iLounge

By Charles Starrett

Senior Editor, iLounge
Published: Wednesday, May 20, 2009
News Category: Mix

Skyhook Wireless, provider of the iPhone and iPod touch’s Wi-Fi-based location services, has released a report in which it claims that location-aware apps on BlackBerry’s App World service cost roughly four times as much, on average, as those offered on the App Store or Android Marketplace. The study found that the average price of a location-aware app in BlackBerry App World is $13.60, compared with $3.60 in the App Store and $0.84 in the Android Marketplace. In addition, the App Store had the highest number of location-aware apps—over 2,300—and the highest percentage of paid for location-aware apps, at over 75%. By comparison, 67% of BlackBerry location-aware apps are paid, while 80% of location-aware apps on the Android Marketplace are free. More information is available in the full report (PDF Link).

Stanford University’s iPhone Application Programming CS193P class has become the fastest iTunes U class to hit one million downloads, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. “I had a feeling this class would be popular but the level of popularity is surprising,” said Troy Brant, one of the graduate student instructors for the course. The course has been offered on iTunes U since April 1, and is only one of roughly 100 courses offered by the university through iTunes U. “This one by far grew more rapidly in public response and interest” than other classes, said Brent Izutsu, manager of Stanford’s iTunes U offerings. “I know (Stanford physicist) Leonard Susskind has several hundred thousand downloads but that was over 12 quarters.”

A pair of men have been arrested in connection with a recent robbery of an AT&T store in Lake Forest, CA. At 9:30 a.m. on Thursday, May 14, two armed men robbed the AT&T store on El Toro Road, forcing employees to lock the doors and hand over several packages of cellphones and cash, including roughly 70 iPhones. The men were arrested between Saturday evening and Monday morning on suspicion of robbery and kidnapping; Orange County Sheriff’s spokesman Jim Amormino said none of the iPhones have been recovered, and were likely sent to other countries.

Amazon has released version 1.1 of its Kindle book reading application for iPhone and iPod touch. New in version 1.1 is the ability to read in portrait or landscape mode, to pinch to zoom in on images in books, to select alternate background and text colors to improve low-light readability, and the ability to tap the sides of the screen or flick to turn pages. Amazon’s Kindle for iPhone application is available now as a free download from the App Store.