Now, no matter what next-gen platform you want to develop for, iPhone, Android, or "whatever comes next," says the company, you can stay on top of your business with one easy-to-use tool.

Apple may be monkeying around with some developers and restricting certain highly anticipated apps from inclusion in their store, but that's not going to stop the overall land rush to develop for the iPhone. Why? Success stories like that of Trism, a popular puzzle game that raked in $250K over the course of two months, prove there is potential for huge success on this platform. It's nothing like the mobile market has ever seen.

And today, we receive yet another next-generation platform designed to compete with iPhone: Google's Android, a mobile OS with applications of its own. Even before this platform became publicly available, Google had developers competing to win cash prizes by building the most promising apps for the upcoming OS. With winning prize amounts in the range of $100,000 - $275,000, these were "quit-your-day-job" numbers.

If Building Mobile Apps Is Big Business, Then We Need Big Business Tools

When someone gives up months of their time to build an application or makes the decision to build a business around an application, there's a real need for tools that can help measure an app's success (or, perhaps, the lack thereof). What developers need is a way to track all the information about their application - from downloads to daily users as well as historical changes.

Did everyone download the application right away but never really used it more than a few times? How many people installed the latest update? Are ads generating any revenue? How do I compare to my competitors? Is my app doing better on iPhone or Android?These are the types of questions a developer needs to know the answers to. Once they have answers, they can then make informed business decisions like whether they should add more employees, adjust app prices, etc.

Looking at the screenshot below, you can see the types of answers the Medialets analytics program provides. Active users, average daily users, sessions, average sessions, ad revenue, app store ranking, metrics, historical changes, and much more are easily visible in the program's well-designed UI.

In addition to those basic metrics, developers can also gain insight as to how users interact with the application itself. This is done via custom app events, which are basically small triggers written into the application itself. They can be anything about the application that a developer would want to track; for example: how many people beat the first level of a game? How many people clicked the link that provides the directions in the location-aware app? These triggers let developers receive the kind of feedback that console game developers would only get after hours on end of monitoring focus group users as they interact with a game.

Why Medialets?

Medialets isn't the only company out there that can help iPhone developers analyze and monetize their applications. However, they're already five to six times bigger than their nearest competitor, Pinch Media, having managed to sign up around 200 developers within their first sixty days. Those developers are building some of the top-rated applications out there, too.

But size alone is not the key difference between Medialets and Pinch Media (or others like them). The key difference is in their focus. Where those other companies are iPhone-only, Medialets is building tools for iPhone, Android, and whatever platform comes next. For today's app developers who don't want to be tied to just one mobile OS, they can now choose to have the same consistent tool set available no matter where their applications are installed.

Developers can sign up for the beta of this new analytics program at http://www.medialets.com/android.

Before we look at apps and other solutions, let's try to nail down just what exactly is lifestreaming. The thing about lifestreaming that is perhaps confusing to some is that the term is this very general, all-encompassing word that can be applied to all sorts of things from a FriendFeed stream to a Tumblog to a full-on hosted stream at a site like Swurl.com.

There are people that argue that sites like FriendFeed are not, in fact, lifestreaming sites because "aggregation is not lifestreaming." There is some truth to that because those types of sites only collect a sliver of your activities, specifically those on the social web, and that's only a small portion of your "real" life. However, short of strapping a camera to your head, there's not that many ways (yet) to truly "lifestream" everything you do. However, by taking this concept to the mobile phone, you're apt to share more about your life than just what you can do when behind a computer screen. The convenience of having mobile tools for lifestreaming will only serve to push this movement forward, and what better place to start than the gadget-du-jour, the iPhone.

Apps For The iPhone

For iPhone users, one of the major benefits to owning the device is the application platform it provides. With apps, you can begin a "real" lifestream - that is, one that acknowledges that more life is spent away from the computer than at it. You would think that iPhone would be a great platform for lifestreaming apps, but there were surprisingly few to be found (so far). We hope to see this list improved in time, if not with apps, then at least with iPhone-ready mobile web sites.

LifeCast

The LifeCast app is one of the first iPhone apps that allows you to easily lifestream from anywhere in the world, no computer required. With LifeCast, you can post text and images to either a Tumblr or Blogger account. (Blogger users need to use Picasa, though). The app is simple enough to use and supports multiple lifecasts, so you can have one for work, one for personal use, etc. For Tumblr users, this app is a quick and easy way to keep your blog up to date when you're out and about, but the setup for Blogger seems a bit more complicated. No other platforms are supported at this time, but that may change in the future, so keep your eyes on this one.

Note: we noticed the reviews of this app in the App Store were mixed, so it's worth noting that LifeCast is on GetSatisfaction if you have any issues. Our tests to Tumblr worked just fine, though.

