Most college professors will tell students to put away their iPhone or iPod once class starts. But not Ken Joy. His class requires them.
Professor Joy teaches ECS 198H, Introduction To iPhone Application Development, to undergraduates at the University of California at Davis. On the first day of class in late September UC Davis became one of a growing number of schools that are tailoring classes and focusing academic resources on the making and selling of applications for Apple's popular mobile platform.
A professor for almost 30 years, Joy has mainly researched computer graphics and visualizations, until he and a former grad student came up with the idea to offer a class that teaches to the iPhone SDK (software development kit). Joy didn't have much experience in mobile platforms, but he was game for teaching something "relevant" that would keep his students motivated.
"Nothing is more relevant than the iPhone or iPod Touch right now," Joy said in an interview this week.
One of the apps developed in Professor Joy's first iPhone app making class.
(Credit: Sunny Dhillon and Fei Li)He's not the first to teach this class to undergrads. Stanford University has offered the class for a year, as have Florida's Stetson University and the New Jersey Institute of Technology.
But while those schools have taken advantage of Apple's iPhone Developer University Program--which provides free access to the SDK, Apple hardware, and Apple employees as teachers--Joy's course is a bit more of a grassroots effort.
ECS 198H wasn't approved as a university course until 10 days before the fall quarter started in September--in other words, students already had their class schedules set. But less than four hours after Joy placed it in the registration guide, the class was filled to its 35-student capacity, with another 40 people staking out wait-list spots.
"I saw the e-mail (about the class) and I thought, 'Oh gosh.' I jumped right on my computer and signed up for the class as soon as I saw it," said Kip Nicol, 22, a computer science and engineering major. "It was a pretty hot class."
Jules Houts, 21, also studying computer science and engineering, jumped at what looked like a "fun" class, he said. "It seemed better than operating systems or something like that."
Besides room on their schedules, students also had to provide their own iPhone, iPod Touch, or Mac that can run the SDK, thanks to the UC system's well-publicized budget problems.
"We had no choice; students had to find resources themselves," said Joy.
And they did. So did several faculty and university employees who chose to audit the class, or sit in without getting a grade, illustrating much of what we already know: the App Store is popular. Apple's online marketplace for iPhone and iPod Touch programs has been bombarded with submissions from developers in the year and a half it's been open for business. There are more than 100,000 applications currently for sale and 8,500 new and updated programs submitted every day. And its competitors want a piece too: Research In Motion, Google's Android, Palm, Nokia, and Microsoft's Windows Mobile have followed suit, opening up application marketplaces, though none has university professors teaching courses about them. Or at least not yet.
Granted, squeezing the entire learning and development process into a 10-week academic quarter was a challenge. The first five weeks were spent learning the SDK, some Objective C programming language, and making simple apps like an RSS reader, while the last five weeks they split into two-person teams building their apps.
Joy said he is impressed with what his newbie iPhone developers came up with: an app for properly tuning a piano, one for tracking location of the GPS-equipped UC Davis student-run bus system, and one application for all UC Davis students, including information about student groups, maps of the campus, class locations, to name a few. That one will be in the App Store next quarter, Joy is already predicting.
The class was deemed a success, but it's unclear if it'll be back on the schedule come next fall. "We hope to offer it next year, but with the budget problems of the University of California system, no one quite knows what's going to happen."
Either way, Joy says teaching to the SDK is one of the most hands-on real-world classes he's ever taught to undergrads.
"We got to develop some apps for the real world. Students got to see a really good SDK...This is something we normally don't get in a university," Joy said. Most classes "tend to solve limited problems and don't really deal with real world that much. These that do, trying to develop bigger applications, get the students closer to the experience of industry. Which is very good."
"It was one of the funnest classes I've taken because it was project-oriented, and it created a community of developers," said Houts, who created the piano-tuning application.
But besides teaching the programming language to build iPhone apps, Joy's class also included business how-tos for those who may want to create their own iPhone app developer companies.
