Blancer.com Tutorials and projects

This ia a guest post by Justin Davies, founder of NinetyTen, a UK-based consultancy providing mobile community and location aware solutions to companies. Davies also founded the now defunct BuddyPing, an early mobile social networking community based on the realtime location of users, and thus has few opinions about the rise of Foursquare and others…

Not to sound too much like my grandad talking about the War, but when I was doing this, it was all about sending a text message to a person walking past Starbucks with a half price voucher.

Back in my day, we had to pay for location information, none of this “SimpleGeo” or “Google Latitude” malarkey you youngsters have these days.

The only phones that had a GPS chip was a prototype N95 I had to beg Nokia for, and some Blackberry phones.

Yes dear Location Based enthusiast, these are bright times, and this does finally seem to be the year of location (though, admittedly, this has been the case for the past 3 years).

There was a time when Facebook was at the forefront of mobile app development. Before there was even an App Store, the web app Facebook put out that was optimized for the iPhone was brilliant. Then the App Store came and with it was a great Facebook native app. Then came version 3 of the app, which was even better. Those days, sadly, are long over.

Everyone already knows that the Facebook Android app sucks. The iPhone app, though, thanks largely to version 3, has remained a bright spot. But while some people are gushing today over the latest iPhone update (3.1.3, the first update in a while), I’m not one of those people.

First of all, Facebook still has yet to release a native iPad app. This is pretty ridiculous considering that undoubtedly a high percentage of the millions of iPad owners have searched the App Store for a Facebook app, and come away with only imitations (which Facebook has demanded be taken down). As I noted above, the original Facebook app for iPhone launched alongside the App Store itself. We’re now almost 3 months post-iPad launch, and there is absolutely no word about when we can expect an iPad app.

Second, while many of the best iPhone app developers have been hustling to get their apps iOS 4-ready (the new iPhone OS launching on Monday), and plenty already have iOS 4 apps in the App Store, this update brings nothing in that department from Facebook. They couldn’t even bother to turn on fast app switching (the most basic iOS 4 multitasking feature) if they were going to update their app anyway?

Third, this update has at least one glaring UI bug. Sure, bugs are a part of the game, but how Facebook overlooked this one is dumbfounding. If you have new messages or friend requests on Facebook, load up the main screen in the app. There you’ll find certain areas badged to let you know there are updates for you to see — but these badges have a dark upper area that clashes badly with the light background of the main screen. I mean, it just looks awful. How did that get through quality control?

Meanwhile, as I said, plenty of folks are gushing over the things Facebook did add with this update. The ability (finally) to be able to see and write on event walls is definitely nice. But the big addition is the ability to view videos in the app. The only problem? It’s really hard to actually find any videos to view. While Facebook has an area on everyone’s profile for pictures, videos are nowhere to be found. You’d think if they were going to do a video-centric update to the app, they’d make a new area for these videos to highlight the feature they added — but no.

So you’ll forgive me if I let out a big sigh upon seeing this Facebook update. Ever since developer Joe Hewitt walked away from the project (over his disgust for some App Store policies) last November, things have gone downhill. And that trend, sadly, continues — even though Facebook promised it wouldn’t. Small updates may be fine or even welcomed by other companies — but Facebook used to lead the way in iPhone development. Now they’re second-rate.

There are some 55 million monthly active users of Facebook for iPhone, according to Inside Facebook. They deserve more commitment to this platform (as do the Facebook Android users).

Find the updated iPhone app here.

Given all the recent privacy uproar over Facebook, this Fall’s Facebook movie, The Social Network (adapted for the screen by Aaron Sorkin and directed by David Fincher), is going to be all the more interesting. Today, the first official poster for the movie has been unveiled on the movie’s website. It’s an eye-grabbing poster, but it’s also interesting because it implies that Facebook has 500 million users before the network has officially announced that.

The poster, which features a close-up of actor Jesse Eisenberg (who is playing Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg), features the tag-line “You don’t get to 500 million friends without making a few enemies.” Intriguing — but is it accurate?

The latest numbers on Facebook’s press site say the network has “more than 400 million active users” — this echoes what Zuckerberg said in a post in February. In late May, that number was pegged at 450 million, but third-party statistics suggest it was already closer to 500 million. Also in May, All Facebook reported that the social network was working on plans to celebrate their 500 millionth user — and suggested an announcement should come before June 25 (next week). But still, no official word from the company.

It’s kind of silly if the marketing for a movie makes the number “official” before Facebook itself does. The movie poster even points people to the URL 500millionfriends.com (which redirects to thesocialnetwork-movie.com — the official site). Still the film’s marketers are likely just playing the odds — the movie is slated to be released October 1, 2010 in the U.S., and Facebook will undoubtedly be far past the 500 million users mark at that point (and maybe even closer to 600 million users).

I’ve heard in recent weeks from two good sources that Facebook is past 500 million users now, even if they’re not publicly saying it. You can probably expect them to shortly.

