Some posts I found interesting to read this morning, and neither of them got close to talking about what the iPad does or doesn’t run in the browser (well, not in words anyway – there’s a philosophical cross-over in there).

• Danny O’Brien’s Oblomovka – “CD-ROMs and iPads“
• Cory Doctorow on Boing Boig – “Why I won’t buy an iPad (and think you shouldn’t, either)“

I’ve been watching the fall out of the initial iPad release over the weekend (was it really a coincidence that Apple decided to release the Jesus-tablet over Easter, bringing a class of devices back from the dead?) and the continuing stream of commentary and demos from my friends at Adobe, showing ported Flash and AIR apps running on various devices, including Apple’s.

There’s been so much said and thrown around regarding Flash’s relevance and performance on devices recently, and it doesn’t look like slowing down any time soon. And while I think most of it has been rethoric and chest-puffing, there’s some stuff starting to filter out that is beginning to put some coherent thoughts together rergarding Flash running across multiple devices using a single runtime (Flash Player 10.1)

One such piece is a video that Adobe AIR guy Christian Cantrell released (almost immediately) after the iPad launched . It demonstrates a single Flash app (a classic Reversi game) running on various devices from a common code-base (however using a short 20-line wrapper “app” to set some device paramters and load in the common game code). The devices included Windows, Mac, Linux desktops, the web browser, Motorola Droid (Android phone),  iPhone/iPod Touch and the iPad.  Watch it here:

From where I sit, despite what anyone thinks about Flash at the moment, that’s pretty cool. As I’ve written before though, I think you need to temper the technical brilliance of this with the need to create the best user experience for your application, and I don’t see that as working out to deliver 100% of your app the same across every device. The biggest winner out of this would have to be games – and games that don’t require much in the way of user input changes between devices. Apart from that, other application types are likely to require more definition on each screen it runs on, and more importantly perhaps, greater consideration for the computing power of each device.

But with that in mind, it’s fun to watch the ante being raised in this ongoing battle for the hearts, minds, and wallets of developers and content publishers!

It’s always a nice feeling when something you work on is published and released into the wild, and so I’m happy to say that the first iPhone app developed by the Appland team here at VHA has just been approved by Apple – “My Easter Basket” (iTunes link).

The Appland team have some very specific goals when it comes to what we build, and some of them might not be what you would expect from a telco. That being said though, it’s surprising that a telco is building it’s own apps at all – but that’s what I love about working at VHA. One of the targets of our endeavours will be the free, novelty/fun type of app, or apps that work on a simple idea or perhaps single hardware feature of the device it’s used on – and My Easter Basket falls into this category.

With Easter fast approaching we thought it would be an ideal opportunity to launch something fun. We had the goals of 1) doing something unexpected for a teclo, 2) giving users something fun to play with that would hopefully create some chatter amongst friends about the app, and 3) to test the agility and speed of our new team. Some of these goals will only be able to be evaluated after some time, but we certainly succeeded in understanding how the new team can work under a bit of pressure.So the app that we created is all about sharing Easter joy, by connecting devices together (iPhones, iPods … even iPads) wirelessly using Bluetooth (won’t be using it in an app again I don’t think), and flicking eggs from your basket over to your connected friend. The eggs have novelty toys inside which you must collect in order to unlock the Golden Easter Egg! So from a technical side of things, we focused on peer-to-peer sharing of data and some accelerometer stuff (eggs fall around the screen based on how you holsd the device). Simple concept with some very cute visuals that my kids certainly have a lot of fun with.

The first app is always interesting, and we’re learning a lot as we keep the handle turning on our next ideas. Needless to say that the other apps we are now working on cover some very different ground, concepts, technologies and content areas, so expect to be surprised again by our next apps coming out very shortly. But in the meantime, all you iPhone owners out there, please download My Easter Basket (preferably also with a friend because you really need two people to share eggs with) and tell us what you think.

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We’ve got some great ideas for this sucker …

Just received some market data analysis from Canalys this morning, regarding the smartphone market in Q2 2009.

Smart phones continue to shine as one of the brightest spots of the technology industry, with shipments growing despite the global recession. Innovation in interfaces, design, applications and promotion continue to excite consumers, which, in contrast to the PC industry, is helping to keep average selling prices stable. The rise in data traffic seen by mobile network operators is finally generating a return on their investment in broadband capacity and will drive further infrastructure expenditure.

It’s interesting to note the comment about network operators finally generating a return on investment from mobile data. This was a point that I raised in many meetings and presentations about 5 years ago when talking about why Flash and other rich, data-centric applications would be an important piece of the revenue puzzle for operators. Seems as though it’s taken a little longer than expected, and of course some monumental shifts in consumer education through the introduction of game-changers such as the iPhone.

Here’s some other key take-aways:

• Nokia maintains global lead, although its performance varies by region
• Touchscreens become the preferred interface, representing 40% of all shipments
• Apple’s success continues, as the iPhone takes 23% of the North American market
• RIM continues to gain share, succeeding with its push into the consumer market
• Operating system choices are proliferating, primarily at Microsoft’s expense

Read the full press release here.

Via The iPhone Blog: The rumblings and grumblings over Apple’s App Store approval process are growing louder with the news that the recently submitted update to the Tweetie Twitter client was rejected for returning offensive words in the search results of the public Twitter “Trends” rankings.

There’s been a lot of complaining about the quality and consistency of the approval process for new and updated apps in the App Store, but this one seems to be potentially very damaging to the lure of the App Storefor developers. The business model is the best thing going for it – 70% cut of the sale price with no additional charges from telcos being taken off, but with the glut of content already in the App Store (see Mobclix’ stats on the makeup of the 27,000+ apps now online) time-to-market is very important for developers.

Having an uncertain approval process only makes it less enticing for developers to have a go. When some apps get approved and similar ones don’t, or when updates to previously accepted apps are rejected because of functionality that was already there, or content that is brought in from the web and not controlled by the developer (nor could it be by Apple with it’s own tools like Safari!), it makes new developers particularly more cautious.

This is a message that Nokia and Ovi should be listening to. The business model for Publish To Ovi looks similar to the App Store, but because customers can still pay by SMS, the operators are still entitled to a slice of your 70% rev share. Given my experience with Nokia Download, I have some idea as to what operator involvement can mean to the end revenue for developers, but I’m going to give Ovi a go regardless.

As Ovi’s publisher approval process has yet to be completed, I can’t comment on what that looks like, but if I were Nokia right now, I would be making sure that the message I was sending to developers was reassuring them that the approval process was a lot smoother than “some other app stores” out there. After investing blood, sweat, tears and in some cases real cash, developers don’t want to be tripped up in the process of just getting it our to customers through these types of channels.

Who knows, perhaps we’ll see the same trend with Ovi, Android Market and other OEM-driven app stores that we saw with the iPhone App Store – those who got in early were the biggest winners because content discovery for them was easier with less content cluttering up the deck. Perhaps with the wider variety of devices (and sheer greater number of devices compared to the iPhone) Ovi publishers will find it easier to cut through and achieve some “real” sales and generate a reasonable return on investment. Time will tell …