Some students, like Houts, are already thinking that way. As a member of UC Davis' lacrosse team, he plans on making an iPhone game based on his sport, a market he believes has some good potential.
"There's nothing except for a lacrosse stats (app) on the App Store. I want to make a little lacrosse game, and be the first to get on that market. There's a new lacrosse Xbox game that just came out, so it's still a new market right now."
If all goes well, Houts said he could see himself starting an iPhone app-making business. "I think I'll submit the first couple apps under my name, and if they're successful then I might start something."
Industry insiders are accusing Apple of manipulating the price of NAND flash memory chips used in its popular iPhone and iPod products, according to a report in The Korea Times on Monday.
Citing unnamed sources, the article says Apple asks manufacturers to produce more chips than it eventually buys from Samsung Electronics and Hynix Semiconductor. The sources said Apple waits for the price of the chips to fall before making its purchase.
(Credit:
Apple)
The practice of not buying all of the product originally ordered, semiconductor analyst Jim Handy told CNET, is "not uncommon in the industry."
Handy, of market research firm Objective Analysis, explained that these contracts are normally negotiated with a cancellation clause, with provisions to protect the supplier and buyer. He said companies usually work closely with the buyers, so changes to orders are normally small and don't cause many problems.
Supply and demand in the NAND market are currently about even, Handy said, adding that with the popularity of the iPhone and iPod, he's heard estimates that 20 percent to 30 percent of the worldwide NAND flash memory goes to Apple. In its fiscal fourth-quarter results, the company reported selling 10.2 million iPods and 7.4 million iPhones for the three months ended September 26.
Chipmakers Samsung Electronics and Hynix Semiconductor declined to comment for The Korea Times, as did Apple's Korean office. Contacted by CNET, representatives of Apple in the United States also declined to comment for the story.
The iPhone sales numbers continue to increase, as does the number of applications available for the device. Apps are one reason the iPhone has become as popular as it is among so many different categories of users in such a short time on the market.
Apple currently has more than 100,000 apps available for download, with users having downloaded more than 2 billion apps as of November 4.
Update 2: Apple's U.S. Black Friday sale is up, and while not spectacular, there are some rare discounts to be found. To go back to the same examples we used for the U.K. and Australian Apple stores, the base model 13-inch MacBook Pro is $1,098, down from $1,199.
In fact, it looks like all MacBook Pro models are exactly $101 off, while the $999 white MacBook is not discounted at all. The 32GB iPod Touch is $268, down from $299.
This sale is good online and in Apple's retail stores and runs until 3 a.m. EST on November 28.
Update: Even though it's not quite Black Friday in the U.S. yet, it's past midnight in some other parts of the globe. Notably, Australia and the U.K. have both seen their respective Apple Web sites updated to reveal Apple's one-day sale. While we can't say yet that the deals in the U.S. will be exactly the same, there's no reason think they won't be.
On apple.com/uk, we saw a 13-inch MacBook Pro, originally £1,149, marked down to £1,078. On apple.com/au, the same unit was A$1,868, marked down from A$1,999.
Similarly, a 32GB iPod Touch is £208, marked down from £229 on the U.K. site, while while in Australia, it's A$358, down from A$399.
We've also examined some Black Friday deals from other retailers.
Our original post continues below:
According to purportedly leaked documents on the tech rumor site Boy Genius Report, Apple is gearing up to offer a series of post-Thanksgiving bargains on products from iPods to MacBooks.
The deal, allegedly good only on November 27, lists "up to" discounts of 30 percent on iPods (excluding the Shuffle and iPhone), 25 percent on Mac laptops and desktops, and 15 percent on accessories, software, and other hardware.
The Boy Genius Report Web site says: "One of our connects just hit us up with some intriguing Apple information. According to them, what you see detailed above is a shot of Apple's yearly Black Friday deals. It's reported to be something Apple will email out shortly."
