Though the iPhone gets much of the attention when it comes to mobile apps, RIM recently launched its BlackBerry App World to compete with Apple. I've been using apps from that store (and a few other Twitter clients that can be downloaded online) that bring social networking to the social networker. Some are better than others, but they're all worth trying at least once. And they're all free!
13 social network apps
Facebook The BlackBerry's Facebook app is the best social-networking app in the App World. It lets you update your status from your phone, upload pictures to your profile, and send messages to friends. One of my favorite features is the option to use a Facebook friend's profile photo as their image for your BlackBerry contact list. It's really well put together.
ITookThisOnMyPhone ITookThisOnMyPhone lets you snap pictures on your BlackBerry and upload them to your ITookThisOnMyPhone profile. You can also upload all those pictures to your favorite social network, like Facebook or MySpace. It didn't do it as quickly as uploads in the Facebook app, but it still worked as advertised. ITookThisOnMyPhone is useful for those who want to send pictures to their social-network friends. But if you already have the Facebook app, stick with that.
Loopt As long as friends have Loopt installed on their BlackBerry or iPhone, you can find them through the app's location-based positioning, and you can send messages. You can also share photos and comment on their images. Messaging friends is easy and sharing photos works relatively well. But finding those friends is made difficult at times, since the location-based service isn't perfect. I like Loopt, but it needs improvement.
MySpace The MySpace app on the BlackBerry App World is outstanding. You can send and receive MySpace mail and update your status. Like the Facebook app, you can also upload pictures to your profile from your BlackBerry. That feature works well. That said, I found that sifting through friend profiles is more difficult than it should be. But it's still worth downloading if you're a MySpace user.
Qik Livestreaming The Qik LiveStreaming app lets you stream video from your BlackBerry. It boasts an extremely simple (and slick) interface that gets you streaming video in seconds. And the quality of that video is quite impressive. I streamed a few times over the past couple days. There was little lag. I enjoyed using the app.
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Apple)
As an iPhone user, one of the things I've found to be increasingly irksome is the customer review system built into Apple's App Store for the iPhones and iPod Touch.
It's as basic as you get, which follows the design ethos found in the many of Apple's hardware products, such as the no-button Mighty Mouse, disappearing MacBook buttons, and I/O ports on its notebook computers and LCD displays.
While simplicity is one of the qualities that makes Apple's products more approachable for the basic user, it's something that doesn't translate well to a crowd-powered review system.
In its current state, the review system lets you very easily rate a software application from one to five stars, along with the option to write in any thoughts or feelings you have about it. This sounds great, in theory, but a good majority of the reviews found on App Store applications seem to prove otherwise.
More often than not, you'll see one-star reviews in which people are raving about the quality of an application. There are also people who give an application five stars, then go on to spend two paragraphs discussing how often it crashes and larger off-topic issues like international pricing and the handset's lack of a copy-and-paste feature. You also get a lot of comments written in ALL CAPS, with lines of Emoji icons, colored stars, and superfluous exclamation marks.
Some sample reviews taken from Tower Bloxx Deluxe 3D FREE, currently the top free title on the App Store.
(Credit: Screenshot by Josh Lowensohn/CNET)In every sense, it's like the Wild West: untamed and full of interesting characters.
To Apple's credit, on Friday, the company (as promised) removed reviews from customers who had not purchased the application they were reviewing. This may cut down on spam and ill-conceived or written reviews, but it's not a big step in improving how the review system works.
Problematic by design
The problem stems from the fact that Apple has treated software reviews with the same level of simplicity it's approached movie and music reviews. These two mediums are not interactive, nor do they have hangups like development schedules and performance issues.
While you can rate an album or music track based on your enjoyment of it, it's not speaking to a truth about frame rate jitters, buggy code, or a developer who has not put out a necessary update in six months--all things you may find in iPhone applications and that can be good to know before plunking down money on a purchase.
