Written on September 7, 2008 – 10:12 am
Steven Carrol, Next Web WebTipr France
Recent buzz and hysteria surrounding overnight success stories of applications built for the iPhone seem to have been garnering almost more hype than that which surrounded those early Facebook applications (though those stories, were and still are about numbers of users not numbers of dollars).
Of all the ‘iPhone apps’ one stands out as a particularly interesting case. This app cost 1K USD did nothing and is probably the simplest and most elegant ‘app’ “ever” developed designed. It made the owner 5K in pure profit before Apple decided to pull it. Reasons for it being pulled amount to 2 pissed off buyers complaints who pressed ‘buy it’ by mistake ‘apparently’. I’d personally quote a saying me old man taught me ‘a deals a deal’.
This ‘app’ will gain no respect from the hardcore hackers who are proud of their ability to make the world dance from their command line, nor from those who have invested millions into developing complex offerings that flop at the box office. But why not? Why does something so simple and elegant not deserve respect in this field?
I am also guilty of “once” believing that if an application was built for a ‘fiver’ and over the weekend it was not worthy of any acclaim, but come on, isn’t that simply jealousy by an overzealous developer? What counts at the end of the day is what the market makes of it and in this case six rich bastards and two retards liked it enough to press that dangerous buy it button.
If this teaches us anything, it’s that what counts at the end of the day is not the technology used, nor the effort surmounted, but rather the idea and the idea alone.
I hope you like that post!
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Written on September 6, 2008 – 4:03 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Being a stats-addict sucks. You experience highs and lows the whole day, which causes unpredictable mood swings. Though when you’re running a project that actually does well, it doesn’t hurt to check it every once in a while. For me, checking The Next Web stats sort of works like a happy-pill, I guess. So I was glad to hear that my favorite statistics service Clicky (review here) will officially launch an iPhone version of its stats dashboard on Monday. And guess what? It’s already available on m.getclicky.com!
When opening the page in your iPhone, you’ll see an overview of all your web sites. Click on one, and you can choose whether you want to check the stats of “Today”, “Yesterday”, “Last Week”, and some other date options. Then a screen with a summary appears and the options to see the “Visitor tally”, the “Action tally”, and the “Recent visitors” (There are actually a ton more options, just scroll down). To give you an idea of the eye-candy, you can see our recent visitors at the right.
Although Google Analytics is the standard, I use Clicky for my sites. I believe smaller companies are more likely to innovate and the launch of the iPhone app proves that (No Google Analytics app so far).
Disclosure: we’re involved in a affiliate program with Clicky. Which we wouldn’t be if the service wasn’t that great. Oh an by the way, there are no affiliate links in this post.
UPDATE: Clicky has now ‘officially’ launched the App.
Written on August 15, 2008 – 5:08 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
You better face it: with millions of iPhones flying over counters world-wide, more and more of your visitors will read your blog on the shiny object. On this blog for example, already 2 percent of the visitors does. So it might be time to consider making your blog iPhone compatible. Especially now the crappy plugins are replaced with cool tools which have that “OMG-it’s-so-shiny”-flavor.
You’ll need two plugins: the WPtouch iPhone Theme and Yoast’s Blog Icons. Before we continue, please mind the iPhoney. This nifty tool shows you how your blogs would look on an iPhone.
WPtouch iPhone Theme
Bravenewcode isn’t the first one to develop an iPhone template, but definitely the first one who does a good job. While other versions depicted a rather boring lay-out, WPtouch does have that shiny feeling all over it. Moreover, there’s an option to switch to a normal view, which is something some iPhone users asked us to offer when had an old iPhone theme running. Mostly because they were using a wireless Internet connection.
After uploading the theme, there’s an admin panel available to play around with. For example, there’s the possibility to specify the icons per page or post. It’s also possible to switch off some of the fancy features - mostly Ajax-based - to make your blog for more accessible EDGE and 3G connections. I won’t do it, as I already save these users a lot of time by cutting away the heavy images.
If you don’t feel like installing an iPhone theme, then at least make sure you insert one important line of code that specifies the width of your blog.
Blog icons
So now you’ve taken care of ALL your visitors. But you might want to give your fans something extra, right? Well, Joost de Valk takes care of that with his latest plugin. Based on an idea of my co-editor Boris, he wrote a Wordpress plugin called Blog Icons. It allows you to upload a favicon, rss image, and…, an iPhone icon - the one you see when adding a bookmark to your start screen. So when somebody decides to make your blog available with one click, it will look pretty damn good.
(more resources here)
Written on August 6, 2008 – 2:56 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Google has launched a new tool that helps to gain insight in search terms, called - not surprisingly - Google Insights for Search. Google’s Trevor Claiborne wrote earlier today that the product was designed with the advertiser in mind:
It provides more flexibility and functionality for advertisers and marketers to understand search behavior, and adds some cool new features like a world heat map to graphically display search volume and regional interest.
Even though the service is aimed at people who have devoted their life to marketing, it doesn’t mean a blogger can’t play around with it as well. I thought of a nice search term, and - again not surprisingly, came up with the iPhone. And not just because an Apple story drives in clicks (somebody accused Om Malik of doing this).
Trinidad and Tobago and Hong Kong: iPhone countries
So here are some surprising facts:
- The first time a fair amount of people searched for the shiny object was in September 2005. Were that some iPhone visionaries? Or a secret Apple team looking for similarities?
- People from Hong Kong and Trinidad and Tobago hardly search for anything else but the iPhone.
