TextMate 2 alpha before Christmas?


According to a blog post at MacroMates this morning, an alpha version of TextMate 2 will be available by December 25th. As a longtime TextMate fan(atic), this news fills me with cheer usually reserved for closer to that date. A very merry Christmas, indeed.

TextMate is an extensible text editor and development tool and has been among the top contenders for developers, web designers and even writers for years now. Version 2 has been promised many times over the past few years without fulfillment. A hard timeline has even been mentioned before, but I can't help but get my hopes up for this one. Here's hoping that the MacroMates team follows through and brings us the sequel to my all-time favorite text editor.

In the meantime, Espresso 2 is coming along nicely, Sublime Text and Chocolat are rising as contenders, BBEdit is receiving plenty of love and more and more people are tackling the Vim learning curve. If and when TextMate 2 arrives, it will be up against some stiff competition.

TextMate 2 alpha before Christmas? originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 26 Sep 2011 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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For local news, TV is dominant but the Internet is our digital future


03.Newspapers.SW.WDC.22dec05 by ElvertBarnes, on FlickrThe days of relying on a print newspaper and a television anchor telling us "the way it is" are long gone. In 2011, Americans and citizens the world over consume news on multiple screens and platforms. Increasingly, we all contribute reports ourselves, using Internet-connected smartphones.

A new report on local news by the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism and the Pew Internet & American Life Project provides reason to be hopeful about new information platforms. But the report also reveals deep concern about the decay of local newspapers, and what that will mean for local government accountability.

"Research in the past about how people get information about their communities tended to focus on a single question: 'Where do you go most often to get local news?'," noted Tom Rosenstiel, Director of the Pew Excellence in Journalism project and co-author of the new report, in a prepared statement. "This research asked about 16 different local topics and found a much more complex ecosystem in which people rely on different platforms for different topics. It turns out that each piece of the local information system has special roles to play. Our research sorted that out and we found that for some things TV matters most, for others newspapers and their websites are primary sources, and the Internet is used for still other topics."

Specifically, the report found that Americans rely on local TV for information about popular local topics, including weather (89% use TV for this information), breaking news (80%), local politics (67%) and crime (66%). Americans use newspapers for breadth and depth of many more topics, particularly with respect to local government information. Newspapers supply "broccoli journalism" about the least popular topics, including zoning and development information (30%), local social services (35%), job openings (39%) and local government activities (42%). These are topics that other local news institutions don't often deliver.

The role of the Internet grows

In the latest confirmation of the growth of the Internet in modern life, we're increasingly going online when we're interested in gathering information about specific local services, searching for information about education, restaurants, and business news, logging onto social media and accessing mobile devices to find and share what we learn ourselves.

"The rise of search engines and specialty websites for different topics like weather, job postings, businesses, and even e-government have fractured and enriched the local news and information environment," said Lee Rainie, director of the Pew Internet Project and another report co-author, in a prepared statement.

Nearly half of adults (47%) now use mobile devices to get local news and information. The proliferation of smartphones, iPad apps and new platforms offers insight into a rapidly expanding mobile future.

"We don't yet know exactly how important mobile apps will be, but it's pretty easy to sketch out a scenario where they rise in importance, especially when it comes to breaking news, weather, traffic, local politics and some of the more popular local topics," said Rainie in an interview.

The Internet has become a key source for peer-generated information. In fact, the survey showed that among adults under age 40, the Internet rivals or exceeds other platforms in every topic area save one: breaking local news. According to the study, the Internet has now become American adults' key source for five broad areas of information:

  • Restaurants, clubs and bars.
  • Local businesses.
  • Local schools.
  • Local jobs.
  • Local housing and real estate.

The websites of local newspapers and TV stations aren't faring well, in terms of how the respondents rated their importance as a local news source. "Local TV news websites barely registered," reads the report, with less than 6% of those surveyed indicating that they depended on a legacy media organization's website for local news.  

