iPhone Developers have a blockbuster weekend

July 14, 2008 By

Today I visited two iPhone developers to see how things went. First we visited Evernote, which makes a great note-taking app. This is the most useful app I’ve loaded on my iPhone so far (which has more than 30 apps loaded on it). Really killer thing? Take a picture of something with text in it. Say a sign, or a business card. Or a newspaper ad. Or a bill you received. Save it. Then, search for something on that bill. Wow. It turned all the text in the picture into something you could search for. This is the coolest thing.

The second app developer was Tapulous, producers of Tap Tap Revenge, the #1 free game (and was #9 on the overall list when I visited them tonight and they’ve been rising fast).

Some things I learned.

Evernote has seen 30,000 new people sign up for its service through the iPhone App Store (and many more have downloaded it but had existing accounts). Tap Tap Revenge, which was developed by Nate True, has seen about 200,000 downloads so far, which is made even more incredible because it wasn’t working for part of the day on Friday due to Apple not letting them onto the list at first.

Tapulous says they have several other apps (including a Twitter app, called Twinkle, that I got a first look at. That’s Mike Lee, Chief Architect, showing that off to me) that hasn’t been approved yet, and they are hoping Apple will approve their apps “any minute now.”

Here’s the videos:

Demo of Tap Tap Revenge. In this video you see Bart Decrem, CEO.

Meet Jeff Clavier, one of the investors in Tapulous.

Mike Lee, Chief Architect at Tapulous, shows off Twinkle for the first time, which is a new Twitter client coming soon for the iPhone.

Interview with Evernote’s CEO, Phil Libin, who shows me how his app works on the iPhone.

To give you some perspective on how much the world has sped up: in 1996 the hottest app was ICQ, an instant messaging client. The guys who started that company defined viral marketing. In the first six weeks that ICQ was out there they had 65,000 downloads. Tapulous saw that many downloads in less than a day.

I’d love to hear from other iPhone app developers, particularly ones that are getting praised, or are learning something unique.

Also, I’m hearing from other developers that getting apps approved by Apple is very difficult. Any tips for getting your apps through the system? Any news from developers so we can figure out how slow Apple is being in getting through the app backlog?

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Qik and Twitter goes to Congress and causes major controversy

July 12, 2008 By

The new press conference

The New York Times, tomorrow, has an article about the controversy over using Internet communications tools like Qik and Twitter and whether they should be allowed to be used by members of Congress. Both Qik and Twitter should be thanking Congressman John Culberson (that’s him, being Qik interviewed by me and Andrew Feinberg). You can read his Twitter account here and you can watch his Qik videos here. It’s amazing how this all started when Andrew Feinberg and I interviewed Culberson just a couple of weeks ago. Andrew broke this story and deserves the credit.

In this Qik video we filmed, you’ll hear him explain the coming controversy over using video in Congress.

Amazing how these tools are quickly being picked up in all sorts of non-techie places and are causing major controversies.

UPDATE: Andrew linked to more video and other posts on this story on FriendFeed.

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Jason Calacanis hands keys to blogosphere to Louis Gray

July 11, 2008 By

Why does stuff like this happen? Blame it on iPhone fever. It’s a slow news day, other than Apple’s crap. So, Jason goes out and trolls for attention, the way that only he can do. Brilliant at it, too. Got BusinessWeek’s Sarah Lacy to bite. Sarah, Sarah, Sarah. I really do need to teach you something about Jason, don’t I?

But I couldn’t resist the temptation to take Jason seriously, either, and assume he’s handing the keys to the blogosphere over to the new guard. Who’s that? Well, let’s start with Louis Gray. He’s my top most interesting guy according to FriendFeed stats (only TechCrunch’s Mike Arrington beats him).

But, seriously. Jason’s playing all of us. And, anyway, he knows how to get us all to listen to him when he needs that. Blogging no longer is the only tool with which someone like Jason can get us all involved in his drama.

Or, like Mathew Ingram says, “give me a break.”

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Is FriendFeed going to hire everyone at Google?

July 11, 2008 By

Gary Burd (new FriendFeed employee) has lunch with us (he's on right).

FriendFeed has been hiring Google’s superstars. This has got to be worrying for Google.

Who is the latest to get hired? Gary Burd (that’s him wearing the FriendFeed shirt in the photo above). What did he do before joining FriendFeed? Oh, just some little things. He was the guy who opened Google’s Kirkland Office. He ran the Google Talk team. Before Google he worked on several key things at Microsoft, including developing the Trident HTML rendering engine, the core rendering component of Internet Explorer 4.

Over on FriendFeed we discussed some of the other team members (they only have eight employees so far, so haven’t made a major dent into Google, but they are definitely getting some superstars). Here are the ones I remember:

Bret Taylor. During his four years at Google, he led more than 25 successful product launches, including Google Maps, Google Local, Google Web Toolkit, the Google Maps API, and Google’s Developer product group.

Paul Buchheit? He was the creator and lead developer of Gmail, which anticipated many aspects of Web 2.0, including the idea of Ajax, long before that term was coined. He developed the original prototype of Google AdSense as part of his work on Gmail. He also suggested the company’s now-famous motto “Don’t be evil” in a 2001 meeting on company values.

Sanjeev Singh is a former Google engineer, playing a role in both Google Mail and Google Search Appliance. Prior to Google Sanjeev worked at social annotations site Third Voice and a government research lab.

Kevin Fox: from 2003 to January 2008, Kevin Fox worked as a user experience designer at Google, designing such products as Gmail, Google Calendar, and the second version of Google Reader.

Tudor Bosman is another. Is a great developer from Google, and was principal member of technical staff at Oracle.

Back at the end of March (shortly after joining FriendFeed) I interviewed Bret Taylor and Paul Buchheit on my cell phone and later I interviewed Kevin Fox, designer, who told me a bit about his design philosophy.

This is a superstar team and is the most interesting startup I follow. Do you have any who have more interesting teams than this?

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If you get iPhone 3G: go for white

July 11, 2008 By

I made a big mistake today. I bought a black iPhone 3G. My son told me to buy white. I thought white would look lame, but he was right (he bought a white one). The white doesn’t show dirt the way the black one does. Damn, it’s a schmutz attractor!

Learn from my mistake: go for white.

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Why is AT&T Family Plan so difficult?

July 11, 2008 By

Last year it took two months to get our iPhones all onto AT&T’s family plan. I visited the AT&T store half a dozen times, spent hours on the phone with them before it was all done properly. I assumed then that it was a problem with Apple and AT&T working together and first-day problems that I forgave.

But, today, our iPhones are again on individual plans (not voluntarily, either) and I was told to visit an AT&T store “soon” to get all my accounts onto a family plan. Apple employees tried over and over again to get our phones to join up into a Family Plan, but they couldn’t make it work, so they gave up and told me to go to an AT&T store. The fun starts over again.

This time I totally blame AT&T for not working with Apple and making sure that the process is much smoother for existing customers. Especially since last year Apple wasn’t even part of the problem.

So, AT&T, why is it so hard to make it easy to join all your accounts together into a family plan?

Making it worse this year is I have several accounts:

  1. My iPhone, which now is a 3G.
  2. My son’s iPhone, which is now a 3G.
  3. My wife’s iPhone which will stay an original iPhone.
  4. My Nokia N82 account.
  5. My Nokia N95 account.

So, I have five accounts using several different kinds of phones, which makes it hard to join them all together.

Anyone else having this problem?

UPDATE: AT&T, over the phone, fixed all of our accounts, so I’m happy. They don’t know why the Apple machines weren’t showing that we were all on a family plan yesterday.

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