http://www.unwiredview.com/2009/09/25/the-vodafone-app-star-competition-e100000-for-the-best-360-widgets/

The Vodafone App Star competition – €100,000 for the best 360 widgets

Yesterday, Vodafone unveiled its brand new 360 services, as well as two LiMo-based Samsung phones (H1 and M1) that will be launched with the 360 platform.

The giant mobile carrier has also announced the App Star competition, which has a combined prize fund of €1,000,000.

Vodafone is searching for “the most innovative and useful mobile widgets” compatible with the new 360 platform and it’s ready to offer up to €100,000 to two developers of the best widgets.

The App Star competition will have two phases: the first one is open now, while the second one will debut in 2010. To enter the competition, visit this website.

The submitted apps must be based on the JIL (Joint Innovation Lab) Software Developer Kit – you can get it from here.

Analysis:

Its good to see some movement in the telecom industry to attempt a viable competition to the web players, but is it too little too late?

Apple Makes It Easier for Free iPhone Apps to Make Money

Apple said Thursday that it will let iPhone application developers offer their users the option to buy additional content or features within a free app on its App Store.

AFP/Getty Images

App developers said they received an email notice from Apple informing them that the in-app purchase feature was now available for free apps and that it would “simplify your development by creating a single version of your app that uses in App Purchase to unlock additional functionality, eliminating the need to create Lite versions of your app.” A spokeswoman for Apple confirmed the news.

The in-app purchase feature, which was first introduced in March, allows developers to offer fresh content for purchase within an app such as new levels in a game, additional books in an e-book app, or expanded capability in productivity apps. The caveat, however, was that the feature was only available for paid apps, which meant that developers had to charge at least 99 cents.

Developers say that the latest announcement helps in two ways. First, it makes it much easier for them to make a business out of free apps. Until now, developers sold ads within their free apps or tried to convert users to a paid version with more content.

“The reality is that the vast majority of apps have been free. If you were going to monetize your app, you were always going up against free apps,” said Jamie Berger, senior vice president of an IGN Entertainment division that provides digital distribution services to developers.

The new capability could also help clean up the App Store because it would make it less necessary to offer both a free “lite” version and a paid version of the same app, a strategy that many developers used to try to make money.

“This is really big news because we’ve been having conversations with Apple as have other publishers,” said Clive Downie, vice president of marketing at Ngmoco, which publishes iPhone games. “This enables increased choice for customers.”

http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2009/10/15/apple-makes-it-easier-for-free-iphone-apps-to-make-money/

The New Web: A conversation Oct 19

Context - (eg. location)
- Internet moving from Internet with data to Internet of Context
- 4 Billion cell phones WW

- eg. #newnet at tweet

1. Location meta-data: Need API's (geonames, placemakers)
Every piece of data should be location tagged!
- Tech: yahoo fireeagle
2. Time: Internet Calendar can be mapped to
3. Who/People: will social graph be open?
4. What/Products: eg. RFID tagging

Data on Web to context
- Context changing the way we behave
eg. yahoo Flikr-- tagmaps: term-frequency

Discussion
- foursquare.com
- Wifi : http://www.skyhookwireless.com/ (~ 200 million locations a day)

Design and User Experience - (eg. twitter)
- twitter
- openid

Discussion
- 330 million people on facebook