One clear finding from this report is that social media currently plays a small role in providing local information that citizens say they rely upon, with 18% using Facebook and 2% turning to Twitter. "Social media look more like a supplemental source of information on these local topics than a primary, deeply-relied-upon source," said Rainie, in an interview. "That's not too surprising to me. Local information is just one of the many things that people discuss and share on SMS and Twitter." 

While the report showed that citizens don't rely on social media for local news, they are definitely discussing it there. "Participatory news" is a full-blown phenomenon: 41% of respondents can be considered "participators" who publish information online. That said, such information is frequently about restaurants and community events, versus harder news.

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A digital generation gap

The question of what these trends mean for all levels of society is also critical to ask. "People under age of 40 are a lot more likely than those over 40 to use the Internet on a host of the topics we probed," said Rainie in our interview. "The gap is quite striking across a number of topics. As this younger cohort ages, it will probably expect legacy news organizations like newspapers, TV, and radio, to have an even more robust online presence. And they are likely to want to be able to contribute to news and easily share news with others via social media."

A generation gap could have profound implications for how informed citizens can be about their communities in the future, based upon their consumption habits and the availability of information.

"There is a disconnect in the public mind about newspapers, and that raises an important question about community information needs," observed Rainie. "As we said in the report, 'If your local newspaper no longer existed, would that have a major impact, a minor impact, or no impact on your ability to keep up with information and news about your local community?'. A large majority of Americans, 69%, believe the death of their local newspaper would have no impact (39%) or only a minor impact (30%) on their ability to get local information. Yet, newspapers are the leading source that people rely on to get information about most of the civic topics on our list. So, if a local newspaper did vanish, it is not entirely clear which parts of the ecosystem would address those needs. Newspapers are deeply enmeshed in the local information system in ways that are pretty important to democracy. That's why the economic struggles of newspapers matter."

Veterans of local news operations know that reality well. "This is something that I faced way back when I was at The Molokai Times in Hawaii," commented Kate Gardiner, responding to a question on Facebook. Gardiner is a new media strategist that works with Al Jazeera, Lauch and the Poynter Institute.

"We built a very robust online community to complement the hard copy and were experimenting with ways to make things even better for everyone — until the bottom dropped out and our major advertiser went bankrupt. The whole newspaper died. The community (about 5,000 people) was left with no alternative means of consuming news. Our competition sort of stepped up, but they weren't doing straight news. It's a problem on any number of levels — and there's no really obvious way to do a community-funded replacement, online or off.

Given that context, do these findings add additional urgency to funding and creating new models for information aggregation and distribution online?

"There aren't clear indications in our survey that speak to this question," replied Rainie. "People say now it's easier than in the past to get the local information they need, so we are not getting a signal in the questions about people thinking that data is hard to find."

An uncertain future for local government information

As print fades and a digital future for news becomes more equally distributed, establishing sustainable local online information hubs to meet the information needs of our democracy will grow in importance, along with the means to connect those news sources to communities on the other side of the digital or data divide. Simply put, there's an increasing need for local government news to be generated from civic media, libraries, schools, institutions and private industry. New platforms for social networking and sharing still need to be supplied with accurate information.

It's not clear if local governments, already stretched to provide essential services, will be able to become robust information providers. That said, new lightweight tools and platforms are enabling ambitious towns to go through "Gov 2.0 city makeovers."

For now, citizens are not relying on local government to be their primary information providers. According to the report:

... 3% of adults said that they rely on their local government (including both local government websites or visiting offices directly) as the main source of information for both taxes and for local social services, and even fewer cite their local government as a key source for other topics such as community events, zoning and development, and even local government activity.

The results of the survey leave us with significant questions and, unfortunately, few answers about the future of news in rural areas and towns. While local TV stations can focus on their profit centers — weather, breaking news, crime, traffic — it's going to be tough for local papers to monetize the less popular but important coverage of civic affairs.

"Newspapers are not struggling in the information-dissemination part of their business," said Rainie in our interview. "Indeed, other research shows many newspapers have a bigger audience than ever if you combine the print and web operations." (Research data on the state of the media in 2011 may not fully support that contention.)

