Virtualization, Cloud Computing and Mobile: 05/25/10

2010년 5월 25일 화요일

For those of you wanting to learn iPhone development, there are a number of resources available. Besides blogs (like ours) there are a number of books that can help pull things together for new and budding developers.

New Stuff to Learn

There’s been a lot of press lately about Apple development tools and the programming language, which is Objective-C. While folks that come from a C and C++ background feel quite at home with Objective-C, there are various developer groups feeling left out of the iPhone app gold rush. Specifically, I am speaking to the legions of .NET and Flash developers who have spent many years mastering their craft and are now being asked to learn a new set of tools, programming language and SDK.

As someone who went through that transition I thought I would document the books that helped along the way. While I did learn Mac development in a classroom setting, the books I’ll recommend were instrumental to it all making sense. My recommendations are listed in suggested reading order.

The Basics

The first book that can help orient new Mac developers is Learn Objective-C on the Mac by Apress. While the book doesn’t specifically focus on the iPhone SDK it does provide fundamental answers to beginner programming questions. This includes how to program Objective-C properties, methods, classes, variables and OO design. It also introduces important concepts such as NSDictionary and NSPredicate which become useful when learning database development using Core Data.

Build On What You’ve Learned

Once you get your bearings you can build on the fundamentals by reading Beginning iPhone Development by Apress. This book introduces the basic aspects of the iPhone SDK. As you may know, learning Objective-C doesn’t necessarily make you an iPhone expert. You will also need to learn how to apply the iPhone SDK using Objective-C which is the focus of this book.

Create User Interfaces

I’ve heard a lot of people comment about their experience with Interface Builder (IB). Granted, IB may not be what most existing developers are used to, I do find working with it to be fun and different. There’s a lot you can do with IB, but working with XIB files (pronounced “nib”) IBOulets and IBActions can be complex. In the book Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X by Aaron Hillegass, he provides almost all of his code examples in an illustrated step-by-step approach. Readers also get exposed to additional concepts such as Key-Value-Coding, which is used in Mac desktop development.

Fill In the Gaps

At this stage you’ll certainly understand most, if not all of the language syntax and SDK fundamentals. However, you may not understand why some things work they way they do. This may include items such as memory management, synthesizing properties, calling delegates and handling notifications. One of the best books to help fill in the gaps is Head First – iPhone Development by O’Reilly. It provides one of the best introductions to Core Data that I’ve seen. One cruise through this book and you’ll be a happy camper.

Build Something Cool

By now you should have the knowledge to put your development ideas into action. Add to your new found expertise by reading More iPhone Development by Apress. This book skips the preliminaries and gets right into the good stuff such as Core Location, GameKit and the MediaPlayer Framework. I’ve been surprised by how many times I go back to this book as a reference for new and existing projects.

Have a Reference

Finally, the last resource that I recommend is the online reference material provided by Apple. This is not to say that its documentation is not good. On the contrary, it’s a great resource, but almost to a fault. Due to the complexity of its documentation I find it most useful as a reference and not for learning new concepts. I feel many new developers rush to the iPhone Developers Reference documentation as their first information source only to be discouraged when none of it makes sense.

Conclusion

Learning iPhone Development is indeed challenging but is not impossible with the right resources. As you continue to build your skills in app development we’ll be here to help take your ideas from concept to the App Store. In meantime these books should ease the learning curve.

http://theappleblog.com/2010/05/21/reading-guide-for-iphone-app-development/

iPhone Still On Top of Android Globally

The iPhone may have given up its edge in the U.S. market over Android recently, in terms of smartphone OS share, but globally it still leads Google’s mobile OS. That’s according to market research firm Gartner (via PC World), who recently conducted a survey of the global smartphone terrain covering the first quarter of 2010.

That lead is thanks to two key international markets in which the iPhone still boasts a significant lead over its Google competitor. In Europe and Asia, Apple maintains a lead that amounts to around a 3 million unit advantage over Android. It’s still a significant lead, but the fact is that Android is still in a very strong position in all world markets.

