Archiving Tweets, With the Help of Google

By James Zipadelli

While much of the media attention recently has focused on the Library of Congress making Twitter a part of history, Google was doing the same thing, on a smaller scale. Google’s feature, called replay, which was recently rolled out.

Google spokesman Jake Hubert says the replay feature helps broaden the scope and relevance of real-time search. The Mountain View, Calif.-based search engine launched real-time search in December 2009.

“Twitter and other micro-blogging services host useful content about breaking news, public opinion, and hyper-local events like weddings and bike races,” Hubert says. “Sometimes the only place someone published information is in short-form from a mobile phone. Just as people want to search for Web sites, today people want to be able to search the public content on update services like Twitter.”

The feature uses a Twitter feed to archive people’s text messages, called Tweets, which is subject to an agreement made between the two companies last year. Hubert says the agreement allows Google “to protect user privacy by ensuring we can delete tweets from our feature in a timely manner after a user deletes a tweet on twitter.com.”

According to Hubert, initially, the Tweets will be archived going back to Feb. 11, 2010; they hope to eventually archive the entire history of Twitter, which began in March 2006.

“When you’re in the “Updates” and “Any time” view in search options, we apply ranking algorithms to determine the most relevant updates content for your search,” Hubert says. “Once you click into the chart and explore Tweets from a specific time, we organize those tweets by date and time, enabling users to see a “replay” of the activity on Twitter about that subject during that time period.”

Co-founder of Twitter reacts
Dominic Sagolla, co-founder of Twitter and author of “140 Characters” (Wiley, 2009) says the inclusion of Tweets into the Library of Congress fulfills the goal Twitter’s inventor, Jack Dorsey, had, which is, “One could change the world with one hundred and forty characters.” According to Sagolla even though many powerful people have been using Twitter since its founding, it became popular once presidential candidates and the White House started using it regularly.

“Individual tweets can be interesting or mundane, but what is truly fascinating are the trends and patterns in aggregate,” Sagolla says. “For example, the shapes and patterns of sand on a beach are considered beautiful, whether or not you may find beauty in an individual grain of sand.”

Sagolla says Twitter helps Google and the way it indexes information.

“The message itself is simply a seed, the beginning of relevance. Beneath the message is a deep root structure of meaning and association, and Twitter’s new developer tools will enable us to add even more information to each tweet,” Sagolla says. “Each result in a Google search has a relevance score associated with it once it is found. Each message sent from Twitter has relevance associated with it _from the start_, making discovery easier and more immediate.”

Sagolla also talked about the impact of Twitter in the world, from the Twitpic of the “Miracle on the Hudson” to places like Mumbai, Iran, Haiti and Chile.

“Mobile devices penetrate the walls of society and short-form messaging provides the transparency that we sorely need. We will soon see a tipping point, where those who govern us will hear our voices more clearly,” Sagolla says.

Founder of Craigslist reacts to Twitter and the LOC
“I don’t think we have value in the historical context in the same way Twitter does,” Craigslist founder Craig Newmark says. “The great value of Twitter is that people do serious work via Twitter, like breaking news, how the world is changing. I do feel this decade represents a tipping point in the way people work with each other, and there will be great shifts of power and influence to the grassroots.

“We have a database which might be useful to detect trends, both behavioral and economic, and maybe someday we can look at that, but right now were swamped and

there are privacy issues,” Newmark says. “We could archive that information, though we are obsessed with privacy. We fear disclosing personal information and were passionate about privacy so we’re very careful.” There are 1.6 billion ads in the Web site’s database.

“In terms of the big trend, I think people are using the Net more and more for down to earth things,” Newmark adds. “Our site is about housing and jobs and everyday needs. Explicitly, we show that it’s easy to work together for mutual benefit and it’s easy to do so.”

What analysts have to say about the future of Twitter and social media
Pitzer College Media Studies professor Alex Juhasz says she supports the addition of Tweets to the Library of Congress. Juhasz taught a class previously within YouTube’s framework and will teach it again this fall.