"But if newspapers cut back on coverage of local government because it is expensive and doesn't pay for itself with lots of advertising, then local government information will be harder to come by," said Rainie.

What these news consumption trends mean for local governments, in terms of getting information to citizens when and where they need it, is more difficult to judge.

"The bigger issue that others have raised — notably by Steve Waldman at the FCC in his report [on the Information Needs of Communities"] — is who covers city hall and the school board and the zoning board to help make local institutions accountable? Our report raises that question without answering it," said Rainie. "If newspapers vanished, would TV stations or bloggers cover the bread-and-butter workings of local government, or do the kind of investigative pieces that newspapers have specialized in? We don't know and can't predict from these data. But it's an important question."

Steve Coll published an article in the Columbia Journalism Review prior to Waldman's that provided a thoughtful series of recommendations to reboot the news.

Of the suggestions in the FCC report Rainie mentioned, perhaps the most important to the technology community was the recommendation to put more proceedings, documents and data online: "Governments at all levels should put far more data and information online, and do it in ways that are designed to be most useful," suggested the FCC in its report. "Entrepreneurs can create new businesses and jobs based on distributing, shaping or analyzing this data. It will enable reporters to unearth stories in a day or two that might have previously taken two months."

Notably, the Federal Trade Commission also has recommended publishing public data online to support the future of journalism.

There is no shortage of creative ideas for the digital future of journalism, as evidenced by the conversations and new projects generated by the dynamic community that came together last weekend in Boston at the Online News Association's annual conference. The challenge is that many of them supply information to digitally literate news consumers with smartphones and broadband connections, not the poor, undereducated or disconnected. If local newspapers go away and local government information all goes digital, with primary access through mobile devices, what will it mean for the 21% of Americans still offline? In addition, will being poor mean being uninformed and disconnected from local civic life?

"In our data, people who are less well off are less connected," said Rainie. "That makes it harder for them to use new tools for civic activism and to gather information easily and on-the-fly. "

Closing the civic gap

As citizens turns to the Internet for government information, government entities have to respond on some level. At the local level, however, resources are scarce. Local TV news is unlikely to fill the gap left by local newspapers. The economics and the medium don't support using limited time to cover topics that aren't popular, as the report discusses:

Past PEJ studies have found that local newspapers typically have 70 to 100 stories a day. The typical half-hour local TV newscast is closer to 15. So it is logical that newspapers would offer coverage of more topics in a community, while television might concentrate on a more limited number that attract the widest audience.

"Local government is one coverage area that will suffer immensely if daily newspapers go under," commented Owen Covington, a reporter for The Triad Business Journal in North Carolina, in response to ">my question on Google+. "It can be mundane, but is necessary, and time-consuming to produce. Daily newspapers cover local government as a matter of course, while much of the online coverage from other sources is sporadic, and often opinionated and lacking depth. I'm not saying there aren't alternatives that do as good or better a job than the daily print editions, but they are still rather rare and absent in most communities now served by dailies."

The Pew report found that citizen-produced information (e.g. newsletters or listservs), commercial websites and newspapers all outweighed local government as news sources that readers relied upon. In that context, the work of e-democracy.org and other civic media platforms will be critical.

There are a growing number of free or inexpensive web-based tools available to city managers, including a growing repository of open source civic software at Civic Commons. Another direction lies in the use of local wikis to connect communities. Libraries will be important hubs for rural communities and will be a core element of bridging the digital divide in under-connected communities. Listservs will play a role in connecting citizens using the Internet's original killer app, email. Platforms for participatory budgeting may be integrated into hubs in municipalities that have a tolerance for ceding more power of the purse directly to citizens.

"I would suggest that many of the citizen-powered information systems will not look like a newspaper website," commented Jeff Sonderman, a digital media fellow at The Poynter Institute for Media Studies, when asked for his opinion, fittingly, in a Facebook group on social journalism. It's "more likely to be message boards, Facebook groups or email listservs."

