kgutteridge

The slightly amusing thing is I did actually buy my girlfriend a card this year, however whilst in the shop I had a great solution come to me that would solve a problem, I obviously was not paying full attention as the left hand inside of the card was clearly aimed at a bloke.

My usual excuse is working with a greetings card company as one of our clients its always a busy time of the year

[Shameless plug] So for those that have forgotten theres a collection of iPhone ecard apps I have been involved in here

Jeego lite (free) http://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/jeego-lite/id399428058

Starcards ($0.99) http://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/valentine-starcards/id4183077...

Disney Valentines ($0.99) http://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/disney-valentines/id416908996

Check out the Hacker news contractors sheet

https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AlD_6iEb8Ed9dGs3clV...

As an iPhone developer, there is currently no shortage of projects so make sure you have done as much of the thinking/wireframing as possible to make the project short, unless you want to pay a high price!

Breaking the project down into its simplest form and delivering key milestones should assist both parties rather than paying hourly

Well actually just given up as its late UK time, always get a lot done in the quiet time on Sunday evenings when no one else is about!

30, nearly starting to come down the other side of this curve

I agree there are apps that currently have integrations with differing payment processors, (Amazon, Paypal, existing service logins, traditional clearing houses) however if you are not launching off to a browser, you should definitely be aware of what the terms and conditions you have agreed to state

Its definitely a very very grey area

From the current docs for Google in app purchase: http://developer.android.com/guide/market/billing/billing_ov... "You can use in-app billing to sell only digital content. You cannot use in-app billing to sell physical goods, personal services, or anything that requires physical delivery."

I'd check the terms and conditions of the stores about using other payment gateways as well

http://www.android.com/us/developer-distribution-agreement.h...

Payment Processor(s): Any party authorized by Google to provide payment processing services that enable Developers with optional Payment Accounts to charge Device users for Products distributed via the Market.

However the advantage of the Android platform is that the market is not the only app store available and also app stores are not the only means of distribution

Agreed I have not really been participating for long but have managed to get myself upto a point where I can participate easily. It just requires some effort and some knowledge

I am in Northampton for the transport links you mention, the reason to setup in London is however simple the majority of good people in Northampton are commuting to London. As you say its about 50-70% of the cost of living in London but still accessible

copying listings in basic from magazines to get games on to my spectrum as a kid, some of it must have sunk in!

Slighty different take on this idea

http://whobuilt.it/

Apps appeared to go through very quickly last year just after the store reopened, I think this is probably down to most businesses have been organized enough to submit well in advance of xmas, so it just leaves the indies who are submitting either side of the store shut down

backup from Google about once a month, this then is included in my normal system backup regime which verges on the slightly paranoid!

Another very happy Balsamiq user here, first step though is always a white board and a camera, really fast iteration there, then work in Balsamiq once the really high level wire frame is done and you are getting to the detail level

Well done guys, shipping a hardware and a software product was never going to be easy! hopefully you can now reap the rewards though of having a hardware product, thats far far harder to replicate

pre ordered back in April so looking forward to receiving sometime in the new year I suspect, as it will be an international order.

Be really focused in what you intend to deliver and every 2 hours remind yourself what you were setting out to build rather than letting feature creep set in, its not a lot of time so simple ideas executed well will most likely do better

Get plenty of rest before hand

Quite often worth taking an electrical extension with you, incase power runs short

Yahoo email that gets checked about once a month, Flickr but sure I could move to picassa its only because of the convenience of iPhoto + flickr

Delicious is the only service I used at least every other day

Theres loads of seemingly good sci fi books being self published for the Amazon Kindle, which might open up a new avenue for the niche and instill some new ideas into the genre

regular listener to the following online radio stations, falling in that 22% who listen to electronic

Sense.fm (trance), chilltrax, Trance clubber

I think the main reason is when in the office environment other peoples conversations is more distracting than music, so a good pair of headphones really helps

Time to read some fiction books and spend time with the family and leave the digital world behind for a few hours

I remember discussing gestures and NFC back at Motorolas conference the day the iPhone 2g launched in the UK and back then all of us thought NFC would happen in the next 12 months! Glad to see its finally arriving, though this patent is going to prove interesting http://www.nearfieldcommunicationsworld.com/2010/12/03/35337...

