Will Cell Phone Video Recorders and Handheld Projectors Cause Mayhem and Joy?

When the iPhone 3Gs came out, YouTube noted a very fast uptick in the number of mobile videos being posted to the site.  It doesn’t hurt that one can post with just one click directly from the iPhone.  While not the first phone able to do this, it is certainly one with a large and fast-growing user base and while they are leading the way other makers will be forced to offer similar features soon.

Now, add to the mix the emergence of powerful, pocket-sized video projectors that can operate on battery power and project images the size of a large-screen TV onto any flat surface. Still in their early stages, these projectors will improve over time and it can’t be long until anyone with the equipment can beam billboard-sized video onto the wall of their choice.

Now, combine these two devices and try to imagine the possibilities:

1) A major riot breaks out in a big city.  Someone sees an act of police brutality. They film it with their phone and then, before you can say “hey, you” the footage is beamed onto the wall of a building for the whole crowd to see.

2) A group of people are waiting in line for tickets to a new film.  A young filmmaker gives those in line a preview of his own latest work, beamed onto the side of the cinema itself. For free.

3) More scary, advertisers arm workers with short video ads and ask them to walk around town and beam them on any wall near a crowd.

I could just keep going and going.  I don’t even want to think out the new laws that will be created and the absurd policing to follow.

And we haven’t even discussed just beaming it live…

iPhone Will Track Your Happiness

Someday we will all be asking ourselves, “what did we do before our cell phones told us what make’s us happy?”

Thanks to Matt Killingsworth, a doctoral candidate in psychology at Harvard University, iPhone users may now take part in a completely free study exploring just what it is that makes us happy:

To participate, volunteers sign up for the experiment through the study’s Web site, fill out an introductory survey and schedule the number of times each day they want to be alerted by an e-mail message or text message reminding them to take another survey. Periodically, volunteers are also provided with a “happiness report” that could provide some insight into the factors — like amount of sleep, exercise and other daily activities — that affect their own happiness.

“The more that people adhere to it, they more they will learn about themselves,” he said.         LINK

Not only will your data help the overall experiment, but you will also receive personalized reports on what make you happy.

One might argue that iPhone owners, as a sample pool, are already a skewed group, but I love the use of the device in the name of science.

Kinda makes that iFart app look a little more pointless…

The PalmPre versus Apple iTunes Sync Fight is Confusing

According to today’s news, the PalmPre is once again able to sync directly with Apple’s iTunes.

This will last exactly as long as it takes for Apple to figure out how disable the feature and then PalmPre users will be temporarily blocked once again.

Now, I can see why Apple might have a lot of hate for the PalmPre.  It was developed almost completely by ex-Apple folk and was released in an attempt to be a direct competitor to the iPhone, though most critics agree it loses in any sort of head-to-head battle.

What I don’t understand is why Apple thinks blocking the PalmPre’s ability to sync to iTunes is a wise move. Sure, it takes away a capacity many people like in their media players but it also opens the door wide to competitors looking to give folks a reason to try something other than iTunes as a media manager.  People will only look for an alternative if they can’t get access to the original, popular and rather well made iTunes software.

Not only that, but this discourages PalmPre owners from purchasing any music via iTunes.  This is a direct loss of potential revenue and again offers a great opportunity for competitors to step in and offer an alternative.

Considering how much effort is going into blocking the PalmPre from syncing with iTunes, Apple clearly has  their reasons.  I just can’t seem to fathom those reasons.

Apple Releases New Sexy App Guidelines for Developers

After the release, and subsequent takedown of the first iPhone App to display naked boobs, “Hottest Girls,” Apple has put out a new set of guidelines to help developers steer clear of a similar fate.

Apple iPhone App “Sexy” Guidelines:

1) Apps containing nothing but pictures of women over the age of 18 will be permitted in the App Store as long as said women are not exposing any of their “bathsuit suit” parts.

2) Apps may allow users to undress said women as long as they only take off a single layer of clothing.  Removal of more than one layer of clothing will get you banned.