Of course, with the vague use of "up to" and no specific products listed, we can't be sure if these will be good deals or not. But if you're interested in being the first in line to check them out, the leaked doc also says that select Apple stores will be opening at 6 a.m. on November 27.
(Credit:
Boy Genius Report)
eBay is playing virtual Santa this holiday season with a free "Deals" app for the iPhone that leads consumers to the better buys on the auction site.
Launched Tuesday, eBay Deals is designed to deliver a stream of the best deals on the site from across hundreds of millions of listings. Like eBay Mobile, the company's regular iPhone app, Deals lets you search, shop, and pay for your items from your iPhone or iPod Touch.
All featured deals spotlight items with no bids, no reserve price, free or fixed-rate shipping, and less than four hours remaining to bid.
You can browse deals across eight categories, including apparel, computers, electronics, and collectibles. If you spot a deal you like, just tap on it, and its listing pops up where you can watch it or bid on it. Not crazy about the current deals? Just shake your iPhone or iPod Touch, and a new set of deals appears.
If you spot a deal that may be better for someone else, you can e-mail it or share it via your Facebook or Twitter account.
Besides browsing eBay's virtual aisles, you can search for your own deals by entering a product name, category, and price range. You can save your customized search results to return to them later.
Starting Friday, eBay will also be unveiling a "12 Days of Deals" feature promoting a new promotion each day until December 8. Friday's deal will offer Samsung's N120 Netbook.
"As the world's leading online marketplace we have insights into how people really want to shop...and they clearly want to shop on their phones," eBay Marketplaces President Lorrie Norrington said in a statement.
Though designed for the mobile crowd, eBay's daily deals can also be found online at the auction site's Deals page.
eBay has been busy lately sprucing up its mobile auction site for the holidays. The vendor recently added social networking to its eBay Mobile app, letting you share a listing through e-mail, Facebook, or Twitter.
Since its launch in 2008, eBay's mobile app has been downloaded more than 5 million times, said the company. With a purchase made every two seconds, the company said, more than $500 million worth of items are likely to be traded through eBay mobile this year.
I often wake up with a tune playing in my head. I don't know why it's that particular tune, and sometimes I waterboard myself for hours trying to find the reason for this apparently random madness.
This morning, for example, it was that Spanish Lullaby song that Madonna numbed us with some time around the last century. (I never said it was only good songs that blared in my internal jukebox.)
So why might one's mind have been invaded by "La Isla Bonita?" Was it because this time last year I was in Spain, sipping sangria with some dubious Europeans? Was it because last night I saw a trailer of a new film directed by Madonna's last husband? Was it because I hadn't had enough sleep?
All this thinking is painful and useless, but it has brought me to an idea for Apple: it's time the company took the apparent randomness of the iPod Shuffle and made it mean something.
Might I propose that Apple creates an iPod that, whenever worn on your person, can immediately discern your mood? Please imagine that this new iPod, let's call it the iPod Shrink, is a tiny little thing that has within it even tinier sensors that monitor your heart rate, your blood pressure, your digestive calm, even your sweat level.
On the basis of this entirely factual information, the iPod Shrink would then select the precise piece of music that would match your mood. It's important to consider just what is meant by "match your mood."
Perhaps you, the moody consumer, might have the ability to ask the iPod Shrink to enhance your mood or to counteract it.
If you ask for counteraction and the machine sees that you're miserable, the iPod Shrink would bypass "My Immortal" by Evanescence, "Creep" by Radiohead or anything by James Blunt and go straight to "I Feel Good" by James Brown or the utterly classic Manilow rendition of "Copacabana." For enhancement, it would do the reverse.
If it detected anger, it could soothe you with some Bebel Gilberto or stoke your fires with some Sex Pistols. If it detected concern, it might offer the Goo Goo Dolls' "Iris." Or, alternatively, something from Disturbed's fine little album "The Sickness."
