TapLynx

This has been a fun week in the TapLynx community. I love to see what people are coming out with, and recently two apps have been released that are really slick and show off some of the great things you can do with the TapLynx framework.

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

While the best way to experience TapLynx is to download the SDK and play around with it yourself, Philip Roy, over at NZiPhone.com has chronicled his experiences with TapLynx — having written two detailed and helpful writeups.  The first, The TapLynx Experience — Part 1 — Getting Set Up, is available here.  The second, The TapLynx Experience — Part 2 — Adding Feeds and Tabs, can be accessed here.

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.

I’m excited to report that we’ve had our first TapLynx plug-in created — by a TapLynx user.  According to Tyree Apps, the plug-in, called Citizen Reporter, is “a little view controller that lets a TapLynx app offer the user a quick way to snap a photo and then email it to someone without ever leaving the TapLynx-based application.”

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!

I’ve come across a few articles over the past couple of days that I think will be of interest to anyone in iPhone app “industry.”

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!

We’re very excited to see the Stratfor app on the What’s Hot list in the iTunes app store. Right now it is the #12 on top free news apps, and sure to go higher.

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

This morning marked the launch of an app we’re very proud of which was created with TapLynx for global intelligence analyst giant, Stratfor.  Part of our excitement is that such an important company used TapLynx; another part of our excitement as it marks the first TapLynx-created app that allows for in-app purchasing and one of the first-ever content apps available on the iTunes app store that allows for this. (You can check out the Stratfor iPhone app here.

Why is this important you ask? In-app purchasing allows for an entirely new monetization channel (as opposed to only serving up ads). In-app purchasing essentially allows for a premium subscription model. People can download the Stratfor app for 30 days from the iTunes store. Thereafter, they can upgrade to Stratfor’s full-service app that is $9.99/mo entirely from within the app. This option has only recently been allowed by Apple and it marks the first app we’ve built that includes this new monetization option.

I should also let you know that we’re going to produce a webinar with our friends over at Stratfor that should be very instructive for both content publishers and iPhone app developers. We hope to produce this webinar in fairly short order and we’ll let you know here on this blog when you can download the webinar.

As you probably already know, rumors around Apple introducing a tablet have been ramping up over the holidays. This article in particular gives us some confidence in those rumors: http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-to-demo-tablet-in-january-asks-developers-to-get-apps-ready-2009-12

If this is true, the device will run the iPhone OS and therefore can run your TapLynx apps. It’s likely we’ll have to make a few changes to the framework based on the dimensions of it, but Apple is always good about helping developers prepare for new devices.

Think about it: with TapLynx you create rich content based apps. News feeds, tweets, picture galleries, video, all of these are perfect forms of media for a larger device. We’re really looking forward to hearing more about the Apple tablet this coming new year.

See you in 2010!

TapLynx makes it incredibly easy for you to build content-rich iPhone apps without having to know Cocoa, and now our friends at O’Rielly are making it even easier for you by offering a free online course: “Learn How to Build iPhone Apps with HTML, CSS, and Javascript.”

This course, which consists of five online sessions of 90-120 minutes between January 5 and February 2, will help teach you how to:

• Build working web apps from the iPhone, using HTML and CSS web standards
• Learn what a mobile web app is and how it differs from a native iPhone app
• Create gestures and animation using JavaScrip and the iUI and jQTouch libraries
• Integrate your web app with several iPhone features
• Build simple native iPhone apps using the TapLynx library — without programming!
• Learn how to build your newfound iPhone web app development skill

What’s sure to be of most interest to TapLynx users, the 4th session — which is at 11am PT on February 2, 2010 — is all about TapLynx! Instructor Elisabeth Robson will teach you how to create both a video-playing app and an RSS-based app using components from the TapLynx library.

Best thing? All this goodness is totally free.  Sign up here today!