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#An Apple a Day Really Does Keep the Doctor Away An apple a day keeps the doctor away.
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#Taste and Health Benefits of Organic food Are All in the Mind Study finds organic food is considered healthier and tastier even when its not.
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#iphone Jailbreaking Has Become a Lucrative Business iphone jailbreaking has evolved now into a lucrative industry with millions of consumers.
George Mason University senior, Kevin Lee, says he earns about $50, 000 a year with an illicit-sounding pitch on Craigslist:
Get Your iphone Jailbroken Today.##Within minutes, the computer science major can download code onto his customers iphones
and fling open the portal to an alternative world of apps and software that Apple condemns.
The jailbreak perks include: tethering the iphones Internet connection to a laptop or ipad without paying extra AT&T charges;
swapping out the AT&T or Verizon service for a cheaper carrier; or, customizing the iphone with 3-D screens, bouncing icons or funkier fonts.
An early form of jailbreaking started shortly after Apple unveiled the iphone in 2007, but the practice has evolved now into a lucrative industry with millions of consumers.
Quashing many doubts about jailbreakings legality, the Library of Congress ruled in July that the practice did not violate Apples copyright.
To be honest, when I first started, I did it for my friends, myself, but it has snowballed from there,
#said Lee, who jailbreaks iphones to enable new screen designs, then unlocks#them so customers can switch wireless carriers.
I was getting five to 10 customers a week now its 30 to 40. I just had one customer from the Mongolian embassy who was moving to the capital of mongolia,
and he wanted to use the iphone there.##The primary jailbreak apps store, Cydia#named after the insect that bores into apple trees#now earns about $10 million in annual revenue and counts about 4. 5 million active weekly users hunting
for apps. Its dominance in the jailbreak world has grown so much that last year, when a rival store began eating into its market share,
Cydia simply merged with the competitor, unleashing howls about a monopoly. Some developers, meanwhile, are raking in tens of thousands of dollars in sales off their apps, technically called packages,#themes#or tweaks#in jailbreak parlance.
In what might be the ultimate sign that the jailbreak industry is losing its anti-establishment character
Once installed, the car is displayed on the background of the iphone home screen, and the iphone icons are refashioned to look like the emblem on the front grill.
Toyota was also the first major corporation to offer an ad to the jailbreaking site, www. modmyi. com,
#Apple and AT&T have been trying to crack down on the booming black market. Matthews said Apple pressed Toyota to remove the theme and the ad this past week,
In the past, Apple has said jailbreaking the iphone or ipad might void the devices warranty. Two years ago, Apple argued to the Library of Congress,
and that the company incurs very substantial expenses#investigating customer complaints about jailbroken iphones that dont work.
Mark Siegel, an AT&T spokesman said the company can detect which customers are tethering their iphones to other devices using an unauthorized hack;
those customers, he said, are sent polite#letters laying out three options: they can pay AT&T $20 a month on top of the data plan costs;
stop the unapproved tethering altogether; or ignore AT&T but get automatically enrolled and billed anyway.
Siegel declined to say how much revenue is lost from the tethering tools, saying only that a small number of customers do it.
whether or how AT&T challenges the creators of the hacks. Because of its technology, AT&T is more vulnerable than Verizon to unlocking,
programmers say. At the top of the jailbreaking hierarchy sits Jay Freeman, 29, the founder and operator of Cydia, the biggest unofficial iphone app store,
which offers about 700 paid designs and other modifications out of about 30, 000 others that are free.
Based out of an office near Santa barbara, Calif, . Freeman said Cydia, launched in 2008, now earns about $250,
#Not everyone is as open as Freeman about their contributions to this black market apps store.
Some jailbreakers and developers declined speak publicly. And the Craigslist ad and e-mail address posted by Lee,
Many of the programs offered by these developers are unavailable at the Apple app store, and some of the most popular items are not inexpensive:
The $10 Wi-fi Sync app lets you wirelessly sync your iphone to itunes without needing a USB cord.
And the $2 Elert app allows users to keep playing Doodlejump, for instance, without having to leave the game to see incoming e-mails.
Freeman says he takes 30 percent from developers that list programs on his store. He spends most of that money on Paypal transaction fees and server costs.