“The way we benefit as a society is that the voices of everyday people expressing the texture and regular practices of daily life will be available to historians in the future,” Juhasz says. “So it won’t be just from headlines, and presidents, and the seats of capital but a more complex and diverse picture of history.”

“For YouTube, they do a poor job of archiving. If National Archives is archiving Tweets we assume that it will take seriously the work of archiving these materials. Because it’s text-based, it’s easy to search and categorize. YouTube is currently not a useful database for serious pursuits.”

Gartner analyst Jeff Mann says there are other archives besides the Library of Congress.

“In 1776, it was the Declaration of Independence and today it’s Twitter,” Mann says. I definitely don’t think it’s a bad thing. There are different types of archivists - some have an academic and others have a public interest approach. That’s what Google is trying to do, organize world’s info and make it more accessible. But they won’t have all the solutions because there will be other archives (like the Way Back Machine.)

AOL, Google: Searching for the Benjamins in Display Advertising

By Sheila Shayon

The first online advert ran on Oct. 24, 1994, on HotWired, the forerunner of Wired Magazine. It was 468 x 60 pixels and asked:

“Have you ever clicked your mouse right here? You will.”

And we did. The click-through rate was 42 percent. (For the record, Global Network Navigator ran the banner two or three weeks earlier, but HotWired garnered the coverage.)

Today’s display ads are virtual micro-sites, replete with interactive, social elements, animation and video. An example of an award-winning rich media ad:

In three days, this campaign earned 170 million impressions, 50,000 clicks and 17,000 hours of brand engagement, according to Google.

JPMorgan analyst, Imran Khan, predicts an $8.3 billion display advertising economy in 2010. The name of the game in the digital space has moved from search to advertising as the big brands step further into open access platforms with suites of tools and metrics to make it easier for advertisers and agencies to create and ’self-serve’ display ads and track and measure their effectiveness.

DMB spoke with Jeff Levick, executive vice president, AOL Advertising; and Rachel Nearnberg, Global Communications & Public Affairs, Google, about their advertising platforms.

AOL
AOL recently launched a beta version of Advertising.com Ad Desk. Levick was on the floor of Ad Tech San Francisco, where he said AOL’s presence in the middle of the exhibition was attracting traffic and attention. “It’s the most exciting experience at AOL you can imagine. We’re still testing Advertising.com Ad Desk, and learning as we go. It’s a huge leap forward, as it opens up all the inventory we have as well as gives access to a massive number of properties across the web through Ad.com.”

The AOL network has 78 of AdAge’s Top 100 advertisers and 70 of comScore’s Top 100 publishers. ‘Lead-back targeting’ is a distinguishing feature for AOL’s new platform, which allows advertisers to target their ads, and once it’s seen, re-target the same ad across the web. AOL’s suite of tools allows for retargeting consumers who have:

• Visited your website (Advertiser LeadBack)
• Seen or clicked on your ad creative (Creative LeadBack)
• Visited a webpage that you’re sponsoring (Sponsorship LeadBack)
• NOT visited your website - a great way to reach more unique visitors (Reverse LeadBack)
• Searched for a relevant word or phrase on AOL Search (SearchBack)

Formats include rich media, video and widgets, and AOL Advertising’s ad serving platform, ADTECH, manages campaigns across multiple platforms for web publishers, ad networks, agencies and advertisers.

“Transparency and control are the future of online advertising,” Levick says. “Providing clients with a greater level of personalized control over digital marketing campaigns is paramount as organizations continue to look for innovative ways to promote their brands and evaluate their ROI when planning campaigns.”

The build-out of Advertising.com Ad Desk over the last 10 months has deep-dived into technology to create the ‘lead-back targeting’ capabilities. Ads uploaded by the users are virus scanned and monitored as they run, as well as reviewed for ad spec compliance, quality and content.

