Have you ever wondered if what you do on a daily basis is the most efficient way to do your job? Maybe you think to yourself, “There has got to be a better or quicker way to do this!” I know I do. Here at W3i we recently had what is called a “hackathon”; an event where functional groups from throughout the company met to do collaborative computer programming. At the end of the day, the goal is to have created some new program or application. Essentially it is a bunch of people, all in one room, pounding out code and UI. This is a great way to use an open and collaborative space to gain insights into what it is that the rest of your coworkers do and, better yet, are capable of.

Through multiple collaborative events, I have been able to ask the right questions and even stumble upon fixes to daily pain points. If you find yourself in an environment that does not necessarily promote collaboration, I would suggest taking the time to visit other functional departments to see what it is that they do and if they have suggestions for fixing problems that you face. If need be, set up a meeting to work together. Not only can you increase your speed to market, but it can also make your life a little easier. Make yourself available to others to find out how your jobs intersect. You might be able to improve something that they do or alleviate a pain point that they have come across.

Communication is everything in making a collaborative environment beneficial. You may already have the ideal environment, but you don’t utilize it to its full potential. Get the ball rolling and create the conversations you think you need to have. Ask questions that promote elaboration so you get more than yes and no answers. Move beyond the years of cubicle walls and closed doors. It is up to you to attain the knowledge you wish to gain so do your best to create a collaborative environment and get conversations going.

Written by Brian Mueller, Associate Marketing Specialist

App entrepreneur success stories are becoming increasingly common through the ever-growing mobile industry. Of course, the truth is that working up to a hit app almost never happens over night or with your first app for that matter. As someone once put it, for every Angry Bird out there, there are at least 20 thousand angry developers.

Having met with countless app developers, I can safely say that the one thing they all have in common is entrepreneurial drive. With Apple recently crossing the 10 billion download mark and an estimated 44 billion downloads expected to be achieved by 2016, creative young mobile app developers everywhere are going all-out, looking to cash in on the hottest business trend to emerge in the last decade.

What does it take to become a successful app entrepreneur? Some may say that the development process is actually the easy part. Thinking of an app with the right balance of value, creativity and marketing reach, that’s the tricky part.

One of best apps to riches stories involves Lisa Bettany, a Canadian figure skater who suffered through a serious injury only to bounce back at the top of the app charts with her hit app Camera+. Entrepreneur.com shares her awesome story which I urge you all to read at least once.

Anybody Can Do It

We’ve all at one point or another had an “Ah-Ha!” moment where we were sure we’ve thought of a hit app idea, or at least know someone who has. However, we weren’t all born with the gift of coding flowing through our genes. Luckily there’s no lack of talented freelance developers for hire on services such as odesk, elance, guru.com and many other freelance sites to help get the job done.

Enter Trey Smith. After launching a very lucrative business as an affiliate in the online world, Trey turned his attention towards iPhone apps. His iPhone apps include top hits such as Jump Pack, Maze+ and Monster Magic.  In just a 5 month period Trey’s apps have had over 3,000,000 downloads. In his webinars, Trey explains how he took his iPhone app game, Kolo’s Journey, from concept to completion and through marketing, almost entirely through the use of freelance services.

Business Sense on the Go

One of the biggest advantages entrepreneurs have today is the ability to conduct business anywhere via their mobile devices. From answering emails, to signing agreements, the use of Smartphones as business tools has transformed the way entrepreneurs do business. This also opens the door for app entrepreneurs to think outside of the box as far too many restrict their app ideas to “the next big game,” when in reality, there’s a huge window of opportunity to deliver utility and productivity tools to make on-the-go users’ life a little more fun and manageable.

In conclusion

The most successful app entrepreneurs have approached their app ideas by looking at what niche their app could best fill. Do not underestimate the power of targeting a specific audience or end-user for your app idea, that being said, the real magic happens when you keep  your mind open to fun and creative ideas.

