iPhone app contest

The Hoggard Team, a local family of realtors, has created an iPhone app contest. Contestants are to build an entertaining app which also advertises the Hoggard's business. $500 will be awarded to the winning app, and the entry deadline is April 30, 2010. The contest was developed primarily for our Mobile Computing students, but I've been told anyone may participate. Read more about the contest here.

Transitioning from Android to iPhone

This week I finished teaching Android programming in my Mobile Computing course. I've created a number of useful tutorials and teaching aids, and I'm weighing my options of putting them out on my blog or website or publishing them in a book form on lulu.com. The tutorials cover graphics and sound, data persistence, custom event notification, using the Google Map API, and a lot more.

After spring break, Gabriel Foust will take over the Mobile Computing course and teach iPhone programming. I'm very curious to see how long it will take the class to climb the steep learning curve and be competent enough to write a useful app. With Android it took a little over a week.

I read just read this morning that Microsoft is turning away from their earlier Windows Mobile OS and focusing on a new OS called Windows Phone 7 Series. (Hello, Marketing department, are you sure you want to compete with Android and iPhone using the name WP7S?) The OS features a sleek new interface, and apparently XNA and Silverlight will be the main method of writing native apps. It's good to know that my efforts learning XNA last fall will pay dividends on this new platform. Maybe next time we offer Mobile Computing, we'll be using WP7S.


Update:

Joel Coehoorn commented on my Facebook note that you can develop applications on the iPhone using Mono, an open-source project that runs .NET applications (C#, VB.NET, etc.) on a number of operating systems. I've done a little investigation into this, and it appears that Mono support for the iPhone is somewhat limited. The UNITY platform allows development with C# and JavaScript, but at a cost. MonoTouch is another commercial option. Otherwise you're stuck with development on a Mac using Objective-C.

How do my students really feel about me?

Sometimes students tell you right to your face what they think about you or your class. Sometimes they let you know anonymously through teacher evaluations. And sometimes they think of more creative means.



This was from an assignment in my Mobile Computing class where I had my students develop a tic-tac-toe game for Android. My wife said she was going to have nightmares tonight after seeing this.

Mobile app developers striking it rich?

As some of you know, I'm team-teaching a mobile application development course this semester. We're focusing on the Android platform the first half of the semester and the iPhone platform in the second half.

With all the hype surrounding the iPhone and Android platforms and their app stores, a question that some might ask is, "Can I get rich developing mobile applications?"

If you're in it just for the money, you're chasing after disappointment. Just ask the writer of Ecclesiastes how much joy and satisfaction there is in great riches. However, I do think it's prudent to investigate if training to be a mobile application developer is worth the investment in time and money.

Apple recently reported that 3 billion apps had been downloaded from its App Store in less than 18 months, and according to Juniper, revenue for mobile applications will hit $24 billion by 2014. That smells like opportunity. However, Michael Mace (former Chief Competitive Officer and VP of Product Planning at Palm) believes mobile application developing is a dead end, primarily because there are so many platforms on which to develop and because web-based apps have a better future:

"I think Web applications are going to destroy most native app development for mobiles. Not because the Web is a better technology for mobile, but because it has a better business model."

I personally believe both native and web-based apps have their place, and there's no reason to give up on native mobile applications just yet.

So returning to the "rich" question, I've found a number of articles that address this topic. I just emailed these articles to my students, and I thought I'd share them here:

• Want to quit and also get rich? Write iPhone Application to enter the gold rush
  

  "iShoot sold nearly 17,000 copies, which meant a $35,000 day’s take for Mr. Nicholas... 'That’s when I called my boss and said, "We need to talk"... and I quit my job.'"



• 15 iPhone Apps Created by College Students
  

  "Carnegie Melon sophomore Jeffery Grossman developed Movies.app to connect iPhone users to local theater information. Shortly after his application was downloaded over 250,000 times, he sold the rights to Flixter for a reportedly generous undisclosed amount."



• Just How Much Money Can Free iPhone Apps Make? Quite A Bit
  

  "The AdWhirl report... says that applications that crack the top 100 in the Free Apps list make $400-$5000 a day." (in advertising revenue)

However, I wouldn't suggest quiting your job or dropping out of college to program iPhones just just yet:

• Striking It Rich: Is There An App For That?
  

  "Not only have most sellers failed to turn a profit... even developers with high-ranking games and applications have made far less than commonly thought. Many come nowhere near recouping their investment at all."



• One billion iPhone apps downloaded. But how many are worth it?
  

  "'You'll have better luck in Vegas,' says Howard Cohen, an independent software engineer and consultant who has one app out and another in the works. 'Most people do not make much money, or even [get] their costs back, when selling their apps for the iPhone.'"

Mobile Computing offered in Spring 2010

This spring I will be co-teaching with Gabriel Foust a new course called Mobile Computing (COMP 475) for 3 credit hours. The course will cover programming the iPhone and Google Android operating systems and development of mobile web applications. The course will meet from 3 to 4:15 pm on Mon and Wed. The prerequisite for this course is Data Structures (COMP 245).

Foust and I are excited to be offering this course for the first time. I hope it will become a course we offer on a regular basis in the future.