3) All said women must wear underwear that covers the entire pubic region (don’t make me say the v-word) and at least one-third of the tuchus while exposing none of the separation between cheeks.  On top, said women may expose as much boob as they can without showing the world even a glimpse of areola or nipple.  Therefore, the smaller said woman’s areola, the more breast can be exposed.  Now, nipples. They can poke through the thinnest, wettest fabric you’ve got, but the user may NOT see the actual nipple skin.

4) Apps may allow users to manipulate the breasts of said women via the touch-screen as long as they user is not able to see the actual flesh being manipulated.

5) Similar Apps featuring scantily clad men will be banned due to the fact that they may cause homosexuality, thus violating the App Store’s basic TOS.

Apple hopes this clears things up in the “sexy” App department.  Look forward to more guidelines from Apple including “Words and Phrases to Avoid in eBooks” and “What’s Ok to Gun Down.”

Real Porn (Well, Boobs, Anyhow) Coming to iPhone Apps

According to Macenstein, an iPhone app maker has decided to challenge the Apple ban on porn in the App Store:

The app responsible for taking iTunes’ virginity is called “Hottest Girls” ($1.99), an app that until today was merely a bunch of Asian chicks in lingerie. However the app has gone through a massive update, and besides now boasting “You should be happy to know that the new update contains 99% non-Asian images”, it is now the first officially sanctioned iTunes app to contain topless photos.

Now, it seems likely that even before I hit publish that Apple will take down this app and perhaps even exert their power to remove the app iPhones that have already purchased the app.

The question is, should Apple do this?  If they don’t you can definitely expect to see a flood of porn-related Apps dominating the App Store.  I mean, the argument has been made that the internet itself was created originally as a better way to get porn to the masses.

Anyone wanting to see naked girls on their iPhone can always hop on Safari but if you are offline you are out of luck.  New Apps like “Hottest Girls,” while beyond silly, certainly solve that problem.

The whole issue of Apple being the moral police of what applications consenting adults put on their iPhone has always been contentious.   Apple has a great opportunity to create a reasonable age-verification process all allow users to decide just how much immoral content they can handle.

Not only would this be a big income generator but it will offer yet another reason NOT to jail-break your phone.  Something Apple would really like to see stopped.

Unfortunately, I doubt Apple will see it that way and it will be some time before the App Store opens up to all perversions.

Live Baseball on Your iPhone

Taking one more small, but important, step towards offering customers what they want where they want it, the MLB is rolling out a new iPhone app that takes advantages in the 3.0 software update.  The new app will allow users to watch live streaming coverage of out-of-market baseball games right on their iPhone over either a 3G or WiFi connection.

This is certainly cool.  The one thing I miss since cutting my cable TV is coverage of the occasional live sporting event.  Slowly but surely, the major sports leagues are coming up with ways for viewers to enjoy events without commiting to expensive packages of programming, the majority of which you are not interested in seeing.

We are getting closer to the day when you can simply pick an event, pay a fair price, and enjoy the coverage on the screen of your choice.  What this will mean to the licensing deals that have been the life-blood of cable operators for years, is still to be determined.  One thing is certain, as distribution becomes less and less reliant on the cable companies, the cable companies are going to find themselves quickly dislodged from their current position as an unwelcome monopoly.

The MLB app will cost you $10, and as long as you don’t follow the local team, seems like a pretty good deal.

Pondering Pandora’s Possible Profits

Pandora is easily one of my favorite streaming music sites and one of my most used iPhone apps so I can’t say I was shocked to read that they are headed toward profitability within the next year:

Revenue may double this year to about $40 million, Westergren, 43, said in an interview yesterday in San Francisco. The advertising-supported service has 27 million registered users and is adding members at 50,000 to 60,000 a day, faster than in previous years.  LINK

Now, I have no idea what their costs are for running the site, streaming all that data and paying the royaltees but $40 million in revenue is pretty good for a site that doesn’t charge users.

However, a closer look at their numbers has me wondering.  With close to 30 million registered users and $40 million in revenue, it means that Pandora is only making a little over $1/year per registered user.  That strikes me as awfully low.

