Apple App storen reaches 2 billion downloads

Apple said Monday that over 2 billion apps have been downloaded from its App Store, and the pace "continues to accelerate," according to chief executive Steve Jobs.
There are now more than 85,000 apps available to the more than 50 million iPhone and iPod touch customers worldwide, Apple said.

The apps now can be downloaded in 77 countries, in over 20 categories, Apple said.

"The rate of App Store downloads continues to accelerate with users downloading a staggering two billion apps in just over a year, including more than half a billion apps this quarter alone," Steve Jobs, Apple's chief executive said in a statement. "The App Store has reinvented what you can do with a mobile handheld device, and our users are clearly loving it."

Apple achieved its first billion apps downloaded in about nine months, from July 2008 until April 23. The most recent billion was achieved in about five months.

Iphone MMS on friday

We've just heard from AT&T that new carrier settings for the iPhone 3G and 3GS will be available "late morning" Pacific Time (which would be early afternoon Eastern) this Friday, September 25, which will finally enable MMS support. Owners will have to tether up to iTunes to grab those settings, so fish out your cable (as if you don't have it permanently attached to your machine already) and make sure you've got some solid time in front of the computer to check for the update over and over (and over) again, alright?

Bay Area Architects Seek to Re-purpose Bay Bridge as Park & Apartments

The Bay Bridge is falling down, falling down, so that a bigger, better bridge—one less prone to falling down during an earthquake—can be erected in its place. If two architects get their way however, it might become this:

Ipod touch now has its own gaming platform

Never mind Mac OS X, and forget about future iterations of the Apple TV as a video game console—the iPod touch is Apple’s game platform. That’s Apple’s message from the stage of its press event in San Francisco on Wednesday.

The “Rock & Roll” event totaled about an hour and a quarter, and 20 minutes of that were dedicated to showing off the iPod touch’s proclivity as a gaming platform. Apple senior vice president of worldwide product marketing Phil Schiller started off the game segment by repeating a quote offered by Arik Hesseldahl of BusinessWeek: “Apple could be on the cusp of claiming the crown as the world’s leader in handheld gaming.”
You’d be wrong to assume that Hesseldahl’s comment—which came in a November 2008 editorial—is more moon-eyed Apple fanaticism from an easily swayed tech journalist. In context, Hesseldahl is comparing sales of iPhones and iPod touches to Nintendo’s DS handheld system. In sheer volume, Apple is doing very well—the company has been selling tens of millions of units. And that pace hasn’t slowed down since last autumn. Of course, not every iPhone or iPod touch is being used for games. But each of them is capable.

I don’t see Apple competing for the same hearts and minds that Nintendo does, but I think a compelling argument can be made that Apple is competing for the exact same consumers who might otherwise buy Sony’s forthcoming PSPgo handheld gaming system. In this respect, Apple is already several steps ahead of Sony. Apple already owns this market.

The PSPgo, similar in concept to the iPod touch, works wirelessly (there is no disc slot, as there are on other PSP models). It’s smaller and more portable than other PSP systems; the PSPgo easily fits into a pocket, just like the iPod touch. Sony is also managing software distribution through its own online store, which currently enables PSP and PlayStation 3 owners to purchase and download games, demos, video content and more. Sony’s revealed plans to release “minis,” games with a smaller storage footprint and a lower price than the current crop of titles available for the PSP.


Ngmoco, which makes the popular Rolando game shown here, didn’t even exist prior to the iPhone’s introduction.Compare that to Apple’s efforts: There are tens of thousands of game titles already in the App Store, including an ever-increasing number from major publishers like Electronic Arts, Ubisoft, even Id Software, makers of Doom and Quake.
The iPod touch has also created its own ecosystem of top-tier game publishers. Ngmoco, makers of Rolando, didn’t exist prior to the iPhone’s introduction. Gameloft, which has long been a purveyor of games for mobile handsets, now says the iPhone and iPod touch is its single biggest platform.