One reason there's a lack of these types of clarifications in user reviews is that Apple has fragmented its reviews system based on platform. Mobile users don't get the same quality of review browsing as those using iTunes do. For instance, when viewing user reviews in iTunes, you get the option to flag a bad review and say whether it was helpful. You can also sort by best and worst reviews, along with the most helpful and recent.
On the iPhone, users have none of these options. In fact, there's currently only one way to view reviews--in chronological order. For a device that's slowly gaining independence from having to sync up with a computer (as seen in recent improvements to podcast downloading on the device), this is troubling.
A better system
There are a three things Apple could do, explicitly to software application reviews, that would beef up the system and make reviews really matter to the potential customers who read them. All three can be found on Amazon.com, which has done a really fantastic job of creating a single ratings system that works on multiple genres of products:
The developer behind Podcaster--who has excellent taste in podcasts--has a similar application that apparently doesn't anger Apple.
(Credit: RSS Player)The iPhone developer behind Podcaster has found a way to get into Apple's App Store without invoking the wrath of iPhone Inspector No. 5.
The developer, who has a private Blogger profile but appears to go by Alex according to Uneasy Silence, has a new application called RSS Player that duplicates the basic function of Podcaster--letting you download podcasts to your iPhone or iPod Touch--but without some of the features that Apple appears to have disliked. For example, you can't search for podcasts through the app, you have to subscribe to the RSS feed for those podcasts.
Back in September, Apple rejected an iPhone application called Podcaster that allowed you to search for podcasts and download them to your device, which was a feature Apple later added to the iPhone. That was one of the first rejected apps to highlight iPhone developer frustration over a lack of communication concerning which technologies and features were forbidden from the App Store, and why.
The iPhone application review process still seems a bit nebulous, but the iPhone application business itself is booming. Apple announced two weeks ago that 15,000 applications are available on the App Store, and that those applications have been downloaded 500 million times, just six months after the store opened for business.
How many iPhone apps does it take to make 10,000? It all depends on how you do the counting.
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148Apps)
Apple watchers this weekend have been ruminating on the overall tally and on the counting methods following a report on 148Apps, a site that keeps tabs on iPhone applications, seen here in its entirety:
In just 142 days, the iPhone OS app store has added over 10,000 apps! An amazing feat for any platform. To commemorate this we've put up a special page. More on this after the weekend.
(We'll hazard a guess that there are actually on the order of 10K mini icons on that "10,000 apps!" special page. A listing to the right side of all those icons gives the total number of apps as 10,091.)
MacRumors.com, meanwhile, quibbles with the overall number, even as it says the actual 10,000 active app mark should be reached "in the next few days":
While several sites have reported that 10,000 iPhone Apps have been released into the App Store, the actual number of active iPhone apps that can be downloaded is about 9,676 as of today's count. The discrepancy comes from the fact that many apps have been removed from the App Store for various reasons (trademark infringement, discontinued apps, pulled and released).
The biggest category of iPhone apps, according to 148Apps, is games (2,333), followed by entertainment (1,122), utilities (1,015), education (737), and productivity (517). The average cost of the apps is listed at $3.12; about one-quarter are free of charge, while one is listed at $899.99.
At DemoFall, Mapflow demonstrated its iPhone application, designed to automate carpooling. The product was just one of many shown built around the iPhone at the event.
(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET News)SAN DIEGO--At Demo and DemoFall, there are always easily identifiable trends among the dozens of companies chosen to present their products.
In previous iterations of the events that I've attended, those trends have been photo-sharing services, online video hosting, Web 2.0, and the like.
This week, the trend--at least as I've seen it--has been the number of companies here with iPhone applications. Not every one of them is talking prominently about the applications they have, but Demo lead organizer Chris Shipley told me informally that she thinks that there must be at least a couple dozen companies with iPhone applications here out of the 72 total presenters.
I'll be the first to admit that I was slow to understand the value of iPhone apps, and I suppose that's because it took me awhile to buy one of the devices, and even longer after I did before I started trolling the Apple App Store looking for the best and brightest of what was out there.