Next up, Version 2 will deliver increased Reporting and Insights tools and metrics. “We’re connecting the advertising experience to the publishing side of the house. Church and state are talking,” Levick added.

Google
We all heard Eric Schmidt’s prediction that display advertising would be Google’s next billion-dollar business. According to Nearnberg, “In such a fragmented media landscape today, with users on social media sites, e-commerce, blogs or online games, the challenge is where best to reach people and how to tailor ads across thousands of sites and track performance.”

According to Google data, US users spend 12 hours online per week, about 32 percent of their media time. But online advertising comprises only 13.6 percent of US advertising spend. “Scale and reach are the key challenges, and serving display ads is a more sophisticated and complicated process than search,” Nearnberg says. “Our Content Network enables keyword, contextual targeting between ads and content.”

The Google Content Network serves hundreds of billions of ad impressions to more than 500 million Internet users worldwide every month. It includes several Google properties including Google Finance and YouTube, and reaches 100 countries, with ads in 20 languages. Major publishers include New York Times, LinkedIn, Univision, About.com, and Food Network. “94 of the top 100 Ad Age advertisers have run campaigns on Google Content Network - display not search,” added Nearnberg.

For smaller businesses, Google’s Display Ad Builder, offers designed templates that enable the creation and distribution of an ad in minutes. The goal is to make display advertising as simple as search, those functions being complementary. “20,000 advertisers using Display Ad Builder are first-time users. We are adding the science of search to display advertising,” commented Nearnberg.

According to Comscore, “average lift of search activity when display was added to a campaign was 155 percent.”  Douglas Anmuth, a Barclay’s Capital media analyst, predicts that display ads will account for $1 billion in revenue in 2010, or about 4 percent of Google’s total sales.

Experts agree that the gold rush towards display advertising is still early stage. Predictions for the advertising landscape in the near future include: data will be more valuable than awards; ROI will be the metric of success; engagement will trump creativity; and the technology deep dive will continue - with those who can afford to own their own - in the driver’s seat.

In April 2005, DoubleClick released a white paper, “The Decade in Online Advertising (1994-2004) - Online Advertising.” The summary included: “Advertisers still lag consumers in their adoption of digital media. As broadband reaches more American homes, as entertainment companies develop more digital content, and as televisions, mobile phones and other devices further blur the distinction between “online” and “offline,” all advertisers will be forced to adapt faster to the new media environment or struggle to stay relevant.”

Five years later, the struggle continues - but advertisers are adapting faster, listening more to their consumers, and making online engagement a more worthwhile endeavor.

Beyond the Smartphone: Widgets For Everyday Mobile Devices

By Sarah Jaferi

In order to comprehend what a mobile widget is, we first must understand the definition of a widget. A widget is a small application that does a single task, but does it well. A widget can be embedded anywhere on the web by copying and pasting a simple piece of html code. There are widgets to serve all sorts of purposes from receiving content, sharing media, playing games, getting information and more.

Mobile widgets are applications that can be installed on your cellular phone or mobile device that add functionality to the device. Each mobile widget provides a single function that is designed to make your life easier, bring information to you or just give you another opportunity to play.

Mobile widgets can easily be downloaded to your phone via the Internet or oftentimes from the web directly from your mobile device. Many cell phones even come with widgets already installed, ready for you to customize and begin using them.

Many large companies offer mobile widgets to help you bring all of your social networks and web actions with you on the go. For instance, eBay offers a mobile widget ticker for all of your bids; MySpace offers a version of the social network for mobile. News sites and RSS feeds can also be viewed on your mobile. Mobile widgets are a popular method of promotion for these types of companies.

There are also a lot of mobile widgets that are designed to simplify your life. For instance you can put a widget on your mobile device to help you find directions. You can also look up maps, look for restaurants, find movie times and more, all from your mobile device.

As you can see, widgets can be a great way to bring new functionality to your mobile device that can make your life simpler and more fun.