Where’s Nintendo in all this? The company that makes the world’s most popular handheld gaming system recently registered the iPod touch and iPhone as a competing product, during a call with financial analysts to discuss lower-than-expected results. Nintendo’s DSi is the first handheld system the company has released that emphasizes downloadable content, but Nintendo’s bread-and-butter remains cartridge-based games. Nintendo has been notoriously slow to move in the direction of ubiquitous online connectivity and gobs of downloadable content.

Just like every other gaming platform before it, the iPod touch will live or die ultimately based on the quality of the software that’s developed for it. And that takes time. Time for developers to learn the environment they’re programming for. Time for them to create or find tools to help them work. And time for designers to get a sense of what the equipment can do, and more important, how its users want it to work.

Let’s face it: The first year of the iPod touch and iPhone’s life as a commercial game platform has been underscored by a lot of “shovelware”—crap that was pushed out the door as quickly as possible to make a buck. That same cash-grab philosophy sent the average price of games in the App Store spiraling downward to bargain-basement levels. Phil Schiller’s slide showing 21,000-plus iPhone games compared to a relatively paltry number of games for the PSP and DS ignores the fact that many of those thousands of iPhone games are, not to put too fine a point on it, garbage.

But some big companies with deep pockets are making investments that are beginning to pay dividends, not only for them but also for iPod touch game players. Look at the depth and breadth of Madden NFL 2010, EA’s legendary American football game franchise, now available on the iPhone. Madden has been in development for a year, and that right there should give you some sense of where we are on the evolutionary scale of iPhone and iPod touch game development—the commercial market for Mac games is barely a year old.

Nintendo’s DS is the latest iteration of a system that was introduced 20 years ago. Sony’s PSP is five years into its life span.

We’re just scratching the surface, folks.

Now the fun begins

Flickr for Iphone app

Yahoo's Flickr service now has a native app available in the App Store. We recently reported that the iPhone had become the most popular cell phone camera used to upload photos to the image sharing site and it's likely this new native app will only increase its popularity among Flickr users.

When you first sign in to the Flickr app, you are required to authorize the app to use your Flickr account, which is done through Safari on the iPhone. After this, uploads to your Flickr account will be handled directly through the app with no further authorization requests.


The app can geotag your photos and offers immediate access to your recent uploads, your entire Flickr stream, and those of your Flickr contacts.

Power your Iphone with Cycling

if I biked a lot—a whole lot—there's little doubt I'd drop $100 on the BioLogic FreeCharge when it hits in March.

Obviously pedaling a bike could generate a lot of electricity. So the BioLogic FreeCharge exploits this phenomenon, sticking a dyno on your wheel that charges a battery-powered USB hub. You plug something (like an iPhone) into the USB and it can recharge in about three hours.

But what makes the idea work is that battery intermediary between the dyno and the hub. By charging a battery that in turn charges your device of choice, the system assures a steady stream of power to whatever is plugged in.

Obviously solar power is another obvious point of energy exploitation for those on bikes, but something about exerting myself to charge my phone really preps my psyche for the days when I'll pedal to power the robot whipping me to pedal to power him.

AT&T Launches iPhone MMS September 25

Sweet Jesus, AT&T just told us that MMS for iPhone launches September 25. Which is emphatically not summer. It'll be coming via software update for iPhone 3G and 3GS (remember, old iPhones are getting left out).

AT&T admits they're late, saying "it was important to give our customers a positive experience from day one" so they needed the extra to "to make sure our network is ready to handle what we expect will be a record volume of MMS traffic." Which I think means if MMS doesn't work, everybody can ream the shit out of them for it. At least it's free.

The wait for tethering continues though, with "no set date." They simply "expect to offer it in the future." Again, 'cause the network isn't ready: "This function could exponentially increase traffic on the network, and we need to ensure that some of our current upgrades are in place before we can deliver the expanded functionality with the excellent performance that customers expect."

One out of two ain't bad, right?

Building In Shanghai Built from Used CD's - First Post of New School Year

With the Shanghai World Expo 2010 fast approaching, architects are jumping in on the "Better City, Better Life" theme with concepts like this Shanghai Corporate Pavilion. The plans include many green features, including a structure made from recycled CD cases.