My second iPhone app, Checkmate, just got approved in the Apple App Store last night. It’s an auto-check-in app that runs in the background. You select your favorite venues, and Checkmate will check you into them when you get close enough, even when the phone is still in your pocket! I wrote this app because I got annoyed at forgetting to check into places on foursquare while there.

If you’d like to get Checkmate, you can buy it here for the low price of $2. For more info, check out the official website I made for it. And follow Checkmateapp on Twitter for news on the app.

I recently read an essay by Paul Graham on what happened to Yahoo. In it, he describes how Yahoo acted like a media company when it was really technology company, and how funky management made it into what it is today. One quote struck me as relevant today:

By 1998, Yahoo was the beneficiary of a de facto Ponzi scheme. Investors were excited about the Internet. One reason they were excited was Yahoo’s revenue growth. So they invested in new Internet startups. The startups then used the money to buy ads on Yahoo to get traffic. Which caused yet more revenue growth for Yahoo, and further convinced investors the Internet was worth investing in. When I realized this one day, sitting in my cubicle, I jumped up like Archimedes in his bathtub, except instead of “Eureka!” I was shouting “Sell!”

Having just integrated iAd into one of my iPhone apps I’ve noticed that pretty much all of the ads are for other apps. Most of these apps are “free,” and I assume that they could potentially be using iAd for revenue as well. This is a result of low fill rates for iAd and Apple wanting to offer developers a way to advertise their apps. It makes sense, but one has to wonder exactly where all the money is eventually going (Apple gets a 40% cut of iAd revenue), and who has the incentive to keep that system running.

A while ago I wrote my predictions for iAd. I didn’t foresee Apple opening iAds up to developers who wanted to advertise their apps. That’ll help the fill rate, but I can’t see it helping CPMs when developers have something like a $0.25 CPC and it was reported that the larger media campaigns like Dove were closer to $2 CPC. Seems like another race to the bottom, just like paid app prices.

I had a mobile startup a while back called Troubadour Mobile. While the company hasn’t been operating for a while, I was using its iPhone developer account to mess around with submitting stuff to the app store. I wrote my Anime Nano app and it was pretty cool.

I wanted to start getting into other kinds of apps, and I wanted to integrate iAd with Anime Nano. To do this, I needed to make my own iPhone dev account because I didn’t want to set up the taxes for a defunct company. I figured it would be a simple process to move an app from one owner to another, because it must happen all the time, right?

I sent in a request to move Anime Nano from Troubadour’s account to my own personal dev account. That was around the beginning of July. I didn’t get a reply until the beginning of August, more than a month later. Unfortunately, between the time I requested the move, my company’s account expired (I wasn’t going to keep paying $100 a year for an account we wouldn’t use).

When the account expired, my original app was taken off of the iTunes App Store. After that happened I just submitted the application again under my own account with a slightly different name (Anime Nano!). Apparently, the “application transfer” doesn’t really even transfer anything. Apple just asked me to remove one of my apps from sale and re-upload the binary. So I waited a month for nothing. This was pretty annoying, because if I had known earlier, I would’ve just done so myself. I don’t know why I needed to wait a month to get those instructions.

Anyway, I submitted the app about a week ago and it was finally approved this afternoon. I’m happy to say that the iAds work and they look pretty neat.

Anyway, if you haven’t gotten it yet (and actually, if you downloaded it before), go get Anime Nano! If you have the old version, iTunes won’t know when it’s updated unless you get the new version.

So I was searching for Angry Birds on iTunes in order to get the link for it. I’ve already bought the game, and it’s an awesome one for $1.

I noticed that there are a number of “Angry Bird” apps, but only two of them are the original. Angry Birds and the lite demo version. The others are all either cheat/walkthrough guides, or random knockoffs. The insane thing is that the price of the actual game is $1, and so are the knockoffs! You can buy the game for the same amount as an unauthorized guide, which has information freely that’s available online! The craziest one is the app called “The Angry Bird,” which has an angry looking bird trying to kill worms or something. I am assuming all of these apps are legal under fair use and whatnot (if they’re only stating facts), yet something tells me they could be violating trademark rules…

I wonder if other popular apps have this same kind of thing happening to them. And I wonder if the developers of Angry Birds are bothered by it. If they got angry enough, they might be able to make a spinoff game called “Angry Developers of Angry Birds.”