My major introduction to the applications was a day I spent last month in Seattle, basically letting a series of them control my life for a day. And more recently, I have found myself blown away by some of the most simple applications imaginable. For example, Showtimes determines where you are and then comes up with a list of movie theaters--sorted by proximity to you--and shows the films showing at each and the times for each film.
As I said, it's totally simple, and pure genius.
Ultimately, while other mobile phones have many of the features of the iPhone, I don't think that there will be any others in the near future that combine GPS, a great interface, the power of an operating system like OS X, and a network of developers eager to reach out to an audience of users as devoted to their devices as iPhone owners.
Back here at DemoFall, there is definitely no shortage of companies that have developed applications for the device, and some of them seem very promising to me, even though most have yet to appear in the App Store.
I have my own ideas, as I stated above, why I think iPhone apps are the future of software, but I thought these developers would have opinions even more valuable than mine, since they're building businesses around the platform.
WebDiet built an iPhone application designed to help people find restaurants that serve the kind of healthy food they want to eat.
(Credit: WebDiet)Among the companies incorporating the iPhone into their Demo products are WebDiet, Telnic, SkyData, The Echo Nest, and Rudder.
"Right now, (the iPhone is) the platform with the most immediacy," said Richard Bryce, CEO of Mapflow, a company here with a product centered around an iPhone app. "Especially for the consumer market."
It's easy to see why Bryce would think so.
Mapflow is a very interesting product designed around the idea of helping drivers offset the high costs of gas by finding people who need rides to pay to fill empty seats in their cars.
"Most of our lives are ad hoc," Bryce said. "We're trying to apply the iPhone's smart technology to give that ad hoc, on-demand capability to carpooling."
The Mapflow system works by letting drivers define routes--either one-time, or repeat--they're following and the number of seats they have available to fill. The iPhone makes it simple to do this through lists that can be easily displayed and because the phone's GPS chip quickly determines where the driver is in proximity to anyone looking for a ride.
It might sound weird to pick up strangers in this manner, but Mapflow requires that all users register with their name, a photo, and a credit card, and that means that drivers can feel confident that whomever they pick up is probably going to be safe. And when they arrive to pick up the rider, the iPhone displays the rider's picture so the driver can be sure the person is who he or she is supposed to be.
In addition, drivers and riders alike can choose preferences for the type of person with whom they want to travel. This means, for example, that women can choose to ride only with other women.
Further, the service has a quick and easy rating system--again, enabled by the iPhone's elegant interface--that allows everyone to weigh in on the people with whom they've traveled.
Riders pay about 30 cents a mile to use the system, and Mapflow makes its money from a 15 percent commission on the transactions. Drivers pocket the rest.
Clearly, there are many questions the company must answer before the product becomes profitable--and of course, it must first release the application, which it plans to do in about four weeks. But this seems to me to be a very good use of the device, especially given the growing emphasis on getting people to stop driving one to a car.
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Yelp on the iPhone maps and calls destinations and provides user ratings, but leaves off other social-networking elements.
(Credit: CNET Networks)Yelp for iPhone contains all the ingredients you'd expect from the well-known site for users to rate local business and restaurant listings--except one. It has a perplexing tendency to space out when loading user reviews. The instability is surely an early bug, but a detraction nonetheless.
Apart from that, Yelp for iPhone features a clear display composed of category listings for nearby restaurants, bars, banks, and so on. Like so many of the other apps that CNET editors have reviewed, Yelp's iPhone offering taps into the phone's GPS receptors to find matching listings in your neighborhood, with further parameters on distance and hours available in the button marked Filter.
Each listing on the results page squeezes in the address, user ratings, distance, and price range. Drilling deeper spreads the information out in a format that lets you map the location, click to call, begin browsing through user reviews, and bookmark the page.