Windows 8 which is expected to make its beta debut in February 2012 is trying to offer the “best of both Worlds” by incorporating a single OS that works across desktops and tablet devices.

With the Windows store, users will be able to license, purchase, and download Metro apps from one location. Although Microsoft is starting with free apps, developers will be able to offer paid apps as well. Microsoft is offering developers a 70/30 rev share with the added bonus of increasing their rev share to 80% once the app reaches $25k in sales.

Microsoft stated that “there are now 1.25 billion Windows PCs in existence, and 3 million copies of the Windows 8 developer preview have been downloaded since September” providing an impressive reach for the new OS.

However others remain uncertain about the potential success of Windows 8 as the “the only real benefit that [Windows 8] provides [is] access to the Windows app store” says Al Gillen, Program VP at IDC.

Additional obstacles that Windows 8 is faced with include the significant efforts corporations have taken to implement Windows 7, application compatibility issues, and their reliance on developers to rework existing Windows apps for the Metro interface.

The table below shows the OS market share percentages as of November 2011 according to NetMarketShare:

As illustrated in the table above, Windows accounts for the largest OS market share with 92%.  With the high percent of consumers currently using Windows XP and Windows 7 it might be difficult to convince them to make the switch.

Microsoft has had a bad history of trying to get consumers to upgrade as a result of application compatibility issues. Windows 2000 Pro required developers to upgrade their apps, which resulted in little success. As a result, Microsoft had to create a new OS with improved application compatibility known as Windows XP. The same compatibility issue occurred with Vista which led to the release of Windows 7. Many wonder if Windows 8 will face a similar fate.

Microsoft must also convince developers to alter existing Windows apps to be compatible with their Windows 8 Metro interface. Although they are offering a fairly attractive incentive to developers with the 70/30 rev share if they are unable to get developers to invest in making these changes it may not be successful.

With all of these obstacles that Windows 8 is faced with, IDC believes that it “will be largely irrelevant to the users of traditional PCs” and they go on further to state that they “expect effectively no upgrade activity from Windows 7 to Windows 8 in that form factor.” Therefore the question remains is Windows 8 bound for success or doomed to fail?

By: Joy Haeg, Account Development Manager, W3i, LLC

Joy manages many of W3i’s key partnerships with a focus on growing successful, long-term business relationships.

Localizing your iOS app can have a major impact on game revenue. Read on to find out how:

What is localization?
Localization is simply the process of translating your product into different languages for a specific country or region.

Why localize your app?
Localizing your app can make a huge difference in growing a loyal fan base in other countries.  The Apple App Store is available in over 120 countries with support for 40 languages.  Support for international payments, currency, and more, is already built in to the App Store.  So taking your app global is a great way to increase revenue and the process is probably more straight forward than you think.  Let’s take a look at how to bring your app to the global market place with localizations.

Getting started
The first step is to figure out which countries you are interested in marketing to.  Up to date sales data by country is difficult to come by.  That said, a good place to start is with populous countries with minimal english speaking people, who love technology.  Examples include, Japan, Korea, China, and France.  There are some sites on the web that show trends.  It pays to check this out periodically. My own research for a free ad-funded app (released earlier this year) yielded the top countries as  Korea, Taiwan, China, Japan,  Spain, France, Italy, Germany, and Russia.

Once you’ve figured out which countries you want to market to, the next step is to choose the languages for your app.  Usually country to language is 1 to 1 but that’s not always the case.  For example, there are 10 languages associated with China or Chinese.  So it pays to do some research on the country you will be targeting and figure out which language(s) make the most sense for your app.  In my case I focused on two languages for China, simplified script and traditional script.

Translating your copy
Probably the toughest aspect of localizing your app is to acquire the actual translated copy.  You can gather translations for common text items like Cancel, Ok, Continue, Back, Close, etc. by simply changing the language on your iOS device and take note of the translation for these common text items.   Using the same translation as iOS itself really helps the user and keeps your app consistent with the operating system.

