Empire Avenue: Trading Influence

January 31, 2012

So I stumbled across Empire Avenue this evening. Another web site sort of like klout or peerindex but this one has a bit of a twist. Basically your personal social identity or brand is tradable in this sort of virtual stock market… thingy. Other users can buy / sell shares in your social identity based on whether they think you’re likely to increase or decrease in value. Your value is partly determined by how active you are on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc. So the whole site revolves around this virtual currency knows as eaves. You can earn eaves through trading virtual shares of other users/brands, completing various achievements (there are many) and, of course, you can pony up some real cash to purchase more eaves if you’re running low.

So there’s that.

Another way you can earn eaves is through missions. Users or brands that are looking to promote a web page or app, gain some likes on a facebook page, etc, can create missions rewarding you for these actions. I’m unable to create a mission at the moment, though I imagine that’s because I just signed up this evening. Or maybe it’s broken. It does seem a little half baked in several places. You can also create an advertising using eaves as currency to fund impressions. These cost a certain amount of eaves per page view.

I’m not entirely sure what to make of it so far, but may be worth a look as a possible promotional tool or maybe it can somehow be used to gauge your social influence, but I wouldn’t put too much stock in it!

Ha!

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Making Good on My Threat

January 30, 2012

A few weeks back I mentioned that I’d been thinking about an overhaul for the old web site here. Well, I finally made good on that threat (except the roots section, it still looks all old timey). I didn’t start out with a particular layout in mind. Just sort of started playing with the Mario background and it snowballed from there. Turned out okay I think. I also like that, apart from the social icons (brought to you by komodomedia), there are only 2 images used. The rest is all CSS.

I haven’t checked to see what it looks like with every single post, so I’m sure there are bound to be some pages that don’t render too well. I guess I’ll fix those problems as they come up. I’ve also not added any of the social thingies in: facebook, twitter, google+, etc. I may or may not add those things back in.

And maybe now that I like looking at it again, I’ll start writing a bit more. We’ll see.

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Pro Bowl Excitement

January 23, 2012

I enjoy football, but somehow I’ve never watched a Pro Bowl. No one else really seems to pay attention to it. There’s not a lot of “water-cooler” talk after the game so I maybe that has something to do with it. I was talking to a friend about it today. We weren’t even sure exactly when it is this year (it’s this Sunday) or where (back in Hawaii). But I also stumbled across some of the rule changes that only apply to the Pro Bowl to make it more exciting safer. Here are some of those rules:

  • No motion or shifting by the offense
  • Offense must have a tight end in all formations
  • Offense can’t have 3 receivers on a side
  • Intentional grounding is legal
  • Defense must run a 4-3 at all times
  • No press coverage except inside the 5 yard line
  • No blitz
  • Not allowed to rush a Punt, PAT or FG attempt

Sounds riveting. While I understand the need to protect the players, if you’re going to add rules why not add some rules to make it more exciting? If not, just make it a game of flag football and be done with it.

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iOS Release / Mobile Safari Version Table

January 9, 2012

UPDATE: New version of this table available here: iOS Releases | Mobile Safari Versions | Supported Devices

Earlier today I was trying to use some web logs to get a sense of iOS adoption rate. I was looking at the version of Mobile Safari being used by requesting browsers, but had no idea which version of Mobile Safari went with which release of iOS and somehow Google was of no help. So I made a list. Then I decided someone else might find this information useful someday too, so I made assembled it as a blog post. And for good measure I added some stuff about iOS release dates, which of those releases is supported on various iOS devices, and some other assorted goodies. I’m seem to always be referring to this wikipedia article, but it’s a bit overkill. This is mostly all I need.

By the way, if anyone knows what version of Mobile Safari was on iOS version 1.0 – 1.1.5, let me know and I’ll update the table. Although surely no one is still using that.

iOS Release History, Supported Devices

iOS Version Release iPhone iPod 1G iPhone 3G iPod 2G iPhone 3GS iPod 3G iPad iPhone 4 iPod 4G iPad 2 iPhone 4S iPod 4G (2011) Mobile Safari Version
5.0.1 11/10/11 06/19/09 09/01/10 – 09/09/09 03/02/11 – 04/03/10 06/21/10 09/08/10 03/11/11 10/12/11 10/12/11 7534.48.3
5.0 10/12/11
4.3.5 07/25/11 6533.18.5
4.3.4 07/15/11
4.3.3 05/04/11
4.3.2 04/14/11
4.3.1 03/25/11
4.3 03/09/11
4.2.10 07/25/11
4.2.9 07/15/11
4.2.8 05/04/11
4.2.7 04/14/11
4.2.6 02/10/11
4.2.5 02/07/11
4.2.1 11/22/10 06/04/10 – 07/11/08 09/01/10 – 09/09/08
4.2 N/A
4.1 09/08/10 6531.22.7
4.0.2 08/11/10
4.0.1 07/15/10
4.0 06/21/10
3.2.2 08/11/10 531.21.10
3.2.1 07/15/10
3.2 04/03/10
3.1.3 02/02/10 07/11/08 – 06/29/07 09/08/08 – 09/14/07 528.16
3.1.2 10/08/09
3.1.1 09/09/09
3.1 09/09/09
3.0.1 07/31/09
3.0 06/17/09
2.2.1 01/27/09 525.18.1
2.2 11/21/08 525.20
2.1.1 09/09/08
2.1 09/09/08
2.0.2 08/18/08
2.0.1 08/04/08
2.0 07/11/08
1.1.5 07/15/08 ?
1.1.4 02/26/08
1.1.3 01/15/08
1.1.2 11/12/07
1.1.1 09/27/07
1.1 09/14/07
1.0.2 08/21/07
1.0.1 07/31/07
1.0 06/29/07
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Every 90 seconds

