Kind of makes me wonder why sunglasses manufacturers haven’t gone beyond crappy gimmicks like headphones, like the Oakley THUMP.

Hell yeah.

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Just stumbled across this blog post and it brought a smile to my face! Layar is allowing developers onto their Android mobile augmented reality platform. I signed up for a developer key right away — the developer instructions are great, looks like everyone will need to get the Android SDK as well.

I really hope they find a way to port Layar to other platforms, even so this has made my mind up of what next phone I’m buying!

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Samsung has released information for developers looking to create Widgets for their TouchWiz User Interface. It’s a cross-platform, web standards based SDK that uses HTML, CSS and Javascript to create widgets for Samsung phones.

This is a big step for TouchWiz as a platform which is featured on many of Samsung’s high end devices. I read through the SDK documentation last night and noticed a few interesting tidbits -

• Each phone uses the native OS browser to render the widgets. Yes, this means dealing with multiple browsers – the main three being NetAccess, WebKit and unfortunately, Mobile IE.
• Eclipse plugins are included with the SDK, providing a nice GUI for specializing widgets for individual devices.
• Simplified testing is included by allowing develoeprs to test remotely on a selection of Samsung handsets.

Overall a very promising move from Samsung – I’ll be posting up some widget tutorials over the next couple of days after playing with the SDK a little further.

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Check it out on the App Store!

In addition to the already excellent Yellow Mobile experience, iPhone users can now view their recent searches and save their favorite businesses to their phone. There are also lots of nice transitions and tweaks made especially for the iPhone.

Anyway… download the app and check it out!

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1. Thoughts on the App Store

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See, the problem with the iPhone app store at the moment isn’t with the software, or the hardware. It is the closed nature of the platform and marketplace.

From the outset Apple has decided to place restrictions on the iPhone as a platform. Initially, by calling web applications viewed in the browser what they are: applications. Sounds great, but the browser had no API hooks into the cool features of the phone, like the accelerometer, camera, gps and contacts database, essentially making 3rd party apps second-class citizens when compared to Apple’s native apps.

The initial disappointment was as huge as you would expect. At the time,  every platform on the market had native application development and at the very least Java or BREW support. Interesting to note is the reaction of the developer community – they revealed just how essential a market for applications on the iPhone was, by creating their own native application browser for Jailbroken phones. The first apps were released using Installer.app (the original homebrew app browser) before any official app store was announced.

Apple needed to have their own marketplace for the iPhone. The end product? The App Store.

After a year of waiting, the App Store is released with much fanfare. It is fast, reasonably easy to get your apps published and the demand for new apps was enormous. The rules for getting on the store weren’t that bad either – nothing offensive, just don’t duplicate anything that’s already on the phone, don’t use any unpublished APIs. Pretty simple right? Well, no.. not really.

As the last week has shown, the reality of getting your apps published on the App Store isn’t so simple. The reasons for applications being rejected from the app store could be anything – from an offensive word or picture to the reviewer just not liking your app. Rulings aren’t particularly consistent either, with Apple accepting Google’s search application which utilized an unpublished API hook in their voice search.

Closed platforms hurt developers. Especially when you can’t be sure if your hard work is going to be accepted into the marketplace. It makes me wonder if spending the time developing for the iPhone is really the right thing to do when there are other platforms out there that are showing massive growth and don’t restrict what you can do as a developer.

For now though, the App Store is the biggest, and the best. For how long? It’s hard to say. Android is the underdog right now, however with it’s advantages and potential for larger market penetration it will start make a dent on Apple’s dominance. Nokia and RIM’s marketplaces are also live, and LG and Microsoft have released details of their upcoming stores.

With all this competition on the horizon, a comparison to Myspace comes to mind. Complete monopoly of the market, seemingly unstoppable growth and a huge following.. eventually beaten by a better, more open product. Time will tell if the App Store will go this way – regardless, it’s a good time to be a mobile developer.

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1. Yellow Pages for iPhone released!

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My name is Jake. I’m a mobile user interface designer and programmer currently living in Melbourne, Australia.

Right now, I work for an awesome company creating mobile versions of the Yellow Pages, White Pages and Whereis web sites.

When I’m not working, you’ll find me tinkering with my Microkorg, reading and writing about the semantic web and trying (unsuccessfully) to not stay out too late.

I hope you find something interesting on the site, and if you do – please leave a comment!

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