For less common words and simple phrase translations, many developers use Google Translate or some other on-line translation service.  This can be problematic if you need more complex sentences or phrases translated.  Poorly translated phrases may actually hurt more than help by confusing or even insulting the user.

By far the best approach to translating your copy is to use a professional translation service.  There are a variety of translation services marketed on the web.  You probably want to focus on those that specialize in working with iOS apps.  Companies with a focus on iOS app translation often provide good documentation or tools that make the process of setting up your app for localization easier.  In most cases you can get an online estimate by pasting your copy into a form.

Tips for Localizing your App
The process for localizing your app is fairly straight forward.  Apple’s developer documentation provides a complete set of programming topics that will guide you through the process.  There are a few common pitfalls to avoid.

Complete your app (especially the user interface) before localizing.  Once you begin creating localized versions of your windows, views menus, etc., if you change the arrangement of screen items, you will find yourself tweaking multiple files (one for each language).  Completing your app also ensures that you will have all the text you need translated. Remember to include any online help text that you link to from your app in your copy for translation.

Consider alerts and dynamic text for translation as well, not just the text you see when views first load.

If your app references any locale or region formatted information like time, date, currency, or other numerical values, remember to use the locale settings of the device in calculations and text you display dynamically.  For example, if you calculate and display miles per gallon in the United States,  be prepared to calculate and display Kilometers Per Gallon if the user’s locale is set as such.

Avoid having graphics that contain text.  For example, if you use a custom button background and the title for the button is included as part of the image, you will need a version of that graphic for each language.  You can save time by keeping text out of the graphic and use the title property for text instead.

Sound files that contain spoken text will need to be available for each supported language.

One key decision is whether you will also provide translated App Store meta data (app description, etc).  This is something you need to figure out before you go live because adding localized meta data requires you submit a new version to the App Store.

Consider starting with localizing your app for one or two countries and bringing more on later.   If your product roadmap includes expanding features in later versions,  you can move additional translation costs to those versions and justify the expense based on sales in additional markets.

Testing your App
It’s important to test your app with your test device setup for each supported language.  Compared to English, most other languages will result in more characters for any given word or phrase.  You may need to adjust the size of some of your UI controls to accommodate the increased length of a word or phrase.

If possible, add testers from your target countries.  Ask for feedback specifically as it relates to translations.

Hmmm, I’m not sure just yet
Even if your still on the fence about bringing your app to international markets by localizing your app you can still help yourself by taking some basic steps in your app development right now.  Start by reading through Apple’s developer documentation as it relates to localization and internationalization.   You’ll discover, when beginning the development of your app, that you can take some simple steps that will make localizing your app later much easier and cost less.

Patrick Brennan, Senior Software Developer

Apple’s development certificate stuff can be difficult to understand, and after I recently explained it to a new team member I thought it would be a valuable topic for others.  Some of this is documented well on Apple’s site, but I will go through it and focus more on the parts that I found unintuitive.

You can download Xcode for free and start creating apps and experimenting with the iPhone/iPad simulators right away.  If you want to put anything onto a device, however, you will need to purchase a developer license from Apple.  (Note: A device is required for things like testing In-App Purchases, Push Notifications and Location Services.)

After you sign up as a developer, you have access to the developer provisioning portal where you can request a development and distribution certificate.  Apple’s site does a good job of walking through most of this process.