#Last year, Freeman was more successful in gobbling up an even bigger rival, Rock Your Phone,
whose owner Mario Ciabarra, runs a jailbreak app design firm. The terms: Freeman has to promote the apps Ciabarras company creates on Cydias home page;
and, instead of the usual 70-30 revenue split, Ciabarras business gets to keep virtually all of the sales, according to Freeman.
and I wanted to focus on developing#apps. Ciabarra has created some of the more popular#and pricey#jailbreak apps,
which have been downloaded on more than 5 million devices in more than 150 countries, he said. His $20 Mywi app hooks up your iphones Internet connection to your ipad or laptop
but he says he does not endorse using the program to avoid monthly charges. Ciabarra said AT&T
or Apple have contacted never him or his company, Intelliborn. We have spent a good amount of legal research making sure were not in the wrong,
and dont have to turn your phone on and off to get online.##While many are raking it in from their black market apps,
others are still making smaller but respectable incomes. Rob Grohman, an IT technician from Mechanicsburg, Pa.
000 in the past two years off of his handful of paid themes that redesign a users iphone screens.
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#Why North dakota May be the Best State to Live in North dakota has a budget surplus. While many states are confronting severe budget shortfalls and dragging economies,
While residents are indeed seeing some of the revenue overflow returned to them via income tax and property tax cuts,
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#Wind Turbines Contributing to Decline of Bat Population Wind turbines are a major threat to bats.
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#Stink Bug Epidemic Spreads to 33 U s. States Stink bugs Stink bugs, the smelly scourge of the Mid-atlantic, are hitchhiking
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#â Blackberry Thumbâ##â#New Health Hazard Blackberry thumb Tennis elbow, writers block and even athletes foot are problems than can cause considerable discomfort and more than a little embarrassment.
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#Adoption of Mobile Wallets Being slowed by Behind-the-Scenes Battle Among Corporate Giants Consumers would wave their phones instead of swiping credit cards at the checkout counter.
The cellphone has been more than a cellphone for years, but soon it could take on an entirely new role#standing in for all of the credit
consumers would merely wave their phones. Theres just one hitch: While the technology is already being installed in millions of phones
You have banks competing with carriers competing with Apple and Google, and its pretty much a goat rodeo until someone sorts it out.#
These include Paypal and Google, which want to play a part in a new payment system,
which want to collect fees through their control of the phones themselves. In the middle#and perhaps playing a deciding role#are the retailers.
to store important payment credentials on a secure piece of the chip inside the phone.
There are several technologies that allow phones to communicate wirelessly with other technologies, though the front-runner for payments is called one near-field communication,
was the impetus behind a joint venture by Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile and Discover to create their own mobile wallet.
Barclaycard, already a major player in Britain, will be the first issuer of the groups in-phone credit card
Because their model is powered by a chip that consumers insert into a slot in certain phones,
But that variation may become outmoded as more phones with embedded chips become available. Visa said it was also working with other providers to ensure that its network would work in all wallets.
if a phone was stolen. Consumers would not be responsible for transactions they did not make. Apple and Google already have payment systems#Apples itunes has 200 million accounts tied to credit cards,
while Google Checkout has been less popular. Both could be turned into mobile wallets, allowing users to pay for offline purchases with their Apple or Google accounts.
But they would need access to the cellphone chips and the merchants terminals. Apple could make its own cellphone chips to make this all happen,
but Google could not because it makes only Android cellphone software, not the phones themselves.
Getting retailers on board is important to the widespread adoption of the mobile payments because many merchants will have to replace their card terminals.
While one analyst estimated conservatively, that only 5. 9 percent of merchants will accept mobile payments by 2015,
And in Japan, people have been swiping phones at convenience stores and bus stations for several years. Other global markets may have a single dominant mobile carrier
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#Whatâ##s In Movie theater Popcorns? Popcorn is just one of the expenses of a movie.
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#Red Bull Augmented Racing Game Lets You Build Tracks With Red Bull Cans Red Bull Can Racing Sure,
and you can grab it in the App store right now to try it out for yourself.
