/The World of 100

If the world were a village of 100 people, how would the composition be? This set of 20 posters is built on statistics about the spread of population around the world under various classifications. The numbers are turned into graphics to give another sense a touch – Look, this is the world we are living in.

red dot award: communication design 2009
GDC 09 Awards

a University of Tokyo study found that pedestrians using gps-enabled cellphones had a harder time figuring out where they were and where they had come from. Their navigational aids, in other words, had allowed them to turn off their hippocampi.

Photoshop for the iPhone? Well, still have to check it out in detail, but from what mashable write it sounds worth a closer look. Why not edit you photos on the go while sitting on the bus? Once a photoshop user, always a photoshop user.

The iPhone Colorsplash app has been in the top 50 downloads since its release in February. (Apple)

A Vancouver programmer has had cause to celebrate as the hugely popular iPhone passed a major milestone last month — the two-billionth download of an iPhone app.

Apple says the company has sold about 50 million iPhones around the world since they were launched more than two years ago and their users have downloaded about 4.5 million iPhone programs, known as apps, per day since July 2008 when Canadians got the iPhone — the second generation iPhone 3G.

And that's meant big profits for programmers such as UBC graduate student Hendrick Kueck, who spent his free time creating an application called called ColorSplash that lets people play with the colour in their digital photos.

"What the application does is loads up the image and then converts it to black and white. You can use your finger on the screen to paint back the original colour of the image."

The program, which iPhone owners can download to their phone for $1.99, got a big boost after it was featured on a popular Mac blog the day after its launch. Since then ColorSplash has been in the top 50 iPhone downloads, and even reached the No. 3 spot on the sales chart.

Kueck won't say how much money he has made, but under Apple's standard agreement, he would keep 70 per cent of all sales revenue. And ColorSplash was not his first hit. He already had one mildly successful app, called Juxtaposer.

Another example of a wildly successful app is iFart. The digital whoopee cushion reached No. 1 on the sales chart, raking in a reported $40,000 in just two days last Christmas, at $0.99 per download.

Most apps not money-makers

Numbers like those have triggered a gold rush mentality among programmers, said Parveen Kaler, the first instructor to teach an iPhone app development course at the B.C. Institute of Technology.

Kaler says novelty items like iFart were successful at first, but now consumers are more discerning about where they spend their money.

Kaler compares the App gold rush to the tech stock bubble of 10 years ago and says companies that set up shop to develop only iPhone apps are struggling. He says smart companies are using iPhone apps as one part of their business — not the sole focus.

"There are about 80,000 different applications on the iTunes store, and I would say the top 100 in each category generate revenue. Everyone else is struggling," Kaler said.

Kueck agrees getting a big payout from a new app is difficult because a good idea represents only a very small piece of a successful app.

The most important element is a user-friendly interface, which is far more time-consuming and difficult to produce than it looks, said Kueck.

Corrections and Clarifications

• An earlier version of this story said Parveen Kaler was the develper of iFart. The app was developed by Joel Comm. Oct. 13, 2009 | 4:02 p.m. PT

Basically, Flash Pro CS5 allows developers to use Flash technologies to develop content for iPhone and iPod Touch devices that were previously closed to them.  The Flash developer tool converts Flash apps into ones that can work on the iPhone, since the iPhone still does not support Flash.  So this is a workaround.  But developers can write new code or reuse existing web content to build applications for the devices, and because the source code and assets are reusable across the Flash Platform runtimes (Adobe AIR and Flash Player) it is aimed to also give developers a way to more easily target other mobile and desktop environments.

TAT, The Astonishing Tribe, is a swedish software technology and design company with very interesting visual experiments of user experience and interaction. Their Mobile User Interface Blog has all kinds of prototypes and demos, for example: Juggle UI.
Juggle UI allows users to conveniently get an overview of all open apps. By using touch surfaces outside the screen, it is easy to switch between different applications and to transfer content between them. The user can access the open applications at any time by swiping a finger over the touch surface to the right. Content can be copied and stored on a clipboard and accessed at any time by swiping a finger over the touch surface to the left.
Multitasking can be a natural and useful part of the user experience.

Calgary's Ph03nix New Media announced today the launch of the first Canadian-based iPhone Fund. According to Ph03nix President and CEO Jon Lam, the $2 Million iPhoenix Fund will be used to develop 133 Apple iPhone and iPod Touch games over the next 5 years.

While funds focused on smartphone applications are nothing new with the Kleiner Perkins' iFund and the Blackberry Partners Fund raising a total of $250 Million, the iPhoenix Fund is both Canadian AND accessible to the average investor. According to Lam, "We really wanted to make this investment accessible to the average investor. The iPhone is game-changing not only for the mobile industry, but for handheld gaming as well, and the iPhoenix Fund is the only vehicle available for an investor like us to get in on the action."

The iPhoenix Fund will be uniquely structured will a maximum of 400 Units costing CDN $5,000 each. Investors will get paid 50% of revenue and recoup 100% of the development costs first, starting with their first payment in six months. The Fund already has commitments over the minimum required and Lam anticipates that the Fund will close in November 2009.

Last month at GDC Austin, Lam ran through his slide deck for interested investors (click here and scroll down to watch) and a unique feature stood out - all investors get access the iPhoenix Fund's very own app that reports real-time data on the Fund and how the portfolio of apps are tracking.

To jump-start the fund, Lam also announced that Ph03nix New Media has acquired Blue Unit Studios - a Calgary iPhone Game Studio created by Craig Rushforth and Dan Kratt. Rushforth and Kratt are the brains behind the popular iPhone game Sally's Spa which knocked off EA's Sims 3 last summer to become the #1 in the App Store. Quite the accomplishment considering The Sims is the best selling PC game franchise in history.

Thanks to actress Megan Fox's endorsement earlier this week on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, it looks like Sally's Spa will be headed up the App Store charts once again with iPhoenix Fund investors in hot pursuit.

Happy to hear this and hopefully the quality of iPhone apps will increase by that too.

Ad on iPod touchs capabilities as a gaming device from the IGN website. Thanks to TUAW who preserved the ad via screencast so everybody can enjoy it in Youtube.

If you are still wondering what I would like for my birthday Brian Fling's new book on Mobile Design and Development is on my wishlist! Brian owns pinchzoom and is well known in the Mobile Network for his knowledge on Mobile.