Because widgets are small and oftentimes simplify everyday tasks, they fit perfectly into the mobile world. A mobile widget is a widget that is designed for use on a mobile device. There are all sorts of different mobile widget types. You can download a mobile widget to your cell phone to receive RSS feeds or news; you can download a widget to check and send emails. There are mobile game widgets, communication widgets, information widgets and more. People all over the world are simplifying their lives by installing widgets to their mobile devices for movie times, restaurant searches and reviews, maps, directions and more.

Additionally, the world of the mobile widget is constantly growing to include new and exciting opportunities to simplify your life by way of your mobile device. Many mobile carriers offer mobile widgets that you can easily download to start simplifying your life today.

There are so many different widgets that you can choose from to post on your blog or website. How can you narrow the selection down to the best widgets? Well, the most important thing to keep in mind is that the best widgets are the widgets that add something to your site. Good widgets make your site more interesting and stickier and they make your visitors want to return again and again.

If you work in social media then for you the best widgets would be your social networking badges. As a social media expert you would want visitors to reach you at all your social network sites directly from your blog or website.

If, on the other hand, you are a Flash game programmer then the best widgets for you may be Flash games as well as a news feed about new updates in the gaming industry.

Basically, the idea is to choose widgets that are related to your site. Widgets add to your content so that your visitors will have more to read and more to do when they visit your site or blog. The best widgets, like RSS and news feeds, add content to your site constantly without you even doing any work at all.

International Companies Embrace Mobile Bill Pay Technology

By Moria Byrne

Remote bill pay is the next trend in mobile banking.

The collaboration of mobile phone operating systems, banking institutions and money transfer systems are working together to create a new way to manage your money.

The next generation allows “anyone on any operator system” to establish a mobile banking account, it’s no longer a “closed system,” according to Diarmuid Mallon of Sybase. The program has been “massively successful” in Kenya.

In places like Kenya, where paying utility bills is a cash-only business and getting cash is often a time-consuming and travel intensive process, mobile banking is a huge advantage. Mobi-Cash users will soon be able to pay their bills simply by sending a text message to their bank in Kenya. The other advantage is that users will be able to “pay-as-they-go,”  Mallon says. People won’t have to pay an exorbitant amount each month. Mobile banking is much more flexible system for paying bills. Users can pay weekly or even daily.

It’s much easier to access your money, according to Mallon. Mobile banking allows a “prearrangement of services around people” instead of the other way around.

Currently, users spend an average of more than 10 percent of the value of the transaction to send money through official channels. The cost of mobile banking is merely the cost of a text message. Moneygram took the opportunity of growing consumer interest in online banking and mobile phone use to push cell phone distributor’s to make mobile banking more affordable for mobile phone users.

“By collapsing a value chain and removing a barrier to entry by doing it from cash to phone, I think remittances play a key role in the ongoing adoption and expansion of mobile wallets,” says Justin Monk, director/consumer products of the Americas, Moneygram. The company is one of the leading international money transmittance services using mobile banking.

Austrian government enables mobile commerce across all counties. The most popular use is paying parking tickets instantly. Yet, Austria is in the minority of European countries utilizing mobile banking beyond the basic bank institution to customer practices.

In Asia, mobile banking is booming. One of the most successful mobile banking trials was masterminded by Moneygram and Smart mobile in Philippines in partnership with Mozido, a Dallas mobile gateway service provider. Launched in 2004, Smart Padala has more than eight million users. Moneygram continues to roll out its joint program with Smart through the country and plans to eventually implement the program to their entire user network.

M-Pesa and Moneybox Africa are two other notable pilot programs that are growing in popularity. M-Pesa is a mobile banking system run by IBM Mobile service on behalf of mobile network operator, Vodaphone. The technology platform, provided by Microsoft has been so successful, the Melinda and Bill Gates Foundation highlighted M-Pesa as an important charitable initiative by Vodaphone in 2009.

In fact, the flow of money from developed nations to developing countries grew 130 percent in the past decade; that is over USD $248 Billion in remittance, according to the World Bank.