Perhaps the greatest surprise for you, the iPod Shrink owner, would be to discover what mood you are actually in. After all, your little device would be more familiar with the true scientific nature of your innards than would you. So your own self-knowledge would surely be enhanced by such a wickedly wily machine.
This could be a very big seller. It would certainly make me look more kindly on the self-absorbed, frustrated, preening, angst-ridden waddlers in the gym.
While it's waiting to be gobbled up by Google, AdMob isn't sitting still.
The mobile ad company announced Tuesday that it will deliver interactive video ads to the iPhone and iPod Touch devices. The ads, set to run this week, will let iPhone users surf the Web and check out other videos while the video ad is playing. AdMob believes advertisers and developers will take advantage of the video format by serving up interactive ads designed to pull in consumers.
"AdMob's new Interactive Video Ad Unit brings together consumers' love of watching videos on their mobile device with advertisers' goal of providing an interactive, social experience for consumers," said AdMob Founder and CEO Omar Hamoui in a statement. "We are excited to create new ways for advertisers to engage with consumers on their mobile devices and for the developers behind the most popular and engaging iPhone applications to effectively monetize."
The video ads will automatically pop up as iPhone users access certain content and applications. The ads will also offer a video player so that people can control and interact with them. To make sure the ads run at a decent clip, AdMob uses a network of distributed servers to push them out. Each video is saved in different file sizes, with the most appropriate one streamed based on the connection type, such as 3G or Wi-Fi.
AdMob is one of the top advertising providers for the handheld and portable device market, a position that convinced Google to cough up $750 million in stock to buy out the company. With its multimedia capabilities and huge market share, the iPhone has proven a fertile ground for video ads, with the first ones popping up in early 2008 and growing since then.
A Mad Magazine contributor has been told by Apple that his iPhone app featuring drawings and contact information of members of the 111th Congress has been rejected because it depicts politicians in an objectionable light.
Richmond's iPhone app in action.
(Credit: Tom Richmond)According to Tom Richmond, who wrote about his app's rejection on his personal blog, his app--dubbed Bobble Rep-111th Congress Edition--in no way should have been construed as objectionable.
Richmond said that the focus of the app was to create a "database of all the members of the United States Congress which allowed the user to find the names and contact information of their senators and congressional representative either via Zip code or by using the iPhone's GPS location services." Rather than use the politicians' individual portraits, the app depicts each senator and representative in caricature form, which Richmond drew himself. All told, the app features 540 caricatures of the politicians.
... Read moreDon Reisinger is a technology columnist who has written about everything from HDTVs to computers to Flowbee Haircut Systems. Don is a member of the CNET Blog Network, and posts at The Digital Home. He is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure.
More than 100,000 apps are now available for download from Apple's App Store, making it the largest such retailer in the world.
App Store icon
(Credit: Apple)The App Store launched in July 2008 with just 500 applications. The store is now available in 77 countries, which has contributed to what Apple said Wednesday is well over 2 billion downloads.
Apps from the App Store work with both the iPhone and iPod Touch.
When introducing its new iPod Touch in September, Apple positioned the device as a superior gaming platform to Sony's PSP or Nintendo DS. Apple said its rivals charged too much for games and didn't offer enough selection. At the time, Apple had more than 21,000 game titles in the App Store, while Nintendo had 3,600 titles and Sony had 600.
The message apparently has gotten through.
"The App Store has forever changed the mobile gaming industry and continues to improve," Travis Boatman, vice president of Worldwide Studios at EA Mobile, was quoted as saying in Apple's press release Wednesday.
Not everything has been perfect with the App Store, however. Most notably, Apple's app approval process has caused frustration with developers, who are sometimes left in the dark about the reason an app is rejected.
Apple released iTunes 9.0.2 today an update that included additional improvements to app sorting for the iPhone and iPod Touch.
In early September, we offered a bug fix for arranging apps on iTunes after the release of iTunes 9.0 and later that same month Apple released iTunes 9.0.1. Progress was made in squashing some of the bugs we found, but the app sorting feature was still pretty tedious to use and nearly impossible to use if the number of apps on your iPhone exceeded 176.
