Google released Google Earth for iPhone this morning. The app integrates with the built in GPS for positioning, but obviously lets you explore the entire globe. Great integration with Panoramio photos too-
The creators of the Shazam iPhone app say that 20 million iPhone requests have been made for song identification on the company’s servers. This is 2-3 look-ups per person, per week vs. 3-5 times per phone on other platforms.
Is this solely due to the success of the iPhone platform or could it be that they charge money for these lookups on every other platform?
[via MacNN]
An iPhone book app, Stanza [app store], has been downloaded more times than the number of Kindle units sold by Amazon.
The free Stanza app downloads public-domain books directly to the iPhone. Developer Lexcycle reports 395,000 downloads and growing at a rate of 5,000 per day.
Citigroup predicts that Amazon Kindle will sell 380,000 units in 2008, which is four times longer than Stanza app has been available. Lexcycle says it is planning commercial book distribution in the new year.
[forbes via macnn]
Apple has finally dropped the iPhone non-disclosure agreement:
To Our Developers
We have decided to drop the non-disclosure agreement (NDA) for released iPhone software.
We put the NDA in place because the iPhone OS includes many Apple inventions and innovations that we would like to protect, so that others don’t steal our work. It has happened before. While we have filed for hundreds of patents on iPhone technology, the NDA added yet another level of protection. We put it in place as one more way to help protect the iPhone from being ripped off by others.
However, the NDA has created too much of a burden on developers, authors and others interested in helping further the iPhone’s success, so we are dropping it for released software. Developers will receive a new agreement without an NDA covering released software within a week or so. Please note that unreleased software and features will remain under NDA until they are released.
Thanks to everyone who provided us constructive feedback on this matter.
To view status comments on the new Facebook 2.0 for iPhone, click on your profile, then scroll down (this is the traditional “wall”). Nifty little icons show you how many comments there are. The process works pretty much the same way in the “new” Facebook web application.
Surprising how buried the “wall” is now.
