The iPhone has been top dog in the mobile world for the past two years. It’s apparent when you look at the App Store and how well the iPhone platform has fared, even amidst the economic recession the world has been experiencing. In the mobile developer community, the iPhone has been a holy grail. Apps can be built in short order, the UI is beautiful, some fantastic widgets and the App Store provides an awesome distribution channel (especially if you get in the Top Apps charts)

Companies of all shapes and sizes are looking to get their apps quickly built and listed in the App Store. Enterprises, who before didn’t even give mobile a second thought, are looking to build mobile strategies built around Apps for the iPod touch and iPhone. For example, it’s been reported Pizza Hut has made over USD $1 Million on their app (I wonder if they provide little wipes with each delivery so you don’t smear your beloved touch screen with your sticky tomato fingers)

However, as any iPhone developer would tell you, working the the Apple and the App Store can be a challenge. Recently, Joe Hewitt of Facebook has publicized his displeasure with Apple’s practices. While respecting Apple’s ability to run their App Store according to it’s rules, Hewitt has stopped developing the application out of frustration.

There is a silver lining for application developers. A year ago, the iPhone was by far the leading platform developers looked at, but the game has changed in recent months. And competition is good for everyone.

With the surge of the Android mobile OS, developers have a new platform that is lucrative and attractive. Android OS is based on languages and APIs that developers are already comfortable with and the operating system is fully open source. Also, the Android Market is much more democratic and allows developers to publish their applications in a much more fluid way.

The Palm Pre is another ‘alternative’ which runs WebOS – a platform based on HTML, CSS, and JavaScript – three technologies mobile web app developers are very familiar with.

While the Apple’s App Store has 100,000 apps, the app market places on the other platforms has yet to boast these types of numbers. The Android Market has around 10,000 applications and Palm Pre users have a few hundred to choose from. However, volume isn’t everything – many of the App Store apps available are repetitive and quality can vary.

Finally, Symbian is a platform that should not be overlooked, however many developers I talk to are frustrated with developing for this platform. While the number of handsets is staggering, developing for each individual handset (because Nokia tweaks S60 in so many different ways) can be a developer’s nightmare.

The one new facet with S60/Symbian development is the new Widget architecture that is popular on the Nokia N97 and N900 handsets. These new devices support homescreen widgets that bring web applications to your mobile handsets in a new way. Existing ones include Facebook, Accuweather, Amazon.com and so on. They’re relatively easy to build compared to full applications.

In conclusion, the Apple iPhone and the App Store is a highly effective way to build and distribute your mobile applications. However, there are other options available to developers that are now starting to become viable alternatives. If you’re a developer or company looking to build out your mobile strategy, give all these platforms a look, different strokes for different folks …

Cloud computing is a  that describes a model of computing where by your data is kept on servers that are outside your control and out on the Internet (hence, in the cloud).  According to Wikipedia, cloud computing is:

Cloud computing services often provide common business applications online that are accessed from a web browser, while the software and data are stored on the servers.

Cloud-based services are ideal with devices such as Netbooks and mobile handsets because the mobile devices have little computational horsepower, meager storage, and are typically connected to the ‘Net via data connections, either Wi-Fi or 3G data networks.

The promise of cloud computing for users lies in the assumption that our data is safely held in professionally-managed data centers somewhere in the world.  But as recent events show, this isn’t always the case.  Last week, Microsoft/Danger lost millions of Sidekick users’ data in a botched storage area network upgrade.

Microsoft is supposedly working around the clock to bring back the data.  But, as it stands, millions of Sidekick users are without their contacts, photos, emails, notes, and other valuable data they depend on when utilizing their mobile devices.  Because the Sidekick uses RAM to store all this data, any user who power cycles or lets the battery run out on their device will lose all their data until Microsoft/Danger can recover it – if at all.

What is the lesson here? If you have a device you care about that contains data you find valuable, you must seek and constantly update your backups.  If you rely upon hosted services to house your data in the cloud, I suggest seeking ways to backup your phone’s data locally as well.

For example, iPhone users are in luck because of the way iTunes is structured.  In addition to the availability of Apple’s MobileMe service, the iPhone/iPod Touch is automatically backed up each time you sync your phone with iTunes.  Likewise, Nokia N Series and E Series users have access to some Ovi services that back up your photos/contacts and other data, but if you want a local copy of these types of data – Nokia users must use PC Suite on a regular basis.

There are services for many platforms that allow you to backup and maintain your data and I suggest you evaluate our options.  Blackberry users have online and offline backup options and using Google’s mobile web services, you can backup your contacts to their services as well.