It’s especially strong because it’s the fastest growing of all the smartphone operating systems represented in the survey, and it’s experiencing that growth during a heady time for smartphone sales in general, with global sales overall seeing record increases. Put simply, Android is grabbing the most significant portion of an expanding pie.

Android’s share grew from 1.6 to 9.6 percent in Q1 2010, while Apple’s share went from 10.5 to 15.4 percent. Both are still behind Symbian and RIM, but the shares of both those companies shrank during the period measured. Symbian, the worldwide leader, dropped to 44.3 from 48.8 percent. RIM slid from 20.6 to 19.4. Windows Mobile is the big loser overall, dropping from 10.2 to 6.8 percent, which puts it behind Android in the global rankings. It’s a mixed bag for Apple. On the one hand, it’s still performing well in the global market, and two of the three major smartphone markets still have them positioned ahead of Android. On the other hand, Android’s growth is meteoric, and the numbers would seem to indicate that customers new to the smartphone market are leaning in Android’s direction overall.

What’s crucial to keep in mind is that Android’s share grew from next to nothing to a significant percentage. It’s highly likely that it’ll continue to have similarly strong performance globally, since it can really only go from nothing to something once. Now that it’s entrenched itself in the market at large, its growth rate will likely slip to something much more reasonable, like Apple’s five percent gain.

Will Android continue to threaten Apple’s piece of the smartphone market pie? No doubt. Will it blow past iPhone OS and emerge as the dominant force in the market? That’s much less likely. Android and Apple will contend with each other on the world stage, but it’ll be a real fight, not a one-sided affair.

http://theappleblog.com/2010/05/21/iphone-still-on-top-of-android-globally/

iPhone More Important Invention Than Flush Toilets?

Is the iPhone a more important invention than the humble water closet? As one who has lived for extended periods of time in houses and cottages without indoor plumbing, I would say not, but according to your typical British consumer, it is.

The Telegraph reports that, in addition to beating out Thomas Crapper’s 1880 siphon flush device and space travel, the iPhone was voted a more important invention than washing machines or internal combustion engines. In the Tesco Mobile survey of 4,000 Britons aged between 18 and 65, the iPhone ranked eighth — ahead of the toilet, which finished ninth (toilet paper was 22nd), and also higher than the automobile, camera — even shoes. What Tesco has provided here is a somewhat alarming snapshot of where popular priorities and preoccupations lie.

At least the wheel was acknowledged the most important invention in history, with the airplane in second place and the lightbulb third, but amazingly the Internet finished fourth and computers fifth. By contrast, roofs ranked a distant 44th.

Really,folks? Would you truly prefer to go back to using chamber pots and outhouses than give up web surfing in the rain barefoot?

Of course, inconsistencies abound in popular perception here. Internal combustion engines were an indispensable enabler of airplanes and made the wheel exponentially more useful, and without cameras we’d be staring at lines of text on our computer screens at best.

The iPhone also beat central heating (13), painkillers (15), the steam engine (16) and eyeglasses (205). Astonishingly, the printing press, which this writer would contend was a vastly more significant invention than either the web or computers or most of the rest of the survey picks, didn’t even make the top 100. Bizarre.

Notable finishers were refrigerators (14), freezers (17), the vacuum cleaner (23), microwaves (26), hot water (29). shoes (30) hair-straighteners (34??!), paper (38), the (presumably electric) kettle (40), remote controls (43), cats-eye spectacles (48) power steering (50) tea bags (54), spell-checkers (86), makeup (66), push-up bras (77) and mascara (80).

This survey indicates that Britons think the iPhone is quite literally the greatest thing since sliced bread (70).

Go figure.

