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…

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.

Apple Loves Soft Core Porn Apps Like SuicideGirls Flip Strip

The ongoing saga of Apple’s idiotic idea to police iPhone apps continues to do nothing but confuse and annoy both users and developers.

While developers hoping to add real usefulness to the iPhone with new eBook readers find themselves being rejected because it might let someone download the public domain version of the Kama Sutra, makers of what amounts to soft-core porn seem to have no problems getting approval.

For instance, the Sucide Girls Flip Strip application.  Here is what it does.  It presents a still photo of a young woman in clothes. When you flip the phone over it reveals the same girl in just her underwear.

While there is not explicit nudity there is nothing beyond prurient value here.

Now, I’m not saying Apple should ban apps like this. Instead, I think Apple should stop trying to play morals cop and let the grown up owners of the iPhone decide whether or not they want to buy any app that can be developed.

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

iPhone Apps Beat Pirates By Understanding Users

Image via Wikipedia

There was a piece in the New York Times about the somewhat surprising success of iPhone Apps, especially the success of the apps that aren’t free:

What’s most interesting is how iPhone users are willing to spend money in ways that Web users are not.

I’ve criticized Apple from time to time for not having a coherent approach to delivering free content with advertising. But in some ways, the development of a market for paid content is a bigger and less expected achievement.

Why has this happened? Apple has created an environment that makes buying digital goods easy and common. With an infrastructure that supports one-click purchases of songs and videos, it was easy to add applications in the same paradigm. Paying for software, especially games, is not new to Apple customers. So when you see the iPhone manual or the Frommer’s Paris guidebook, it feels natural to click. (And of course, your credit card is already on file with Apple.)

What I think is most important in this story is that is proves that most people are more than willing to pay a reasonable price for a decent piece of content if a) it is extremely easy and streamlined to make the purchase and b) the content is priced in a way that seems to fit the value.

It certainly wouldn’t be hard for their the be a vast P2P network for iPhone apps much like there is for music right now – and there is when it comes to “jail-broken” iPhones – but it seems that the vast majority of users are more than happy to pay for the apps they want since Apple has made it simple and affordable.

Hey record labels and studios, you guys paying attention?

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The Presidents of the United States Push iPhone Music App

There is a very cool story in Wired about a new iPhone app from the band The Presidents of the United States.  Selling for $3, the app provides buyers with a direct streaming link (meaning you must be “online” to use it) to four albums and a slew of other content:

“If all the rights to the masters and the publishing are contained — if the artist has control of them or the label has control of them,” said Dederer, “they can sell music in this entirely new format. The first one we’re doing is for my band, The Presidents… you can sort of pump anything in there that you want, at random. Maybe we’ll put my bandmate Chris Ballow’s answering machine message on there… it becomes an open conduit to the fans to promote tours… and include links to the band’s blog.”

All of the music in the Presidents’ iPhone app is available in streamable playlist form, so you need to be connected via cell or Wi-Fi in order to hear it. Songs can be played in order or shuffled, while “Buy” links let you add any of the songs to your normal iTunes collection so that they can play offline. As for Apple, it’s happy to collect 30 percent of the price of the app for distributing it — the same share it takes when songs are sold through the more conventional iTunes music store.

This is a great experiment in terms of non-traditional distribution.  I wonder if the $3 pricetag is such a good idea, though.  It would seem to me the true benefit with this sort of app is user-penetration since it becomes a constant opportunity to make more money on tours, single-song sales and merchandising.  $3 seems like a high price to pay when you don’t actually get anything but access.