January 6, 2012

The What’s New page on AppShopper sort of blows my mind, for a couple reasons.

First, just the sheer quantity of new apps posted to the app store every day. I was flipping through the new apps, as I’m wont to do from time to time, and noticed that the oldest app on the first page was only 49 minutes old. There are 20 apps on each page and these are all new releases. No updates. All version 1.0 apps. 49 minutes, 20 new apps. I did a little more browsing and realized that 1,126 apps (just over 56 pages on AppShopper) had been posted to the App Store in the last 24 hours. Thinking maybe that was an anomaly, I checked the previous days additions: 1,085 new apps.

Because I’m lazy I’m going to say that two days worth of data is enough to conclude the iOS app market is growing by roughly 1,000 apps per day. There are currently 530,652 apps on the App Store and that number is increases by one roughly every 90 seconds. If you could somehow manage to download an app every second, it would take you a little more than 6 days to download every one, during which time another 6,145 apps would appear on the App Store.

Given the huge number of new apps released every day, how in the world are you supposed to get your app noticed? I’m not even going to try and get into that right now. But it probably doesn’t hurt if your app is actually good, which leads me to the next point.

I know that developing is hard and it can be tempting to take shortcuts… Look, I don’t want to be mean, but skimming through some of these apps, just, damn. Here’s an assortment of some of the apps that were released over the last 24 hours.

gocart race
gocart race

The first app I stumbled across was gocart race. What is going on here? Maybe it’s just me, but some of the detail on the “go carts” appears to be missing. And everywhere else for that matter. The red rectangle seems to be winning. Hey maybe it’s fun, but there is nothing here that’s makes me want to find out. Compare this to another $0.99 app: Real Racing 2 and tell me which you’d be more likely to spend your hard earned $0.99 on.

Rapid finger
Rapid finger

Two others that jumped out at me were Rapid finger and Beauty Scan!. But not in a good way. Rapid finger tests how fast you can press a button. That’s it. No wait, you can press a button repeatedly and it’ll tell you how many taps per minute you averaged. On the bright side, it’s free.

Beauty Scan!
Beauty Scan!

Beauty Scan! (exclamation point), however, is not. As near as I can tell, it will take your picture and put it in this mirror thingy. There’s only the one screen shot, so I can’t say for certain and it would cost me $0.99 to find out. This app is brought to you by the makers of Ugly Scan! (another exclamation point!) which includes this phrase in the app description: “Trick your friends by taking there picture and scanning their face if there ugly or not!”. That’s some good grammar right they’re!

MulThis
MulThis

MulThis might also be good, actually probably the most useful of the bunch. I have a soft spot for education apps because they’re at least trying to serve a greater purpose, but this is just really hard to look at without wanting to stab something.

Panties Detector (FREE) will determine what color panties the detectee is wearing when they place their (not there) finger on the scanner. They also make Cooties Detector (FREE) and Mood Detector (FREE). Rounding out the suite is Poop Analyzer (FREE). These are free, but if the ads are somehow the only thing you find annoying about them, you can pay $0.99 for ad free versions of each.

Lastly there was the Tim Tebowâ„¢ app. A bunch of Tim Tebow wallpapers. But look again at the name of this app. It’s trademarked! The developers somehow managed to trademark the name Tim Tebow. One has to wonder if the real Tim Tebow has been informed and what sort of deal he has struck with the developers to allow him to keep using his name.

I could keep going. But I won’t. There’s a metric buttload of new apps being released each day but how many of those qualify as great or even good apps? Of course, creating a great app doesn’t guarantee success, though it surely helps (someone tell me that’s true, please). Then again, I’ve seen some really mediocre apps in various top 200 lists, so marketing clearly plays a big, possibly bigger, role than quality. But why make the marketing guys do all the work? Take a little extra time to add that extra bit of functionality and polish that’s going to make your app stand out from the rest. In a good way.

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