Porn Is Apple’s Latest iPhone Headache

Sat, 11 Jul 2009 22:03:00 -0400

A photo ostensibly showing a 15-year-old nude girl has turned up in an iPhone app, highlighting Apple’s inability to safeguard its application store from prohibited content.

The image appears in the free app BeautyMeter, which enables people to upload photos that are then rated by others, who assign a star-rating to members’ body parts and clothing. It’s much like an iPhone version of Hot or Not and many similar sites.

On Thursday, Apple pulled the app from the iTunes store.

The photo to the right (censored by Wired.com) depicts a photo of a nude girl snapping a photo of her reflection in a mirror. In the screenshot, the girl, who is listed as a 15-year-old from the United States, is topless and partially nude at the bottom. Nearly 5,000 users of the app have rated the photo. iPhone app review site Krapps discovered the photo.

The appearance of nudity in BeautyMeter underscored Apple’s difficulties regulating content in its App Store, which has surpassed 50,000 pieces of software available for download. For example, last week, Wired.com reported on an app called Hottest Girls, which released an update for its app to include topless photos of women. Apple pulled the app hours later, saying porn is not allowed.

“Apple will not distribute applications that contain inappropriate content, such as pornography,” an Apple spokesman said regarding Hottest Girls on June 25. “The developer of this application added inappropriate content directly from their server after the application had been approved and distributed, and after the developer had subsequently been asked to remove some offensive content. This was a direct violation of the terms of the iPhone Developer Program. The application is no longer available on the App Store.”

Apple made no similar announcement regarding BeautyMeter. It simply disappeared from the App Store. But in theory people who already had the app can continue to use it, including the upload and rating functionality.

On its web site, BeautyMeter’s developer Funnymals says members of BeautyMeter are required to provide their iPhone device ID so illegal content can be traced back to the owner of that phone.

“We don’t review each uploaded photo exclusively but from time to time we will clean up,” Funnymals stated in BeautyMeter’s terms and conditions.

As of 1:30 p.m. PDT Wednesday the image of the purported 15-year-old was still in the app.

Funnymals and Apple did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Wired.com has not confirmed the photographed girl’s identity or her age.

Although U.S. federal and state laws prohibit child pornography, Funnymals and Apple will probably not be held liable for the content because they would be protected by the Communications Decency Act, according to Mark Rasch, a lawyer and founder of computer security consulting firm Secure IT Experts. That’s because when Apple approved the app, it did not contain the prohibited content. Instead, the app downloads images off the internet, thus placing the responsibility on the people who use the app.

However, Rasch said he expects Apple to remove the application, or the developer to remove the content, once made aware of it.

“They probably don’t have liability unless they have actual knowledge, in which case they have at least a legal or moral duty to act,” Rasch said.

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From iLightswitch to iBurrito, Stanford Students Concoct iPhone Apps

Wed, 13 May 2009 23:56:42 -0400

(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

Marathon Runners Tweet Their Way to the Finish Line

Wed, 13 May 2009 23:53:00 -0400

(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

Wed, 13 May 2009 23:50:00 -0400

(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

Apple Aggressively Pursues 'Pod' Trademarks

Sun, 19 Apr 2009 16:50:00 -0400

(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

Sun, 19 Apr 2009 13:40:00 -0400

(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

Sun, 19 Apr 2009 13:38:27 -0400

(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

MacHeist's League of Extraordinary Dropouts Reinvents Software Sales

Wed, 08 Apr 2009 14:59:49 -0400

(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

The Funniest E-mail I've Ever Received

Sat, 04 Apr 2009 01:55:47 -0400

From Brian Chen
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