Noteable Mobile Banking Platforms

Mobile banking platforms are measured on reliability, flexibility and services rendered. A robust mobile payment platform may include: airtime topup, bill pay and transferring money to other people and spending their money at a point of sale all available through mobile banking transactions.

Sybase, winner of two MobileTrax 2010 Mobility Awards for Best in Class Mobile Banking and Mobile Device Management Solutions, is one of the leading mobile banking platforms. Sybase’s mobile banking services are comprehensive. Mbanking 365 provides end-to-end mobile commerce solutions for banks and financial institutions and their users, mobile messaging services for business owners and mobile operations management. Sybase 365 reaches 850 operators with 4 billion global subscribers.

The other largest mobile banking platform provider is Microsoft .Net platform, which offers multi-channel platform accessible to branch, ATM, Internet and now mobile banking. In a case study with OCBC Bank, Microsoft.Net produced 30 percent time saving and took less than four months to roll out in Malaysia in comparison to the Singapore launch with a different platform provider.

“By meeting our specifications, Microsoft .NET enables us to move quickly in application and system development, with time and cost savings,” says Patrick Chew, SVP, head delivery, OCBC Bank Consumer Financial Services. “We used Microsoft .NET to integrate our CRM tools with our ATM network to extract important customer information, which allows us to convert customer information into up and cross-sell opportunities,” he adds.

As the services are SMS-based and available to across various mobile phone providers, travelers are taking full advantages of mobile banking services.

Advantages for Travelers

There are also huge advantages for mobile users who travel a lot. Mobile banking users will be able to sit in the airport and pay their bills simply by sending a text message to their mobile banking account, no smartphone needed.

The user simply requests a reminder to send bill payment alerts to their cell phone. The message will ask if they want to pay their electric bill through the mobile phone, for example. The user simply replies yes or no. If they reply yes, money is transferred instantly to the electricity service provider.  And as the message is sent through texting rather than internet services or a phone call, there are no roaming charges. The cost is the same as any other mobile text message.

“I think that we’re at the beginning of a very long and very exciting migration to mobile services,” Monk says of mobile banking services in general.

While the need for mobile banking services is increasing at a slower rate in Europe and developed countries, recent Forrester Research study proved that interest in online banking is growing. Northern Europe leads in the adoption of online banking, with 90 percent of Dutch and 87 percent of Swedish online consumers having used it in the past three months. European Technographics Financial Services Online Survey, Q4 2009 looked at online banking and money management tools on behalf of Forrester Research. The countries leading in online banking are the most active mobile banking users in Europe, namely, Spain and Italy. One in five mobile phone owners use mobile banking in some form -checking account balances, transferring money, or paying bills through text messaging (SMS) or the mobile Internet.

Three of four adults have a mobile phone and regularly use SMS in Europe, according to a Forrester Report on mobile phone use. Some countries have as many as 88 percent of mobile users texting Sweden is one example. “These European adults who use a mobile phone represent the largest audience of all the electronic channels,” says Christine Hamilton, an analyst of Forrester Research in a recent blog.

Western Union also has a mobile banking service, Western Union Anywhere. Its mobile banking services are available in Africa, Asia and Latin America. The international leaders partnering with this money transferral service include: South Africa-based Fundamo, India-based mChek, U.S.-based Sybase 365 and Singapore-based Utiba Pte among others.

While inexpensive cell phones are abundant throughout Asia, Africa and Latin America access to banks and remittance services are not for everyone.  Mobile banking provides users with immediate and convenient access to money transfer services from where ever they are.

Yet, the growth of online banking is largely a result of several changes in online technology in the past decade. The number of mobile phone users grew globally as did the number of people shopping, banking and running a business online. Upon seeing the development growth and customer interest in mobile banking by migrant workers and others living in areas not easily accessible to banks or ATMs, Moneygram, Western Union and others pressured mobile platform vendors to decrease the integration costs and “accelerate go-to-market activities for banks and mobile operators by creating standard technical deployments,” according to Hamilton.

