Google’s Do-It-Yourself App Creation Software
The New York Times did an excellent summary of Google's new App Creator for Android. Why wait for someone to build an app for your phone when you can just build it yourself. Easily.
This is a great example of why my next phone will be an Android phone and not an Apple phone. I want a phone that lets me do what I want with it, not what Apple engineers let me do with it.
doubleTwist is a good-looking software package that can manage your media (music, photos, video, podcasts) so that it can be accessed by your mobile device (Android, Palm, BlackBerry, etc). If someone wants the media skills of an iPod with the flexibility of an open platform, this might be the killer app.
As I look to transition from my BlackBerry to likely an Android-based phone, this might be just what I need.
I noticed a Flip camera during our talk but hadn't realized that they published it. Awesome to see @nandikerri, @dcinc66, and me mixed up with some of the amazing speakers on the Creative Commons blip.tv channel.
The App Store is for Suckers
by Jonathan Stark
Submitting (pun intended) to the App Store is for suckers.
Do you really want to:
- Give up 30% of your profit?
- Learn Objective-C?
- Endure approval delays, rejections, and yanks?
- Navigate labyrinthian code signing issues?
- etc…The cheapest, easiest, fastest way for folks to get in on the mobile gold rush is to build killer web apps. Web apps can access location data, utilize client-side SQL databases, and even run offline.
In addition to side-stepping the App Store minefield, web apps run on more than 100 mobile handsets with zero modification.
And on desktops.
And on the iPad.
And on anything else that has a reasonably modern web browser; which will likely include everything from sewing machines to cereal boxes in the next few years.
The App Store paradigm (Apple and others) is an out-dated business model based on scarcity, middlemen, and control. It is newspapers. It is travel agents. It is used car salesmen.
The world has moved on. Don’t get suckered.
I love this commentary by Jonathan Stark on developing iPhone apps. I've sort of known that I wanted a web app for our school for a while. Athletics schedules, blog posts, access to our Moodle server, etc. But then I couldn't figure out if we should develop for BlackBerry or iPhones (and what about the Palm Pre!), but then this post just made it all clear.
Closed models = bad. Didn't the Internet teach us anything?