Jason Grigsby

More on iPhone App Store Pricing

The conversations about the App Store and the drive towards 99-cent applications continues. Here are some more thoughtful posts:

And from 37Signals:

The benefits of a monthly recurring revenue model in tough economic times

Ok, I lied. That last one isn’t about the App Store—at least not directly. ;-)

links for 2008-12-27

iWebkit

Development library for mobile web apps on iphone

(tags: iphone mobile safari webkit library tools)

links for 2008-12-26

The real surprise of the App Store isn’t number of downloads or revenue | last100

Instead, the real surprise is that the carriers – AT&T in the U.S. and 02 in the UK – agreed to Apple launching the App Store in the first place. Or more specifically, that Apple could offer the App Store in the manner in which they have done. Apple has a direct billing relationship with iPhone customers

(tags: iphone mobile appstore research apple)
Mobile Opportunity: App stores and APIs: It's the ecosystem, stupid

If you're like most people in Silicon Valley, you probably think that's an Apple iPhone developer chart. But actually it's Palm OS ten years ago, from 1998 to 1999.

(tags: iphone appstore palm mobile statistics market business api ecosystem goldrush research)
First Look at Blue Spruce, IBM's Next Generation Browser Platform – ReadWriteWeb

Another big player dives heavy into building out web application platforms

(tags: browser research platform web2.0 apps ibm)

links for 2008-12-25

Improving Drupal's page loading performance | Wim Leers

(tags: performance speedupyoursite drupal optmization)
Nick Sergeant :: Theming Drupal primary links with child sub-menus

most themes by default display primary links in such a way that if the menu has sub-child menus, they will not be displayed. Fortunately, the solution is much easier that you'd think.

(tags: drupal navigation themes)
Twelve (12) emerging best practice for adding user experience work to agile software development

(tags: agile ux ia usability methodology userexperience process ucd)
Free Site Validator | complete website validation and link checking tool

Scan your entire site for validation errors and dead links manage multiple sites, watch report status in real time receive report email notifications…

(tags: validator html xhtml testing)
Detect Mobile Browsers

PHP Library to detect mobile phone user agent strings

(tags: iphone mobile useragent ua php library detection)
Terrific Tables with CSS [CSS Tutorials]

There were a couple of table css properties that I wasn't familiar with in this article. That's always a welcome surprise.

(tags: css tables tutorial)
The Life and Times of AdMob » Blog Archive » Impact of new RIM handsets: Storm rising?

"Of the three new devices, the Storm has made a much bigger impact on Verizon and is already responsible for 16 percent of all BlackBerry mobile Web requests." How to reconcile this with the fact that the Storm seems so poorly designed to me.

(tags: blackberry rim browsing statistics mobile storm)
Updated iPhone App Sales – The Final Post

Number of downloads for a top-rated iphone application

(tags: iphone sales appstore goldrush)
HTTP Client – Mac Developer Tool for HTTP Debugging

A Mac OS X Leopard developer tool for debugging HTTP services by graphically creating & inspecting complex HTTP messages.

(tags: macosx http debugging httpclient)

links for 2008-12-24

Dimdim: Web conferencing that just works. Dimdim provides easy, open, affordable collaboration. Use for online meetings, eLearning, desktop sharing, training, distance education, unified collaboration, webinar, free web meetings and more.

Open source web conferencing and service

(tags: webex webconference)
A FREE SMS API | Zeep Mobile

Send and receive SMS via web sites

(tags: mobile sms api webservice)

links for 2008-12-23

jQuery Sparklines

(tags: jquery sparklines graphs plugin javascript ajax)
dw2-0: Mobile development in a hurry

Taking Google Maps for mobile as an example: there are 10+ platforms to support, requiring 100's of builds in total – it all adds up to PAIN

(tags: mobile google maps development goldrush mobileweb research)
Lessons of the Square Watermelon « Hard Knox Life: A Brand Manager Blog by Dave Knox

Great reminder of the power of creativity and innovation. The story revolves around the growing of square watermelons in Japan

(tags: watermelon story innovation technology inspiration japan)
Bank Of America Says It Has 1 Million mobile Users

(tags: mobile banking statistics research)
Story of a Peanut: The TiVo Remote's Untold Past, Present and Future

The history of the TiVo peanut-shaped remote control.

(tags: tivo remote design usability)
Mobile Commons » Blog Archive » Mobile Commons Legislative Lookup Project

database for querying congressional and state legislators by latitude & longitude.

(tags: politics mobile api)
Analytics Talk » Blog Archive » Tracking YouTube Videos with Google Analytics

(tags: javascript analytics flash google youtube omniture ipip)
Michael Tsai – Blog – Turning Off Apple Data Detectors in Mail

defaults write com.apple.mail DisableDataDetectors YES in Terminal

(tags: macosx mailapp mail terminal)
Ajaxian » iPhone Safari Flick Navigation By Example

Recreating the flick scrolling behavior in Mobile Safari

(tags: iphone css javascript touchevents mobile design)

links for 2008-12-22

Mozilla Labs » Blog Archive » Introducing Geode

an experimental add-on to explore geolocation in Firefox 3 ahead of the implementation of geolocation in a future product release.

(tags: firefox geolocation browser javascript lbs location)
AppStore Bucks Economic Downturn Trends | Cult of Mac

The chart below shows the number of applications being released per day, with momentum clearly trending upward and sitting currently at more than 140 new apps per day. There are more than 9000 apps available on the AppStore, with the ratio of paid to free apps at about 7:2.