Yelp.com is a data-intensive site bulging with user opinions and social-networking addenda. The iPhone app was clearly never intended as a replacement, but as a companion for the lost or weary to seek out a bike shop or bite to eat. That much is evident by the read-only quality, mobile-specific mapping and call functions, and the de-emphasis on social networking. Still, while the closed, self-centeredness of Yelp for iPhone is somewhat refreshing, certain scheduling capabilities would be welcome--like the ability to invite a friend to lunch.
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CNET Networks)
Of the several news readers offered in Apple's iTunes App Store to date, NetNewsWire stands out as the most appealing. Unlike Mobile News from the Associated Press, NetNewsWire pulls in stories from multiple sources, and unlike Google Reader, it does so nearly instantly in a true native application (Google Readers whisks you to an iPhone-optimized Web application after you select it from a list of more options on Google Mobile.)
Like many other applications, NetNewsWire is the iPhone version of an already-brawny Web service operated by NewsGator, and one whose desktop versions CNET Download.com editors have already acclaimed for its usability on Macs and on PCs, where it's known as FeedDemon.
NetNewsWire for iPhone is a feeds repository, but a good one. You won't be able to add feeds at this early stage, but the application will syncs with any of your existing NewsGator accounts for NetNewsWire for Macintosh, FeedDemon, Inbox, and NewsGator Online. The application lets new users to sign up from the iPhone. You'll also be able to save posts in a clippings folder for later perusal, and read the full article on Safari.
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CNET Networks)
Pandora may be one of the better-known music-discovery apps to premier in the iTunes App Store yesterday (download | review), but it isn't the only free Internet music-streaming and discovery service-turned-iPhone-application out there. One of my iPhone-blessed colleagues here at CNET also heartily recommended AOL Radio.
AOL's channel of recommendations tops the category listings on this simple vertical app, followed by category genres from Alternative to Sports talk and World music. Clicking a category streams content by radio station or by predefined collection. All songs play on a darkened screen powered by CBS Radio. The artist's name and available album art are displayed when available. Below is a options button that can be "tapped" to save the song or find it on either iTunes or AOL Music.
All of these are useful functions of streaming media, but what won my colleague over is the ease of streaming local stations by selecting the city from a tab.
AOL Radio may not offer the same element of excitement or surprise as Pandora's music-picking engine, but with a song and station history, favorites, local stations, and collections, it's a viable contender for those who aren't as interested in rating songs or having an algorithm pick their next jam.
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CNET Networks)
There are several media-pushing services represented at the opening of the iTunes App Store, each with their own combination of supported sites. ShoZu (covered here) remains the whopper of them all with support for roughly 30 popular social sites and services. There are the major players, of course--Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Photobucket, Blogger, Picasa, LiveJournal--but ShoZu isn't too high and mighty to upload text and images to some of the more niche guys, like Box.Net qipit, Snapfish, and SmugMug.
With so many services ready to cram into an app interface, things could get tangled up fast. But they don't, partly due to the iPhone's nice big screen and partly due to a structure designed to keep order. Frequent uploaders can automate multi-platform-pushing by going online and adding up to 10 child services to be copied each time media is posted to the parent service.
My biggest gripe? That while you can sign up for a ShoZu account from the iPhone itself, you have to visit the Web site to arrange for multi-pinging. It's the glue that ties ShoZu together for many users, and is something they'll need to add to truly be a standalone app on the iPhone.
My favorite thing about open platforms that allow third-party developers to run wild is when those independent programmers actually do. Jeffrey Grossman wrote a free native application called Movies.app that revolves around movie listings and offers everything from from a straightforward, yet sophisticated lookup by movie or theater to a crisp, clear preview on the phone.
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iTunes)
Grossman wisely included the other essential information that every moviegoer may want or need, including supporting information on IMDB, a lists of popular movies currently in theaters, and another list of shows coming to theaters soon (first up is Dark Knight). There's also a way to buy tickets on the spot through the iPhone brand of Movietickets.com, and complete Google-powered maps and directions. The only things missing are user reviews and stars for theaters with the best popcorn.
Note: Movies.app currently provides listings for U.S. theaters only. All users may watch trailers and read up on opening flicks.