Many forward-thinking local governments will provide the means for citizens to obtain information by using the most common electronic device: a cellphone. Arkansas, for instance, has added question and answer functionality to mobile apps for citizens using text messaging.

Should small cities or towns invest in citizen engagement? The government-as-a-platform approach looks to nonprofits, civic coders, educators, media, concerned citizens and commercial interests to fill that gap, building upon the core web services and data governments can provide. An essay on newspapers and government 2.0 published earlier this year by Pete Peterson, a professor at Pepperdine University, explored the potential for media and local government to collaborate on citizen engagement:

The increasing use of these tools by local and state governments has created a niche within the burgeoning "Gov 2.0 field," which now covers enterprises from participatory policy making to 311-systems. Although newspapers have been slower to employ these online engagement platforms, several interesting initiatives launched by newspapers from the San Francisco Chronicle and its water shortage game to the Washington Post's city budget balancing tool indicate that news organizations are beginning to take the lead in online public participation. This can be seen as both good and bad.

On the positive side, these tools are interactive, allowing a new and participatory form of learning for participants. Matched with the popularity of online games in general, these online civic engagement platforms can create a real "win-win" for both news organizations and users alike — informing readers and driving precious online traffic to newspaper websites.

To date, however, that kind of cooperation doesn't appear to be gathering much momentum as a complement to the press looking for fraud, corruption or scandal. And, as Peterson noted, there are other challenges for the media:

The way to build the most effective online engagement platforms is for news organizations and local governments to collaborate from their strengths: newspapers bringing their informed readership and marketing skills, working with a municipality's budget and policy experts. Of course, these relationships demand both transparency and a lack of bias — qualities neither party is known for. But — and this may be hardest of all — these tools also need citizens who are both engaged on local issues and humble about the challenges of forming public policy.

The growth of a new digital news ecosystem populated by civic media, an evolving civic stack, and data journalism will generate some answers to these questions, but it won't address all of the outstanding issues.

Local news readers write in

When I asked for feedback from readers on Twitter, Google+ and Facebook, I received a wide range of responses, some expressing serious worries about the future of local journalism and a few that were hopeful about the potential for technology to help citizens inform one another. A number of people discussed new public and private ventures, including Patch.com, AOL's initiative to fill the gap in local news, and NPR's Project Argo, which is experimenting with regional news coverage through public radio.

"I expect people will come together in groups or neighborhoods, and things will be more fluid," commented David Johnson, a journalism professor at American University, in response to my question on Facebook. "I don't foresee commercially supported news and information on the local level until there is a valuable platform for advertising and exchange of various levels of services. Perhaps associations will fill the void."

The "loss of local newspapers, dailies or weeklies, is not a new concern, and a concern in metropolitan as well as more rural cities and towns," commented Robert Petersen, a software developer, in response to my question on Google+. Petersen continued:

Many years ago the early trend in smaller markets was loss of local ownership of both print and broadcast news sources, an event that leads to a focus on financial performance first, rather than the financial success that follows from producing a quality product. More recently the advertising dollars necessary to sustain local journalism have tended to flow away from local journalism outlets to the additional delivery mechanisms, including "shoppers" (those go way back), electronic (direct email, blogs, coupon or deal sites, shopping help sites with reviews and price comparisons, etc.), movement of advertising to regional radio and TV, not to mention the loss of local sales to online merchants.

This shift away from local journalism can also be seen in the journalism schools, where students are much more interested in journalism with perceived better financial prospects. That there can be substantial non-financial benefits to living in small cities and towns, i.e., quality of life, seems of less importance.

I fear losing the judgment, ethics, and dedication of small-town journalists will lead to a slow deterioration of the quality of local government, a reduction in the quality of life due to a lack of balanced reporting (as well as editorials) of local issues, and in too many places a return to the civic leaders in the "smoke-filled room" making decisions for the uninformed.