* Continued for another year on the roller coaster ride that is mobile services + applications, im now not sure its actually possible for me to get of this roller coaster so hanging on for and enjoying the ride!

* Fortunate to work with and meet some great people

* iPhone apps:

* Bath Rugby http://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/bath-rugby/id391265972?mt=8

* Jeego premium core application http://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/jeego-ecards/id387728936?mt=8

* Three Disney Ecards applications http://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/disney-ecards/id398500671?mt=... http://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/disney-christmas-ecards/id405... http://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/disney-spooks/id398583345?mt=...

* Work with two startups and help from the mobile side of things - http://bardowl.com/ - http://www.vpar-golf.com/

* Two other iPhone apps that should be in the store in the new year

* Launched http://www.jeego.me and mechanised its maintenance

* Launched our consumer focused site creator http://www.sitetaga.com and heavily testing its two complementary sister products for launch in the new year

* Spoke at and attended some great mobile conferences including Openmic, GoogleIO and Droidcon

* Taught myself Rails + Sinatra

* Drove down the PCH from SFO to LAX

thankfully you can change the target now to "latest sdk" so hopefully this will stop that particular annoyance in the future

Iterate on paper, Start coding the next bit, filter email inbox + im

in-app Tending to use Flurry because of ease and in house stat tracking due to custom requirements

Make use of AppViz and appannie for download + store monitoring

Main motivation for using Amazon is the Kindle eco system, being able to read on laptop, iPad + Kindle is something I use a lot

If there was the ability to rent technical ebooks for a short period this is something I would definitely move for, which is the same as basically being motivated by the price of ebooks

Two things worth bearing in mind. 1. Google had acquired the Android team before the iPhone became popular 2. Mobile phones will sell whether they are smartphones or not, just because a user has a phone capable of utilising a function might not mean they use it, especially if they are purchasing bargain price phones just for making calls and sending texts

Android was slower to rolling out frictionless payment onto their store, only recently did it roll out in a lot more countries http://android-developers.blogspot.com/2010/09/more-countrie... So I would not necessarily use the past history of paid apps on Androids market as direct comparison to Apples app store. However the self selecting fact that more Apple users are likely to have a disposable income is very appealing when choosing to just target an iOS device if you do not need reach, I think for non hit applications, that are more of a business though reach is very important as cracking the top 100 in Apples app store is rather difficult and you have very few other options if you do not succeed in this endeavor

27 million iOS devices in the last 3 months, thats a very nice demographic to target that does not seem to be slowing down even with Androids rapid growth also gaining real momentum, I like being in mobile its certainly interesting!

This is a slight red herring, I do wonder how many of these apps you would like, could actually be rather easily made to run on your phone (can you give a specific example, many apps do not need 4.0 features or could easily have them ported around)

Apple have done a great job of outdating the old sdks, mainly through the method of dropping simulator support for the previous sdks and no legitimate route of running previous firmwares on an iPhone other than holding them back (obvious flaw in this plan, how does a new developer acquire an ipod running 2.2 or 3.0)

Android on the other hand has had no where near this rate of attrition of the previous sdks with only really the initial release not being heavily supported.

However Android suffers from the problem you are not just waiting for Google to update the firmware so you can't make your app 2.0+ only in the thoughts that if users want my app they can update their firmware, this step would remove a lot of htc, sony and other phones that do not currently have the ability to run a 2.0 firmware whilst still being a very comptent phone.

As for the carrier "enhanced" firmwares....

for my sins I have been making mobile apps for over 6 years, the original problems we had explaining to clients about fragmentation in J2ME was even worse as Java was sold as write once run anywhere, A similar thing now happens with iPhone OS variants where people just see it as a "iPhone app"

The real skill is in explaining why this is difficult and actually how much design work needs to be undertaken to make these "simple, clean" looking apps

However it has to be said there are some quick wins for mobile apps that can be achieved quickly, however something like twitterific which is probably one of the top 2% of iPhone applications the effort expended is not that surprising unfortunately