After reading this article on the upcoming iAd release, I have a few thoughts on the future of Apple’s mobile advertising platform.

iAds on Apple devices will be rich media experiences, they’ll stay in the app, and they’ll make developers tons of money. That’s what Apple assumes, at least. The major takeaways from this article are that only a limited number of advertisers are signing on at first, and at a really high premium. What’s more, iAds are costly to “develop” which will limit the number of advertisers at first.

Advertising relies on a steady supply of supply (advertising inventory) and demand (ad impressions). The advertisers supply the… well, supply, and the developers handle the demand by providing users who will see the ads. Because there’s not much supply yet, and because I have a feeling many developers will integrate iAds into their apps or already have, I predict a few things happening:

Users will go through a high degree of ad fatigue. With only a few different ads available, users will probably get bored of the same ads over and over. Sure, they’re rich and interactive, but if I see that same Toy Story 3 ad a billion times, it won’t be effective anymore. This will probably contribute to iAd blindness.

Initial advertisers will pay a premium for being first. Because of the limited inventory and abundant number of impressions, advertisers will probably end up using up a lot of their inventory. Apple might have a way of throttling ad impressions so they remain constant throughout a time period (or at least they should). If so, iAd display will be pretty erratic. Sometimes they’ll show and sometimes they won’t. Of course, if that happens, publishers will be upset that their placements aren’t selling.

Publishers (developers) will make some money, but not as much as they thought (at first). Or at least, not until the ad inventory goes up. Because Apple will probably throttle the advertisements going to them, or users will be weary of the same ads showing up, publishers will suffer at first. In the long run, publishers will probably end up making more when the supply and demand issues fix themselves.

Advertisements will probably start off being innovative, then fall in quality. I have a feeling they will mirror the app store apps. There will be many high quality ads at first, but once Apple requires a steady amount of rich ads, others will develop iAds for advertisers. The ad inventory quality will suffer because of the cost and time associated with creating high quality ads.

On a high level, I see a few early issues in the iAd platform, mostly the demand for ads outweighing the amount of initial advertisements. Over time, this will correct itself, but at the cost of the quality of ads delivered. Think of how the App Store degenerated into crappy mirror apps, etc. Apple would like to keep the quality of their ads high, but I can’t see this happening based on the number of ads they need to deliver.

This will happen because Apple is offering the iAd platform to all publishers (developers). If they had hand-picked a few to beta test, I have a feeling the supply and demand would match up. Apple knows they’re behind in the game though, so that’s probably why they’re releasing it to all developers. In the long run, I think the iAd platform will be a hit for advertisers and developers. Hopefully the level of ad quality doesn’t suffer so much that it affects the end user too much.

My first iPhone application has been approved and is “ready for sale” in the Apple App Store! I decided to do a native version of Anime Nano, which already has a mobile site. This native one loads faster and also doesn’t have ads (yet). Get Anime Nano for iPhone!

If you install it and play around, you’ll notice it’s really simple and lacks features. This is on purpose. Instead of spending a lot of time getting it perfect and including all features of the full website, I figured that I would release the most simple functioning app first. I read a bunch of Rework before having to return it (I borrowed a digital copy from a library). Rework basically suggested that software be light and easy to use, and I think Anime Nano for iPhone fits well within that mentality.

I plan on iterating on Anime Nano to improve it. I think enabling an iPad version would be the next logical step, as well as including things like the personalized blog list and series, and search.

Anyway, if you have an iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch, please download Anime Nano (for free) and let me know what you think!

While on my drive back from the grocery store today, windshield down and blasting some “Of Montreal,” I overheard some sweet tunes coming from a truck during a red light. Instead of yelling at the driver for the name of the tune (he might not have known anyway), I turned off my radio, fired up this app, Shazam, and held it out the window for a few seconds. The app came back at me with the song title, artist, and other junk:

And here’s a link to buy the song (if I ever wanted to…)!

Pretty cool.

So after a few false starts, I have an iPhone 3G that works.

The journey was a long one; at the end I grew weary and lost faith. But finally, I have a neat iPhone 3G that does cool stuff.