Don’t take the Sidekick data loss and assume this type of catastrophe couldn’t happen to you.  With mobile devices becoming a part of our daily lives, there are likely contacts, photos and videos you care about.  Take a minute to back up and ensure your data is safe! 

(Photo credit: Flickr User kevindooley)

We have been working hard at Taptu to refine our application on the iPhone and iPod Touch platform.  We believe our app is a great addition to the touch web and brings all the highlights of touch-friendly content to your fingertips.

With that in mind, we’ve released a new version of the application into Apple iTunes App Store.  There are a few notable changes.

User Interface Improvements:

These include a few minor changes to make it easier to utilize all the functionality of the Taptu Search Application. The most notable change is that the “Orbital” function is now an actual button.  This feature was present in the last version of the application, but many users missed it because it wasn’t visibly noticeable as a click-able (tap-able) button.

Now, if you click on the button in the upper right – you can see the awesome functionality which lets you refine the scope of your search by just searching images, twitter, and so on.  Also, you can see related search terms based on what you enter.

Finally, we’ve implemented a new Settings tab in the App that lets you refine how the Taptu Search App behaves.  The new tab will allow you to set user preferences in the App, without having to go to the iPhone’s settings bar.

Other Changes

We have also made an effort to tidy up the Sharing options. As before, you can still share out your results via email and SMS, or on your favorite social network such as Facebook or Twitter.  We just cleaned up the interface a bit.

In another change, if you launch the App after having it closed – it will load up the last search you executed.  This change is a direct result from user feedback we’ve attained since the App debuted in July.

Please Give Us Feedback!

As you can see, this minor update addresses a few of the concerns our users have given us since the launch of our iPhone/iPod Touch application.  In fact, two of the changed items mentioned above came about because of feedback I’ve received from our user community.

So, the bottom line is – we’re here and we’re listening.  So please connect if you have issues, comments, or concerns about our application.  We’re always looking for ways to make our applications and service better!

To grab the latest version of the Taptu iPhone App, follow this link.

Get in touch with us by emailing me at jason <at> taptu <dot> com or via our Twitter account.

Jason

US Community Manager – Taptu

Earlier this week, we launched our iPhone app with much excitement – it was the culmination of many months of work, so we couldn’t help being curious to see what people thought.

Ewan at Mobile Industry Review says:

“[Ed note: In the context of your average mobile search engine] It’s incredibly annoying to have to click, click, click on a mobile device, irrespective what type. There’s a cost in terms of time and battery (assuming you’re on an unlimited data plan) to every single tap or click.

So they’ve tried really hard to get it right first time. A total godsend for any mobile user. [...] Nice work Taptu!”

Scott at MobileCrunch says:

“Another great feature of the current version of the Taptu app are context sensitive search filters included beneath the default search filters. As you can see, my search for beer produced a number of beer-related links. Mmmmm…beeer.

Bottom line: Taptu is a pretty slick mobile search solution.”

What’s On iPhone says:

“Google works just fine on the iPhone, especially now that iGoogle is back on line. But is it the only choice of search engines for the device? NO WAY!

Taptu brings a unique aproach to web searches on the iPhone with its new search engine. Designed to be finger friendly, it is intended for small screen. And it shows.”

Now, we have also had a few bits of criticism from some iTunes reviewers, who have flagged up that our index isn’t up to scratch for every type of search term. That’s a fair comment – our index is growing every day and will continue to improve as we keep plowing more material into it. In fact, you can help improve our index by recommending the best mobile sites out there if we don’t already list them.

Our thanks go out to everyone who’s taken time to look at the app, reviewed or commented (positively or negatively constructively) over the past few months. Now, how about I go get one of ‘em new 3GS iPhones and test that Taptu works properly on it? Oooh shiny!

Over the past few months we’ve not just been busy on creating new branding for Taptu, but we’ve also been beavering away on an iPhone app which you’ll hear about in more details very soon. We couldn’t find any templates on the web to help us preview our new iPhone logo in-situ, so we created our own.

If you’re also developing an iPhone app and want it to stand-out amongst the crowd in the App Store, then this download is for you.  Download the templates below and you can see how your app will look before it’s submitted.

Just drag your icon into the template to see how it’ll look with Apple’s funky  gel-effects applied.  Or better yet, design your app icon from scratch from within these templates.  We use these to design in context so as to ensure we are thinking about how it will look from a user’s point of view – in the App Store list, the Home Screen dock, and on the Desktop iTunes Store.  If you’re a designer or a developer, you’ll find these assets ultra-useful.

