This all could be yours?

Did you wake up today thinking that winning a $10,000 iTunes gift card could help your crappy life? You're in luck! Apple is giving away that awesome prize to whoever downloads the 50th billion app at its store, which is expected to happen sometime later today. Just like your third-grade softball league, Apple is also giving away a $500 gift card to those who come in second through 50th place after it reaches its goal.

Apple has played this trickery in the past, too. When the App Store logged its 10th and 25th billion download, winners received a $10,000 gift card (big whoop). Geek.com notes that the App Store's downloads is still growing despite competition from other outlets, like Google Play. In January 2011, the store hit 10 billion downloads; and a mere 14 months later, the 25th billion app was downloaded.

So, have fun buying all those apps you don't need today for a gift you'll never finish. There's so many seasons of the Real Housewives (like the crappy D.C. season) waiting for you in the iTunes store if you're successful.

Whatever Vine does or doesn't have, it also has this: As of a new update released today, Vine has a 17+ rating from Apple, as well as a feature that allows you to block users, and the (new) ability to share videos to Facebook and Twitter.

Of course, while the new age-rating formally prohibits iPhone users under the age of 17 from downloading the app, adolescents have been lying about their ages to ogle naked bodies since before the great sex-show known as the Internet was a twinkle in the eye.

Whoops. (Photo: The Amazing iOS 6 Maps)

If there's one thing the Great iOS6 Map Crisis of '12 has taught us, it's to appreciate the mapping function we have, or rather had. Google Maps isn't perfect (just try finding the High Street station), but at least it's never turned any highways into roller coasters, unlike Apple's new offering. And so as the initial disbelief faded, the question became: When the hell are we getting a version of Google Maps available through the App Store?

The New York Times has an answer for you: "by the end of the year." Hopefully.

The Gray Lady reports:

"Google is developing a maps application for iPhone and iPad that it is seeking to finish by the end of the year, according to people involved with the effort who declined to be named because of the nature of their work."

We can already hear you whining, "But whyyyy?" Well, Google wasn't exactly prepared for Apple to boot its maps off the iPhone, as the companies' existing contract still had some time left on the clock.

And according to at least one of the Times' sources, Google wants whatever it releases to include 3D imagery, but all of Google's 3-D imager is trapped in Google Earth, "which is a separate app with a separate code base from Google Maps, so it would take some time to combine the two." Sounds like there'll be a lot of all-nighters happening for the GOOG's resident cartographers. At least they won't be bored anymore, right?

Meanwhile, Google chairman Eric Schmidt is basically rubbing Apple's face in its terrible faceplant. Reuters relays a few of his choice comments:

"We think it would have been better if they had kept ours. But what do I know?" Schmidt told a small group of reporters in Tokyo. "What were we going to do, force them not to change their mind? It's their call."

We're starting to suspect Mr. Schmidt might have been an eccentric mafia enforcer in a previous life. In fact, we can't help but wonder whether Google is even in any rush to get this app out the door, or whether the company is taking its sweet time, under the theory, "That'll teach them to appreciate us properly."

UPDATED: The headline has been altered to more clearly reflect that Google has not confirmed that an iOS 6 version is in the works.

Basically. (Photo: flickr.com/cameronparkins)

We leave the Internet for 24 hours, and this happens: Something is seriously wrong with Apple's app store. As in, if you updated Instapaper or Angry Birds Space HD Free yesterday, there's a good chance it just crashed upon launch. Users are having to perform clean installs, while developers are dealing with annoyed users who assume the fault lies with the app itself.

No one wants to do either of those things while recovering from a holiday hangover.

Instapaper creator Marco Arment kicked up the initial fuss with a rather disgruntled blog post. As he tells it, no sooner had Apple approved the latest Instapaper update than Mr. Arment received a flood of customer complaints that the app was no longer working. He wrote:

This didn’t make sense — obviously, Apple had reviewed it, and it worked for them. My submitted archive from Xcode worked perfectly. But every time I downloaded the update from the App Store, clean or not, it crashed instantly.

Lots of anxiety and research led me to the problem: a seemingly corrupt update being distributed by the App Store in many or possibly all regions.

So much for that vaunted review process.