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#How to Make Pop Rocks Pop Rocks at home! Chickflix has posted an Instructable that pierces the veil of mystery
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#Top 10 Photos of the Week As with most politicians, breathing fire creates a good sideshow Before you criticize someone,
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#Why World Food Prices Are poised to Keep Climbing In February, world food prices reached the highest level on record.
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#Mcdonaldâ##s â Oatmealâ#Has 11 Weird Ingredients, More Sugar Than a Snickers An oatmeal dont.
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#The Best Foods (and Strategies) for Eating at Your Computer Everybody eats at their computer at some point.
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#Why Chocolate Is Bad For Dogs Chocolate and dogs do not mix. To most of us, chocolate is a delicious substance.
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#Doctors Warn Energy Drinks Putting Consumers at Risk as Sales Soar Around the world there are signs that for some people who consume these drinks,
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#Sheep Are More Intelligent Than Previously Thought â#They Can Even Make â Executive Decisionsâ##Sheep can remember faces
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#Hospitals Shifting From Smoke-free to Smoker-Free Workplaces Smoking habit could cost you your job
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#Restaurant Makes Handbags From The Cow You Eat Fashion Directly From Your Food Forget about plunking down thousands of dollars
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#Unraveling The Secrets of Antarcticaâ##s Fossilized Forests The Fossilized Tree Rings Dont Lie It may be hard to believe,
and C# in fact, one cup of red bell pepper packs an amazing 317%of the recommended daily allowance of Vitamin c and 93%of the recommended Vitamin a.
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#Top 10 Photos of the Week Todays couch potatoes have a way of turning every disaster into a spectator sport I saw the movie, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and
wikipedia 4.)Wrinkled Fingertips If you have spent ever time in a hot tub for too long then you most likely emerged with wrinkly fingertips.
#Nolt said over the phone. He puts his losses at $100 000. Many in the raw milk community believe law enforcement picks on the Amish
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#Google Unveils Honeycomb Tablet Google unveiled Honeycomb, the first version of its Android software specifically designed to run on tablets.
Google has launched an operating system it hopes will break into the tablet computer market dominated by Apple. The company showcased the first version of its Android software specifically designed to run on tablets yesterday.
Pics and video) Honeycomb has greater computing horsepower than in previous incarnations, allowing for a sleeker and theoretically faster interface with built-in video conferencing.
During a highly-anticipated press event at its headquarters in Mountain view, California, Google also introduced a new way for developers to make money by building applications that run on Android.
The unveiling raised the stakes in the fast-growing TABLET PC market, for which Hewlett-packard and Microsoft are also developing rival software.
Analysts said Honeycomb, while addressing a couple of perceived flaws in the operating system when used for tablets as opposed to smartphones,
was unlikely to immediately shift the balance of power. It closed the gap quite a bit, said BGC analyst Colin Gillis.
But he said there was nothing there that was going to make me wait in line overnight, referring to the lines of customers who waited outside retail stores
Google said Android developers will now be able to sell consumers goods from directly within their apps,
And it has started a web version of its applications store for Android devices which will help developers sell their software applications to a larger audience.
Previously, Android apps were available only through client software on devices. Apple, which some analysts expect will unveil a new version of its ipad later this year,
has shipped 14. 8million ipads since April. But it lost its early lead in the smartphone market to Android,
which Google gives away to hardware vendors and which became the number one smartphone operating system in the fourth quarter of 2010, according to research firm Canalys.
Whether Google can do the same in the tablet market will depend on the support its new Honeycomb gets from manufacturers
wireless carriers, and the armies of developers who build applications like games and productivity tools.
Google now has more than 100,000 apps available for Android devices, versus Apples catalogue of more than 300,000.
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#In the future, Your Car May be made of Mushrooms Video games have long been using mushrooms as a source for power, energy and advancement.
#Pogue told AOL News. They are identical in springiness and they are wrapped in vinyl like other car seats.#
#Arlas Kids Closer to Nature project, via Sports One Source (free subscription rquired) Share Thissubscribedel. icio. usfacebookredditstumbleupontechnorati l
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#Monsanto Wins Big and Consumers Again Get Screwed What a great time to become a vegan!
Paul Chang, who leads the traceability initiative at IBM, said the company is basically taking the tracking system it uses for the pharmaceutical industry
With very high-profile food recalls, cellphones and iphones, people have been trained that they can access information very quickly.
