I'm not sure if this is a happy or sad data. Movie & TV shows most liked?

I'm an independent developer and recently launched a World Cup iPhone app called 'Total Football 2010' for this summer's World Cup, a really unique sports app providing rich in match stats and visualisations of every match event including every pass, shot, tackle etc:

http://www.totalfootball2010.com

It's been extremely well received and the reviews in the App Store tell their own story, overwhelmingly positive. My costs involved two months developing it and paying a third party for the license to use the data (which was a fairly hefty cost for an individual like myself), it's 100% my own work and I took a break from freelancing to give me the opportunity to complete the app. I hoped that at worst case I would cover my costs and best case it would prove to be popular enough to allow me to continue development on the concept to apply to other competitions after the World Cup.

My numbers so far are very much in line with what you are discussing. Even though the app has been reasonably successful (in the top 10 across a number of European countries and particularly strong in the UK where it's been in the top 5 selling sports apps for the last couple of days) I'm still struggling to break even on the venture. In part, I'm sure this is due to the fact that I have zero marketing budget but the app has even been featured by Apple on the App Store homepage and sales have decreased since that happened! To give you an idea though, the app is outselling apps by large brands such as The Times (of London), the official England football team's app and other large brands here in the UK. I dread to think how much they invested in the apps to see even smaller returns than I'm seeing!

In truth, this shouldn't really be taken as a standard business case study. I'm an individual developer who was really scratching an itch, I knew this kind of app was possible and have been massively frustrated that no 'big brand' was using the data I am to provide a really rich experience for users. Also, it's actually been a pleasure to work on from a development point of view, the iPhone platform is fantastic from a developer's perspective. I'm incredibly proud of the app I've built, the feedback I've got and I know the experience of doing this is going to be fantastic for me in future. I'm still very hopeful that the app will come to the attention of someone with a budget who will be interested in the future development of the concept - whether that be in mobile apps or not!

So even had I read this article 3 months ago I probably still would have went ahead with the idea. But I just wanted to chip in with personal experience and reaffirm the message you've laid out here. Don't be taken in by the hype, be realistic in what you expect your returns to be and be very aware that the long tail is very very long...

If anyone is interested in discussing my experience, please feel free to get in touch at the email address below or on twitter.

Thanks!
Colm

Twitter: @colm @totalfootball10
Email: colm.mcmullan@gmail.com

As the article emphasized that mobile apps is not a gold mine but it is a good way to learn, gain experience. Maybe, the developers should keep a 'I'm in for the fun, and not for the money' attitude towards mobile apps.

It is worth stepping back a moment and asking the question, "Why are the antennas placed where my hand is MOST likely to cover it?"  It's a fair question.

The FCC puts strict limits on the amount of energy from a handheld device that may be absorbed by the body.  We call this Specific Absorbtion Rate, or SAR.  In the olden days, when I walked ten miles to school in three feet of snow, uphill in both directions, cell phones had pull-up antennas.  This allowed the designer to use a half-wave antenna variant, and put the point of maximum radiation somewhat away from the users cranium.  Of course, most people did not think it was necessary and kept the antenna stowed.  Motorola's flip phone acutally had a second helical antenna that was switched into place when this was the case.  But, more importantly, SAR rules were not yet in effect.

Flip phones became yesterday's style, and phones were becoming more monolithic.  Some phones, like the early Treo, kept the antenna in the traditional location at the top of the phone, near one edge, but reduced it to a short stub.  Whips became stubs, stubs became bumps, and finally antennas were embedded into the rectangular volume of the phone.  The trouble was SAR; if you left the antenna at the top, the user was now pressing it into their head, insuring lots of tissue heating.  Enter the bottom-located cellphone antenna.

Just about every cell phone in current production has the antenna located at the bottom.  This insures that the radiating portion of the antenna is furthest from the head.  Apple was not the first to locate the antenna on the bottom, and certainly won't be the last.  The problem is that humans have their hands below their ears, so the most natural position for the hand is covering the antenna.  This can't be a good design decision, can it?  How can we be stuck with this conundrum?  It's the FCC's fault.

I'm a concerned about 'tissue heating' mentioned in the article. Is it something to worry about?

An SMS Appointment Reminder System for Prenatal Care in Urban Health Care Centers in the Philippines Authors: Ryan Julius A. Banez, Office of High Performance Computing and Communications¹, Raymond Francis Sarmiento², Alvin B. Marcelo², Paul Fontelo¹, Bowei Du³.
¹National Library of Medicine, Bethesda, MD, USA, ²National Telehealth Center, Manila, Philippines, ³University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA. Abstract Body: The Philippines is known as the Short Messaging System (SMS) or text-messaging capital of the world. Each day, about two billion SMS messages pass through the three main telecommunication networks in the country. SMS not only has benefits in maintaining communication among friends and family, but it can also have potential benefits in different sectors of society - one of which is healthcare. To take advantage of the country’s facility with SMS, the University of the Philippines Medical Informatics Unit (MIU) initiated the development of an open source SMS appointment reminder system for pregnant mothers attending urban health centers.
The application was tested in two health centers in Pasay City, Philippines. Initially, posters and handouts were provided as a marketing tool for the reminder system. Patients were then registered during their initial visit or subsequent follow-up appointment. On its first month of operation, 60 patients on initial consults and eight patients on follow-up visits were registered. Pregnant women, who registered for this service in their respective health center, receive two SMS reminders starting two days prior to a scheduled follow-up appointment. The health center personnel at the two centers sent SMS reminders using the MIU’s SMS gateway. Preliminary results showed that SMS reminders improved prenatal follow-up visit compliance. Subjective feedback was also positive. An SMS appointment reminder system seems to be a promising tool for increasing the compliance rate in prenatal follow-up appointments. Other applications planned for the future are: Direct-Observed Treatment Short-Course (DOTS) system for tuberculosis, Immunization programs for children, and dental visits.

MoTeCH seeks to alter this dynamic by enabling the delivery of relevant and actionable information over mobile phones. Pregnant women will register by providing their phone number, the name of the area in which they live, their estimated due date, and their language preference. They will then begin receiving SMS and/or voice messages that provide information about their pregnancy (e.g., milestones in fetal development), the location of the closest health facility, and specific treatments that they should receive during their pregnancy (e.g., tetanus vaccination).

Some of the messages the woman receives will be specifically relevant to her history of receiving antenatal care. For example, someone who has not received a tetanus vaccination will receive a message specifically about the importance of tetanus immunization. Services will also be created that allow an expectant mother to send health related questions via SMS and receive an automated response that is relevant to their question. Once her child is born, the mother will receive messages and information about essential vaccinations for her child and how to manage critical childhood illnesses.

Information, information, information.

Measuring someone for an eyeglass prescription usually requires bulky diagnostic machines or high-tech laser scanners that can cost thousands of dollars. Which means that in the developing world, vision correction is often an unattainable luxury for literally hundreds of millions of people. But a team of researchers at the MIT Media Lab has unveiled a system for prescribing eyeglasses that requires nothing more than a smartphone and a $1 plastic lens attachment.

Cool at $1! =) This is innovation!