How to create a development/distribution certificate:

1. Generate  a Certificate Signing Request (CSR) with a public key
• In your Applications folder, open the Utilities folder and launch Keychain Access.
• Choose Keychain Access > Certificate Assistant >Request a Certificate from a Certificate Authority.
• In the Certificate Information window, enter or select the following information
• In the User Email Address field, enter your email address
• In the Common Name field, enter your name
• In the Request is group, select the Saved to disk option
• Click Continue
• The Certificate Assistant saves a Certificate Signing Request (CSR) file to your Desktop.
• The public/private key pair will be generated when you create the Certificate Signing Request (CSR) if you use the Key Chain Assistant to create the CSR.
2. Submit the CSR through the Provisioning Portal to the Admin for approval.
• Click the Distribution/Development tab
• Upload the certificate by choosing the file
• Click Submit

Once the certificate processes and downloads you can double-click it to add it to the Keychain (the login keychain by default), the part that is not clear is that this certificate is tied to the computer where you requested it.  If you ever want to sign an app with the certificate on another computer (or another OS on the same computer), you need to export your identity from Keychain Access.  The export process is pretty simple and creates a “Personal Information Exchange” (.p12) file that can be copied to another computer:

Apple's Keychain - Simple Export Process Creating a "Personal Information Exchange"

If you have e a team with multiple developers that could potentially submit an app to the App Store, then exporting the identity is a critical step. This allows other team members to import that distribution identity, download the distribution certificate and provisioning files, and sign the app for testing or submission (Ad Hoc or App Store).

Once you have a developer certificate you can activate any iOS device for debugging:

1. connect the device via USB
2. run Xcode
3. open the Organizer (Window->Organizer in Xcode)
4. go to the devices tab
5. Control-Click on your device in the list
6. select “Add Device to Provisioning Portal”

Xcode will take care of requesting a development provisioning profile (iOS Team Provisioning Profile), and install it on your device.

The next thing you’ll want to try is Creating an App ID, but be careful here – once created, an App ID cannot be changed or deleted. The App ID is comprised of a description, a prefix, and the bundle id. The bundle id is something like com.domainname.appname, and the bundle prefix can be left alone unless you are creating a suite of applications that need to
work together.  A few pieces of advice:

1. lowercase bundle id - The App ID is case sensitive, so it’s best to eliminate confusion/mistakes by sticking to all lowercase.
2. unique description - The common name (description) field shows up in a few different drop-downs, and if you create two that are similar it  can be a pain to keep them separate.
3. double check before submit – As I said earlier, this is permanent.  A misspelling here isn’t customer facing, but it can be annoying and confusing for other teammates.
4. beware enter key - The default action for the enter key is to submit.  I accidentally found this out after I entered the Description, but before I had entered the bundle id…  Duh! So now we have an empty bundle id with a valid-looking description.

Once you have an App ID you can create provisioning profiles for that app.  There are three types of provisioning profile:

1. Development - Now that Xcode manages a default development profile you shouldn’t have to worry about this.
2. Ad Hoc - This is for distributing to coworkers or team members that may need to see or test the app. If they are not registered as developers on the same account, then their device UDIDs need to be manually entered.
3. App Store - Used only for final submission to the App Store

Revoking

If you didn’t export the identity (.p12) files, and the original computer that created the Certificates is lost or wiped, you can Revoke the existing certificates and create new ones. Unfortunately this requires updating all of the active Distribution Profiles.  It’s not difficult, but depending on the number of apps it can be a tedious process.  To do this go to the Distribution tab of the Profiles section, and click Edit -> Modify next to each profile. The Modify page will not let you Submit the profile unless you make a change, so usually I just add a space to the profile name.  Once the profiles are processed they can be downloaded and added to any computer with access to the distribution identity (.p12) file.

Hopefully, this saves you a ton of stress and time.  Do you have any additional feedback on  Apple Development Certificates?   if so,
add it in the comments.

Tony Feick. Senior Software Developer

One of my biggest passions as a child was running around, shooting short videos. The pain was always in uploading the video to a PC, spending time editing it only to share it with a limited audience, mainly friends and family.

While winter isn’t usually the optimal time to take videos outside, there’s usually more than enough family antics happening indoors that you might want to treasure. To save you time and cut straight to the action, here are five video creation apps for iPhone you will find handy. Bad script writing not included.