The templates are in Photoshop PSD format with full editable layers.  We recreated the gel-effects using vector paths to give you greatest flexibility.  The pink symbol is there just as an example.  Hopefully the layers are all quite self-explanatory – if not, give us a shout.

Click here to download the whole zip package.  There are templates for the Home Screen, the iPhone and Desktop App Store as well as individual 57×57px and 512×512px icon PSDs.

I’ve been calling June 2009 the “Month of Mobile”.  This is because June this year is bringing us many developments, announcements, and releases from different big players in the mobile industry.

Palm Pre – A New Beginning?

In the United States, June 6th saw the release of the Palm Pre.  This highly anticipated handset is seen as many a turning point for Palm, once a major influence in the mobile handset world.  The Treo had a strong following in the early half of this decade but with a lack of new innovations, Palm has fallen in popularity.  Will the Pre turn things around for the Sunnyvale, Ca company?  The next few months will tell.

Nokia and the N97 Mobile Computer

June will see the shipping of their newest NSeries handset – a phone I’ve called the “Holy Grail“.  The Nokia N97 has an impressive hardware stack including a high resolution touch screen, 5MP camera with widescreen video capture, GPS and compass.  Also, the homescreen of the N97 can be customized via widgets written for the S60 platform.  The N97 also features a full slide-out keyboard for easy messaging and text input.

The Nokia application store, called Ovi Store, was recently released, making app discovery and selection easier on the S60 platform.  This combinationwill help advance the Nokia/Symbian platform as a great option for mobile application developers and for customers as well.

Apple, the iPhone, and WWDC

This week, Apple kicks off their World Wide Developer Conference.  Tomorrow, June 8, the keynote address takes place.  We already know the Apple iPhone 3.0 software will be released soon, but mobile geeks everywhere are hoping for new iPhone hardware to be announced soon.  Last June, Apple released the iPhone 3G and there’s hope this June Apple will refresh the hardware stack again.

As you can see, there is a lot happening this month in the world of mobile hardware.

What features or handsets are you looking to try out?  Let’s discuss in the comments!

We believe that the touch interface is going to be a dominant technology in the mobile world for some time to come.  It turns out Nokia may be catching on to this mentality as well.

Nokia fans have had only one touch enabled mobile handset come out in recent months – the Nokia XpressMusic 5800.  In June, the Finnish handset giant is posed to deliver the Nokia N97, a device that is a feature monster, packing a touch screen and full QWERTY keyboard for data entry.

To add to this Nokia touch fever, a few poignant publications have noted that sources inside Nokia are reporting a threesome of ‘thin touchscreen phones’ set to debut later this year.  The new phones are said to feature the VibeTonz technology that Nokia licensed from Immersion, which takes haptic feedback technology to the next level by delivering a “multi-sensory experience”.

I’m not sure what to expect from a VibeTonz-enabled hands yet.  However, after experiencing how Apple’s iPhone and application developers are utilizing touch on the Apple platform, I’m anxious to see what Nokia can deliver if and when they put their creative and engineering muscle into delivering a touch-enabled device.

A chief complaint amongst touchscreen phone users (and a major barrier for buying them) is the lack of tactile feedback while typing.  Perhaps with Immersion’s haptic technology, Nokia can win over those who have held out on buying a touch device to date.

What is your opinion?  Can you type adequately on your touch-enabled phone?  Have you held off on buying a touch-enabled handsets, or is the utility of the iPhone enough to make typing troubles non-existent?

Also, do you think Nokia can deliver a winner of a touch handset, or are they just too late to the game?

We look forward to the comments!

[image courtesy: MaxRoam]

Another year at Mobile World Congress ends; the team comes home both exhausted from the long days (& nights) and energised by meeting so many interesting and enterprising people.

Looking at the mobile trends, many manufacturers have now jumped on the Touch UI bandwagon. For Taptu, that’s great news; we love a touchy-feely interface, since using your fingers to point at menus is so much more intuitive than having to scroll and click.

There are however a few cases where we couldn’t believe our eyes at how Touch UI can be used so poorly. Regardless, it’s encouraging that more manufacturers are considering the simplicity of touch; it’ll just take a while to polish it and make it most user-friendly rather than purely “flash, spin and float around” eye candy. Just before MWC, we published a whitepaper on Touch UI, which Bob Last mentioned on the TechCrunchTalk panel on Mobile Disruption.