Mr. Arment immediately emailed App Review and, while he hasn't heard anything back, within a couple of hours anyone attempting a reinstall got a working version.

The developers at GoodReader, a PDF-reading app, confirmed the troubles in a blog post and added, "It appears that Apple has recently changed something in their app distribution engine, and ever since that change there are ongoing problems at Apple's end."

We've reached out to Apple for comment and will update if we hear anything.

It's not clear what created the problem, which means we've got no way of knowing whether it's been fixed. Several apps now appear to be updating properly, but as of last night, the Verge found at least a couple of the apps on Mr. Arment's list still demonstrating the aforementioned wonkiness. And as of this morning, Mr. Arment is still warning developers via Twitter that, "if you can help it, DO NOT release app updates today. The corruption is widespread and ongoing," adding later than the list of corrupted apps currently stands at 73.

Every developer that ever had problems getting an app approved is cackling so hard right now.

Gifture at work. (http://gif.vg/p/l7j9f01)

The humble GIF has seen a renaissance in recent years, even evolving, in some cases, into an arresting artform. Now Gifture, which just hit the App Store today, hopes to make them into an entertaining alternative to the smartphone snap.

When Gifture's press release first landed in Betabeat's inbox, the sight of an Instagram-like interface and the prospect of yet another social mobile photo app left us unimpressed. Then we clicked through to a sample post, only to find a charming animated image of Astoria’s elevated train at night, flickering like a silent film. Downloading the app, we discovered an feed filled what appear to be members of the Gifture team: designer James McDonald bellyflopping onto a bed; business development brain Erik Stern doing a goofy dance outside an Apple store.  Intrigued, Betabeat reached out to Mr. Stern, who offered a bit of background on their creation. He explained that, to his team (consisting of just himself, Mr. McDonald, and developer Devin Doty), the appeal of gifs lie in the ability to tell a complete story. “We feel like with GIFs, we can paint a more complete picture of moments that we want to share. And gifs can be hilarious, gifs can evoke a certain emotion.” Given that, their goal is to “evolve the picture-taking and GIF-making experience,” he explained.

Asked how Gifture will stand out among competitors such as Flixel, Kinotopic, and Cinemagram, Mr. Stern expressed absolute confidence in their product: “We felt if we focused on user experience and creating a complete GIF-making solution, that we would stand out. Again, with a laser focus on design, we felt like we could distinguish ourselves as the GIF-maker of the iPhone and iPod touch, and again, I feel like we’ve done that,” he told Betabeat.

“At the end of the day,” he added, “We want to make a product that we want to use, so we felt like with Gifture we could do that.”

They’re off to a good start: Today they nabbed the App Store’s coveted top featured app spot. Mr. Stern attributed the nod to their “laser focus on design,”  He wouldn’t disclose numbers, other than to say that “we’ve had a ton of people sign up,” and “we’ve seen a lot of success so far, and we hope that it keeps going.”

via BoingBoing

In a sign of technology's growing pervasiveness in the cultural ether, Boing Boing pointed us to an upcoming show at the Pace Gallery on West 25th Street will feature art from David Bryne that's inspired, almost entirely by the looks of it, by Apple's App Store. The exhibit called "Social Media" (naturally) says will it will focus:

"Contemporary artists exploring public platforms for communication and social networks through an aesthetic and conceptual lens. In an era of increasingly omnipresent new technologies, Social Media examines the impact of these systems as they transform human expression, interaction, and perception."

Wow, that was almost as obtuse as business jargon. Just throw in a few strats and pivots and this could be a company bio.

So what would the App Store look like if Mr. Byrne was a developer? Along with Invisible Me (to the left), there's Weaselface, an app that "lends snark and satire to any written text--including the Bible!" There's also  Childster, which sounds like something Pedo-Bear would be into, but is actually "turns your phone into a babysitter," which features "a new setting for monitoring aging parents."

We'd definitely plunk 99 cents for that Weaselface widget.

The internet has not been kind to traditional newspapers. But the NY Post's decision to block access to their site through the iPad's browser is myopic and damaging. 

Users who tried to access NY Post articles through the iPad this morning were served this message, asking them to download the official app instead. This means shelling out $1.99 to buy the app, which comes with a 30 day free trial. After that its $6.99 a month to keep reading.

