On Friday, June 20th, iLounge and Bowers & Wilkins announced the Quest for the Best iPhone App Contest.

There are three categories your can place in, each winning a B&W Zeppelin Speaker System

• Best Game


• Best Business/Pro App


• Best Just Plain Cool App

For more details on how to enter visit the Quest for the Best iPhone App Contest web site.

The Quest for the Best iPhone App begins on June 20, 2008 and ends on July 23, 2008 at 11:59PM Pacific Time.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs kicked off Apple's WWDC Keynote highlighting 147 sessions on developing for Apple products, 62 of those sessions on the iPhone, with 169 hands-on labs. After announcing over 250,000 developers downloading the free SDK and 25,000 purchasing the developers license, Jobs went into the iPhone 2.0 features.

• Enterprise


• SDK


• New End-User Features

iPhone 2.0 Enterprise

The iPhone isn't just for Mac businesses anymore, The iPhone can now integrate with Enterprise applications, ie. Microsoft Outlook and iCal, as well as "push" technology, which can easily be described as synchronization to multiple devices allowing users to synchronize their email, contacts, calendar, etc. With increased security and implementation of the push technology, the iPhone can now be used as a secure and viable Enterprise solution.

iPhone 2.0 SDK

Scott Forstall discussed allowing developers to build iPhone applications the same way that Apple does, using the same kernel as Mac OS X and Core Services layer, development couldn't be any easier. If you're already developing applications for the Mac the iPhone won't be much different.

Included in the SDK now is XCode, Interface Builder, iPhone Simulator, Tethered Debugging, and Instruments. With so much power in this SDK, iPhone applications should blow iPhone users out of the water.

Be sure to check out Apple's WWDC Keynote for Scott Forstall's demonstration of these iPhone SDK tools as well as some of the amazing demonstrations from other development companies.

iPhone 2.0 New End-User Features

Some of the new features included in the iPhone 2.0 update are Parental Controls and 16 new languages including Japanese and Chinese.

iPhone 2.0 Software Update - Early July

As the Keynote went on Jobs mentioned the iPhone App Store and MobileMe.

What really got us excited here at iPhoneMinds was the announcement of the 3G iPhone, which can only be purchased and activated in stores July 11th. The 8GB 3G iPhone will cost you 199.99 while the 16GB 3G iPhone will cost you 299.99, the new iPhones also include GPS.

Tell us what you thought of Apple's 2008 Keynote at WWDC. ask[at]iphoneminds.com

// Jay, aka W3prodigy

Digg 2008 WWDC Apple Keynote Highlights on iPhoneMinds

Labels: 3g iphone, apple, apple keynote, iphone, iphone development, iphone enterprise, iphone features, iphone sdk, wwdc

Thanks to Jay and the iPhone team for their support on this interview/feature in BtoB Magazine!



Originally published in BtoB Magazine.

By Amy Syracuse
Story posted: May 27, 2008 - 11:48 am EDT

Ask an iPhone user what the device means to him or her and you'll likely hear that its advanced capabilities and user-friendly interface have been nothing less than life-changing.

Such statements might sound like hyperbole-the ravings of an ardent group of Apple-eyed gadget geeks. But recent studies indicate there is truth behind them. The iPhone is changing lives, at least where mobile Web use is involved.

A survey of 50,000 U.S. households conducted by iSuppli Corp. in the fourth quarter of 2007 found that iPhone users spent just 46.5% of their time on the device making calls, compared to 71.7% for the typical cell phone user. The rest of the time, they were reading and sending e-mail, browsing the Web and checking out Google Maps, among other tasks.

As these consumers' behaviors change so, too, must those of marketers. Realizing this, more companies are testing campaigns targeting iPhone users to determine whether the way to their hearts is the $400-plus device they're carrying in their pocket.

One example is Payless Car Rental, which this month unveiled an iPhone-optimized Web site that helps consumers research and reserve rental cars with minimal typing and clicking. The site focuses on the functions that most interest mobile users, with buttons for "Reserve a Car," "View, Modify, or Cancel Reservation" and "Locations." It also has a "Call to Book" button that connects directly to a call center.

According to Justin Talerico, CEO of ion interactive, a company that offers iPhone-optimized landing pages and other post-click marketing services, optimization should improve consumers' interactions with marketing messages. And even though the iPhone was designed for easy browsing of the Web in its traditional format, there is room for improvement.

"[iPhone users] come to the table in a more ... purposeful state of mind," Talerico said. "In a way, they're easier to convert. But you make them harder to convert if you give them an experience that's subpar."

Companies can deliver more satisfactory iPhone browsing experiences by simplifying landing page messaging, developing pages that load quickly over lower bandwidth connections, using fonts that are readable on a 3.5-inch screen and eliminating the need to scroll, regardless of whether the device is in portrait or landscape mode, Talerico said.