In addition to mobile banking leaders, Kenya and the Philippines mobile remittance services are expected to continue to expand globally in the Middle East and Europe as well as to other countries areas of Asia and Africa.

A variety of businesses  are taking advantage of mobile banking in order to create convenient and accessible ways to purchase services any place and at any time, Mallon says.

NGOs Get Into Cloud Computing

By Linda Broughton

Non-profit governmental organizations (NGOs) are discovering cloud computing. Cloud computing is a cheap and lightweight Software as a Service (SaaS) option for economically limited and geographically stretched NGOs. Cloud computing removes the cost of purchasing and maintaining hardware and software while nullifying deployment costs and reducing the overall TCO (Total Cost of Ownership). Centralizing software and data greatly simplifies inter-organization collaboration.

The current collaboration between SaaS/PaaS cloud computing company WOLF and the India-based sustainable development NGO, Social Education and Development Society (SEDs) is a perfect example of this trend. According to Aditya Tandon of WOLF, “the Web openness of the cloud allows NGOs to selectively expose operational data/statistics to the public, subscribers or to a private audience (such as donors) in the form of emails, RSS feeds, blogs and website content.” And all this for a price that the NGO can afford and justify - to both its rural stakeholders and more urban resource base.

For example, just like a for-profit business, NGOs get funded for results. It’s essential to have consistent and accurate data that the fundraiser can use to brag and bag more cash. Real-time data can also be used to identify issues and patterns in how money is being spent and which projects need more resources and additional attention from the central office - something best done via a central database that tracks who enters which data when and from where. On top of this, Tandon highlights that online tools like blogging and RSS feeds attract public attention and can even be used to build up an online community that supports (emotionally and financially) the NGO. These marketing capabilities are just one cloud in a very big sky.

Most of these tools exist in the self-sustaining Internet infrastructure that is cloud computing. The trick is selecting the tools and customizing them to meet the NGO’s needs and capabilities.

WOLF provides SEDs, the second largest NGO in India, with customized SaaS and PaaS solutions. WOLF noted that the secret to success with SEDs - as with any NGO - is collaboration. WOLF consulted and provided access to the cloud infrastructure that met the economic, information, communication and altruistic needs of SEDs.

The story of SEDs and WOLF Framework is part of a growing trend. The skill set required for an NGO like SEDs is rarely technical. NGO workers are often social engineers and entrepreneurs seeking long-term community development despite limited resources. For the average NGO field office, the Internet can be a luxury and SaaS can seem out of bounds. But reality demands that NGOs, often at the mercy of public and private donors far away from the field, are at least visible online, and increasingly reality requires that NGOs are capable of collecting and communicating their work and ambitions to these far away funders via the net.

The only limitation to the cloud is the experience and Internet accessibility of an NGO’s staff. Companies like WOLF are addressing this problem through collaborative customization, training, and through exploring remote accessibility options for NGO field staff far from an access center.

iPushback: Are Apple Developers Getting Restless?

By Ned Smith

When Apple released iPhone SDK 4, its new software development kit for mobile devices, in early April, three lines of legalese in the license that mandated developers only use Apple’s programming tools to create applications sent seismic shock waves through the software community. The reverberations are still being felt.  And Flash functionality is still on the outside looking in.

Lots of sound and fury followed, coupled with rampant speculation that this latest instance of Apple’s control-freak habits would finally send software developers fleeing in droves.  Gene Munster, a Piper Jaffray analyst, told The New York Times that “the risk Apple runs is ticking off developers and causing them to want to develop on other platforms.”

Though some prickly proponents of total developer freedom still grumble and mutter anti-Apple sentiments, it appears that the anticipated backlash has been pretty much confined to bluster and bombast. “Developers don’t like anyone telling them to do,” says Judy Shapiro, chief brand strategist for CloudLinux. “There will be a backlash, no question about it. But I think they’ll get over it.”