Betabeat is all in favor of paywalls, but a surprise attack is not the way to launch one. Readers should have been given the chance to sign up for at least a week in advance, and anyone with a regular subscription should get the iPad access for free. Similarly, anyone who buys the app should be able to sign in from the web if they so choose.

"Okay this is bad. This is breaking the web. If no one used the iPad it wouldn't matter. But lots of people use it," wrote ur-blogger and visiting NYU scholar Dave Winer. "I wonder how Apple feels about this? I can't imagine they like it. I can see the ads now. 'Get an Android tablet to read the web.'"

If readers trashy lowbrow gossip in an iPad only format, they would already have paid for The Daily.

Apple does have a trademark on "IBOOK," but according to the suit, it only applies to computers. (Apple once sold a PC known as the "iBook). Colby alleges that Apple didn't use the term to apply e-books or a means of delivering e-books until the iPad debuted last year. If Apple starts applying it to e-books and apps, the suit says it will render Colby's trademark worthless. But that's not the only trademark suit Apple got smacked with this week.

Apple was also sued for a trademark infringement on "iCloud" by a Phoenix-based VoIP company. Don't feel too bad for Mr. Jobs, though. After all, this is the same company that sued Amazon over the use of the highly-original, proprietary term "App Store." In their injunction to stop Amazon from using the term, Apple said, "Consumers of mobile software downloads are likely to be confused as to whether Amazon's mobile software download service is sponsored or approved by Apple." Somehow we feel like the giant Amazon logo will set them straight.

Twitter recently announced a 12-day death sentence for full clients like Seesmic, Hootsuite and Brizzly by removing the ability for third parties to access users' private messages. Mr. Arment's reaction, as someone who makes his living as a third party developer? Tough luck.

It’s the simple, brutal truth. Twitter must do what’s best for Twitter. They owe us nothing.

It’s not a public good. It’s not a right. It’s a private, entirely centralized service with no meaningful competition and a massive network-effect barrier to competitive entry. Twitter has all of the power in its relationship with users and developers.

It doesn’t matter whether third-party clients helped make it popular. Twitter has reciprocated for years by giving such apps a compelling platform for which to sell software. Successful Twitter-client developers have made a ton of money in exchange for the help they provided in making Twitter popular.

The situation isn't exactly analogous--Apple is an established company and Twitter is still a young, rapidly-evolving product. "Next year’s Twitter might be radically different from today’s," he wrote. "You can’t count on anything about Twitter to remain constant."

But Apple recently introduced a drastic change that was devastating to some developers by requiring in-app purchases to go through its official subscription system, a move that benefits 1) content publishers, 2) Apple, and, Apple would probably argue, 3) users. Even the supposedly-open Android Market recently yanked the music-streaming app Grooveshark.

Moral of the story? No one is safe. But considering the leaps and hurdles that developers used to have to go through in order to build software to sell to consumers--buying shelf space! dealing with Microsoft!--the mobile app economy is still a pretty good place for developers.

"We were working on a lot of different things at once, and with a small team that really slows you down," says Hype Machine founder Anthony Volodkin. Moving a big portion of the teams work to MongoDB really helped. "Now that these things are done, we can create new things faster." The app released today was built in just a few months.

An Android app is on the list of projects, but Volodkin says the approach will be very different. "I think for us, the Android will be more about collaborating with the developer community and having them come up with cool things to build using our API."

Apple's ecosystem is a curated experience in which users are much more likely to pay for goods and services. Android is a bit wilder, more fragmented, but with a freedom that makes it ripe for experimentation. "There are a number of challenges there, but I think it's a cool playground," says Volodkin.

The more rigid constraints of iOS were helpful, says Volodkin, for building his first mobile app. "We are used to building on the web, where there is more flexibility, so to find a good way to boil down the Hype Machine experience to its core was difficult. The iPhone really makes you prioritize."

Volodkin has found the mobile app changes the way he listens. "I found I pay more attention," he told Betabeat. "When you are using the website, it's so easy to jump to something else the moment your mind wanders, that it's easy not to leave the same amount of space in your mind for the new music. The app's flow is different, so you get more focus."