Jeanne Holm, Data.gov's open data evangelist, shared her community's hybrid news reality in a reply to my question on Google+:

In my small town in Southern California, we still support a local paper, but the frequency has changed. We supplement with online news from City Hall, and most importantly we use social media — a lot. We have fires and floods in our area, and everyone connects on Facebook and via our emergency website to get people organized, supplies where needed, and our firefighters the support they need. It works really well. The local reporters often lead those social media conversations. They are reporting, but just in multiple modalities and in ways that make sense to the situation."

If states are the laboratories for democracy, towns and cities may be the Petri dishes that stress test the vitality of different species of online hubs. The ones that will stick around will have met the information needs of citizens better than the alternatives — or they'll have found sustainable business models. In an ideal world, they'll have both.

Appropriately, the conversation around the Pew report continues on a variety of online forums. If you have any thoughts on what's next, please feel free to share them in the comments here or on Google+ and Facebook, and via the #localnews hashtag on Twitter.

Photo: 03.Newspapers.SW.WDC.22dec05 by ElvertBarnes, on Flickr

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Ask Engadget: most compatible motherboard / components for Ubuntu desktop?


We know you've got questions, and if you're brave enough to ask the world for answers, here's the outlet to do so. This week's Ask Engadget inquiry is coming to us from Everest, who ain't skeered to dip his toes in the Linux sea. If you're looking to send in an inquiry of your own, drop us a line at ask [at] engadget [dawt] com.

"Hey guys! I'm building a new computer with Ubuntu Linux in mind, and was wondering what motherboards (preferably from Intel or ASUS, but any reputable brand will do) you folks would recommend with great compatibility for stuff like WiFi straight out of the box? Compatibility with the first- or second-gen Intel Core i processors would be great, too. Thanks!"

Anyone who has dabbled in Linux knows the pains of incompatibility -- it's the price we pay for being exactly who we want to be -- but if you've got any trouble-free recommendations, comments are open!

Ask Engadget: most compatible motherboard / components for Ubuntu desktop? originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 24 Sep 2011 22:35:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Hulu Surpasses 1 Million Paying Subscribers



Hulu now has more than 1 million paying subscribers. The subscription streaming service, which is currently for sale, hit the mark at the end of the summer.

Hulu CEO Jason Kilar had previously predicted that the service would hit the milestone by the end of 2011. Three months ahead of schedule and with Netflix losing customers, it is looking like Hulu Plus will continue to convert its 40 million-plus free users into paying subscribers.

According to Reuters, Kilar plans to invest $375 million in content in 2011. The major subscription streaming companies — Amazon, Netflix and Hulu — are all in a race to sign as many content deals as possible in order to lure in and retain subscribers.

Like Netflix, Hulu Plus is available on the iPhone, iPad, select Android phones and a variety of set-top boxes, Blu-ray players and connected TVs. Its content library includes both current programming and catalog titles. Unlike Netflix, Hulu provides users access to many programs the day after they air on broadcast or cable TV.

The company also launched its service in Japan earlier this month.

[via VentureBeat]

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Facebook partners up to bring music, news and videos to your profile through Open Graph (video)


Facebook's f8 developer conference is going on today, and Andy Samberg Mark Zuckerberg has just revealed another part of his master plan for the social network. Open Graph will now integrate many of your favorite news and music services, including Spotify, Rhapsody, Rdio and MOG onto your Facebook page with custom apps, and will also bring video from Vevo, Netflix, Hulu and many more. The media platform's already up and running, so you can see (and hear) the results of Mark's labor right now.

Update: Unfortunately for Facebook users in the US, Netflix has confirmed that its Facebook integration will only be available in Canada and Latin America initially, due to a US law that "creates some confusion over our ability to allow U.S. members to share what they watch." That doesn't apply to the music services, however, and you can get an idea how Spotify will work in the video after the break. Even TiVo's gotten in on the action, announcing new sharing buttons for its iPhone and iPad mobile apps, although there's no direct DVR integration mentioned yet.

