home

Palm is offering new developers a chance to sign up for free by waiving the usual $99 fee. For reference Android is $25, iPhone is $99 for this developer fee.

So I went to sign up just to sign up and take advantage, and just a safe warning, they ask for your Tax ID, which I don't know off hand so I couldn't continue with the sign up.

http://www.phonenews.com/palm-waiving-99-fee-for-new-developer-accounts-for-a-limited-time-10962/

I came across this article today via my RSS feeds from a financial blog. The Smart Passive Income Blog, it's a blog designed around how to earn passive income and the writer has entered the world of iPhone Apps. So far has done very well, and shared this list of 5 things that I'd like to share.


1. You Don’t Have to Develop Your Own iPhone Applications

The writer of the blog comments that he doesn't know how to code, he just had an idea and outsourced it to a programmer to get it made.

I plan to live the other side of this spectrum!

2. Any Type of App Can Be a Success Story

Every day, iTunes showcases the most downloaded and most profitable applications, and every day it surprises me.

At this stage, I have no idea how iTunes displays these, but I know how Android does and from reading other articles, getting mentioned in the "Featured Apps" section can be a huge boost

3. Getting Your App Made and Approved is Only Half the Battle

Not every app is a success story, for every person who can quit their day job from 1 application, there's 20,000 other app developers who are going to keep trying.

Promotion is key, hopefully I can build up a decent blog following before even releasing my first application.

4. It Takes Time To Create an iPhone App

The blog writer says it took 2 months for their first app to be made..and that's with an experienced programmer coding it, not a newbie in training like yours truly.

5. Free Apps Are Profitable

I see this on Android all the time too, search an certain app and you'll get 2 results a "lite" version for free and a paid version for price. The Lite version is sometimes a limited version [only a few levels in a game, let's you read but not edit a document, missing features, including ads] and in itself promotes the paid version in which you get rid of all the annoyances and get the full blown application. Sorta like a demo.

However unlike a "demo" some lite versions of paid apps are just as useful in their lite state for some users. One personal example is "Titanium Backup on android. I use the free versions and it lacks a few features, but those features aren't really needed for my uses, and I'm a constant user of a the free version.

Now what the article I'm referring to states is they have this model for their app, a free and a paid version, the free has ads, the paid doesn't and surprisingly the paid one earns upwards of $10 a day, while the lite version consistently earns between $30-60 a day due to ads alone!

Interesting stuff, full article is here: http://www.smartpassiveincome.com/5-things-you-must-know-about-creating-your-own-iphone-apps/

I remember reading about the idea of Adobe AIR on mobile devices. In laymen terms, you simply create your application in AIR's SDK and it'll run on any device supporting Air. Which Adobes hopes is everything.

Here's an interesting article I'd like to share about this:

http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/05/adobe-air-developer-demonstration-one-game-five-platforms-all/

It shows a simple game being played on desktop operating systems (Mac, Windows, Linux) and also mobile systems (iPad & Android)

I can see it's usefulness but I also can see its misfortunes and it's technically running a system on top of a system and therefore eating more resources, which at this stage in the game are extremely limited on the mobile world.

Just wanted to post a quick update, I was able to get Hello World working on Windows Phone 7 as well and also figured out how to run my applications for android straight on my HTC Hero and not the virtual device that the SDK creates! Pretty cool to say the least, for me this is all new.

Also unlike the Windows Phone 7 and Android, Blackberry [like iPhone] requires to sign up for a free developer account before even downloading the SDK, which I just went through and am downloading it's 368MB SDK. So I'll report back with my fourth Hello World hopefully soon.

Less then a month away before I start my college's class on iPhone Development. Really excited!

Purchased my OS X compatible netbook last week. Went with the MSI Wind U123, it was really a battle between the Lenovo S10-2 and the Wind U123 after during all my research, it just came down to the better deal.

I was scoping (and placing bids) and a few computers since my last post on eBay. I lost getting a S10-2 by less then $5 twice. The max I wanted to spend was around $220 if the computer was refurbished, $250 if it was new. Then I came across this deal one morning from CompUSA [yeah remember them?, they still have an online store] it was $300 with a $35 cashback [think like mail in rebate, but via email] and free shipping for a brand new MSI Wind U123, it included a 9-cell battery which sealed the deal for me.

So for the 5 or 6 days I was waiting for it to ship I prowled the forums/wiki over at InsanelyWind and came across this article: http://insanelywind.com/wiki/index.php/Windows_XP,_SnowyWindOSX-_Dual_Boot

SnowyWindOSX is a prepared version of OSX designed just for the MSI Wind, no need to fiddle around and changing stuff from the retail version to make it work, so I figured this was the best bet, also used Windows 7 instead of XP, worked out just fine, very very easy.

Progress so far since setting up the OSes

Android : SDK installed, Hello World coded and working
Blackberry : SDK installed, no coding yet*
iPhone : SDK installed, Hello World coded and working
Windows Phone 7 : SDK installed, no coding yet

*Blackberry and Android can both be coded for within the same software, Eclipse, then after it's setup when you go to new project you can select Android or Blackberry or any other Java SDK you have installed and make a project for that platform.