Achieve iPhone App Stardom in 2 Minutes or Less

The complexity and costs associated with developing and customizing an iPhone App has just been turned upside down. The team at PointAbout launched this week a revolutionary tool called AppMakr, which enables anyone to develop and publish simple iPhone applications in minutes.

Do you have an RSS feed of compelling and noteworthy content that some of the millions of iPhone users might be interested in seeing on their phones? If you do, you too can generate an iPhone application using AppMakr in a short amount of time with a reasonable amount of money. While we’ve seen similar incarnations of mobile and even web site generation tools, AppMakr provides a powerful capability in generating a viable iPhone experience despite all of the many complexities of creating these coveted utilities. AppMakr handles everything from the application icon and splash screens to the content detail and interaction screens and it even handles the associated touch screen navigational gestures for selecting, zooming and tapping through the content.

The workflow of generating the application is a straightforward process. One can start by simply providing a Web site URL or keyword query and then wait for the result which is in the form of a sample iPhone app built with that content in less than 30 seconds. One can then customize the app further by incorporating additional feeds from social media services like Twitter, Flickr or YouTube. The next step which is optional is to modify the graphic elements to reflect your branding and style guide. This includes the ability to tweak the content icons, splash screen and application tabs. If you are interested in generating a return on your investment, AppMakr also provides the opportunity to opt into one of their two current ad network partners or to B.Y.O.A.N. to serve ads into the resulting app. The video tutorial below provides a brief visual demonstration of just how easy the process is.





Finally, as you reach the end of the generation process, AppMakr gives you two options to publishing your application to the iTunes store. The first is to continue to build and publish using AppMakr, and the second is to publish the app to the iTunes store on your own, provided you have an iPhone application developer account. This is also where the price point changes from $199 to publish with PointAbout/Appmakr as the author when the app appears in iTunes, or to be able to specify your company as the author for $499 and have overall greater control of your application; for instance, being able to test it on an iPhone and not just an emulator first ,and just as important, having the ability to charge for the app if you’d like.
The overall assessment of AppMakr is that at the $200 price point, I would give it a B-minus. I doubt that if I had already taken the necessary steps and made the investment to become part of the iPhone developer program that I would find much value in this solution especially not for an additional $500, but that’s just Me, what do you think?

Impact of Convergence on the TV Industry

The question was posed to me- "How will the merging of TV, the Internet, and phones/mobile devices affect the television industry? Is it still just the TV industry?

The TV industry is multi-faceted. If this question refers to the content producers, the impact will be extremely positive. The platform convergence along with the democratization of content creation will result in the continued leveling of the playing field and the emergence of great innovation in content, with lots more places to distribute.

From a TV service distribution standpoint, the impact will be the negative erosion of the subscriber base for cable and satellite companies who have not made broadband a staple offering among their bundles. According to a recent report from ChangeWave Research, among traditional TV viewers, 20% say they're likely to downgrade or cancel their current TV service package in the next 6 months. The likelihood of canceling is highest among Cable subscribers (22%) and Satellite subscribers (22%), and lowest among fiber-optic TV subscribers (7%). Finally, from a TV advertising standpoint beyond the targeting, contextual and behavioral tracking benefits the convergence will provide, there is an overall sentiment that audiences will be more likely to engage with a brand on an interactive platform than the would be with a traditional TV ad.

While Boomers clearly want to see fewer ads than they do with conventional broadcasting, 68% say they are willing to view at least some ads online.


Broadband video now represents a significant threat to traditional TV viewing. According to the ChangeWave Research Study:

• 69% of Boomers say they've watched video content on their computer over the past 90 days
• 48% of respondents say they'd be willing to pay a monthly fee for a Video-over-the-Internet subscription if it provided the same programming currently available on their TV service
• 79% watch YouTube.com as the leading online website Boomers use to watch video
• 39% TV Network Websites
• 16% Hulu.com
• 11% iTunes

From the perspective of the longtail, the number of choices may be too overwhelming to consume on some of these devices unless software, search, and other providers begin developing deeper personalization capabilities to enable consumers to only get what they want or need on these devices instead of the entire universe of offerings.

Lastly, I believe the convergence will ultimately continue to fragment the overall media landscape, not just the TV industry and its respective la familias- bada bing!

On Barack Obama and the use of Digital Media

The use of digital was a key element in the election of Barack Obama as the 44th President of the United States of America and a historic moment in which America has also elected it's first African American in the President.

The web site, mobile messaging, online video, online donor programs and more all contributed to build a strong grassroots effort.

New chinks in the chain at LinkedIn

The jury may still be out on this, but the LinkedIn home page as been completely redesigned.

It boasts a much better organized information architecture, particularly for navigating to inbox, profile, contacts, groups. Additionally it provides a nice and concise snapshot view of the user's profile with profile photo, # of contacts, and a summary of the number of views in a given week.

It is the middle of the page which gets a bit diluted for me. The Inbox most recent 5 messages I get; however, it is the box below which contains a summary of news feeds for a company that is at the bottom of my profile and really not pertinent or newsworthy right now, and there is no intuitive way to change this that I can find right now. I struggle with why I need it at all on my home page. It is followed by Network Updates, which has proven very useful and insightful and something I would value seeing higher in the hierarchy of information on my home page.

Finally in the right rail is a part-time house promo ad highlighting some of the other new features including LinkedIn tips, as well as the new LinkedIn mobile (http://m.LinkedIn.com).
More importantly, what follows is what I would have expected for the center body of content, which is an AJAX enabled set of modules/widgets that I can move around, reorder, add and subtract to this rail. Perhaps as this whole page is noted as being beta capability that maybe the flexibility of the rest of the page is coming....bada-boom, bada-bing!

Dominance Disguised as an Android

As Google continues to grow, is it their intent to hide their continued dominance under the thin veil of Open Source?

This week, Google unveiled an alliance (Open Handset Alliance) with 33 companies to make new software available free of charge to power mobile phones that will hit the market in the second half of 2008. Last week Google unveiled the alliance around it's Open Social social networking platform.

If this isn't a smart company I don't know what is. Strategic partnerships are integral to each of Google's viable (read non-beta) product/service launches.

Not too mention that the wireless landscape is in need of a huge disruptor like the Android platform proposes itself to be - a low cost, flexible, and hardware agnostic platform.

On Open Social

GigaOm's Om Malik points out that Google's entire business model depends on information being public--search is just a tool used to glean more information about us so the company can serve more targeted advertising. The idea behind OpenSocial is more of the same: provide free tools for (developers in this case) to create free, open software and then help developers monetize their programs through AdSense. Therefore, Google doesn't really have to get into the social networking game.

Well the case is that Google only has to dip their toe into the Social Networking game in order to have significant influence over the social networking space in terms of monetizing the output of capabilities develop using their 'standard' of OpenSocial.

Perhaps I am can easily now be lumped in with those calling Google the evil empire, but I challenge everyone with the question, "What is that threshold when it becomes too much control for one organization to have over the advertising distribution mechanisms for every media including digital, known to mankind?"