St. Petersburg Web Design Blog

Are you considering developing an application for the I Phone or Google’s “G-Phone” (Android). There is an obvious risk you may want to consider. They just may reject your software sraight away, or may approve it at first, let people install it on their phones and tyhen yank it off them and reject your program months or years later.

Sound far-fetched? It does, I know. But I have first hand knowledge that Apple especially, are quite fickle. They often deny apps and sometimes they approve apps, let you promote and distribute it ad then reject it later. this is especially true if you are improving or fixing something they have screwed up.

They seem quite republican in that they never admit they screw up and are very hostile towards anyone who implies their devices aren’t perfect in some way. There’s quite a lot of dysfunctional emotion in the process.

Here’s the latest story of someone getting ganked because their product “looks an awful lot like Apple’s Cover Flow feature”:
Link, Link 2

It looks like the backlash is building and developers are banning together and are rebelling:
iPhone: Big trouble in the App Store

Apple seems to be the worst offender. Any application that makes users work flow go faster, connect to I tunes less limit the personal info that Apple gets etc is denied. They are quite often dis-honest about the reasons why as well.

Free software can be a great thing, don’t get me wrong, you can make money by giving things away free. But it seems the trouble might not be worth it to most.

There’s HD Radio out there folks. It doesn’t have anything to do with the internet but it may have opened up the minds of some uber-conservative radio station corporations CEO’s. Now that the HD foray into technology paid off for them in a good way it seems that they are more interested into taking the jump into other technological adventures. I guess I can’t blame them, as many of “Radio’s”
past IT projects have failed.

They “don’t know nothing about that internet and computers stuff” and since the whole file sharing thing don’t have the best opinion of it. But they’ve seen the light and are coming around. Here’s some of the latest internet projects from the Radio Industry:

• Clear Channel, which own hundreds of radio stations each with their own website (which are made to look like they are independent when they are not), has recently moved to a centralized web application to create, edit, manage all the web sites for all the radio stations.
• No company increased its commitment to the digital space in 2008 more than CBS Radio, which announced a content and advertising partnership with AOL Music in March. Since then, 150 CBS Radio stations and 200 AOL Music Internet stations have become powered by a CBS Radio player. The company also launched Play.it, which enables listeners to create their own stations. They’re even joining forces with Yahoo. And not just joining, but they’ve made some products that Yahoo will use over they’re own. More on that soon

But why are they fighting so hard and putting so much resources into it?
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Here’s a little video of an interview with someone from IBM that is supposed to be about how they manage their content. If you’ll watch the video you’ll notice he doesn’t speak on that directly he answers the question from a SEO point of view.

Please note that unless you company is IBM, Microsoft, or some other large multi-national mega-corporation this isn’t going to work for you. How can I tell? Well by the things Mr. Hunt doesn’t say and by the state of the mess that is large mega-sites like ibm.com and microsoft.com.

There is gold in his words, but when it comes to actually managing the content in a search engine and human friendly manner, Mr Hunt (and his clients websites) totally drop the ball.

In the war against free speech on the internet the Telcos are quietly winning. Here’s the latest blows:

• In December, Rogers Communications ( a Telecommunications and Internet Service provider), essentially hacked Google, adding a message to Google’s home page that appeared to it’s customers that where getting close to the ISP’s bandwidth limit.
• Comcast has admitted to blocking file-sharing traffic. link
• Comcast is discovered to blocking non file-sharing software as well. link
•      – BTW, the methods they use are illegal (packet forging and/or spoofing) are not just illegal but felonies (each act) under federal law.
•      – Ironicly, comcast reported this story on their own site, I quess they are proud of their censorship efforts
• Time Warner/AOL blocked e-mails from and to subscribers that were critical of thier “pay-to-send” (a method that ensure that spam will reach AOL users for a fee) email plan. link
• Verizon prevented the abortion rights group Naral Pro-Choice America from getting a “short code” that would allow the group to send text messages to supporters. They claim they have a right to block anything they’d like.link
• Comcast blocks other companies VOIP traffic a few days before they begin offering their own VOIP services for twice as much as others. link
• Telus (an ISP in Canada) blocked 766 websites in an effort to block one Pro-Union web site during a lock-out by the company. link. NOTE: This is a very extremely sloppy and lazy way to block one site.
• AT&T cut off the webcast of a Pearl Jam concert just when lead singer Eddie Veder was critical of U.S. President George Bush. link

The Telco’s argument in justification of all this is twofold as is their battle plan:

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