Viddy

Fands of Instagram will love this one; Viddy is a simple way for anyone to capture, produce, and share beautiful videos with the world. Record a moment of your life, give it that cinematic look with our production packs, and share it with those who matter most.

The app offers free visual effects, music, transitions and themes, plus one click sharing to your favorite social networks.

Cost: Free

BlipSnips

BlipSnips is truly unique as it lets you tag your Facebook friends and location, turning your video creations into a social experience. The BlipSnips team recently added features such as, an activity feed to track activity on your videos.

Cost: Free

Movie360

If Movie360 doesn’t spark your creative juices, I don’t know what will. Let’s start with the fact that it’s free, now add the fact that it comes jam packed with 13 visual effects and you get where I’m going. Unlike iMovie, you can’t edit video, but you can pause and record, so there’s no editing needed really. The app’s interface is fluid and to-the-point. Select an effect from below and tap the record button to start shooting. The app allows you to switch to another effect in the middle of a recording.

Cost: Free

iMovie

The user interface is beautiful and offers numerous options from the editing screen; assign a theme, shoot video on the fly, choose a clip from the camera roll or play the video. Video clips, images from the photo gallery and audio from the music library can all be inserted within a project.  The pre-selection screen is really handy for quickly finding clips.

Cost: $4.99

Vimeo

I’ve been a long time fan of Vimeo‘s professional video hosting service. For one, the Vimeo community of students, artists, and amateur filmmakers is thriving. The official Vimeo app enables you to not only watch high-quality videos that are hosted on Vimeo, but it also delivers an easy-to-use video editor that rivals iMovie. Once you’re done editing a video, you can upload it to Vimeo from within the app itself or export it to your camera roll. The only thing that would make this app better, is if there was an iPad version.

Cost: Free

In conclusion – There’s no lack of options when it comes to creating great videos, using nothing more than your iPhone or iPod Touch. Everyone from music videos producers to big budget productions are turning to the low alternative of shooting directly from the iPhone.

Already have your video work of art shared online? We’d love to see it. Share it with us in the comments or let us know about it on Twitter – @W3i and @OrenTodoros

My day job brings me the good fortune of working with the majority of the top-grossing app developers. For the AppNation conference in San Francisco earlier this month, I was asked to organize and moderate a panel, “Rants From Top Grossing App Developers.” The panel consisted of Giordano Bruno Contestabile (EA/PopCap Games), Cat Silvestre (DeNA/ngmoco), Daniel Pfeiffer (FunMobility), Jamil Moledina (Funzio), and me.

Rants from top-grossing developers might seem odd. As Jamil pointed out, why would a top-grossing app developer complain since it is, by definition, generating the most revenue? Therefore, included in my highlights are a few anti-rants.

Mirage of cross-platform. Giordano pointed out that the promise of cross-platform app development was talked about for 10 years, and we are still not there yet. From Jamil’s perspective, we are seeing some progress as interfaces and monetization solutions are becoming more consistent across platforms.

Fragmentation is still an issue. From their experience working with feature phone apps pre-iPhone, Giordano and Cat both agreed that fragmentation issues have subsided a bit. With that said, fragmentation issues are still prevalent, and we aren’t just talking Android. During Funzio’s recently released hit iOS game, Modern War, Jamil said his team spent several sleepless nights working through fragmentation issues with older iPod touch devices.

People problems caused by the bubble. Daniel said it’s difficult to hire good talent at a reasonable price due to unrealistic expectations versus the value and impact an employee brings to an organization. From my perspective, the trouble with talent acquisition largely stems from so many venture-funded mobile app companies. I’m reminded of the dot-com bubble, and how that impacted the early growth of my company. Daniel believes that a lot of dumb money is pouring into inexperienced startups with thoroughly unprofitable app concepts. Jamil disagrees, however, that we’re in a bubble. He believes investments are generally rational given how big the mobile app space will be. From a hiring perspective, Jamil said the problem is not just hiring developers. The greatest issue, he said, is hiring top-notch artists.