They have a good reason to get over it. “We have to build the stuff people want,” says Joe DeSetto, a principal in reallyMedia, a mobile applications development firm that creates games and utilities for the iPhone. And consumers clearly like what Apple offers.

Many believe that the developers themselves are just collateral damage in the Apple/Adobe wars. To parse the latest rules from Apple, you have to look at them from several perspectives, says Scott Schwarzhoff, vice president of marketing for Appcelerator, a platform and services company whose conversion tools help Web developers build content-rich applications for desktop and mobile platforms such as iPhone.

“What is the language?” he says. “What is the intent behind of language? What is going to be enforced? They hold the ultimate trump card in the form of the App Store acceptance/rejection process.”

The answer to the first, Schwarzhoff believes, has been blown out of proportion. “I think it’s a classic example of looking at one clause under a microscope.”

But the answer to the question of intent, he believes, is unequivocal. ‘Our position is that the intent is 100 percent directed at Adobe. This is an Adobe/Apple thing.” He doesn’t believe coincidence accounts for Apple making its SDK 4 announcement just three days before Adobe announced Flash CS5, which includes a packager for iPhone that would give Flash developers to get into the App Store.

“It’s critical for Adobe to get into the iPhone App Store,” Schwarzhoff believes. “Their developers need to get there. That’s where the action is, that’s where the growth is.”

And once you take disgruntled developers and Adobe out of the equation, the end user benefits. “What Apple wants is applications that make the most of their platform,” says Schwarhoff.  “They want applications that show the qualities of what the Apple platform offers. The company wants to showcase applications that make it unique and special.”

Though Appcelerator has not yet received word from Apple in whether its application has passed muster, Schwarzhoff believes that their product is in compliance. But he would like to see more transparency in the process. “To be fair, there’s a lot that could be done to provide more clarity to Apple’s intentions,” he says. “When you actually have to make business and development decisions based on three lines of legal write-up, there’s no way to really give clarity and confidence to a broad developer base.”

There are also ways to end-run Cupertino. “While I don’t begrudge Apple their locked-down approach — nor take sides with those that would rally against it — it’s not the only way to build rich applications for the iPhone,” says Yury Tsukerman, cofounder of Recess Mobile, an SMS and web applications developer. “You don’t have to play in Apple’s sandbox to build rich apps for their devices.”

“We just built a pretty sophisticated cross-platform calendar and appointment scheduling tool that opens in a browser, looks like a native iPhone app, works on Android, Palm, etc. and degrades gracefully to Blackberry and WAP devices,” he says. “To me, that’s ideal for business applications. We got to build it with a flexible, transparent and common toolset — html, JavaScript — the same way we build web applications, and make it broadly accessible, all without Apple’s oversight.

Though he prefers to remain an App Store outlier, Tsukerman concedes that there is merit in Apple’s approach. “I do agree with those who argue that Apple’s vertical integration has resulted in phenomenal, consistent quality that companies like Microsoft or Dell, being all things to all people and faced with maintaining compatibility across such a breadth of hardware, can’t match.”

That consistent quality may also explain why there has been little consumer backlash because of Apple’s restrictive policies. “Microsoft was run over, not because they were a big bully, but because a lot of their products were not up to snuff,” says Shapiro at CloudLinux.

Performance is also an issue underlying Apple’s rule striking out the use of conversion tools to create applications. “At a technical level, the conversion tools are really convenient for the developers but add an intermediate layer, increasing processing load and draining battery life,” says Patrick Tan, interactive director with Famous Interactive, a web portal developer. “Apple has put a lot of effort in to ensure a smooth and reliable experience for the iPad and iPhone user, a major reason for popularity and adoption, and conversion tools pose a threat to this.”

“Finding efficient methods to version software has always been a challenge in the software development world,” he says. “Apple’s announcement has added fuel to this challenge, but they are not the first or last company to be strict with its platform. In the end, Apple cares about the reputation of its brand and products more than it cares to please developers. We don’t blame them.”

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