A brief look at their descriptions tells us:

1. An exciting year - A list of 365 things you need to do before you die.
2. CyPria - A photo printing application.
3. Beautiful widgets - A set of clock, weather, and other widgets.
4. All Butt Lights Out - Your favorite puzzle game, Lights Out, featuring, as suggested in the title, all butts.
5. TitsCrawler - A utility that crawls websites and downloads ‘possibly inappropriate’ images.
6. Voice Music - Not really sure what this does, something about making animal sounds.
7. Pure Calendar widget - A Google Agenda / Tasks widget.
8. Porn Hub - View videos from PornHub.com’s main site.
9. GDE - A replacement desktop home screen.
10. Better Keyboard - A keyboard widget.

Steve Jobs recently said: if you want porn, get an Android phone. Looks like he was right about that.

I’m sure there are many high quality Android apps out there, but taking a quick look through AndroLib.com, that’s not really the impression I’m getting. Widgets and porn apps? Seriously guys?

We’ve been there before, and intermediate layers between the platform and the developer ultimately produces sub-standard apps and hinders the progress of the platform.

There are two arguments here:

1. Intermediate layers produce sub-standard apps.
2. Intermediate layers hinder the progess of the platform.

Most people seem to be rebutting the first argument without addressing the latter. I do think their rebuttal is valid: developing an app in Objective-C doesn’t provide any guarantee of quality, and app quality should be vetted during the approval process regardless of the language used. So the first argument does not hold water, but what about the second?

I think Job’s second argument is valid: intermediate layers hinder the progess of the platform.

Imagine a scenario where Apple releases a bunch of new features in their iPhone SDK. Developers using the native platform have access to the new APIs immediately, and can begin incorporating those features into their applications.

Developers on an intermediary platform have to wait for the intermediary platform vendor to implement the new features and expose it in their APIs. The best case scenario is that the intermediary platform vendor figures out how to implement the new features in a timely fashion, allowing their developers to take advantage of them quickly.

Vendors with slow release cycles (I’m looking at you Adobe) end up creating an additional delay before developers on their platform can take advantage of the latest and greatest features from Apple. This is no good if Apple wants to be on the cutting edge.

And of course, the worst case scenario is that the intermediary platform vendors never get around to implementing the new features, preventing all of the developers on their platform using those features.

I can definitely see how that hinders the progress of Apple’s platform, and why they would want to take steps to prevent that from happening.

Exhibit A: Block Objects

It’s no coincidence that these SDK license changes came with the announcement of iPhone 4.0’s multitasking features.

The multitasking API relies on block objects, a language feature added to Objective-C 2.1, which first shipped with Snow Leopard. Note that the introduction to blocks specifically states (emphasis mine):

Blocks are available in GCC and Clang as shipped with the Mac OS X v10.6 Xcode developer tools. The blocks runtime is open source and can be found in LLVM’s compiler-rt subproject repository. Blocks have also been presented to the C standards working group as N1370: Apple’s Extensions to C (which also includes Garbage Collection). As Objective-C and C++ are both derived from C, blocks are designed to work with all three languages (as well as Objective-C++). (The syntax reflects this goal).

You should read this document to learn what block objects are and how you can use them from C, C++, or Objective-C to make your program more efficient and more maintainable.

Essentially, the new features Apple shipped in iPhone OS 4.0 rely on core improvements to C, C++, and Objective-C, the three languages that Apple now wants you to build your apps in. How shocking!

Forget the crazy “sky is falling” pronouncements of how Apple wants to control how you think. Forget the reactionary claims of Apple slapping developers in the face, or how Steve Jobs has just gone mad.

Perhaps there is a much more straightforward, practical reason for their actions. Perhaps they simply want you to work in those languages so you can take advantage of the improvements they are making to them, and the new features they are shipping?

Imagine another scenario where Apple adds some fancy new iPhone OS feature that relies on a new programming language construct they’ve added to C, C++, and Objective-C. Now we’re no longer talking about intermediary platform vendors simply having to expose some new APIs. They might have to fundamentally alter their programming language in order to support those new features before their developers can take advantage of them. How much longer will that take? In some cases, will it even be possible?