Images courtesy of Flickr users ricardovillela and williamhook.

http://theappleblog.com/2010/05/24/iphone-more-important-invention-than-flush-toilets/

Your Mom Wants an iPad

I’ve been amazed by the flood of negative press surrounding Apple’s latest offering. I like what David Pogue had to say about the shape of a typical Apple product release — “months of feverish speculation and hype online,” followed by “the bashing by bloggers who’ve never even tried it,” followed by “people lining up to buy the thing” — and the iPad release has followed that trajectory quite nicely.

But what’s so surprising to me about the bad reviews is the general condemnation of the iPad’s features. According to the blogosphere, most of the things that make the iPhone good make the iPad bad, which doesn’t make a lot of sense. What’s worse, though, is how much of the criticism is just facile. Are we really going to give big-name, prime-time, above-the-fold blog space to the iPad’s bezel?

I am disappointed.

So while I agree that the iPad looks like the iPhone grew up and got a job as a picture frame, I’m disappointed that only very few seem willing to look past that to see that the two devices have very different goals. Whereas the iPhone was about convergence of features, the iPad is about convergence of activities.

The iPad Versus the iPhone — What, You Mean They’re Not the Same?

The iPhone was designed from the ground up to change the mobile phone game with its features. Feature convergence was already a longstanding trend in the U.S. device market when the iPhone was released in 2007, having started with the first true smartphones like the Palm Treo in the early ’90s. But despite a full decade of “convergent” devices, there was still no one device in the U.S. market that combined telephone, music, contacts, high-quality GPS, and usable Internet browsing until the iPhone. The iPhone let people do things that no other phone would. Add the iPhone’s intuitive interface, polished appearance, and Steve Jobs’ reality distortion field to the iPhone’s (at the time) one-of-a-kind feature list and you get a bona fide, must-have, status symbol phenomenon on your hands.

The iPad, on the other hand, is designed from the ground up to be incredibly simple, but still useful and robust. Whereas the iPhone let techies do things they couldn’t do before at all, the iPad will let muggles do things they already do more easily.

Time has turned the iPhone’s touch interface from “newfangled” to “natural,” especially for the non-tech savvy crowd, so many people will find everyday tasks like email more satisfying on the iPad’s intuitive touch interface. People can say a lot of things about Apple’s products, but they can’t say that they’re hard to use. Apple’s track record on usability is stellar, and the iPad is more than living up to its pedigree.

The iPhone has also proven that apps are serious business, which means that iPad users can rest assured that if they want a simple-to-use app for playing poker, or planning a trip, or even looking at funny pictures of cats, the worst they’ll have to do is wait. And remember, all 185,000 apps in the App Store work on the iPad out of the box. (They may not be pretty, but they work.) The App Store will make the iPad the average user’s one stop shop for simple tasks and casual recreation. And because all apps come from the App Store, which has ratings and reviews for each one, finding good apps is easy because they’re all in one place and just a keyword search away.

But even though it’s obvious that the iPhone and the iPad are pursuing different goals in different markets, the most common criticism of the iPad by far is still its perceived lack of features. It’s true: the iPad lacks Flash support and HDMI output, and is not widescreen. But the people who have bought or are going to buy the iPad don’t care. If these features are important to you, then the iPad isn’t for you. Don’t buy it. But it’s important to understand that these features aren’t important to everybody, even if they’re important to you.

The Whole Point of the iPad: The Market

Because of the incredible amount of buzz that has surrounded the iPhone since its launch, it’s easy to forget that not everybody has one, or even wants one. The iPhone was aimed at techies who needed access to high technology anytime, anywhere. That’s a lot of people, to be sure, but it’s not everybody. The iPad is aimed at a different market: people who want an easy-to-use computer that’s powerful enough, as opposed to a souped-up phone.

Is there overlap between these two markets? Sure. But they’re not the same. The purpose of the iPad is to take iPhone technology and boldly go where no iPhone has gone before.

There are three kinds of people when it comes to the iPad: people who won’t buy it, people who will buy it and use it as their primary computer, and people who will buy it but will not use it as their primary computer. (There’s probably at least one more group that says something like “*@#$ no I won’t buy it!” but I’m trying to keep this article family friendly.)

