dailylicious!
The Internet remembers. It stores all. Well, almost all. Sometimes things get pulled down and despite the best efforts, people may not be able to find certain things online anymore because they become to obscure and hidden. The Internet is quickly becoming that attic in which everything gets stored but it would take forever to find what you’re looking for.
Snapchat however is one of several apps that would automatically erase its content after it was viewed for a limited time. It even has a mechanism to prevent people from taking a screenshot of the photo (although taking a photo of the photo with a separate camera is till possible)
This Mission:Impossible approach would obviously be used for items that are meant for private consumption and it’s getting popular. Local iOS app Harpoen already implements this sort of mechanism for its location-based notes or tags. It has an option to erase items from its database after it has been left for certain period.
The Atlantic mentioned that Snapchat is among a recent wave of apps that implements such a measure but unfortunately did not say what apps they are. Snapchat and Harpoen are the only two that we know of. Would love to know what other apps employ such methods.
Wired puts forward arguments from a number of developers who say that Android apps don’t look as good as iOS apps because they have to make sure the apps don’t mess up on different screen sizes and resolutions. Despite the Android environment having a far greater flexibility and freedom to design apps, it seems that the range of device sizes forces designers to conform to the lower end of the scale whereas having a single screen size for iPhone and iPod touch makes things much easier.
Of course, with iOS apps there’s the issue of retina display on the more recent iPhone, iPod touch, and the latest iPad, but the problem there is less about overall design, more about redrawing elements because the aspect ratio remains the same compared to the older devices. This means the icons and other graphical items as well as placements don’t change, they just need to have higher resolutions.
Essentially, consistency across iOS devices and its SDK makes things easier to come up with well designed apps.
If you like to save articles, websites, or videos to check out later, you’ll be happy to know that the popular Read It Later service has been made free. 4.5 million users later, Read It Later also decided to change its name to Pocket. No reason given for the change but the apps have been redesigned with a more beautiful and cleaner interface which at a glance resembles Flipboard than a list of saved items. Saved videos have also been made more prominent and there’s also a better way to organize saved items.
Up to 75 per cent of the energy used by free versions of Android apps is spent serving up ads or tracking and uploading user data: running just one app could drain your battery in around 90 minutes.
Astounding discovery. Doesn’t it make you want to by apps instead? Surely this applies to iOS apps as well, not just Android. The mechanism and code involved in sending data from in-app ads are similar after all.
Yesterday TechCrunch broke the news that Apple has acquired Chomp. What is Chomp? It’s an application store directory. It lets you search and discover apps using keywords in a way that seems to work better than how each marketplace works. Sometimes when searching for apps people type categories or random keywords instead of the app’s name because they’re not easy to remember. Chomp provides search results in a much more meaningful way than iTunes’ App Store can.
Apple’s own App Store has been criticized for lack of app discoverability when apps fall off the top 20 list or the App Store lobby so it’s great news for Apple that the team behind Chomp is now working on improving iTunes. It sucks to be an Android user who uses Chomp because this means it will cease to be a separate, independent search engine especially since Chomp’s team has already been working at Apple for a while.
Wired has a story on how Chomp can improve the App Store.
2010: Gawd, App Store approvals take FOREVAR.2011: Wow, App Store approvals are fast now!2012: JESUS CHRIST THE SCAM APPS
— Chris Rawson (@rawsoncj) February 21, 2012
TUAW’s Chris Rawson illustrates the state of the App Store from 2010.
The guys at Impending paint a gloomy picture for the App Store, specifically Apple’s, although the same underlying concerns can be said about other application marketplaces. After four years in operation, the App Store now lists over half a million apps.
With a limited number of app reviewers coupled with Apple’s insistence on reviewing each app before publication, having a large number of scam apps and knockoffs is almost inevitable and some copyright infringing apps not only make the cut but ran all the way to the bank. Hands up if you thought Instagram had released an app for Android some weeks ago.
Android is arguably the largest smartphone platform on the planet in most part due to having multiple vendors offering different flavors of it across many different models. If joining the green army is your thing, Google’s home for developers is a good place to start.
There’s a new platform in town and its name is Windows Phone. It’s a different beast from the old and discontinued Windows Mobile and it’s certainly different from the more familiar iOS and Android platforms. Windows Phone has actually been around for more than a year yet there’s still a lot of opportunities to be seized.
To get you started, Microsoft has published a number of guidelines and overviews to help developers get on board the platform and learn the ropes. It also has the much better designed App Hub, which is developer central for those working on Windows Phone and XBox apps and games.
If you plan to venture into Windows Phone territory, go check out the links.
Sandboxing means restricting access, in this case, limiting the abilities of apps to perform functions that may affect how the larger environment operates. It also blocks apps that require access beyond the user space. For example, an app like SuperDuper which copies the entire hard drive for backup purposes would be blocked from the Mac App Store. Apple’s argument is that sandboxing improves the security of its system and it’s actually a valid one although some may think otherwise.
Developers are still allowed to distribute their apps outside of the Mac App Store but given Apple’s increasingly more restrictive approach to application distribution, who’s to say it will block non Mac App Store apps for security reasons eventually?
If you’re a Mac app developer, it’s something for you to think about.