Jeff Lin, project leader of Payless Car Rental's Web marketing strategy team, believes optimization paid off for Payless. "The number of iPhone ... visitors and bookings has increased many fold since the launch of the interface," he said. The press that accompanied the debuth has also helped with branding, Lin added.

Payless drives traffic to its iPhone site through RSS feeds, publicity and links on www.apple.com and www.paylesscarrental.com. Other companies have used online advertising to connect iPhone users with optimized content, said Jason Spero, VP-marketing for mobile advertising network AdMob.

In April, AdMob client Land Rover Group made online advertising purchases targeted to iPhone users. When they clicked, consumers reached landing pages where they could watch video, view pictures, access a store locater and click-to-call for a test drive.

Companies can target advertising buys within AdMob's network according to device manufacturers and models, country or region, demographic groups and other factors. Spero called Land Rover's work "highly successful" and said iPhone users are only becoming more active. "We have seen traffic to iPhones and iTouch devices grow rapidly in the last year," he noted.

As much as the iPhone has already altered mobile Web usage, Tara Lamberson, VP-marketing and strategy for marketing agency MindComet Corp., believes more "life-changing" developments are on the horizon.

The June release of Apple's Software Development Kit means select external developers and enterprise customers will be able to create custom widgets, games and even software platforms for the device. Marketers can use branded versions of such applications to boost brand awareness or deliver a call to action, said Lamberson.

In the long term, Lamberson thinks truly advanced mobile marketing capabilities-things like geo-targeting based on a user's GPS coordinates-aren't unrealistic. But with such opportunity comes tremendous responsibility.

"Direct marketing on the iPhone should be permission-based," she said. But for those consumers who wish to receive iPhone marketing, "companies can be more relevant just by using those devices."

Another great question comes in today from an anonymous "M$ .NET developer",

Hi,

Please forgive my ignorance, but can you tell me which languages you can develop iPhone applications in? From looking around it seems you need to install xCode 3.1 on OS 10 (10.5?) by installing the iPhone SDK and then write code in Objective C. But can you code in other languages, like C#?

Also, what language are the code snippets on you site in?

There's no need for apologies, we're all learning here! This is a great question. You are correct in your assumption. The first step toward iPhone development bliss is installing the latest beta of the iPhone SDK (you'll need a free Apple Developer Connection account to download). Unfortunately, you will only be able to install the SDK on the latest version of OS X (10.5.2 at the time of this writing). The iPhone SDK is not supported on Tiger or any previous versions of Leopard. Once you have it downloaded, install it like you would any other .dmg file and you're off!

The only language you can use to write code for the iPhone currently is Objective-C. Now, there have been some open-source efforts made to bridge Objective-C with other languages (PyObjC comes to mind), but as far as being able to directly develop for iPhone with another language within Xcode (whew, that was a mouthful!), sorry Charlie.

For the code snippets, I believe you are referring to the web applications, correct? The backend code used is PHP and the effects are the result of some crafty Javascript. For the slide effects, we've utilized the IUI on several occasions, the wonderful YUI, and have also taken from the jQuery library. Also, have a look at a nice little list of frameworks that we have previously written about.

Keep those questions coming in! Until next time, stay classy iPhone-diego!

// Albert

Labels: iphone development, objective-c

We received a comment on Basic AJAX Scroll Animation w/ YUI from Joel saying,

These javascript libraries will equal more than 80K. For an iPhone that's just way too much. Especially if it's EDGE.

Any other suggestions for slide?

I agree Joel, you have an excellent point, an iPhone loading a web page on EDGE is much slower than on 3G or WiFi. While I don't have any other suggestions for a slide technique, as a developer I do my best to keep the load times to a minimum, and in all reality the user should only have to load your site once. After the initial load, no more data should be transmitted.

Let's keep this simple; an iPhone application should be "small, lightweight, and portable." Sound familiar? Yeah, that's exactly how Apple describes the iPhone. So we're not stretching far away from the overall goal of the iPhone. "At the touch of a finger." I believe was one of the many slogans used during the initial iPhone ramp-up. We should develop our web applications with the same intent.

While normally loading these AJAX libraries on mobile devices is tedious and increases the load time, I personally have no problem loading YUI libraries on our development iPhone. The way I see it, users of the iPhone expect a slight delay when loading a web page, much like I expected it on my old SideKick. However, when developing these iPhone applications, if you load all your content, whether visible or not to the user, then make AJAX animation calls to bring the content to the iPhone's screen when needed, the overall user model will not take a hit and it will be an experience of the lifetime.

To summarize:

• Keep AJAX Libraries to a minimum.


• Limit the number of pages to load.


• Define a user model that relates to the user.

iPhone web applications rely on solid user models. Build a good one, and you won't have any issues with my methods.