The iPad as a Primary Computer

The people who will buy the iPad to use as their primary computer are not who you would call “power users.” They do simple things on computers, so a simple computer suits them just fine. How about your mom, for instance? Your mom uses her computer to play solitaire, check her email, poke around on msn.com, and leave embarrassing comments on your Facebook wall. The iPad is perfect for your mom. It’s easy to use, hard to break, and (compared to a “real” computer) not too expensive. To your mom, the iPad’s simplicity is a feature, not a bug.

And when was the last time your mom complained that she can’t distribute her app to her friends because there’s no ad-hoc app distribution? How about never? Your mom loves that all apps come from the App Store because it gives her a better-than-chance shot at actually finding them.

And to those who call Apple’s closed platform restrictive and controlling: Bingo! But stop saying that like it’s a bad thing. Instead of thinking about what you can’t do on the iPad because it’s closed, start thinking about what your mom can’t do on the iPad because it’s closed:

Install that friendly-looking free PC tune-up
Claim her prize for being the 999^th visitor to imavirus.com
Streamline her iPad with “convenient browser toolbars”
Download RealPlayer and its 517MBs of “must-have!” add-ons

Since Apple checks all App Store apps one-by-one, malware on the iPad just doesn’t exist. I don’t know why more geeks don’t support the iPad for exactly this reason — it’ll cut their mommy-related tech support calls in half.

And about the other “missing” features: Does your mom even know what HDMI is? How about widescreen standards? Product features are only important if they’re important to the people buying the product.

(By the way, it took all my discipline not to crack a joke in a whole section of talking about your mom.)

The iPad as a Secondary Computer

The people who buy the iPad to use as a secondary computer will be trying to do one of a couple of things: liven up their dead time, or make their hard work easier.

For the first case, think about a commuter who doesn’t drive to work in the morning (New York City, anyone?). Now that the iPad 3G has hit the streets, they can read any newspaper in the world, catch up on their reading, play some games, and look at compromising pictures of their friends on MySpace with multitouch goodness on a beautiful 9.7″ color screen all for $629 down and $15-$30 per month. It’s hard to call Kindle a good alternative for this market, even with free 3G wireless and a price tag of $259, because of its non-touch screen, lack of an App Store, slow Internet browsing, and because gosh, isn’t color nice? The Nook hits a little closer to the mark because of its color touch screen, but it’s still really just for books and other digitized print media, not for videos and apps. And both Amazon [iTunes] and Barnes and Noble have (or will soon have) iPad e-Reader apps, too, so it’s pretty clear they don’t expect their devices to out-compete the iPad on its own turf. But if you still don’t think the iPad will be used by morning commuters to catch up on the news and such, there are a couple small companies like the Wall Street Journal and NPR who disagree. If I weren’t so addicted to writing software in the morning (OK, all the time) and I didn’t drive my morning commute, the iPad would be a no-brainer for me.

The second crowd is thinking: sure, it’s expensive, but so what? This market of overworked high rollers like doctors, lawyers, and investment bankers value their time more than they value their money, so any product that can make catching up on email or keeping up on the news either (a) go faster or (b) suck less will be on their Amazon wish list in a big hurry. And these guys aren’t exactly what you’d call “price sensitive,” so for them productivity is king. Even the most expensive $899 price tag on the top model is well below their flinch point if it makes their work just a little faster or their life just a little more fun.

The iPad As a Viable Product

So if the iPad looks like a huge iPhone…well, good. I know a lot of people who could really use an iPhone-cum-tablet. iPhones don’t do everything, but they do a lot and they do it well, and most important of all they just work. And if the iPad bears more than a passing resemblance to an iPhone, that’s not a bad thing if you want to buy something that’s a lot like an iPhone. And it looks like that’s something a lot of people want to do.