- Lebanese iPhone fanboys rather have an iPhone for free
Written on August 6, 2008 – 9:29 am
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
While European techies were sleeping last night, the American ones discovered a rather absurd iPhone app. It’s called I Am Rich and has two remarkable characteristics. One: it only lets a red diamond glow on your screen - sometimes a secret mantra appears. Two: the price $999.99. Will developer Armin Heinrich make his fortune with this shiny app?
Whether he does or not, he DID get some tech bloggers angry. They think the I Am Rich app is provoking serious developers who don’t manage to get their app in the Apple app store. MG Siegler from VentureBeat calls on Apple to “wake up or grow up”. Dan Frommer from Silicon Alley Insider notes:
The upside for Apple: $300, or 30%, of all purchases. The downside: Good luck enforcing that “all sales final” policy on this scam.
Although I understand where these frustrations are coming from, I’d like to call on these bloggers to take it all a bit more light-heartedly. After all we’re talking about a company here of which the CEO once said experimenting with LSD was “one of the two or three most important things [he had] done in [his] life.” Experiments like I Am Rich keep Apple interesting. It’s a form of art, you can interpreter it however you want to.
See it as a protest against the lifestyle IT girls like Paris Hilton. A way to tone down the iPhone fuzz. Or.., it’s a genius parody on all these folks who have been using their iPhone in a somewhat too showy way - waiting for the utter satisfying experience of someone asking… “wow, is that an iPhone…?”
Update: TechCrunch has a confusing update on the story
Written on August 4, 2008 – 10:02 am
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Britain’s second newspaper has thrown a rather interesting and spectacular rumor into the world. Supposedly, there are iPhone Nano’s on their way to thousands of Christmas trees all over the world. The Daily Mail reports that the little device will be launched in December.
The product will be launched in the UK at up to £150 - €190 - for pay-as-you-go customers by O2, states the conservative newspaper. An iPhone Nano will be the affordable alternative that is cheap enough for most people to give to their family and friends for Christmas.
If these rumors turn out to be true, two things will surely happen. Firstly, early adopters will be angry (like me). Secondly: time for the early majority: the iPhone is gonna be as common as the iPod - which partly owes its success to its stocking stuffer task during the joyful feast of Christmas.
But for now, it’s just a rumor. And not really a realistic one if you take the last paragraph of the Daily Mail article in account. A touch wheel on the back… are you serious?
One expert suggested the nano phone would have a touch wheel on the back and display on the front so that numbers would be dialled from behind.
UDPATE: also check out this article on Techcrunch. Foxconn is building 800.000 iPhones a week now. Are those iPhone Nanos?
Written on July 14, 2008 – 10:08 am
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
An iPhone 3G doesn’t come cheap, in fact, most monthly plans are pretty expensive. Yet bloggers are constantly writing about ways to save some money with the shiny object - such as VoIP calling (and not having to buy an iPod or GPS system). This morning I stumbled on a money-saving plan that concerns the most unfairly priced mobile technology of our time: SMS texting. It’s ridiculous how much we have to pay for transferring such a small amount of data. If we had to download a song from iTunes for SMS data costs, we’d pay €3,770 (based on calculations by Sam from a gthing science project).
So I don’t know about you, but I welcome every possibility to take away some money from this billion dollar SMS business. Here’s one:
- Download and install the free AIM client from the App Store.
- In your IM client, create a new contact whose AIM address is a plus sign and the mobile number of the recipient, such as “+31641510902″.
- Start texting away by looking up the new buddy on your AIM software. He or she will receive a SMS text message, yet the reply will end up in your AIM client.
Just so you know, this also works with an iPod Touch.
Written on July 12, 2008 – 3:11 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Henk van Ess, Dutch Internet speaker, writer, and consultant - the type that writes an Internet tip column for the Dutch journalist trade journal - has became the European battery dealer for the iPhone 3G in just 24 hours. He’s the kind of guy that travels with huge stacks of batteries - so that he can work for nine hours on his Macbook Air. Not surprisingly, he wasn’t pleased with the battery life of the new iPhone - as the fast HDSPA sucks out all its energy in no-time. Not that van Ess blames Apple for that, as “all major phone manufacturers have to deal with that” - he writes on his corporate blog.
China BAK Battery to the rescue
Driven by the urge for a full battery, van Ess posted a question in LinkedIn - asking: “‘who brings me the smallest rechargeable battery for the iPhone 3G without silly cases”. He was looking for a solid Apple-certified battery and found out that NASDAQ company China BAK Battery made such a product. Twenty acquaintances also fancied the battery, so van Ess started a little web shop to avoid paper works. The dealer than asked whether the Internet expert would be interested in becoming the European reseller - and so it happened.
Why is this battery so great?
Van Ess called his company 3G Juice company and now offers a fine battery for European iPhone owners. It’s world’s smallest external battery for both iPhone versions - only six centimeters - and it doesn’t need any cables. But don’t be fooled by its size, as the battery doubles the life of your iPhone.
Muse
Looks like van Ess found what Timothy Ferriss describes as a muse - a relatively simple way of making money. That means: not much effort and time involved. He has his web shop running and money flowing - while improving our iPhone experience.
Update: Henk just mailed us that he is in search for an American distributor, if you’re a distributor or know someone who might be interested, get in contact with henk or leave a comment.
Recent buzz and hysteria surrounding overnight success stories of applications built for the iPhone seem to have been garnering almost more hype than that which surrounded those early Facebook applications (though those stories, were and still are about numbers of users not numbers of dollars). 
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