Apple has resolved this problem by displaying the apps past the first 176 onto home screens that are grayed out. These home screens, numbered 12 or higher, will not currently display on your iPhone, but at least now you have a chance of grabbing apps from these screens and moving them to another visible screen. You should keep in mind that any apps on the home screens past the first 11 will only be accessible via a Spotlight search.
iTunes app sorting note grayed out home screen.
Problems sorting apps were not completely resolved by this iTunes update if all the home screens and the extra ones are completely populated. In this case, you lose any chance of moving the apps around effectively. However, there is a work-around--simply sync one more app back to your iPhone and iTunes will add another grayed out home screen. The exception being that this screen will now be mostly empty giving you the work space you need to get your apps sorted the way you want them. When you are done, make sure that extra app is the only one left on the extra home screen and delete it once you are satisfied with the way your apps or home screens are arranged.
This last step is optional; however, I recommend you perform it to prevent apps from accidentally being placed onto this screen. If you add more apps by syncing or purchases iPhone OS will recreate it.
iTunes app sorting--make some room for temporary workspace by syncing one extra app back to your iPhone.
Additional information about iTunes 9.0.2 enhancements, bug fixes, and download links for Windows or Mac OS X can be found at download.com.
Say Tweetie, and most folks think: "I tawt I taw a puddy tat."
But as a social-networking kinda guy, Tweetie is the name of my favorite iPhone Twitter app.
Tweetie lets you access all the standard Twitter features on your iPhone. You can see and respond to the tweets you follow, post your own tweets, and search for tweets by keyword.
Tweetie has always offered a clean, simple interface. But with its newly-redesigned version 2.0, the app is even friendlier. The buttons to tweet, check mentions of your name, send a direct mail (DM), and search for tweets are now within easy access at the bottom of the screen.
Checking your own profile is also smoother. A single Profile screen displays your bio, location, and URL, as well as the number of your followers, those you're following, tweets, and favorites. Tapping on a category like Followers displays the names and photos of all the people tracking your tweets.
Tweetie 2.0 also sports a neat, new feature to let you update the list of tweets that you follow--simply drag your finger down the screen, and the newest tweets appear at the top with a pop.
Tweetie provides its own interface for viewing Web pages and other linked content in a tweet. Courtesy of the iPhone 3.0 update, the interface works in both portrait and landscape mode and offers options to view the page in Safari, e-mail a link to the page, or repost the link in your own tweet.
Options are plentiful when creating your own tweets. Like Twitter, Tweetie keeps track of every character you type, so you know when you're approaching that 140-character limit. You can attach photos or videos to your tweets, either by snapping them with the iPhone camera or grabbing them from your library. Your followers can then view them on yFrog, a site that lets you share images and video via Twitter.
Geotagging is another hot trend that Tweetie offers. You can add a Google Maps link to your current location in a tweet and search for other Twitter users in your area.
Like several other iPhone apps, Tweetie ran into trouble earlier this year with the Apple police, who initially denied approval of its 1.3 version over alleged naughty words in its Twitter Trends feed. Of course, Tweetie is just a conduit that displays whatever appears on Twitter, so it's ridiculous to ding the app for the content. Fortunately, Apple eventually OK'd the update, and it's been smooth sailing for Tweetie since then.
The Apple's App Store is loaded with other Twitter apps, and I've tried a variety of them--both free and paid, including Twitterrific and TweetDeck.
Twitter fans all have their own preferences. You can even vote for your favorite Twitter app.
But Tweetie is the app I've stuck with the longest, and the one I heartily recommend.
Tweetie 2.0 will set you back $2.99--even those of us who migrated from Tweetie 1.0 have to pay for the new edition. But the upgrade is well worth it. Tweetie 2.0 requires iPhone OS 3.0 or higher and is compatible with both the iPhone and iPod Touch.