Randomness of smartphone store policies. Daniel expressed frustration over the randomness of smartphone store operators’ policies including their procedures and enforcement thereof. For example, Daniel cited the recent approval by Apple of Big Fish’s use of subscription billing in a game, which was only days later rejected. Also, Apple forbade the use of incentivized app downloads in April 2011, even though our company’s research shows that users who receive incentives can be highly engaged.

More intelligent ways to drive user acquisition are needed. While pleased they can generally target by country, Jamil would like to see mobile ad networks support demographic targeting.

Got a rant or anti-rant of your own? Please share in the comments.

Rob Weber, Senior Vice President of Mobile Business Development and Co-Founder, W3i, LLC
Rob is an Internet marketing pioneer with over ten, profitable years evolving W3i in the consumer application industry.

With the recent news of the bucket load of funding W3i is investing in developers’ applications there is a lot of interest in the AppX service. One of the features of the service is the free production support. Sounds awesome but what do you actually get out of it? I am one of the Producers at W3i’s Recharge that offers this free “production support” so I’ll let you in on what goes on in what I’ll call “Recharge Studios Freemium Playbook Sessions” where I’ll present a brief example of one of the playbook elements. Here goes:

Social Freemium Playbook Session 1: Envy  

Your game should allow for the purchase and display of content to create envy between players. The best way to apply envy is to set high price points to special items in your virtual store for customization of a player’s character or world. These special items should have an outlet to display this character to other competing users and friends. These friends see your high priced item and know that you paid big money either by playing a lot and earning your way to purchase or by making a premium purchase.

Much like a leader board that encourages players to “beat” their friends, this will create an opportunity for users to try to earn enough currency to purchase the high-priced item to compete with their friends. Additionally, this item could have a modifying affect on your game such as increasing income by 10% during an income cycle or it could have no affect other than visual stimuli.

Here is an example from SkyVu’s Battle Bears Royale, a Recharge partner.

Users begin with a basic character skin for Oliver. He looks pretty good here, but this is the character everyone starts with. The user wants to differentiate themselves.

Users Want to Differentiate Themselves - Start with a Basic Character

No here is an impressive look that will stand out from the crowd.  It is a little spendy so opponents will know how serious the user is about Battle Bears. Since the user already made a premium purchase, he has plenty of joules to spend.

Personalized Characters Indicate the User is Serious About the Game

Battle Bears Royale offers an obvious outlet for displaying this envious bear design to opponents in the live online battle arena. Even if the user doesn’t run into every player, since he disposed of an opponent, his icon appears on the right hand side of the screen for all competitors to see.

Icon Also Shows on Right Hand Side of Screen

At the end of the battle there is another opportunity to see who just dominated the competition with nine kills. It was JIMIVG33 and he has the awesome O.C.O Oliver skin that costs 400,000 joules.

Heat up competition with prominent scoreboard.

There you have it. Envy created by a premium purchase and an outlet to display the item to other users. Stay tuned for the next Social Freemium Playbook Session!

Jimi Van Guilder, Producer, Recharge Studios, W3i, LLC
Jimi is a mobile content expert with a decade of experience working with brands that include Nickelodeon, the NFL, NBC, Marvel, Snoop Dogg and LucasArts. Jimi heads up production at W3i’s wholly owned publishing arm and investment fund, Recharge Studios.

With Windows 8, Microsoft is taking a dramatic change in how users interact with Windows; centered on the Metro interface and application environment.  Here’s what I learned at the Microsoft Build Conference in Anaheim, California as Microsoft revealed the latest incarnation of Windows, namely Windows 8.