The second noticeable trend was the clear focus on apps, apps and more apps. Everyone is opening their own app store, following Apple’s success. It’s exciting to see to think that every device platform could develop its own hub for applications, as it’s something I always felt was missing back in my S60 days, but the take-up will depend highly on the quality of the user experience in browsing the apps available. If every platform has a high quality app store, users will have more fun and developers will get the recognition they deserve. What could possibly go wrong?

Shiny gadgets and business exchanges aside, some of the other highlights of our week include the bear machine, which was so popular with visitors to our stand that it broke by the third day. Don’t worry, we still gave away the teddy bears for the rest of the week.

The team thoroughly enjoyed hosting drinks on Tuesday evening, and we want to thank everyone who popped by! Celia’s Killer Pink Cocktails were such a hit, we were asked for the recipe and we thought we’d share it here:

Celia’s Killer Pink Cocktail

• 1 part raspberry liqueur
• 2 parts triple sec
• Top up with chilled dry white wine

Serve with a pink stirrer and enjoy!

Twelve hours later, top up body with two headache-relief tablets, a glass of water and a bacon buttie.

Manning a stand for a few days can also lead to discovering new skills in your colleagues, as we did with Bob when he started juggling teddy bears to entertain people walking by!

In summary, we thoroughly enjoyed our time at Mobile World Congress and cannot wait to see what partnerships, funky app releases and friendships the next few months will bring as a result of this event.

A few weeks ago, we released Wapedia as an application for the iPhone, hoping we could open up Wikipedia to more users than ever before.

The French were first to take fancy to it, catapulting Wapedia to the top of Free Apps chart on iTunes France for three days! We have since remained in the top 10 Free Apps in France, and have received some great feedback from users. Merci à tous ceux et celles qui nous ont donné leur avis sur iTunes ou ailleurs!

We’re working on a new version of the application, taking in account a number of suggestions we’ve received, so keep an eye out for the next version of Wapedia for iPhone. [iTunes link] If you’d like to share your feedback, drop us a line on iphone@wapedia.org.

I watched the launch of the second generation of the iPhone with great interest on Friday, not because I planned on replacing my first generation one, but because I wanted to see how the world would welcome it. While not everyone here is an Apple fiend as I am, we couldn’t help but be curious about it since we’ve just launched a new iPhone version of Taptu*.

The product

In December, after a month of iPhone ownership, I reviewed it. I loved it then and I still do now. It’s clearly not everyone’s cup of tea, as certain Symbian-owning friends regularly remind me, but definitely still the best device for my needs.

The new version of the firmware gives all iPhones, new and old, a fresh lease of life with a wide range of downloadable applications available to make better use of the phone. Applications range from really useful to downright silly (see the iPint one for possibly the wackiest one around), but I can’t get over the fact that they can’t run in the background. I appreciate that the battery would run down faster than our office manager Celia can neck a glass of wine, but it still renders applications like streaming radio and instant messaging pretty much pointless.

The 3G hardware theoretically brings GPS functionality and faster browsing speeds, but I’ve yet to witness these first hand. I’m sure it’ll make a marginal difference, but still isn’t enough to convince me to upgrade.

The 3G iPhone is Apple’s tough second album, and not bad going, but not an awe-inspiring result.

The launch

Oooh, now here’s my bone to pick with Apple and the operators. How could launch day go so horribly wrong?

With expected sales of over 1 million handsets on day 1, plus millions of first generation iPhone and iPod Touch owners across the world, why did O2, the UK’s operator to win the iPhone contract, grind to a halt within moments of opening its doors at 8:02am? The iTunes Activation Center then followed suit shortly.

Sure, that’s a bunch of frustrated new users. But it’s also a whole lot of stranded existing users: My phone began its update and restore around lunchtime, yet I only managed to reactivate via the iTunes store around 8pm, leaving me unreachable for most of the day.

So Apple and the operators owe their users an apology for a poor first experience, I think!

The future

While execution wasn’t perfect over the launch, it’s still undeniable that the iPhone’s impact on the mobile world is increasing with every phone sold. A large and bright glossy screen, a user-friendly interface with single-click app download and no learning curve, this is inspirational for mobile developers.

The gloss is marred by the strong DRM and lock-down the iPhone suffers, one of the main criticism heard from those who opt for the Symbian-based alternatives. I’ll be curious to see how many users of the 2.0 firmware still choose to jailbreak their device, defying Apple and the operators. In fact, how long before jailbreaking becomes pointless?

[* Best viewed on an iPhone, but can be accessed in your browser]