Continue reading Facebook partners up to bring music, news and videos to your profile through Open Graph (video)

Facebook partners up to bring music, news and videos to your profile through Open Graph (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 22 Sep 2011 14:23:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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When & How You Should Update Your Mobile App



The Mobile App Trends Series is supported by Sourcebits, a leading product developer for mobile platforms. Sourcebits offers design and development services for iOS, Android, Mobile and Web platforms. Follow Sourcebits on Twitter for recent news and updates.

You’re done. After months of slaving away over Xcode or Eclipse, you have finally finished your mobile app and submitted it to the App Store or Android Market. Within minutes of releasing the app, you see reviewers complaining about a bug or requesting a new feature. Whoops.

Figuring out how and when to update a mobile app is a crucial part of the mobile app development process. Mobile apps are very different from traditional desktop software apps. Let’s look at some of the most common reasons to update an app and how to handle the inevitable “upgrade” question.


Update Stages


When it comes to software versioning, or assigning a version number to a certain piece of software as it exists in a unique state, the most common number scheme is to assign a major version number, like 1, followed by a point release for minor updates, and sometimes followed by a second-point release for a revision or bug fix.

In the software world, version numbers typically follow a major.minor.revision pattern. For example, the current version of Twitter for iPhone is 3.3.6. The “3″ indicates that it is the third major release. The second “3″ indicates that it is the third minor revision of that release and the “6″ indicates that it is the sixth revision, or bug fix, to that minor release.

These numbers indicate what type of update an app has received.

The Bug Fix

The most frequent types of app updates are bug fixes. Bug fixes are typically covered in “revision” or “bug fix” releases. Bug fixes don’t change the structure or feature set of an app. Instead, these updates make sure that the app is working as designed.

No matter how much beta or user testing a developer does before releasing an app, there are always going to be problems, bugs and issues that only show up after the app is used more broadly.

Bug fixes are a way to keep the integrity and structure of the app intact, while making sure that it doesn’t crash and performs more optimally.

Google‘s update policy with the Android Market allows developers to push out updates whenever they want. With Amazon, Apple and Microsoft, however, updates have to go through the same approval process as submitting an app to an app repository in the first place.

Apple has a policy in place with the App Store that allows developers to fast-track an important or crucial bug or security fix without having to wait as long as with a regular update. Still, these instances are reserved for situations in which an app is either crashing consistently or is potentially insecure.

Because it takes time for even bug fixes to get approved, many developers try to lump several updates and bug fixes together in one release. This limits the number of new downloads for the user and prevents the developer from having to wait through multiple approval queues.

Developers should triage bug fixes based on factors like how many users are affected (or how many have complained) and the severity of a problem.

Adding or Removing Features and Updating UI

Adding or removing features from an app is a more significant update than a bug fix. For example, when Facebook released version 3.5 of its iPhone app, it rolled in new privacy updates, refined the user interface and added the ability to share external links from within the app.

It’s common for developers to use designations like “.5″ as a major milestone for a release. In other words, a 3.5 update is often seen as more significant than the 3.1 update.

Adding and removing features is an important part of the app development process. When it comes time to add a feature, it’s important to look at the feedback you are getting from your users. If enough users are requesting a feature, it’s a good idea to look into what would be required to add that feature.

Just as important as adding features is removing functionality. It isn’t uncommon for developers to go into the app creation process with one feature in mind, only to find that users don’t like or use the feature, or that it doesn’t work as expected.

Sometimes, features have to be removed for performance, stability or even compliance reasons. When making the decision to remove a feature, keep in mind what impact removing that feature will have on your users. If a feature is causing undue strain, performance problems or it’s not being used, dropping it is often worthwhile.

Marco Arment’s popular Instapaper app for iPhone and iPad has undergone some significant changes over the years. Arment is not afraid to remove features that aren’t used by enough of his users or that cause undue server strain.


Major Updates


A major version number update indicates that the app has some significant changes to its features, UI or both. This is the big release for an application.

Earlier this week, Instagram released version 2.0 of its popular iPhone app. The new version added a significant number of new features, including live filters, tilt-shift in camera, higher resolution photos and enhanced filter options.


Major Update or a Whole New App?