Napster just launched a plan to let user stream specific music for $60/year ad-free.  I wonder if Pandora’s 30 million users would pay, say $5/year for an ad-free version of Pandora’s current service?  That would be $150 million in revenue right there.  Plus, Pandora is already fully portable, unlike Napster.

Apple’s “Closed” App Store Actually Hurts Profit Potential of iPhone

The word on the web the last day or so is that Apple has only made somewhere between $20-$50 million from the sale of iPhone Apps.  While not chump change, it doesn’t make a big impression on Apple’s overall revenue.

As SAI says:

Apple has said publicly that its plan is to run the App Store near breakeven. The main idea is to make money by selling iPhones and iPods, which Apple is doing nicely.

If the point of Apps is to boost the sale of iPhone, why would Apple be so against opening up the App Store to all application? Why not step away from the constantly problematic position of moral/ethic/technical boarder guard and let Apps for the iPhone be an open marketplace?

The coolest Apps out there are often only currently available to the few out there willing to jailbreak their iPhones, voiding their warantee and risking having their iPhones bricked with Apple’s latest update.

Many of the Apps that Apple have rejected (video recording, cut and paste, etc.) are exactly the ones that would encourage more people to buy an iPhone and that’s where Apple claims all their profit lies.

It’s also downright creepy and weird for Apple, a hardware/software company, suddenly trying to decide what is “appropriate” content.  Since the iPhone comes with a web browser capable of opening the pages of porn sites, it seems completely absurd to tell adults they can’t have certain software because it violates some vague concept of morality in the eyes of Apple.

Not only that, but because of Apple’s crazy position as gatekeeper there is a constant stream of bad press on which App was or wasn’t accepted by Apple.  What does Apple get for all this negative press?  If they just opened up the system they would have a simple defense: Hey, it’s not our job to tell people what they can and can’t do with their iPhones once they buy them.

Apple’s Stranglehold on iPhone Apps is Puzzling

There is a pretty good overview in the NYT about Apple’s attempts to make is declared somehow illegal to jailbreak your iPhone:

downloading a bit of software that bypasses Apple’s restrictions and allows the installation of unsanctioned third-party programs.

Forgetting the legal issues surrounding this question, I find myself struck by just how audacious, and ultimately doomed to fail, it is for Apple to try and lock the iPhone platform so that only software it approves is usable.

Aside from pure gaming systems (XBox, etc.), I can’t think of a legitimate computing platform that attempts to exert this level of control.  Even on my Mac I can download and install any software I choose.  Sure. I risk crashing my computer, but it is my computer and it is mine to crash.

I understand the financial advantages of Apple being the sole outlet for iPhone Apps but it doesn’t seem likely that they can maintain this position if they continue to so tightly restrict the applications offered for sale.  As long as Apple blocks useful or entertaining apps from their shop there will be plenty of people willing to do whatever it takes to get access to the banned content.

According to the NYT, the jailbrak community doesn’t appear to be posing a signficant threat to Apple’s bottomline, either:

William H. Greene, a professor of economics at New York University who studies digital entertainment, said most jailbreaking software is free and does not hurt sales of the iPhone. Some applications available through the independent channels had been rejected by Apple for inclusion in its store. “It’s hard to see where Apple is being harmed by this,” he said.

It would be nice to see Apple, on its own, examine and reevaluate their positions both on having to approve of the content of Apps before sale and on their Sisyphean efforts to halt jailbreaking but something tells me they will have to be forced their by the market.

LINK

Baby Shaker iPhone App Short-Lived

Considering how hard it was for iFart to be approved for sale in the iPhone app store, one really has to wonder how an app called “Baby Shaker” made it through all the red tape.

For a relatively brief time, “Baby Shaker” was available for purchase at the iTunes app store. Now, after a few major blog posts and tons of twitters, the app has been removed.

Still, how did this ever get listed in the first place?

Other apps recently pulled by Apple include Nazi Sympathizer, iKKK, Puppy Kicker Lite, Skin the Cat, PedoFinder2 and Sexting: The Game.