The predominate narrative on the web right now is of Apple attacking Adobe over Flash CS5 in an attempt to protect their hold on their platform, with developers getting caught in the middle. But I think there is a much more practical reason for their actions: they are evolving (and will continue to evolve) the programming languages on their platform to support the new features they want to build, and waiting for intermediary platform vendors to eventually implement those features will hinder the progress of the platform as a whole.

That’s a lot less sensationalistic, don’t you think?

• Fred Wilson’s recent post describing the future of the Twitter platform has left developers wondering if Twitter is going to integrate certain core features (URL shorteners, photo sharing services) into their platform, leaving the third party versions behind.
• Apple’s iAd announcement, which has left people wondering about the future of third party mobile advertising solutions like AdMob and GreyStripe.
• And the big one of course, Apple’s recent iPhone OS 4.0 SDK agreement changes banning the use of third party intermediary compilers, which affects Adobe’s Flash CS5 to iPhone compiler, and third party application platforms like Unity3d , Appcelerator Titanium, Monotouch, and Corona.

In all of these cases, several companies’ products are now threatenend because the owner of the platform decided that they either:

1. No longer wanted to allow the product.
2. Wanted to implement the product themselves.

These examples finely illustrate the point: if you are building your business solely on top of someone else’s platform that they have full control over, you’re taking a massive gamble. This is especially true with Apple, which has a history of being pretty controlling with what is allowed on their platform.

This isn’t to say that building for someone else’s platform can’t be very profitable. Over the past few years we’ve seen some very successful iPhone apps, Twitter apps, and Facebook apps. And that success is what has driven more and more developers to continue building new apps for these platforms.

But you’d better have an exit strategy that involves becoming independent from your parent platform. Be aware that at any time, the rug can be pulled out from under you. We’ve seen it repeatedly in the past, and several times just this past week. Have a contingency plan in place, other platforms to target, other ways to distribute your product. Don’t want until Apple/Twitter/Facebook decides that they want to take over your core business: by then it will be too late.

Should you be pissed that Apple has added restrictions on their platform that can potentially put your company out of business (or at least dramatically decrease its value)? Sure.

Should you be annoyed that your URL shortener or photo upload service might become irrelevant once Twitter integrates those core features? Sure.

Should you be surprised at any of this? Only if you weren’t paying attention and weren’t aware of the risks.

Update:
Another example just announced: Twitter acquires the Tweetie iPhone client, effectively turning it into the official Twitter iPhone app. Good for them, too bad for the other iPhone Twitter clients that weren’t chosen. The Twitter <-> developer ecosystem is shifting.

This obviously presents a big opportunity, and many companies have jumped to capitalize on it. At this point, there are dozens, if not hundreds of companies out there building location based apps. The landscape is quite fractured right now, it seems like every day I hear about a new company building sort of location app.

Whether it’s:

• Yelp, Citysearch, or buzzd doing local reviews.
• Geodelic, or Whrrl doing location based discovery.
• Loopt or BlockChalk doing geo-local based tagging.
• Foursquare, Gowalla, or BrightKite doing check-ins.

(Note: apologies if I got any of these general classifications wrong – most of them have overlapping features and fit into multiple categories)

Users have way too many apps to choose from, and not enough differentiating features between them. And users aren’t likely to open more than one or two apps when they walk into a new location, so there isn’t enough room in the pool for all of them. In my opinion, at this point, if location discovery/presence is the primary feature of your app, you’re going to get run over. Either by the dozens of other competitors doing essentially the same thing, or by Google/Facebook/Twitter/ when they make their location based play.

Location in and of itself is not particularly compelling to users, it’s what you do with location that makes your product interesting. And there is still plenty of room for innovation in that department. The winners in this space will be the ones that can leverage location to solve existing problems in new and interesting ways. Some of my favorite location based apps out there right now are ones that have done exactly that.

For example:

• SCVNGR lets you build and run location based scavenger hunts with the help of your phone.
• CitySourced lets you report local civic issues (potholes, graffiti, etc) from your phone.
• Waze reports real time crowdsourced traffic data based on your in-phone GPS.

These companies are really interesting to me because they’re not just thinking about “where am I and what is near me?”, but how to use that information to solve other problems. Location based gaming is another area with huge potential: MyTown has very rapidly built a large audience by focusing on the gaming aspect with their Monopoly-like location based game. Location is going to be the next big opportunity for those who can capitalize on it well.

