augustus's comments

It may not be the dark ages but people losing their homes and having to deal with a bad credit rating for seven years is pretty bad.

Maybe in the dark ages, a second chance was a lot easier.

Today all our mistakes (finances, internet posts,errors of youth) will plague us for the rest of our lives (seems like).

I agree.

What works for me as a programmer is to get into the zone as quickly as possible. I like to set aside one day of the week to handle miscellaneous tasks. Other days its all about the zone.

There is a story about Schwab (Carnegie Steel) hiring a consultant to gave him the best productivity advice. The advice was to start with the most important thing first. Stick with it and when its done move onto the next important task.

Schwab loved the advice and promptly paid the consultant his fee. It worked even then.

I guess I will answer my own question.

The app compareAnywhere won the Android ADC 1 Contest. Here is a link below: http://code.google.com/android/adc/adc_gallery/app.html?id=8

That was in 2008!

You couldn't do bar code scanning on the iPhone until 3GS came out (I think I am right on this).

So this was an idea out there since 2008. The red laser team were the first one to execute it on the iPhone 3GS.

I also have high regard for the Google team for correctly accessing the value of this idea.

I might be wrong on this but I will say it anyway.

The original idea for this came out of the Google App contest for Android. This was the idea that won the competition. So the idea was available for anyone to execute after that.

The red laser team might have come up with the idea independently or just learned about it from the Google Android contest. I am not sure if the contest or the app came out first. Someone here might know.

Not sure I agree with it.

I can think of at least two people - Henry Ford and Walt Disney whose success came after a long string of failures. And that's just the cream of the crop.

I developed a webapp (project management) before deciding to go native.

Some of the additional reasons why I believe users prefer native apps are:

1. The app store app and iTunes make it easy to discover native apps. Webapps are simply posted on a link from apple. This makes it harder for users to discover them. Here is the link to webapps: http://www.apple.com/webapps/

2. With native apps, users can take advantage of built in UI elements reducing the learning curve and creating richer applications.

3. Web apps can suffer from performance issues especially when you are on an edge network.

4. Payment processing was already mentioned. Its an issue but probably not a huge one.

I think the native look and feel and Apple's own promotion are the two big factors in favor of native apps.

The top competition for netbooks and the Chrome OS will the smartphones.

Smartphones are in a position to be your second computer in the next few years. Personally I prefer the smartphone but I can see some people wanting a web only computer.

The lesser evil would have been to allow everyone an update at least once a month.

The current app store policies encourage developers to iterate apps i.e develop a bunch of apps in a month or two and hope one or two of them shoot to the top.

Developing compelling desktop level full featured apps over the long run are discouraged.

I have now two published apps in the App Store. Both business apps - one in finance and the other in business.

The biggest change they have made that took me off their platform was their recent policy to not show updated applications along with new releases.

Let me explain. For the longest time, if you looked under released applications you could see applications that were recently updated. This was a great incentive for developers of existing applications to keep updating their applications and getting it easily noticed by users.

Apple no longer allows updated applications to be displayed in the released applications list.

There is now no way for users to discover your application except for about one or two days when it is first released.

That's why the happiest people are those who are enjoying themselves when others see them as working.

I have to agree with the Article.

Jobs is truly a visionary when it comes to technology. The article is not really clear on why he is unique. Here's my perspective.

Steve Jobs has the unique ability to see where the next big technology opportunity is.

Look at his track record - Apple II, Macintosh GUI, Pixar, iPod and now the iPhone.

Walt Disney is the only other visionary I can think of that could repeat his success - animated cartoons (took advantage of TV's) and theme parks.

I don't consider myself a fan boy just a student of business and technology.

Well, the one thing that motivates me to come back to entrepreneurship despite some past failures is simply the fact that,

There is a future in working for yourself. If your plan succeeds, you own your destiny and with it comes financial independence.

What is really the future for an employee? If the business goes south, you are laid off. If you work really hard you get promoted and make a little more. Hardly a recipe for financial independence.

Of course that's oversimplification, but the payoff in entrepreneurship is highly gratifying and motivating.

After a few months of in the App store, I am finally realizing the realities.

A month ago they told me I had information that would be confusing across regions. I changed it immediately but they have not reviewed the app again.

I have send at least a dozen emails asking them for a review to no avail.

And this is a business app. So if anyone thought getting in was the biggest thing, think again.

This review was probably fair but then again, I have personally found dealing with the review team to be highly frustrating.

Anyone have any scoop on when the public SDK will be available?

I bought a Palm Pre hoping that it will be available soon.

In my humble opinion, I can't see the Kindle succeeding in this pricing model.

I really respect Bezos but to me he is seeing things from his side not the customers.

The consumer has limited space in his pocket. Why would anyone want to have a Phone and a Kindle with them at the same time.

I can't really see the Kindle appealing to the mass market with that pricing model. I think Amazon's best bet might be offering subscription through smartphones like iPhone and others.

When the iPhone originally came out with the $500 price tag it only appealed to the fan boys. But by cutting the initial price they started appealing to the average Joe.

The thing with the average joe is that they don't do the two year math. They only look at the upfront price. We justified our monthly data plan costs by getting rid of our land line. I think that's why the smartphone makes sense to lots of consumers.

The iPhone 3.0 SDK GM seed has been available for a while now.

I just bought a Pre this weekend. My main gripe is the keyboard. The keys are too small.The operating seems to not respond at times. Maybe they released the product too early. I just downloaded the latest update. We will see how that goes. Otherwise the Pre and the iPhone OS's are in a class by itself.

Regarding the iPhone keyboard, you can get used to it. I can type pretty fast. Also the auto correction does help. With OS 3.0 and landscape mode, it will be even better.

I was only thinking of Jobs.

Not good.

No typo, timburks.

Before the app store debut around July 2007, web apps was the only way to develop for the iphone.

With Webapps, Apple simply place your application on their http://www.apple.com/webapps page and gives you a chance to promote yourself.

Apple does not seem to promote those web apps as much as they should.