In Windows 8, Metro is a replacement for the Start Menu, and the normal desktop view of Windows.  When a user first logs into Windows 8, the first thing they see is the Metro interface with application tiles on the interface that are similar to the tiles seen on Windows Phone 7; these tiles are called “Live Tiles”.  Besides being interfaces to the specific application, they can display information relative to their function on the tile themselves.  For example, a weather app could display your current weather location, the Twitter app could show the latest tweets, and so on.

The Windows 8 Start screen in developer preview version (Build 8102.winmain_win8m3.110912-1733.92eb4451821f0730). It was released at the Build Windows event. Source: Wikipedia

Microsoft is heavily pushing the Metro interface; it appears that they want to use the current base of Windows-based systems to incorporate Metro, rather than having it limited solely to low-powered tablet-based systems.  Microsoft is betting that touch will be everywhere in a few years; much like the age of computers changed when the mouse was introduced.  They are counting on the fact that touch will have the same effect; every system, every monitor, will be touch enabled.  With that context, their promotion of Metro makes sense for the future of Windows.

Touch

Metro is really meant for a touch interface.  Touching a tile opens the application; swiping on the main interface scrolls the available tiles. Swiping from the right edge in any application brings what Microsoft terms “Charms”, which gives access to sharing, search, configuration options and the like. Swiping from the left edge switches between running applications; swiping from the bottom or top of an application will bring menu options available from that application.
The Metro interface is definitely a touch interface; with a touch-enabled screen it is “fluid and fast” as Microsoft described it many times during the conference.  At the same time, however, it turns into a second-rate interface with a mouse and keyboard; much like touch on the classic desktop is not ideal, keyboard and mouse on the Metro interface does not feel ideal.  Granted, many things may change before the release of Windows 8, however, I hope the interface translates better than it does currently.

The classic desktop is still there as a tile on the main Metro window.  All applications that currently run on Windows 7 should work fine under Windows 8; when those applications are launched they open on the classic desktop and work as you would expect them to.  The classic desktop will be available on any x86 and x64 systems; however with the new ARM platforms that Microsoft is targeting (light tablets like the iPad and Android platforms), the classic desktop is rumored to not be available; the only interaction will be through the Metro interface.

Metro Environment

The best way to describe the environment that Metro applications run in is comparing it to current offerings of iOS and Android platforms.  Metro is a closed environment, given only what the Windows Runtime (WinRT) allows.  All apps work within a sandboxed environment; apps have their own storage area and temporary file location.  Any access outside of these areas is only through the user specifically selecting files outside of those environments; the Windows registry and random file access is not allowed.  There is limited interaction between apps; the only way to “share” content between apps is through the use of Contracts defined by Microsoft.  These contracts define what each application shares with other applications, either as a source or a target of those given contracts.  For example, one app might be able to share pictures with another app, or another might be a target for search queries within the application.
Applications are fully managed, much like the application lifecycles you see in iOS and Android platforms.  When an app is visible, it’s in its running state; if the user switches to another application, the former app will go into a suspended mode shortly; taking memory but not able to process any data.  Eventually if the memory needs to be freed, Metro will stop the application; these situations should be handled.

Access to external services, such as querying web services and such are all managed through WinRT.  Metro apps can define background processes for performing tasks and keep the application responsive, but as always, these are all managed by the system.  Any normal service, running under the normal Windows desktop or web service, cannot assume that the Metro app is actually in a running state so any requests should come from the metro app in polling those services.
All device interaction with the computer is also managed with WinRT and Metro; any request to device capabilities, like the camera or accelerometer data, must first be declared in the application manifest.  Additionally, user confirmation must be given when the application tries to access the device module; the user will be given an option to approve the access when the app tries to access the device.

Windows Store

Like the other operating systems mentioned, all Metro apps are solely distributed through the Windows Store.  Like Apple’s App Store, all apps within the Windows Store must be fully approved by Microsoft, matching Microsoft’s design specifications for Metro apps, as well as functionality.  Given that many of Microsoft’s customers are enterprise installations, they did say that there will be enterprise installation methods available (likely through Active Directory or the like); however for all home and individual installations, Metro apps are only installed through the store, and cannot be side-loaded.  There is no actual installation executable (exe or msi) for Metro apps; a metro app is essentially a signed package and manifest, which the Metro environment loads; no custom installation options are available.