// Jay, aka W3prodigy

With the iPhone SDK out, and iPhone applications moving away from the web, I never thought I'd post here again. Lucky for you, we received an awesome question from Dan in the UK about Animation on the iPhone. Yay Dan!

Hey iPhonemind.com guys,

I was wondering if you could help me with a quick question I have pondering about in my mind relating to the wonderful invention called iPhone. I'm a multimedia student at Stafford College in the UK and having learnt the "designer" side of computing fancied turning to the dark side and have a go at programming. I've done bits of programming here and there before and know Action-script pretty well etc, but since the iPhone currently doesn't support flash yet here is where my question lies.
I want to create an interactive application where the user taps the screen and random squiggles or images will pop up to create a sort of abstract image animation, I've been looking on Apple's Developer website and had a look through most content on their but to no avail I'm still not sure on what the right sort of API's or frameworks to use. The UIKit would be a major player in the making of it but I'm not sure what else to read up on, just hoping someone out there might be able to point out roughly what I should be looking for?
The application is going to include shapes, colours, images, video maybe, sound hopefully, vector graphics and maybe a bit of text, the whole thing is going to be totally random for a college project and have no real purpose other than being one of them cool things you show your mates.

Your website is great by the way, loads of useful tips and tricks that I will be having a tinker with after I've figured all this out.

Many Thanks,

Dan

Well Dan, That's an excellent question! Since we'll never truly know when Flash will become available on the iPhone, I'm very glad you asked. We've all seen ways to animate a web page through the use of AJAX [cough]dhtml[/cough], including my post on creating a Basic AJAX Scroll Animation w/ YUI that was featured on the YUI developers blog.

As of right now, AJAX is the way to go for animation on the web. Here's a few of my favorites...

• Yahoo! UI Library: Animation - A little more advanced, but one of my favorites.


• Script.Aculo.Us - Simple to implement, a little more restricted.


• jQuery - Takes time to learn, but definitely worth the effort.


• MooTools - This one seems to be a popular one, maybe not the best for the iPhone, but definitely fun to work with.

What I suggest is that you sketch out your idea, step by step, then determine from the libraries listed above which would work best for you. JavaScript is relatively simple, and with your ActionScript experience it should be a quick run-through for you. Try to stick to one library to reduce load times. While the iPhone is an amazing device, the technology it runs on (EDGE) isn't completely up to speed for large applications.

I hope this helps you out Dan, I look forward to answering more questions like this. If you have a question about iPhone development, hit us up at ask [at] iphoneminds.com.

// Jay, aka W3prodigy

Labels: actionscript, ajax, animation, flash, iphone development, uikit, yui

All I can say is "holy shnikes!" If you missed yesterday's presentation, head over to Apple's site and watch the QuickTime stream. Especially if you're interested in iPhone game development. Check out the demos! The iPhone appears to be more impressive of a platform that I had originally thought.

Apple revealed two things of importance to developers both big and small. First, despite earlier skeptisism over the immediate availability of the SDK... here it is, complete with a visual interface builder and snazzy iPhone emulation (for testing). Very cool. Second, they've already announced a distribution model that equals money for all developers. Even the lonely one's working from their basement (that's not a stab at you, that's a stab at me).

I won't get into much of the details because Apple's iPhone Dev Center has absolutely everything you could possibly need. But I do want to comment on the revenue model since, from what I can gather, that's the only piece that some have reservations about.

All apps will be sold through the iPhone's App Store. You set the price. Apple takes 30 percent. Is Apple's commission too great? That's what's up for debate. But let's look at this objectively. Apple is handling all credit card charges and hosting fees. Additionally, they're making it simple for developers to update their apps through software updates. Since each developer can name their own price, I personally don't see much wrong with this model and I'm more than happy to throw the burden of money transactions at Apple. Let me concentrate on developing, then cut me a check once a month. This all sounds good to me. But what do you think?

Before I wrap today's post I figured I'd "touch" upon a comment we received yesterday.

Do you think having a native SDK will reduce the number of iPhone web apps currently being developed?

jeffrey.t.lynch

My response was: "Not initially, since any app developed with the SDK will not publicly be distributed until June. Even after the mobile App Store is launched I find it hard to believe that Web Apps will become obsolete. After all, development for the SDK requires knowledge of a much more complex programming language (compared to HTML/CSS/Javascript) and developers will need to pay $99 in order to distribute their SDK-developed wares. I expect all of the bigger named properties and developers to move strictly to SDK development, but I still think there will be plenty of Web based apps for all."

Yesterday I quickly mentioned that Cocoa development requires knowledge of Objective-C. The same holds true for Cocoa Touch (the programming interface for the iPhone and iPod Touch). So, although anyone with $99 can now develop applications for the iPhone and iPod Touch, their may be a steep learning curve for those only familiar with HTML/Javascript development.

// Ryan Jennings