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#Collapse of the Honeybee Population Could Be linked to Pesticides Even tiny doses of neonicotinoids made the insects more susceptible to disease.
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#Time Running Out For Many Bird Species in Turkey The White-Headed Duck is threatened among many fowl.
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#Calcium Supplements Linked to Heart attacks: Feed Your Bones Instead Calcium supplements have been linked to increased heart attack risk.
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#Genetically Modified Chickens Developed Than Cannot Transmit Bird flu Scientists develop GM chickens that do not spread bird flu.
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#Genetically modified crops That Glow Green When Stressed Genetically altered Arabdopsis Thaliana plant, with green fluorescent protein (GFP) inserted near the on/off switches for anoxia and drought genes.
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#The Color Orange Was named After The Fruit Life would be quite different if these would have been known as geoluhreads.
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Theyre renegade restaurants,#said Alison Bing, food writer and San francisco Lonely Planet guidebook author, who has tracked the phenomenon.
Ms. Bing, who has attended underground dinners said she had mixed feelings about the lack of health department oversight.
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#Study: Alarming Decline in Bumblebees Found in U s a bumblebee gathers pollen from a sunflower. Four previously abundant species of bumblebee are close to disappearing in the United states,
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#Rare Miniature â Panda Cowâ##Born Rare panda cow A rare miniature cow with markings similar to a panda was born on a farm in northern Colorado.
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#Pepsico is Betting Consumers Want to â Snackifyâ##Drinks Tropolis Because healthy food just isnt cool enough for todays youth,
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#Amazon remains on top for customer satisfaction while Apple drops out of the top 5 Amazon remains on top for customer satisfaction.
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#Ten surprising and scary health findings of 2012 Spongebob Square Pants leads to hyperactivity. 2012 was an incredible year.
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#Chicken farms turn to oregano as a substitute for antibiotics Chickens at Bell & Evans eat feed laced with oregano oil.
In a nationwide telephone survey of 1, 000 adults in March, more than 60 percent told the Consumer Reports National Research center that they would be willing to pay at least 5 cents a pound more for meat raised without antibiotics.
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#Five technologies IBM predicts will be possible in the next 5 years What if a computer could let us feel#the texture of a fabric before we buy clothes online?
Or gives us a whiff or taste of a meal we re thinking of preparing?
it s all within the realm of possibility in the next 5 years, according to IBM s list of technologies it thinks are on the cusp of adoption.
Every year IBM polls its R&d brain trust about what technologies that may have been at the hairy edge before
#IBM fellow and VP of innovation Bernie Meyerson told me recently. This year those closer-to-the-scalp#technologies converge around computers growing ability to handle richer,
So, without further ado, here s IBM s sixth annual 5 in 5 technology picks. 1. Computer with a sense of touch Even people who love shopping online say that it s hard to get a good read on the finished
IBM thinks they also need to hear total sounds#ambient noise, words, music, a lot of inputs to get the full story.
if a cell phone caller is in a car with an engine running at 2, 000 rpm,
teething, or something more serious. 4. Digitized taste buds IBM s brainiacs think that machines will increasingly be able to taste things#like chocolate
For example, researcher and app developer Foodpairing has broken down flavor to its molecular components and has compiled databases that can match the flavor of those ingredients against other completely different ingredients.
By compiling foodpairing trees#its technology can identify vegetable or seafood ingredients that reinforce the flavor of different meats,
So, how s IBM doing as a sooth sayer? Since I m still waiting for the jet packs we were promised decades ago, I m skeptical about technology predictions,
but IBM s list provides a good starting point to track tech progress and priorities. It s also fun to grade its prognostication skills.
IBM has 4 more years to make good. Taking the longer view, looking at IBM s inaugural list in 2006,
it does better. It was on the money with its call that people would be able to access healthcare remotely.
IBM also predicted real-time speech translation now exemplified by products like Samsung s Galaxy speech translation.
Meyerson admits to some less successful calls#especially one about hydrogen-powered vehicles#but he s pretty happy overall with IBM s effort.