As much as has been said about Metro, very little was said about the Windows Store itself.  The current build of Windows 8 has a live tile for the store, but it only is a placeholder and is not currently available.  As mentioned above, all Metro applications must be approved by Microsoft; while the length of this approval process is unknown, they did say that the entire process will be transparent as to what stage of the approval an app is in, as well as detailed explanations as to why an app was rejected, and what needs to be changed to allow it to be approved.  There will be pricing options available, although the license options and Microsoft’s portion of the sale was not described.  It was mentioned that classic desktop applications may be available in the store, however, full details aren’t available.  Microsoft will likely release more information concerning the store when it’s available.

Overall Windows 8 Experience

 As it stands right now, Windows 8 and the Metro interface is pre-beta software; it is very buggy and experimental.  Windows 8 should not be run on production or every-day use systems; you will experience crashes and hangs; to anyone that has run pre-release software this should come as no surprise.  It is possible to run Windows 8 on some virtualization software, although the performance leaves much to be desired, as most VMs have a very basic video card driver, and all of Metro uses DirectX to run.  I would suggest a dedicated piece of hardware if one is available.
Microsoft plans to follow the same release cycle they had with Windows 7; there will be one Beta and on Release Candidate (RC) before the Release to Manufacturer (RTM), with the retail version of Windows 8 coming in the Fall 2012.  Many things will change between then and now, including the items listed above.

For more information about Metro applications and Windows 8 subsystems, visit the Microsoft Windows 8 development site at http://dev.windows.com, and all the videos of the keynotes and sessions from the Build conference can be found at http://www.buildwindows.com.

Joel Braun, Senior Software Developer, W3i

Joel has more than 9 years experience in software development focusing on native Windows development in C++.

The Olympia Center in London England was host to this year’s Apps World Event where a who’s who of the mobile app world came together to discuss both the challenges and opportunities of the flourishing app industry.

Apps World, which doubled in floor space since 2010, is quite telling of how the mobile industry as a whole is expanding exponentially and is estimated to be worth over $17b by 2012 according to GetJar.

Global brands such as Vodafone, Telefonica, Nokia and Spotify were out in full force to demonstrate their view-point and strategies.

One of the clearest indications that the mobile industry is in transition is the ever growing demand for content on the customers’ terms. This is very evident in News and Media publications. Steve Wing, head of digital marketing, consumer media at Guardian News and Media, shared that it’s still too early to tell exactly what impact The Guardian’s new iPad app is having on print sales.

“From our research, a large proportion of iPad people are non-newspaper buying – they’re new digital people,” he said, while pointing out that access to the iPad app is also being bundled with the newspaper’s six and seven-day print subscriptions. “To date, that level of cannibalization has not been there.”

Apps World Highlights and Takeaways

Throughout the event, there were nuggets of information both on stage and through the Twitter-sphere.  Here’s a roundup of app trends that’s not to be missed.

25% of Smartphone owners scan QR codes” Alex Kozloff – Senior Mobile Manager, IAB.

Multi-language apps – I see this as a must for apps in the future – @kirstymca

App downloads are a little like valuing monthly website visitors. How many of them convert?

Apple’s App Store is by far the biggest app distributer; dominating distribution similarly to how iTunes dominates digital music sales. Apple takes a 30% cut of all sales, enough to run at a break even, only making profit on hardware says Javier Lorente of Telefonica. Lorente also highlighted the strength of the Apple ecosystem which will drive HTML5 growth.

If you attended the event, we’d love to hear your thoughts. Share them in the comments below or reach out to us via Twitter @W3i and @OrenTodoros

(credit: image by apps-world.net)