“At tap tap tap, we have no centralized location. We have over 20 people working together on well over a dozen active projects and the team is spread-out over all parts of the globe. One of the biggest benefits is that everyone’s able to work in the comfort of their own home, their favorite coffee shop, or pretty much any place they desire. But along with this great benefit comes some disadvantages compared with more traditional businesses where it can be difficult to share ideas and keep everybody in synch with each other. So how are we all able to collaborate in an effective way?”
(via taptaptap)
“In an apparent response to rising concerns about children buying costly virtual goods in freemium apps, Apple is reportedly discussing the possibility of reducing a 15-minute purchase window for users to buy successive apps or purchase in-app goods with only one password sign-in. According to PocketGamer, a source said the company is looking at reducing the amount of time it holds on to a password in a possible effort to stem unwanted app purchases.”
(via Gigaom)
“The filters only apply to searches, so you can’t sort the category lists by star rating, sadly, but it means an end to the endless paging, and makes third-party app aggregators like App Advice a little less essential.”
(via Wired)
“So we have a huge number of potential customers who are very comfortable installing a lot of apps and can buy ours by simply entering a password. Without app review, that market would be very different.”
(via Hacker News)
HN Comments: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2178439
“While the February 13 date falls oddly on a Sunday, making it an unlikely date for an iOS release, it appears that iOS 4.3 will at least be released around that day.”
(via AppleInsider)
“Update: The golden master build of Xcode 4 appears to have been pulled from Apple’s site, with only the earlier Developer Preview 6 currently available for download.”
(via MacRumors)
“Hed said the company studied the iPhone app ecosystem hard, looking at what worked. A team of 12 at Rovio spent eight months developing and refining Angry Birds before it was released.
(Indeed, another top-selling iPhone game Doodle Jump incorporated similar elements: a sharp design appealing for people of all ages and a physics-based gameplay.)
It wasn’t completely random that Angry Birds did very well,” Hed said. “We did a lot of homework before we ended up with that concept.”
“After producing a viral hit, Rovio kept Angry Birds popular by doing its own marketing with social-networking tools such as Facebook and Twitter, and by continually adding new products.
“We try to respond to every question asked on Twitter,” Vesterbacka said. “Sometimes I reply, too.”
The company also regularly issues software updates for the game, adding new levels to keep people talking about Angry Birds.”
“Today’s goal is to design a basic game using Cocos2d, Chipmunk, and SpaceManager. I believe the best lessons are those learned from example, so for this article I’ll walk you through building a small example of a game and show off some of the features of SpaceManager. Some of the things we’ll demonstrate here are: * Save and Load entire game state
* Explosions in Chipmunk
* Creating a debug-layer
* Using impulses
* Retina Support”
“Apple has approved an update to an app that required iOS 4.3 for all the features to work correctly. The app that has received the approved update is called StreamToMe. StreamToMe is an app that allows you to stream music, photos and videos from your Mac or PC over WiFi and 3G. Nothing special there except that this version has the option to use AirPlay which requires iOS 4.3 to function.”