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#Boom in app development lures coders but it s tough to make a living Software engineers now outnumber farmers
and have almost caught up with lawyers. Over the last two years Shawn and Stephanie Grimes have spent much of their time in pursuing their dream of doing research and development for Apple, the world s most successful corporation.
writing software applications for mobile devices like the iphone or ipad. Even as unemployment remained stubbornly high
the ranks of computer software engineers, including app writers, increased nearly 8 percent in 2010 to more than a million, according to the latest available government data for that category.
These software engineers now outnumber farmers and have almost caught up with lawyers. Much as the Web set off the dot-com boom 15 years ago,
apps have inspired a new class of entrepreneurs. These innovators have turned cellphones and tablets into tools for discovering,
The iphone and ipad have about 700,000 apps, from Instagram to Angry Birds. Yet with the American economy yielding few good opportunities in recent years, there is debate about how real,
and lasting, the rise in app employment might be. Despite the rumors of hordes of hip programmers starting million-dollar businesses from their kitchen tables, only a small minority of developers actually make a living by creating their own apps, according to surveys and experts.
The Grimeses began their venture with high hopes but their apps, most of them for toddlers, did not come quickly enough
or sell fast enough. And programming is not a skill that just anyone can learn. While people already employed in tech jobs have added app writing to their rsums, the profession offers few options to most unemployed, underemployed and discouraged workers.
One success story is Ethan Nicholas, who earned more than $1 million in 2009 after writing a game for the iphone.
But he says the app writing world has experienced tectonic shifts since then. Can someone drop everything
and start writing apps? Sure,#said Mr. Nicholas, 34, who quit his job to write apps after ishoot,
an artillery game, became a sensation. Can they start writing good apps? Not often, no.
I got lucky with ishoot, because back then a decent app could still be successful.
But competition is fierce nowadays, and decent isn t good enough.##The boom in apps comes as economists are debating the changing nature of work,
which technology is reshaping at an accelerating speed. The upheaval, in some ways echoing the mechanization of agriculture a century ago,
began its latest turbulent phase with the migration of tech manufacturing to places like China.
Four of the most valuable American companies#Apple, Google, Microsoft and I b m.#are rooted in technology.
that set off the app revolution with the iphone and ipad. Since Apple unleashed the world s freelance coders to build applications four years ago,
and the exact composition of a jobs subcategory to reflect the new prominence of apps.
And the tech industry has begun making claims about how apps are contributing to the broader economy A study commissioned by the tech advocacy group Technet found that the app economy##including Apple, Facebook,
Google s Android and other app platforms#was responsible, directly and indirectly, for 466,000 jobs.
Apple said this month that its app business had generated 291,250 jobs for the American economy,
as varied as developers and U. P. S. drivers. That number rose 39 percent in less than a year.
During that time, the number of United states developers paying the $99 annual fee to register with Apple rose 10 percent to 275
Some of these registered developers have other full-time jobs and write apps in their spare time.
Apple has become increasingly assertive in promoting the economic benefits of apps as its own wealth
and prominence have grown and its employment and other business practices have come under scrutiny. The company issued a statement for this article saying it was incredibly proud of the opportunities the App store gives developers of all sizes,
#but declined to answer questions. At the company s annual meeting this spring, the chief executive, Timothy D. Cook, noted that just a few years ago mobile app#wasn t even in people s vocabulary.
Now there s this enormous entirely new job segment that didn t exist before, #he said.
The guy who writes an Apple app one day will write an Android app the next day,
#For many of the developers not working at traditional companies, moreover, job#is a misnomer.
Streaming Color Studios, a game developer, did a survey of game makers late last year.
while not a scientifically valid sample and restricted to one segment of the app market,
the app world is weighted an ecology heavily toward a few winners. A quarter of the respondents said they had made less than $200 in lifetime revenue from Apple.
A few apps have made it extremely big, including Instagram, the photo-sharing app that was bought by Facebook in April for $1 billion.
When app developers dream, they dream of triumphs like that. Most developers, however, make their money
when someone buys or upgrades their app from Apple s online store, the only place consumers can buy an iphone or ipad app.