But in order to do so, companies are going to have to be creative and develop applications that leverage location as a feature, not as their core product.

1. A recipe manager

   I do a lot of cooking, and frequently like to experiment with new recipes. Currently I need to either print out the recipes (which makes organizing and searching through them later a pain in the ass), or bring my laptop over to the kitchen (which doesn’t work so well since I don’t have much room in there). I would absolutely love an app that lets me organize my recipes, read through them while I am cooking, and look up useful instructional videos.

2. A UI/UX mockup app

   Think Basalmiq Mockups meets pen and paper. I currently do my mockups on pen and paper because it’s so easy, but I also want to be able to save, sort, and easily share my mockups with others. I also want to be able to draw something, save it as a widget, and re-use it or make modifications to it later. I’ve tried out Basalmiq a few times and while I think it’s really neat, getting your widgets set up, positioned, and configured takes way more time than I’m willing to spend. But an app that combines freehand drawing with prebuilt widgets, saving, and sharing? Killer.

3. A universal remote replacement

   This probably needs a hardware attachment to deal with the IR transmitter. So: someone make an IR transmitter for the iPad, then write a universal remote app for it. And I don’t want to see standard looking buttons ported from a regular remote, take advantage of the touchscreen interface and give me a new, better way to control my media center/TV. Perhaps give me a TV guide overlay that I can use instead of channel surfing.

4. An augmented reality treasure/scavenger hunt game

   Show me a nice big, interactive treasure map that starts out empty, and then let me fill it out as I travel to different locations and explore my city. Use the display to show me the ‘treasure’ at the destination spots, include some interesting puzzles, and let me collect cool badges. Think SCVNGR meets Gowalla.

5. Multiplayer Pictionary

   Think iSketch on a big touchscreen. I know there are a few iPhone versions of the game out there, but a bigger touchscreen makes this much more fun: you have much more room to display scores, the timer, the word guesses, the color pallette/brushes, and your opponents. Add a persistent multiplayer lobby and game mechanics that follow iSketch, and I’ll definitely be addicted.

6. Bonus: An iPad controlled helicopter

   Ok, so this one’s a little silly. But take this, and give me a nice iPad interface: front mounted camera display, a radar/map overlay, and some cool speed/altitude gauges. Bonus points for turning in into a real life dogfighting game!

Note that none of these apps are based on traditional computing use cases. The people that are comparing the iPad to their existing computers are missing the point entirely. It’s not meant to replace your computer. Frankly, if I’m writing, coding, or gaming, I’m quite happy with my keyboard, mouse, and giant monitors thank you very much.

No, the iPad isn’t going to revolutionize computing. It’s going to revolutionize the dozens of other shitty interfaces we deal with on a daily basis.

These rumors have now turned into a class action lawsuit, filed in Los Angeles federal court, on behalf of a veterinary hospital. The hospital contacted Yelp asking them to remove a negative review, and claims that Yelp representatives demanded a fee of $300 per month to hide or delete the review. Judging by the number of previous reports of this type of behavior, this lawsuit could snowball into a massive problem for Yelp.

When these rumors first surfaced, I have to admit, I was rather surprised. Not at the allegations themselves, but the fact that Yelp selected a business model that put itself in this position in the first place.

Any user generated review site has an inherent credibility problem: any public user can sign up and easily post a fake review. I’ve seen this done repeatedly, and I’ve also been asked to do it occasionally (I didn’t bother). If your site is focused around user generated reviews of businesses, you need to be doing your best to ensure the credibility of those reviews. If users don’t trust your reviews, they aren’t going to bother showing up at your site anymore.

This is why it makes absolutely no sense to me that Yelp selected a business model that inherently compromises the integrity of their site. It seems like they could have found a dozen other ways to make money. Charging business owners $300 per month for featured listings that make the bad reviews go away wink wink nudge nudge seems like the wrong way to go. They are already fighting an uphill battle to gain credibility in the eyes of users, why make it even more difficult?

At this point, it doesn’t matter so much whether the allegations are true or not. This type of negative PR is anathema to a review site, and could easily drive their userbase to other competitors. Especially now that location based services have taken off and there are dozens of other companies doing very similar things.

Maybe they should have taken the $500 million from Google while they still had the chance…

Apparently some people think I have thoughts worth sharing. We’ll see if they’re right (probably not).