Well Stanza, the world’s best ebook reader program (and it’s free by the way), is now on my home screen. Having an icon on my home screen means you gotta’ be one of the absolute best apps out there… free, paid, stock, it don’t matter… the only way you can get on the Neocell’s home screen is if you’ve proven yourself worthy.
Well two things have happened… one, I’ve been using Stamza multiple times a day because I’m reading a bad ass ebook (included a screen shot of it) so Stanza’s usefulness had gone up, and because I don’t have cable TV and watch all my TV from Hulu, the free What’s On app has lost most of it’s usefulness. So Stanza replaced What’s On.
I suspect it’ll take a long time before another icon gets changed from my home screen.
Peace, J
The free What’s On app had an update I noticed tonight. The What’s On app is the free TV guide program that I use. I use it so much in fact that I keep it on my main springboard page
I downloaded the app and guess what… it’s a whole new freakin’ redesign with a bunch of really kick *** features installed. One of the features they added is channel icons. Look at the screen shot at the bottom to see what I’m talkin’ about. That’s a really great feature, it’s like… it makes it feel that much more professional, ya know?
Um, what else… oh yeah, the ability is go to a specific date and time is a fine *** feature. “Baby, do you know if a new episode of The Office is on this Thuraday?” How do you answer? You say “Let me find out What’s On…“. And the animations they added is really a great touch for moving to different dates.
Now this is something I probably didn’t know about and existed in the first version, but the ability to easily and quickly add different locations for where you are is nice. What do I mean by that? I mean if you travel to another city and wanna’ know what’s on cable or digital over the air or (yuck) Verizon FIOS, you can. You can search by entering your location or by letting your iPhone find your location. And it doesn’t do anything stupid like merge different channels together, it switches out your channel line up. Got a channel you hate (like all those Spanish channels)? No prob, What’s On will remember what channels you add or remove, even when you switch saved providers. Like at home, our TV’s are programmed to skip all the Spanish channels, public access channels and spam channels (i.e. QVC). So, I programmed the What’s On app to do the same thing. Nice.
Another great thing I love is the new look of it. It just looks so nice ‘n’ polished. I honestly can’t believe this is a free app!
This is something completely new they added. Normally any kinda’ apps that add a news feed kinda’ system end up bein’ useless. But what they added is something really interesting. They added a news feed from somewhere that tells you what happened last night. Now I’m the type of person who doesn’t care anything about celebeties… at all, or give a **** about entertainment news. But this is something really interesting. If you wanna’ find information about something… “Was it just me or did that episode seem really odd last night?”, you can find out. Or, maybe just find out what you missed. I love that.
They also even have a really great feature for finding movies that are out, or will be coming out, in theaters. I don’t go out to watch movies (why watch what you can steal online, he-he-he), so I don’t want an app on my iPhone just for movies… forget that. That’s why I love it being part of the What’s On app. When someone does ask one day “I wonder what new movies are coming out this weekend?”, I know I’ll have the answer with What’s On.
This company may not be making any money with their ad-free! product, but look at my main springboard screen. Notice they’re there, along with Wordpress, Cycorder, Balance and Pandora? All free programs. They may not be makin’ money, but they remain one of the very BEST apps for the iPhone. Much respect.
What about y’all, any of you usin’ What’s On?
Peace, J
So here’s something that’s really interesting. There’s all these smucks that are flocking to the app store, tryin’ to make all these paid apps to become the next rich ****… It’s sorta’ like a gold rush, but mark my word, it’ll end up more like the dot com bubble bust. They all rush to make a cheap, $0.99 or more app, hoping that it’ll be downloaded by most iPhone owners so they’ll get a million or more downloads. At $0.99 let’s say, getting 70%, tha’d be $70,000 for 1,000,000 downloads. But most apps don’t see numbers like those at all. Some will be lucky if they get 100 ($70) downloads. And if you raise your price higher than $0.99, your downloads get killed… It’s best to stay at $0.99.
But here’s the interesting part. Someone creates a great paid program, such as RulerPhone, as of right now, the only program that allows you to measure objects taken with your camera by simply placing a business card in the pic. They enjoy success, and then one or two people make the same type of program. Well, whoever makes the best quality and cheapest program will get all the downloads (the money). The interesting part is how all that can change.
It all can change by someone creating the same type of program… but charge nothing for it. In other words, a free app.
In the PC software world, someone can create a free program and it won’t affect a paid program at all really. There’s a few reasons. One, people don’t know how to find the free program because there’s no single software searching source. If they do discover a free program alongside a paid program (such as from download.com), the user isn’t going to trust the free program as the paid program. Also, the issue of support (are there updates, does this work for other users) and the quality (most freeware PC program are junk and feel like they were designed for Windows 95). So free PC program don’t affect paid PC programs very much.
But iPhone apps are completely different. Free apps are discovered and installed the same way paid apps are. Free apps are safe, updated regularly, stable, usually good quality, ect… so, when an app is released for free, let’s say an app that does what RulerPhone does, why would anyone wanna’ spend money on the paid app?
And there’s the interesting thing… one good quality free app can kill 20 paid apps. People, such as myself, use and fercely promote free apps. That there is hype… awareness; free advertisement. Take a tv guide program app. There are a few paid apps, but there’s one and only app I used and the one I’ve mentioned a few times is the What’s On app. It’s free and does what other paid programs do. So all these app designers selling crappy or awesome paid tv guide apps don’t get discovered at all… why? Because of at least one free program, the What’s On app.
That’s the downfall of paid apps. Nothing wrong with an app charging, if it’s cheap… but once a free app is released that does the same things, that free app is gettin’ all the attention and that paid app ain’t gettin’ ****. After all, I’m going to show my support to the program giving us something and asking nothing in return, verus a program asking for our money. See the problem free apps cause to paid apps?
It’s interesting to watch these app designers who’re tryin’ to make money. My advice… if you want fame, release your app for free. If you want money, consider it nothing more than a hobby and keep your day job.
Peace, J