Apple keeps 30 percent of each app sale. While its job creation report trumpets the $6. 5 billion the company has paid out in royalties,
it does not note that as much as half of that money goes to developers outside the United states. The pie,
while growing rapidly, is smaller than it seems. My guess is that very few developers make a living off their own apps,
#said Jeff Scott, who runs the Apple app review site 148apps. com and closely tracks developments in the field.
The Struggling Entrepreneur Like many computer experts Shawn Grimes started experimenting with apps almost as soon as Apple opened its doors for the iphone.
He wrote an Internet security program as well as a tool for studio photographers to manage portrait sessions.
Those amateur apps pulled in more than $5, 000 from Apple. Late last year, Mr. Grimes was laid off as a computer security specialist by Legg Mason, the Baltimore financial firm.
The dismissal shook his confidence. I worked really hard, #he said. I did my best.
But ultimately my career was not in my hands.##The layoff, a result of Legg Mason s decision to eliminate the jobs of 300 tech support workers,
had been in the works for more than a year, which gave Mr. Grimes and his wife, Stephanie,
Google, which receives two million applications a year, interviewed Mr. Grimes, but he did not make it past the preliminary stages.
With direct employment out of reach, he decided to work independently by writing apps. He had no illusion that he was likely to become rich.
But with hundreds of new apps introduced every day in Apple s store, the field is overcrowded#something the Grimeses learned quickly and painfully.
Ms. Grimes, 32, quit her job teaching kindergartners to join the couple s new venture, Campfire Apps.
They worked steadily on apps that revolved around children. Henry s Smart Headlamp was a learning game for preschoolers
a hunt for hidden objects that the Grimeses hoped iphone-wielding parents would think was worth $2 for a moment of distraction.
The couple aimed for one new app a month, but progress was slow and sales were slower.
In March, with the apps bringing in only about $20 a day, they cashed in Mr. Grimes s 401 (k),
Pro, two ipad 2s, two Apple TVS, two iphone 4s and an iphone 3gs. We justify buying new models by saying we need them to test out the apps,
#Mr. Grimes said. Soon, though, it got to the point where Mr. Grimes needed to take on freelance work,
but took time away from Campfire Apps. By the beginning of summer, troubled by several persistent health care issues
Mr. Grimes now works as an app developer for ELC Technologies, an Oregon company that allowed him to stay in Baltimore.
Ms. Grimes is still working on Campfire Apps. While Mr. Grimes was angry at Legg Mason for laying him off,
So far this year, their eight apps have earned $4, 964. When the newest iphone came out at the end of September,
the couple immediately bought two. Success Beyond Dreams Ethan Nicholas was a Sun microsystems programmer, a games enthusiast and a father of two very young boys,
and he needed some extra cash. So in late 2008 he wrote an artillery game that could be played on the iphone,
which was still relatively new. There were about 11 million in circulation#certainly a large number but nothing like the 270 million that have now been sold.
They founded echobase, a start-up with 14 employees that is developing apps to allow doctors and nurses to view
whose doctors download the app free. Apple makes no money here, but it gets a long-term benefit:
start-ups that succeed will embed the ipad and the iphone more thoroughly into society. The company is, in a sense, another arm of Apple s research and development program.
Apple s brilliant but mercurial chief executive, Steven P. Jobs, agreed to unlock the gates of the fledgling iphone only after much internal argument
and he made sure that Apple would retain strict oversight of every app. In retrospect, it might have been the smartest decision ever made by a company that prides itself on creating the future.
The App store opened in July 2008 with 500 apps. In an interview, Mr. Jobs laid bare the company s goal:
Sell more iphones.##And so, thanks in large part to the multitude of apps, it came to pass.
More iphones#nearly seven million#were sold in the next three months than in the entire previous year,
and that was just the beginning of the ascent. Apps changed the iphone from a simple phone into a mobile computer,
#said Mr. Scott of148apps. com. Apple s financial documents show just how crucial app inventors are.
If the developers stop developing, the company warned again last month, customers may choose not to buy the company s products.#
#So far, there has not been much risk of revolt. Developers have expressed flickers of grumpiness at Apple s 30 percent cut of each app sale.
A shadowy group calling itself theapp Developer Union briefly posted a petition online this summer asking for something more equitable.#
#Apple declined to comment about the union, which disappeared from the Web as mysteriously as it had arrived.
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