The big question for lots of mobile developers is when to issue a major update — as in a new version number — and when to release a whole new app.

With traditional software, developers can charge for software and offer special upgrade pricing. For example, when I bought Adobe Creative Suite CS5.5, I was able to get a discount directly from Adobe because I owned an earlier version of Creative Suite.

Likewise, when my favorite lightweight image editor Acorn was updated to version 3.0, its developer was able to offer it as a whole new version and charge for it accordingly.

This isn’t the case with most mobile app stores. Apple doesn’t allow developers to offer upgrade app pricing. In other words, if I want to update my iPhone app to version 2.0, I have to either give everyone who purchased 1.0 or higher a free upgrade or release a brand new version of the app.

Both strategies have their pros and cons, and it’s important for developers who charge for their mobile apps to take both scenarios into account.

Pros and Cons of Releasing an App Update

  • Pro: Existing users will be happy that they don’t have to pay.
  • Pro: Promoting the app and the update won’t require changing any links to the App Store.
  • Con: The development costs for the new version need to come from brand new customers.
  • Con: Users are forced to update the app (unless they explicitly choose not to).

Pros and Cons of Releasing a New App

  • Pro: The developer can get paid for their work.
  • Pro: Users are not forced to upgrade the app. They can continue to use the old version indefinitely.
  • Con: Users might revolt or be disinterested in buying a new version.
  • Con: Migrating settings might be difficult or untenable.
  • Con: Promoting the app and letting new users know about the upgrade might be difficult.

Most mobile app developers do not release a new version of their app and instead update the existing version. However, some developers have managed to release a new version of the app and have done so successfully. Before selling to Twitter, Loren Brichter released Tweetie 2 for iPhone as a brand new app, and thus a paid upgrade. Some users did complain about the charge, but Brichter held his ground and the app was a massive success.

A common workaround that many developers have successfully used is to offer their app for free for a limited time, in order to allow existing users to upgrade for free, and then to start charging the usual sales price. Some developers also offer the app at a discount for the first few days both to promote a new release and as a gesture of good-will towards existing users.


In-App Purchase as an Update Tool


For developers of games and other types of extensible apps, a common upgrade approach is to release new level packs via in-app purchase.

PlayFirst, Inc’s Dash series of games frequently releases updates both to the main application, as well as additional level add-on packs. This is an easy way for the developer to extend the game without forcing customers to buy and download a new version.

Likewise, music apps and document and utility managers can offer add-ons that add support for new features.

Keep in mind, the in-app purchase approach doesn’t work with all apps. It’s a very different type of business model, but for game developers, can often be the best way to approach extending a game.


Your Thoughts


When do you update your apps? Are you in favor of releasing free major updates or releasing a brand new version of an app. Let us know.


Series Supported by Sourcebits

The Mobile App Trends Series is sponsored by Sourcebits, a leading developer of applications and games for all major mobile platforms. Sourcebits has engineered over 200 apps to date, with plenty more to come. Sourcebits offers design and development services for iPhone, Android and more. Please feel free to get in touch with us to find out how we can help your app stand apart in a crowded marketplace. Follow Sourcebits on Twitter and Facebook for recent news and updates.

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Nokia Creates Foursquare-Enabled Vending Machine [VIDEO]


Location-based technology and vending machines seem like a natural match, but Nokia is among the first, perhaps the first, to make the connection.

To celebrate Social Media Week, the mobile brand released the video above detailing how such a machine works: All you have to do is check in to the machine on Foursquare using the #NokiaConnects hashtag, share it to Twitter and then collect your prize. In essence, Nokia is giving you a treat for doing some of its social media marketing.

Fittingly enough, the idea seems to have evolved from a Foursquare-enabled billboard — which ran in Germany earlier this year — that dispensed dog food. Meanwhile, Nokia’s not the only brand trying to link vending machines and social media: Pepsi demoed a machine earlier this year that lets people send free drinks to their friends via texts.

What do you think of Nokia’s vending machine? Let us know in the comments.

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