It started this morning at around 5:30. I woke up (though I only got like, 3 hours of sleep since I had taken a nap earlier and messed up my sleep cycle) and took a quick shower. No breakfast. Just took a vitamin water (these things are kinda good!) and a coffee granola bar for energy.

Gaurav (from Troubadour Mobile) picked Adam (also from Troubadour Mobile) and I up. We drove to the mall and saw a bunch of peeps. We also saw some officemates from CampusRoost (yes, that’s a slick mention!). They told us that the AT&T store on Liberty had like, zero people and we should go there.

When we actually got to the AT&T store, it was around 6:30ish. There were actually about 30 people in line. Apparently everyone showed up around 6:15 or so. There was a really cool line wrangler named Steve that kept everyone reasonably informed. We found out there were like, 40 phones. So we should be able to get one. Adam and Brent didn’t want to settle for white ones. Or 8GB ones. But I think eventually Adam got a black 8GB and I dunno what Brent did.

At 8am, the line started moving, and it was moving well. But then disaster struck! It seems either Apple or AT&T didn’t have the resources to take a billion people in the US all wanting iPhones at the same time (and having to activate them in the store). The activations were apparently taking around 45-50 minutes each when they should’ve taken 15 or so.

Eventually, the AT&T people let us just do most of the steps in store and then activate at home. By the time we were done, it was about 11am. I went home and tried to activate the thing for about 15 minutes. iTunes was just being bad. So I went to sleep. I woke up at around 2pm and tried to activate again. This time it worked after about 30 minutes of trying.

I’ve been loading up apps and trying them out. It’s pretty cool. My favorite so far is the PhoneSaber.

So I drove on over to the Apple Store today (it was on the way back from some other place I was driving to) and I tried out the iPhone. It’s neat! I tried out all the applications and they work fairly well. The typing is alright, but when you type words that are uncommon in the dictionary, for instance, “truong,” the keyboard kinda compensates in the wrong direction.

Besides that, the applications are pretty fun to use, but they seem a bit more jerky than the commercials would have you believe. For instance, I was using the google maps app and it took forever to download the map tiles! The zooming in and out using the multi touch was way cool, but it also seemed to lag behind a bit as well. I know it’ll take lag to move stuff around, but it was… how should I put it? Slower than I expected.

The iPhone certainly is a cool gadget. I just don’t know why it needs to be a phone. Apple’s created a pretty sweet PDA that includes a phone, which requires a subscription fee. If they had just called it the iPDA, maybe I’d be more willing to get one. That, and if they lowered the price, made it snappier, made the battery life longer, etc. I actually had one die while I was using it in the store. The battery ran out and I had to switch to another one.

Oh well, maybe in the next generation/iteration I’ll be able to afford one. And convince myself that I should pay the price for it.

The focus of today’s Macworld 2007 was definitely the iPhone. While general consensus is that the iPhone is the next killer app, I still have my doubts. Here are 4 reasons why the Apple iPhone will fail:

1. Public Acceptance:
The average person doesn’t even use the WAP browser on their phone, let alone any full blown OSX apps! What people want in a mobile phone is a phone; they don’t need all of these extras. Extra software just makes it more difficult to perform the main function of the phone: to make phone calls.

2. Price:
The price of the iPhone was announced at $499 for the 4GB model and $599 for the 8GB with a 2 year contract. Right now, you can get a T-Mobile MDA smartphone for $0 after rebate. The mass market is not willing to pay this much for a phone.

3. Copyright and Regulations:
There already is an iPhone out. It’s the Linksys Wireless-G Skype iPhone. I hope Apple has a lot of money or lawyers to acquire the rights to the name.

Pair this with the fact that the iPhone doesn’t have FCC approval and we might never see the iPhone get to market. How did Steve make all of those phone calls anyway?

4. Battery Life:
The iPhone runs OSX! This is great for a laptop or a desktop computer, but does a phone really need OSX? The battery life was announced as 5 hours of talk time, browsing, or video. Basically, 5 hours of active use. What happens after that? Your phone is dead and no one can call you.

People are not going to use the iPhone’s features for fear of losing their connectivity when the battery runs out.