Mike Cohen

More tales of rejection

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Apple really needs to learn the difference between content in the application and content available on the internet when they review app store submissions.

In their latest fumble, Apple rejected Eucalyptus, an e-book reader which contains absolutely no embedded content. It lets you read freely available books from Project Gutenberg, which it fetches from the internet. Their reason for rejection: “offensive content”. The book in question (the Kama Sutra) can already be read on the iPhone with Stanza or any other e-book reader or even Mobile Safari.

If Apple is going to reject an application based on their ability to obtain offensive content through the internet, they should also ban Mobile Safari, or even Maps (thanks @chockenberry).

The fact is there’s offensive content on the internet. No matter what Apple does, almost any application that accesses the internet will be able to find it if you try hard enough.

153 years 26 days 20 hours

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iPhone application usage stats show that many apps are used only a few times and are then forgotten. According to Pinch Media, only about 20% of users return to use a free app the day after they first download it, and after 30 days, less than 5% are still using it.

I Can Has Cheezburger doesn’t seem to be following those trends. These stats only include version 1.1 and later, since 1.0 didn’t include Pinch Analytics. We’ve had a total of over 5 million sessions totaling more than 153 years. That works out to an average of 13 minutes per session.

ICHC Lifetime stats

Our usage seems to show no sign of tapering off. This month so far we’ve seen over 22,000 first time users for a total of over 1 million sessions totaling over 26 years cumulative time for all users.

ICHC Month Stats

I Can Has Cheezburger is a very “sticky” app that people keep coming back to and spend a lot of time in, so it would be very successful as an ad-supported app. Ben & I have been talking to a mobile advertising company about putting ads in the application. Some people will probably complain about it, but this is too profitable for us to pass up.

links for 2009-05-21

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  • Whither Eucalyptus? – Jamie’s Web Log
    If you’re wondering why Eucalyptus is not yet available, it’s currently in the state of being ‘rejected’ for distribution on the iPhone App Store. This is due to the fact that it’s possible, after explicitly searching for them, to find, download from the Internet, and then read texts that Apple deems ‘objectionable’. The example they have given me is a Victorian text-only translation of the Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana. For the full background, a log of my communications with Apple is below.

    I'm sure almost 90% of iPhone applications can be made to seek out & display offensive content, including Mobile Safari.

    (tags: iphone apple appstore stupidity)

Photo of the day

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I haven’t posted a photo of the day for a while, but I really like this one. This dove let me get very close, so I was able to take this picture with only a 105mm lens rather than the 70-300mm I usually have to use for birds.

Dove

Things revisited

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Although I fell in love with The Hit List‘s beauty & simplicity, I find that I really need the ability to sync with my iPhone, so I took another look at Things and ended up switching back.

Now that I understand the proper use of areas vs. projects, I can live without folders or nested outlines. I had been avoiding areas of responsibility and creating projects for everything, which became difficult to manage without folders.

Areas of responsibility can be used to group related projects as well as individual tasks. A project should be used for something that can be completed, such as releasing an application, or preparing for a trip. An area, on the other hand, is used for an ongoing activity such as work or blogging.

Although Things doesn’t let you simply drag an email or URL to create a task, you can still link them to the notes field of a task. The ability to sync with my iPhone and share tasks with team members more than make up for The Hit List’s nicer user interface.

Posting to Google Reader from NetNewsWire

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One reason I use Google Reader is to share interesting articles in my shared items page. However, I find that I’m more productive when I use NetNewsWire, since I’m in control of how & when it fetches new items, so I spend less time reading news.

I’ve been looking for a way to share items in Google Reader from NetNewsWire. One way I did it was by subscribing to my NetNewsWire clippings feed, which I make publicly visible in Reader. It doesn’t appear in my shared items, though.

I’ve found a better solution, although it still isn’t perfect. This AppleScript is based on Google’s “Note in Reader” bookmarklet. It should be placed in NetNewsWire’s script folder. You can then choose ‘Post to reader’ in NetNewsWire’s script menu to open the selected news item in Safari and open a box to post it to your shared items.

tell application "NetNewsWire"
	set u to URL of selectedHeadline
end tell
tell application "Safari"
	make new document with properties {URL:u}
	delay 2
	do JavaScript "var  b = document.body;
var  GR________bookmarklet_domain = 'http://www.google.com';
if (b && !document.xmlVersion) {
    void(z = document.createElement('script'));
    void(z.src = 'http://www.google.com/reader/ui/link-bookmarklet.js');
    void(b.appendChild(z));
} else {}" in document 1
end tell

links for 2009-05-19

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Staying in sync

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I’ve found that my MacBook Pro is better as a desktop system, while my MacBook is more pleasant to travel with, so I’ve been looking for a good way to keep them in sync. After trying several sync utilities, I was surprised to find that Windows Live Sync is my favorite.

Windows Live Sync runs continuously in the background and syncs files as soon as they’re changed. In most cases it “just works”, so you can work normally without having to think about it. Live Sync is the only sync utility that’s completely free. It’s limited to 20 directories with 20,000 files in each directory. I haven’t run into any storage space limitations.

ChronoSync with ChronosAgent is a close second. Rather than running continuously and syncing files as they’re changed, it runs at scheduled times (or manually) and does a full sync of everything that changed since the last time it ran. If you’re syncing a large folder such as your home directory, it can take a long time. ChronoSync is great if you want to do a full sync before leaving with your laptop and again when you return.

SugarSync looks promising, but there are a few things I don’t like. It also syncs continuously like Windows Live Sync, plus it lets you access your files from the web. However, the sync application isn’t a background process. You need to actually run their SugarSync Manager application at all times if you want it to sync. Also, the free service is limited to 2GB. Other plans are available from 30GB for $4.99/month through 250GB for $24.99/month.

If you only want to synchronize a single folder, Dropbox is great. Like SugarSync, the free service is limited to 2GB, although more storage is available at extra cost. Since it’s limited to a single folder, it isn’t really a complete synchronization solution.