Your mom doesn’t need a new widescreen computer with HDMI output and an open development process. Your mom needs a computer that does what she wants to do quickly and easily. That’s why she wants an iPad.And she’s not alone.

http://theappleblog.com/2010/05/21/your-mom-wants-an-ipad/

Samsung pulls a Google and gives devs free Bada phones, confirms upcoming handsets

Google didn’t invent giving stuff away. Oprah did that. Google just made — or at least greatly popularized — the trend of companies giving their latest and greatest handsets to all the attendees of the developer events in hopes of spiking their interest.

The latest company to pull a Google: Samsung. At a Developer Day in South Africa, the company just passed out Bada Wavesto everyone around.

They also revealed a number of new details — some good, some.. not so good.

The Bada app store will be manually moderated — if its got drugs, sexually-suggestive content, or anything that “incites violence or hate”, it’s a no go.
In a one-on-one chat with PhoneReport, a Samsung rep confirmed that the next Bada phone will look much like the Wave with a sub-$200 pricetag, while the one after that will rock a full QWERTY keyboard. This is inline with what we saw on that leak back in April.
The Bada App Store will launch in South Africa and 19 other (unspecified) countries, with plans to hit 80 countries within just a few months
Apps can be free or paid
Paid apps are paid for via credit card, though Samsung says they’re working with carriers to implement carrier billing.
Samsung hopes to sell 10 million Bada handsets this year, and 20 million by the end of next year.

[Via PhoneReport]

http://www.mobilecrunch.com/2010/05/24/samsung-pulls-a-google-and-gives-devs-free-bada-phones-confirms-upcoming-handsets/

Confirmed: Motorola i1 will be Boost Mobile’s first Android phone

http://www.mobilecrunch.com/2010/05/24/confirmed-motorola-i1-will-be-boost-mobiles-first-android-phone/

Back at CTIA 2010, Motorola announced the world’s first rugged Android handset with iDEN push-to-talk functionality: the i1. At launch, Motorola was only willing to spill the beans on one carrier who’d be getting the handset: Sprint.

We just unearthed some pretty irrefutable proof that someone else will be getting the i1: Boost Mobile. Yep — say hello to the first pre-paid Android handset in the US.

One of our oh-so-lovely tipsters just sent over the poster you see below, from which a few details can be gleaned: the Boost Mobile i1 will launch with retail exclusivity at Best Buy, and it’ll be Boost’s first Android phone. Better yet, it looks like Boost will be offering this handset with their standard $50 unlimited data/web/text plan — in other words, they’re not going to try to strap on some crazy smartphone tax.

Given Boost’s current line-up, this will very, very easily be their best offering. There’s no word yet on pricing — but remember, there’s no contract here, which means no subsidies. The Boost BlackBerry 8330 costs $249.99 out the door, and it’s a pretty safe bet to wager that the i1 will cost at least as much.

HTC Desire to get Android 2.2 in late June?

Android 2.2 might already be rolling out to the Nexus One — but what about it’s nearly-identical European brother, the HTC Desire?

If a random HTC customer service rep is to be believed — which we generally wouldn’t recommend — the Desire should be seeing Android 2.2 in all of its Flash-packin’, performance-boosting glory within the next month.

Our buds over at Phandroid spotted this gem on XDA-Dev. The tale, as its told: a grumpy customer decided to ring up HTC about his Desire’s inability to store applications on the SD card — an issue which is nullified in Android 2.2.

The CS Rep initially refused to budge on any info, but Grumpy McCustomer kept on pushing. After a quick chat with his supervisor, the CS Rep dropped this litle tid-bit:

But you never heard this from me…. A new update is coming the 23rd of June and you will be able to put some apps on to the micro sd card.