A few other interesting tidbits about the poster: 1) It makes use of the UI of the most recent Facebook top toolbar (though the icons are slightly different — and obviously the search box wouldn’t normally be used to input a URL). 2) It appears to be running Firefox (judging from the tab bar). 3) It’s definitely running on a Mac (you can tell by the scroll bar at the bottom).

[thanks Christopher]

We all know that the iPhone 4 launches this coming Thursday. But on Monday, current iPhone users get an early treat in the form of iOS 4, the new iPhone operating system (formerly known as iPhone OS 4). It comes with several enhancements, but the ones people seem most excited about involve multitasking (or background tasks). A little over a week ago, Apple began urging developers to submit their iOS 4-ready app, and a number of them have. And actually, some have already been approved, or will be shortly.

The component that all of these apps share is the ability to do fast app switching. What you may traditionally think of as multitasking isn’t the same on iOS 4. Multiple apps aren’t running all of their functions in the background at once — obviously, this would take up resources and eat up battery life. Instead, Apple allows third-party apps to do certain functions in the background now, as well as create an easy way for all apps to save their states to enable this fast app switching. Basically, these apps get paused, put in the background, then un-paused when you come back to them. That may sound a little lame, but the effect is actually quite nice and will end up saving users a lot of time if all app makers implement it.

Here’s a list of some of the best iOS 4-ready apps so far. First, the ones that are out now:

Evernote — The latest version (3.3.5) brings some pretty solid iOS 4 support. This means not only does it offer fast app switching, but it also uses some of the more advanced background APIs. For example, you can both download and upload notes while the app isn’t currently open. Even cooler is that if you start recording an audio note and then leave the app, it will keep recording. A big red bar along the top of the iPhone will let you know that this action is still taking place, and clicking it will take you back into the Evernote app. The Evernote blog has more on it. You can find the free app here.

Dropbox — The latest version of Dropbox (1.2.2) also support fast app switching. It also seems to support uploading/syncing in the background, though this isn’t in the notes for the latest version. You can find the free app here.

Zagat To Go — The latest version (3.1.2) has fast app switching but also the new ability to add events to your iPhone Calendars (this is another new API). Also nice is that Zagat says it has updated the graphics of its app to be ready for the iPhone 4′s new high resolution screen. You can find Zagat To Go in the App Store here — it’s $9.99.

LinkedIn — The latest version of this app (3.1.1) only seems to support the fast app switching for the moment, but seeing as this is a very popular app important to a lot of users, it’s good to see them implement this so early. It’s great to be able to start typing a status message, leave to go find something on the web, then come back to the LinkedIn app and it’s still exactly where you left off. You can find it here for free.

Next, the iOS 4 apps coming soon:

Loopt — I got a chance to see a build of Loopt for iOS 4 that offers both fast app switching and location running in the background (another new API of iOS 4). It’s really impressive (and the app itself has a much nicer, completely new main UI). I noted last week that iOS 4 is going to up the ante for some of these location-based startups, and seeing this in action reaffirms those beliefs. The new Loopt is still check-in based, but with background location, it can now tell when you leave a place (and more importantly, let your friends know). Look for more information on this shortly and for the app itself sometime around the iOS 4 launch.

Pandora — I can only assume the iOS 4-ready version of Pandora will be launching soon considering that Apple had it installed on all of the demo units at WWDC (here’s a video of me playing with it). I can already say that at least on my iPhone, Pandroa will benefit the most from iOS 4 because its music can now play in the background while you’re doing other things.

Twitterrific 3 — Developer Craig Hockenberry tweeted a few days ago that it the iOS 4 (and iPhone 4)- ready version (version 3) of the app has been submitted to the App Store already and should be out soon. Having a Twitter app that can be quickly switched into and out of will be pretty vital.

Navigon — Another key new use of the background location API will be for turn-by-turn navigation systems. Navigon recently showed off a version of their app that is iOS 4-ready and they plan to submit to the App Store soon.

Foursquare — This is a bit of a wildcard, because in an interview we published today, co-founder Dennis Crowley makes it seem as if Foursquare is taking the wait-and-see approach to iOS 4 and background location. But at the WWDC iPhone 4 hands-on, Foursquare was installed on the demo units, and fast app switching was working on it. So perhaps that will be ready to go early, but Foursquare will evaluate whether or not to do something with location in the background.

So that’s the list so far. Anyone know of/have seen any others? Feel free to ping us or leave them in the comments. A few quick notes: I know Facebook’s app was just updated today, but that doesn’t appear to have anything iOS 4-specific in it. Both Fandango and Boxcar say they’re iOS 4-ready, but neither appear to even support fast app switching, so if they’re doing something else with the new APIs, I’m missing it.

Update: Here’s a few more via the comments:

How To Cook Everything — It brings fast app switching, local notifications, gesture support, calendar support — and updated graphics for iPhone 4. This may be the most robust iOS 4 app overall! Find it here, the app is $1.99.

NYTimes — The paper’s app support fast app switching. You can find the free app here.