(tags: iphone statistics research appstore goldrush)
How Rank Correlates to Sales: Top 50 means 1000 Sales per Day

Open sales numbers from an iPhone app

(tags: appstore iphone sales business goldrush)
IBM Study Finds Consumers Prefer a Mobile Device Over the PC: Financial News – Yahoo! Finance

Over 50 percent of consumers would substitute their Internet usage on a PC for a mobile device

(tags: research trends mobile mobileweb statistics laptops)
CSSHttpRequest – Hacks – nb.io

CSSHttpRequest (CHR) is a method for cross-domain AJAX using CSS for transport. Similar to JavaScript, this works because CSS is not subject to the same-origin policy that affects XMLHttpRequest.

(tags: javascript css xmlhttprequest ajax hacks json crossdomain xss library)
How many applications does the average iPhone owner install? | All About iPhone.net

(tags: iphone statistics research goldrush mobile appstore)
inside looking out » Blog Archive » Building CoverFlow for Safari on iPhone

Nice demonstration of Mobile Safari css effects used to make a smooth cover flow effect.

(tags: css iphone mobile safari javascript coverflow)
AppsAmuck iPhone Development Tutorials and Examples

31 different iPhone applications including source code

(tags: iphone apps source sourcecode mobile development sdk tutorials)
Apple iPhone Appstore Application Analytics

iPhone analytics package plus some nice graphs on applications by category and free vs. paid

(tags: iphone mobile statistics appstore)
xkcd – A Webcomic – Election

The after election let down. Plus a funny Nate Silver comment on hover.

(tags: natesilver election politics xkcd comics)
BlueTrip CSS Framework :: Home Page

A full featured and beautiful CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) framework which combined the best of Blueprint, Tripoli (hence the name), Hartija's print stylesheet, 960.gs's simplicity, and Elements' icons, and has now found a life of its own.

(tags: blueprint css grid framework)
hartija – Google Code

A css framework for print stylesheets

(tags: print stylesheets framework css printer library)
Watir – Overview

Watir is an open-source library for automating web browsers. Watir drives browsers the same way people do. It clicks links, fills in forms, presses buttons. Watir also checks results, such as whether expected text appears on the page.

(tags: testing browsers qa automation)
Code: Flickr Developer Blog » Lessons Learned while Building an iPhone Site

Very good read from the flickr team

(tags: flickr iphone ajax javascript mobile mobileweb design howto)
wp-Hyphenate 1.07 beta • KINGdesk

Add automatic hyphenation to wordpress blogs

(tags: wordpres plugin hyphenation hyphen)
jQuery plugin: Tablesorter 2.0

tablesorter is a jQuery plugin for turning a standard HTML table with THEAD and TBODY tags into a sortable table without page refreshes

(tags: jquery javascript tables ajax data sorting)

links for 2008-12-21

sIFR lite

Alternative, smaller version of sIFR

(tags: sifr javascript flash css fonts design)
App Store Glitches | Inside iPhone

Stories of problems that they encountered releasing their iphone app.

(tags: iphone app appstore apple)
Dr Nic » To WebKit or not to WebKit within your iPhone app?

(tags: iphone mobile javascript css safari webkit)
Choosy – A smarter default browser for Mac OS X

Choosy lets you open links in the browser you want. Just set up a few simple options and Choosy will do the right thing, whether that's opening a browser or letting you pick from some or all of the browsers on your system.

(tags: browsers macosx helper)

links for 2008-12-20

Amazon Now Helping Software Developers Sell Software and Services Online – ReadWriteWeb

system handles billing and payment collection for software built on Amazon storage and processing systems, if the developers wish to use it.

(tags: amazon webservices saas cloudcomputing)
The benefits of a monthly recurring revenue model in tough economic times – (37signals)

Sometimes you have to restate the obvious.

(tags: 37signals recurringrevenue software saas web iphone appstore research)
Study: 200 Million Mobile Coupon Users By 2013 : Mobile Marketing Watch – The Pulse Of The Mobile Marketing Community

(tags: mobile coupons barcodes stats projections)
FutureTap » How to purchase an iPhone app

Interesting discussion of how he decided what to pay to take over the source code of an existing iPhone application

(tags: appstore iphone business pricing sales mobile valuation)
Earnings Call: RIM Sees Strong December Sales

Consumers now make up 45 percent of the subscriber base, and 60 percent of new subscribers during the quarter were consumers. Additionally, 75 percent of phones went to new customers in the U.S., and an even higher percentage in Europe.

(tags: rim blackberry sales reports mobile)
Smartphones: Heroes in a Down Mobile Market : Mobile Marketing Watch – The Pulse Of The Mobile Marketing Community

But in 2009, IDC predicts that we’ll see a downturn in mobile phone volumes by 1.9 percent. More interesting for mobile marketers is that IDC expects an 8.9 percent growth of the smartphone market in 2009.

(tags: smartphones mobile projections 2009 sales)
The BrowserPlus SDK, bug fixes, and a shiny new service – YDN Forums

Yahoo's browser enhancements

(tags: yahoo browserplus sdk)

For 2008, I set a goal for myself. I wanted to speak at Web Visions and the Velocity Conference. Other than internal and client presentations, I didn’t have much to point to as a history of public speaking to warrant anyone granting me an audience.

Looking back on the year, I’m surprised with how radically different this year was from previous years. By my count, I spoke at 11 events this year:

Beer and Blog
GnomeDex
Guest Lecturer at PSU Web Development Class
Ignite NYC
Ignite Portland
OSCON
Portland Advertising Federation Panel on Mobile
Portland Web Innovators
Velocity Conference
Web 2.0 Expo NYC
Web Visions

I guess I can check that goal off my list as completed. Now about that regular exercise and diet…

Author: Jason Grigsby