So, in other words: according to a forumgoer who purportedly spoke to a CS rep who allegedly had inside info on the HTC Desire’s update plans, Android 2.2 is coming to the Desire on June 23rd. Take it as you will, won’t you?

http://www.mobilecrunch.com/2010/05/24/htc-desire-to-get-android-2-2-in-late-june/

Google Reveals AdSense Revenue Shares for Content, Search-based Ads

Google finally revealed this morning just how much it takes as its share when advertisers buy ads on content and search inside AdSense. According to a release this morning on the AdSense blog, all publishers pocket 68% revenue for content ads and 51% for search ads, except for high profile publishers which negotiate their own shares. Google says they are revealing these numbers "in the spirit of greater transparency," but what is the real motivation behind their decision?

According to Search Engine Land writer Barry Schwartz, the transparency could be an effort to placate Italian anti-trust complaints which argued for revealing the revenue shares. Journalist, author and Google expert Jeff Jarvis made no mention of the Italian pressures in a blog post this morning, but did mention that he too had pressed the company to publish their ad splits earlier this year.

Google says its cut for content and search ads goes toward the "costs for our continued investment in AdSense -- including the development of new technologies, products and features that help maximize the earnings you generate from these ads." These costs are yet to be solidified for their other AdSense offerings, such as mobile applications, feeds, games and YouTube ads, and thus these splits were not revealed today.

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/google_reveals_adsense_revenue_shares_for_content_seach_based_ads.php

Jolicloud[Video]

Jolicloud HTML5 launcher first video from Jolicloud on Vimeo.

http://vimeo.com/11856021

Sneak Peek at Jolicloud's Latest Update

Before Google ever breathed a word about Google Chrome OS - the company's forthcoming lightweight computer operating system that consists of nothing but a Web browser - there was Jolicloud. One of the original standouts in the field of cloud-based operating systems (referring to the way data and apps are available online as opposed to on the desktop), Jolicloud has continued to innovate and grow, despite the very real threat of having to compete with a computing giant like Google.

The company's latest efforts? A new dashboard and an expansion of its so-called Joliplatform, the Jolicloud version of a Web app store, but one where apps can access both Web-based and local resources. Yes, "local" as in the files and folders you had on your computer prior to upgrading to Jolicloud.

Earlier this year, the company transitioned its operating system's back end from Mozilla prism to Chromium, the open-source Web browser that Google used to build Google Chrome. Jolicloud also embraced HTML5, the Web standard that will allow, among other things, applications running online to perform more like applications stored on a computer's local hard drive.

Soon after that transition, another change followed, which allowed users running Jolicloud Express the ability to access their Windows data from within the Jolicloud operating system. (Jolicloud is targeted at users of Windows netbooks).

Jolicloud's New Launcher

Now the company is making new changes once again, this time with an updated HTML5 launcher where all your favorite Web applications are available. To get started, you sign into Jolicloud via Facebook or with a username and password combination. You then have access to a scrollable dashboard where apps can be re-arranged and organized much like how apps on a smartphone can be moved around.

You'll notice in that image that Jolicloud not only offers a wide array of Web-based applications, but many popular desktop-based apps as well, like Skype, Open Office and even alternative Web browsers.

This in-OS "app store" is now available to application developers by way of APIs that can call on both cloud and local system resources. And through a new partnership with Joyent, developers can host their Joliplatform applications for free. Joyent will provide a development sandbox, sample applications, APIs and a complete set of Web and graphical tools to build HTML5 Web apps to all Joliplatform developers.

Also worth noting is that Jolicloud OS provides local access to Windows files and folders like documents, music, pictures and videos - an important feature that makes transitioning to the cloud more feasible for many potential users. In the future, Jolicloud aims to help new users move their local files to the cloud by way of a setup process or wizard that prompts them to upload local files to online storage sites like Box.net, for example.

The updated interface to Jolicloud, seen in the video available here, will roll out to testers in the coming weeks.

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/sneak_peek_at_joliclouds_latest_update.php

Cloud Computing Brings New Dimensions To Geospatial Business Intelligence

Nishinomiya Memory Map The advent of geodata and its use in the enterprise is evident in the advancements we're seeing in the cloud computing space.

