iGovernment

Soon after the iGovernment app went live, it placed in the top 50 of paid news apps. As of writing it is at number 33 with 10 5-star ratings. The app provides over 50 feeds of information pertaining to the three branches of the Federal Government.

Download the app: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/igovernment-news-politics/id355225685?mt=8

Website (right now it will redirect to iTunes Preview): http://igovernmentapp.com

Follow on Twitter: http://twitter.com/igovernmentapp

NZiPhone

We blogged earlier about Philip Roy from NZiPhone.com and his experiences with building an app using TapLynx. It’s a great resource for current users and interested parties, and the entire series can be found on the NZiPhone website: http://www.nziphone.com/ The app provides information for the New Zealand Macintosh community.

Download the app: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/nziphone-com-nzmac-com-news/id354923663?mt=8

Website: http://www.nziphone.com/news/site/introducing-the-nziphonecom-nzmaccom-iphone-app.html

Follow on Twitter: http://twitter.com/nziphone

Thanks, Philip, for documenting your experiences using TapLynx!

If you’re considering using TapLynx to build a iPhone app, I’d suggest you’d read what Phillip has written.  It is informative and instructive.

All of these groups and individuals have shown their prowess in iPhone app development, but not only that they are integral parts of the TapLynx community and good friends of ours. If you need any help designing or developing your iPhone app, feel free to contact any of them.

As Brent Simmons, creator of TapLynx, says on his blog, “one of my favorite parts of TapLynx is that it’s extendable: you can create new views with new features. (Note to programmers: TapLynx is a static library. You still use Xcode to build apps, though TapLynx makes it so you write code only if you want to.)

For those more technically inclined, Tyree Apps has a great, and very detailed explanation of the first TapLynx plug-in in their blog post in their blog post here. You can also see what the plug-in looks like.

Finally, I would be remiss if I didn’t post the kind words they had to say about TapLynx itself: If you ever want to create an RSS based application you should definitely check out the TapLynx framework. The framework is designed to be used by people with limited coding experience and is controlled by making configuration changes to a .plist file. If you have a list of RSS feeds and a couple of images, you can have an app compiled and ready to submit to the App store in under an hour. Really.

Thanks, guys, and great work!

We’re brainstorming ways to take advantage of the larger display, to improve user experience on what is sure to be a revolutionary addition to media consumption. Have a blog? Work for a media company? You need an app on the iPad ASAP. TapLynx is the way to do it!

Download the TapLynx SDK: http://taplynx.com/download/

The Apple iPad site: http://www.apple.com/ipad/

Thorough coverage today from Engadget: http://i.engadget.com/2010/01/27/live-from-the-apple-tablet-latest-creation-event/

Apple’s tablet: It’s all about developers: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10440254-16.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20

Investors didn’t like the iPad… until they heard that amazing price tag! http://www.techcrunch.com/2010/01/27/apples-ipad-announcement-sends-stock-down-and-then-the-price-was-unveiled/

Read the blog post here: http://www.tinyshinyapps.co.uk/2010/01/26/taplynx-and-appmakr-comparison/

And head over to Tiny Shiny Apps to see the services they offer, which includes apps made from TapLynx: http://www.tinyshinyapps.co.uk/

First, a report from Gartner predicting that consumers will spend over $6 billion (!) in mobile applications this year.  Some other interesting predictions:

* more than 4.5 billion apps will be downloaded this year
* 8/10 of these apps will be free
* Gartner sees worldwide downloads in mobile app stores to surpass 21 billion by 2013

Second, an article that cites a separate (?) Gartner report that says that 99.4% of mobile applications downloaded in 2009 were through Apple. Also:

* 2.5 billion iPhone apps were downloaded in 2009
* Apple could hold onto as much as 2/3 of the market this year

Finally, a story in Editor & Publisher: “Money to Be Made iPhone Apps? UK’s Guardian Says Yes.”  This article cites the fact that UK paper, The Guardian, will gross more than $3 million this year out of their premium content news app. (They launched it a little over a month ago and it’s already been downloaded by 70,000 people.) Because of this, the paper said, “the impressive number of downloads proves to the industry that users are willing to pay for news applications.

Hope you found some of these stories worth the read!

Changes in 1.2:

Performance — it’s faster and uses less memory. This is probably the last release for a while to focus heavily on performance. It’s important to get that foundation done: now we can build on it. One of the performance changes makes things faster for feeds that don’t support conditional GET. (But please please please use conditional GET.)

You can now use Flurry analytics. Documentation is here.

You can use Medialets analytics. Documentation is here.

You can set up system-authenticated feeds (but not per-used authenticated feeds, which I know some people still want). Documentation is here.

You no longer need to include Feeds.sqlite3 in your apps. TapLynx creates it automatically. (No harm if you forget and do include it: it’ll just be ignored.)

Fixed a bug where an updated feed would sometimes not show the updates until the next launch.

Fixed a couple very small memory leaks.

Fixed a crashing bug with BCResourceWebViewController (or other custom view controller) when a navbar background image was specified.

The thumbnail finder handles the weird case where a return or linefeed appears after an opening <img tag (instead of the space character you’d normally expect).

The Stratfor app represents great strides in the TapLynx framework: it features authentication and in-app purchasing.

You can ready about it in our gallery: http://taplynx.com/studies/gallery.php

Go here to download it (link goes to iTunes store): http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/stratfor/id337309541?mt=8

Stratfor app homepage: http://www.stratfor.com/media_room/pr/iphone

eduTecher

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/edutecher/id348400423?mt=8

eduTecher puts the best web tools and reviews of educational websites right in the palm of your hand. Use this app to access great content for all subject areas, watch eduTecherTV webisodes, share links with colleagues or students via Email and Twitter, and more.

VGPodcasts

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/vgpodcasts/id346488296?mt=8

Love your video games? Listen to some great podcasts created by gamers as crazy about games as you are! With the VGPodcasts App you can enjoy your favorite VGPodcasts.com podcasts everywhere and anywhere you are by WiFi or 3G streaming.

Professional Feedback

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/professional-feedback-the-magic/id348616372?mt=8

This application is a combination of a book, selection of video courses, research news and updated user stories of successful and unsuccessful feedback situations.

Most of the text in this application is from the successful award nominated book “Professional Feedback – The Magic of Conscious Encounters – The art of giving, receiving and asking for feedback”. Added to this are a series of short video courses in the Feedback area.

This application is for employees, leaders and for individuals who want to master and develop their communication skill and want to be successful. There is also an extra section for leaders that describes feedback at work and how to use it as a manger and how to implement a supporting feedback culture within the organization.