Apps providing spin-off opportunities for popular magazine brands | Technology | guardian.co.uk

A great article on how some publishers are looking to bespoke apps and experiences to monetise mobile rather than replicating the magazine format on tablets and mobile.

… a new app released by Dennis Publishing’s male health mag aims to change that, although it’s no digital replica. Men’s Fitness Cover Model Body Plan is a spin-off: a £1.49 paid app offering workout plans promising “you’re just four weeks away from a physique worthy of the cover”.

While I mull the prospect of a “V-shaped torso” by Springtime, the app’s release also made me think about the market for these kinds of spin-off apps for magazine publishers, as they slice and dice their archives of articles and photography in new ways for smartphones and tablets.

Much of the focus on magazines and apps has been on the replica editions, whether offered through aggregators like Zinio, or as standalone apps in the app store newsstands of Apple and Google.

via Apps providing spin-off opportunities for popular magazine brands | Technology | guardian.co.uk.

New services bypass Apple DRM to allow pirated iOS app installs without jailbreaking on iPhone, iPad – The Next Web

“If you’re looking to steal apps from developers — lets not kid ourselves about what’s happening here — it is now easier than ever to do so.”

Late last year, the closure of the uber-popular Installous marked the end of a promiscuous era in iOS app piracy.

Now, several new services are on the rise that are filling the gap and offering easy installation of pirated apps, even on devices that have not been jailbroken.Updated with statement from Zeusmos’ developer below.The two that have risen to the forefront are Zeusmos and Kuaiyong. While the former has been around for a few months, it has gained significant steam since the exit of Installous. The latter has appeared seemingly from nowhere over the past couple of weeks.Both of these services are dangerous for app developers because they offer simple, one-tap installs of pirated apps and do not require that devices have been jailbroken in order to do so. This is an enormous problem, as it opens up the arena for their use from the relatively small fraction of users with jailbroken devices — as was the case with Installous — to any unscrupulous users of iPhones and iPads.

If you’re looking to steal apps from developers — lets not kid ourselves about what’s happening here — it is now easier than ever to do so.

via New services bypass Apple DRM to allow pirated iOS app installs without jailbreaking on iPhone, iPad – The Next Web.

Privacy Icon in Facebook Apps as Facebook Itself Opts Out | Digital – Advertising Age

Facebook is not part of the ad industry’s self-regulatory program that notifies consumers about online data collection and ad targeting, but people can find the ubiquitous AdChoices icon on Facebook anyway: in third-party apps.

Facebook was among the top sites that displayed the small blue triangle-shape icon during the past week. But the symbol didn’t show up in display ads sold by Facebook or in the behaviorally-targeted ads served its Facebook Exchange — rather, the symbol appeared in ads served in Facebook apps.

via Privacy Icon in Facebook Apps as Facebook Itself Opts Out | Digital – Advertising Age.

iTunes store and gamed reviews

There has been a lot said in the press recently about bad reviews – the NYT recently brought to the attention of Google that one company decormyeyes was actively encouraging bad reviews to gain search engine rankings.

Other sites have been accused of allowing poor reviews which may have a negative effect on their businesses and in fact tripadvisor is being sued over it.

Meanwhile over on the iTunes store they’ve had problems in the past and removed apps from a developer found to be abusing the ratings and review system. Still though it persists.

Does anyone else think it’s suspicious that Union17 manages to review one app ***** (5 star) and NOW TOTALLY RELIABLE! PERFECT!! and writing lots of overly positive (and also in caps with exclamation points) yet at the same time manages to review seven other similar apps all * (1 star) managing to slate them, promote the first app and it’s supposed features int he review and all within a couple of days…
Then there’s Type25 who clearly does work for the developer as any of their apps reviewed are great and any others are poor.

I reckon another developer seems to be trying to game the iTunes store review system which really means you can’t trust the reviews on there until they find a way of preventing developers reviewing on the site.

Why Grindr has become boring…

Grindr became successful in London and the UK mainly because of some fantastic word of mouth advertising from Stephen Fry. Also because people ‘advertised’ their app on other networks and websites.

Now however Grindr is successful and they forbid ‘advertising’ any other apps or services within your profile. Their now frankly ludicrously long list of things they prohibit at http://grindr.com/guidelines/ is getting out of control. It might simply be easier to publish a list of things you are allowed to do. I think it will be a much shorter list.

“No advertising of services, goods, events, websites or apps.” which means that you can no longer say ping me in your Grindr profile for fear of being wiped for ‘advertising’ an instant messaging app on iPhone called… Ping!

“A link to your Facebook profile is allowed in the Facebook field. MySpace, Twitter and YouTube links are allowed in the About field; these links cannot contain advertising or pornography or they will be removed. No other web link of any kind will be allowed in any of the profile fields.”

Grindr you are successful because people want to use your service – they tend to use other services too – don’t be naive and think that preventing people mentioning other URLs or services means they won’t use them – it just means you are likely to get excluded from the list that people advertise on other site. I used to link to my blog as the about field is quite limited but clearly you frown upon that. The web is all about links and sharing please don’t stifle that. Plus it would be nice to know if you plan to ‘support’ other social networks soon or not. What’s wrong with Orkut or last.fm?

So Grindr thanks – it’s was fun while it lasted, let me know when you are planning to be a little more open…

iPhone 3G jailbroken (beta)

The iPhone Dev Team released its iPhone 3G unlocking utility, yellowsn0w, on the first of the year although it’s still a beta.

If you’d like to crack your iPhone with the beta remember version 0.9.4 beta works only with iPhone baseband 02.28.00, that’s the version installed by iPhone 2.2 Software Update, Apple’s most recent firmware update. So before you start use yellowsn0w, make sure to use iTunes to upgrade your iPhone to 2.2.

If you’ve used QuickPwn to perform a basic jailbreak before and you use Installer to load apps then you should be able to use this beta with no problems – otherwise I’d advise waiting until the non beta version is ready as I’m sure there will be better support available then when they are not concentrating on the new version although there is some basic help available now

Allegedly you won’t notice anything about it other than that your third-party SIM now works.

I’ve not tried it yet as I’m not going anywhere that needs a different SIM – always my big gripe when I am in Australia with the iPhone. I’m likely to wait to the 1.0 release.