This past week ArcGIS Beta launched. It's an online mapping service that provides tools for making maps. You can share maps or build maps with other community members. It's an example of how geodata is being used to create a new generation of data services that have multiple uses in the enterprise.

Today Alteryx launched a new platform-as-a-service, or PaaS, that uses geospatial data for business intelligence.

Alteryx mashes up data from transactional databases, spatial data formats, data warehouses and other formats to provide business intelligence. For instance, in the retail world, it uses geographic data to determine if a location fits into a retail franchise's criteria for expansion.

The geospatial business intelligence market includes a number of companies, including VisTracks , which is a PaaS, and Microsoft, which is not. Integeo applies its map intelligence to spatial platforms, like Google Earth, Google Maps, ESRI and MapInfo, and business intelligence platforms, like SAP, IBM/Cognos and Microsoft Excel. Spatialytics.com is also an open-source geospatial business intelligence application.

Open Source Geospatial Business Intelligence (Geo-BI)

We expect more services to evolve as business intelligence platforms become more Web oriented, and the use of collaborative tools become easier for the non-technical person to use.

http://www.readwriteweb.com/enterprise/2010/05/cloud-computing-brings-new-dim.php

Augmented Reality without programming in 5 minutes

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=StcIkMpzVfY&feature=player_embedded#!

Code-Free Augmented Reality in Under 5 Minutes

Augmented reality guru Bruce Sterling shared a fascinating video on his Wired.com blog Beyond the Beyond today that shows a developer building an AR application without any programming language in just shy of five minutes. Using the Mac-based visual design app Quartz Composer and few additional plugins, the developer (apparently a Russian named Vladmir, according to his YouTube account) quickly assembles the application using Quartz's visual Yahoo Pipes-like interface.

The video embedded above is pretty easy to follow despite being a screencast of a complex design application. The developer simply drags and drops a few elements onto the screen to initialize the video input device, recognize a marker, and incorporate a 3D model of a teapot. After connecting a few dots and tweaking some settings, we see the teapot appearing on an AR marker via the developer's webcam.

The experience itself is not the impressive thing - fans of AR have seen webcams place objects on black and white makers for a while now. What is interesting about this video is how quickly and easily the plugins for Quartz made what is normally a fairly complex process of programming an AR app.

This application is an innovative implementation of the ARToolKit, a free and open-source library for creating AR apps created in 1999. Just as SDKs for platforms like the iPhone make mobile app development much easier, these types of plugins for visual design tools will make the development of AR apps quick and easy. The easier (and cheaper) it is to develop AR applications, the faster the technology will grow and the more exposure it will receive in the public eye.

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/code-free_augmented_reality_in_under_5_minutes_video.php

Wal-Mart Dropping iPhone to $97

On Tuesday, retailer Wal-Mart plans to cut the price of the popular iPhone 16GB 3GS to $97. Currently this iPhone model is selling for $199. The $97 deal requires a two-year service contract with AT&T.

The dip in price could represent a hope to clear inventory and preserve sales in the lead-up to the debut of the newest iPhone next month. Good for buyers, perhaps, but a source of some aggravation for developers.

The reduction could also be a reaction to the April AdMob report that had Google's Android phone edging out the Apple iPhone in mobile ad traffic. That report indicated that the Android had garnered more of the ad dollars spent on mobile platforms than the iPhone had, with Google at 46% to Apple's 32%.

Apple sold around 50 million iPhones last year. Figures for the last quarter indicated a doubling in sales from the previous year.

Last month, a version of Apple's new 4G iPhone was passed off to tech blog Gizmodo, which wrote about it. An Apple attorney, George Riley, later called this "immensely damaging" to the company.

Marco Arment, lead developer of Tumblr and Instapaper, said on Twitter tonight: "As a developer, I can't wait until Apple stops selling the iPhone 3G and the current low-end iPod touch. Those CPUs are tough to support. And I realistically need to keep supporting them for about 2 years after Apple stops selling them."

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/wal-mart_dropping_iphone_to_97.php