The app allows you to:

• Find photos you love
• Find designs you love
• Favourite the images you love

PictoBento is “your 5 minute creativity boost” and “your daily dose of inspiration”.

The app has been released at a promotional price of £0.69/€0.79/$0.99 for a limited time.

• Over 250 million iOS devices sold
• More than 500,000 apps in the App Store
• 18 billion apps downloaded

• 100 million iPhones and 15 million iPads sold
• 350,000 apps on the App Store
• Over 10 billion apps downloaded

Tiny Shiny Apps is very proud to support the Developers Against Poverty campaign which is supporting the great work done by charity:water.

The campaign, which runs throughout February and March 2011, is encouraging developers of iPhone, iPad and Mac apps to donate to this worthy cause. Scotty at iDeveloper.tv is once again shown to be a driving force behind this community.

Mac App Store

The Mac App Store opened for business on Jan 6th 2011 and did one million downloads in the first day.

It introduces the simplicity of software application management seen on the iPhone and iPad, to the Mac. The Mac App Store is very familiar to users of iTunes and the App Store. The same Apple iTunes account can be be used for payment. Updates for purchased applications are highlighted when available. It provides such a great experience that many will be left wondering why it hasn’t always been like this.

The Apple Slice

Apple takes a slice of every pie and the same 30% payment applied in the App Store is applied in the Mac App Store. The trade-off of a much larger ready made market for your software is at the cost of reduced margin.

Application Migration

In the same way that many apps migrated from iPhone to iPad, many more will migrate their way over to the Mac. The migration from iPhone or iPad to Mac is not straightforward as the iOS components will need to be replaced with MacOSX components. Though this mass migration strengthens the Mac as a important development platform.

Meanwhile, the App Store is on track to overtake iTunes in sales in 2011. The App Store will reach the 10 billion mark in less than half the time it took the iTunes to reach that total.

iPad 2

An iPad announcement is expected in February 2011 to announce an updated iPad to be released in April. There is speculation around front and rear cameras for FaceTime. Improved hardware is expected in an updated Apple A4 chip with a graphics core supporting Retina Display and potential 1080p HD support.

The product has proven massively popular with sales of approx 12 million in 2010 and forecasts of 20 million in 2011. With an average of 60 apps downloaded on each iOS device this is a growing opportunity for app sales.

iPhone 5

Expect an announcement in June 2011 and for the device to be shipping shortly afterwards. Improved hardware including the new A5 chip and more memory are being predicted.

2011 Summary

Apps are here to stay. 2011 will see further growth in the availability of iOS devices with millions of customers keen to download some tiny shiny apps.

The Heritage Foundation hired Tiny Shiny Apps, a TapLynx partner, to assist with preparing the app for release to the App Store. This included a review of app content and upgrading for iOS 4.

TinyShinyApps also assisted with the setup of Provisioning Profiles, device testing and release to the App Store.

The Heritage iPhone app is available for download from the AppStore.

If you would like to discuss iPhone app development or the TapLynx framework, please contact TinyShinyApps.

iOS 4.1

iOS 4.1 is to be released in September 2010. This iPhone upgrade allows users to benefit from the full power of the hardware. The addition of HDR function allows the camera to be used to take high definition photographs. For the video camera there is a change to allow the upload of high def videos directly from the iPhone. The release of GameCenter adds features for multiplayer gaming to the device.

iOS 4.2

iOS 4.2 is to be released in November 2010. This iPad upgrade will bring the most demanded features from the iPhone to the iPad. Multitasking was long seen as missing from the iPhone and its implementation in 4.0 was seen as overdue. The arrival of multitasking on the iPad will also be later than expected. Folders will also become available on the iPad for the first time allowing for a more tidy interface. New additions are wireless printing and Airplay which allows wireless streaming of music, videos and photos.

iPod Touch

The introduction of a new version of the iPod Touch brings the product in line with the iPhone by adding front facing and rear cameras. The compatibility of FaceTime with the iPod Touch will allows calls with iPhone users. This offers a great phone device without a contract, a first from Apple which may lead to an increased demand for the product.

This is mainly a maintenance release which allows TapLynx apps to be built with iOS4 for release to the App Store.

Read more about the capabilities of TapLynx.

• Localization allows app text to be configured for different languages.
• Push notifications can be sent via push.io with config settings to allow users to select which notifications they receive. There is some overhead with configuration of provisioning profiles to achieve this but the solution does simplify a very complicated process.
• Image Flow allows better display of images

Updated: 1.3.4 has been released with fixes

Read more about the capabilities of TapLynx.

Through the review I created a similar application using the TapLynx framework.

I believe that an equally usable application could have been created in greatly reduced timescales and at greatly reduced cost.

If you have any questions about aggregating your content for the iPhone, please contact us.

Navigation

ReadWriteWebApp has channels displayed on the main screen for the application for ReadWriteWeb, Enterprise, Start and Cloud, the four mains section of the site. There is also a link to the Twitter accounts of the RWW Team.

ReadWriteWeb App - Main Menu

TapLynx - Main Screen

Options for sharing – Facebook, Twitter, Instapaper and Read It Later are all available from the home screen too. These configurable options allow for easy sharing of items when reading.

The main screen is easy to navigate although it feels unfamiliar as a tab based navigation would be a more obvious choice.

In the TapLynx main screen we have included additional categories of Products and Trends as featured on the ReadWriteWeb site. The More option allows the user to configure the main screen to include Cloud, Start and Twitter if preferred.

Articles

The article listing navigation is typical and includes entries for ads and sponsors. Linking through to the article displays pages optimised for mobile with graphics displaying correctly.

Ads

As mentioned above, ads and sponsor mentions are incorporated into the article list. The current sponsor link Camera Plus Pro, is a link to the AppStore Info page which closes the ReadWriteWeb app and launches the AppStore. This could be considered out of the users control until the behaviour is learnt.

ReadWriteWeb App - News

TapLynx - Article Ad

In article ads appeared to be removed when viewed in the app. While this may enhance the experience for the user, surely the publisher is missing out on a page view, especially if the app is a success.

Performance

In the ReadWriteWeb app, the navigation between pages can be slow at times, with the selected option remaining highlighted as the next screen is displayed.

Offline Browsing

Offline browsing is not supported in ReadWriteWeb app. This is supported as standard with TapLynx.

Twitter

The ReadWriteWeb app has a nice reply/retweet/follow Twitter function. All authentication is done use Twitter oAuth.

We recreated the Twitter page by grabbing the list of staff members from their Twitter page and creating a couple of Twitter Search feeds which were combined in TapLynx. The Twitter integration in TapLynx is not so solid as it relies on using the mobile version of Twitter after you’ve logged in or a simple post screen which requires your username/password once, not using oAuth.

ReadWriteWeb app - Tweeting	TapLynx - Tweeting
ReadWriteWeb app - Sharing Options	TapLynx - Sharing Options

Search

There is no option to search in the ReadWriteWeb app. This may be linked to the lack of offline browsing. The TapLynx app has searching built-in by default.

Conclusion

The TapLynx framework offers the ability to aggregate the content from an online publication into a mobile application. The flexible design of the framework allowed configuration without coding, with excellent results.

Other publishers can save time and money with the TapLynx framework. If you have any questions about aggregating your content for the iPhone, please contact us.