WordPress and TypePad Apps: Blogs Can Be Lifestreams, Too

Just because a platform was designed for traditional blogging, that doesn't mean you have to use it that way. With a decent theme and layout, even your TypePad or WordPress blog can be transformed from a long-format site filled with articles to a lifestream. The beauty of this solution is that you can keep the content flowing - photos and short updates while you're out and about - and still occasionally interject a longer post when you have something to say. Will this be a blog that attracts the attention of thousands of followers? Probably not (well, unless those uploaded photos are extremely compelling if you know what we mean), but it would certainly be a nice way to for an extended family to share their photos and activities with each other. Both TypePad and WordPress have iPhone apps available for download.

Previous Coverage: WordPress Comes To iPhone

The Social Media Lifestream, iPhonized

Although sites like FriendFeed get a lot of credit for being a "lifestream" portal, as noted above, they're really more of an aggregation of your activity across the social web. If you Twitter from your iPhone are you really lifestreaming? We'll leave that up for debate, but needless to say there are a number of sites that let you lifestream (and interact with the lifestreams of others) from your iPhone.

As you use the "real" internet on your iPhone, your activity on the social web can be piped into a service like FriendFeed, SocialThing, or Lifestream.fm. But to tweak it - you know, hide some entries add comments to others, post a link, etc. - you'll need an iPhone app or iPhone-enabled site. That's where sites like FriendFeed To Go (www.fftogo.com) can help. But since both SocialThing and Lifestream.fm are still in private beta, they aren't much use to the average user just now. However, if you're lucky enough to be in on the private beta, check out www.socialthing.com/iphone. Lifestream.fm doesn't seem to have iPhonized themselves yet. Unfortunately, there don't seem to be any actual apps for these sites though.

Image Courtesy of the Lifestream Blog

What's Missing?

Of course, the biggest thing missing from the iPhone is video - how can a lifestream be complete without that? Without the ability to record and upload video from an iPhone to a service on the web, any lifestreaming solution for iPhone will just be a little bit incomplete. (For non-iPhone users, though, VentureBeat had a great summary of tools for broadcasting your life).

As far as what else is missing, it can be summed up in one word: apps. Even Swurl, whose lifestreaming platform we praised earlier this year, doesn't have an app or iPhone-enabled web site available. And then there are the smaller players like Profilactic and SuprGlu and the like, who could have potentially used the new iPhone platform to launch their sites into niche success stories. Unfortunately, it seems, lifestreaming is still too new to be worthy of much development yet, Sweetcron withstanding. That's a shame, because more and more blogs are incorporating or becoming lifestreams every day. But just who is going to give us the tools we need to keep them updated?

According to Apple's press release, more than 10 million applications have been downloaded since the App Store went live. That is indeed an impressive number. Medialets has crunched some data on these apps and noticed a couple of interesting trends:

• the average price per paid app has fallen from $6.03 at launch on Friday to $5.47 on Sunday
• in general, reviewers on iTunes are rating free apps higher than paid apps
• free apps are rated 25% more often than paid apps

As more apps are added to the store, it makes sense that the average price would drop.

While there are no exact download numbers for the apps available from Apple, Medialets used the number of reviews as a proxy to estimate the number of downloads. Obviously, users are going to download more of the free apps than the paid apps, but if the number of reviews is any indication, the market for paid apps is also very active.

Mobile Gaming

Users are clearly thinking of the iPhone and iPod touch as a mobile gaming platform as well. Currently, except for MLB's At Bat (iTunes link), all the top downloaded apps in the store are games.

This demonstrates that users are quite willing to pay for iPhone applications, as long as they are reasonably priced and easily available. Most of the games are priced between $4.99 and $9.99.

Crashes

While the arrival of native applications on the iPhone and iPod touch was looked forward to with great expectations, reality is slowly setting in and a lot of users and developers are reporting numerous crashes. Most of the time, applications are just crashing right back to the homescreen, but some crashes are taking down the complete operating system, forcing a reset of the phone.

As noted by TUAW, a lot of developers are blaming Apple for this. Judging from the fact that Apple's own Remote application has crashed here quite a few times, it seems that developers rushing out their apps with bugs to beat the deadline isn't the only reason for these problems.

Looking Ahead

While the App Store is still going through some growing pains, it is already clear that there is a huge demand for native apps and that users think of the iPhone as a platform and not just as a fancy mobile phone. Apple is currently facing two major problems: crashing applications and also some cheating among developers. Chances are that Apple is going to (hopefully) release a firmware update pretty soon that will fix the crashes (if they are indeed Apple's fault) and will change the way it sorts applications to prevent some of the more blatant cheating by developers.

Overall, the store has been a major success already, now the question that remains is if it can keep this momentum going after the first wave of curious users has tried it out.

With Cascada Mobile's platform called Breeze, anyone can take their idea from thought to app in about fifteen minutes. Well, maybe not anyone - the apps are built using HTML, so you would have to have some rudimentary web programming knowledge to use their platform. Still, you have to admit, that's a lot easier than using a professional development platform.

With Breeze, you can build, test, and distribute mobile J2ME apps that run on hundreds and handsets. And these are "real" apps, too - fully integrated mobile applications with their own icon, not just mobile widgets.

The "Breeze Simulator" lets the novice developers test their app for hundreds of different handsets - a usually daunting task in the world of mobile web programming where apps that work on one model don't work on another, even if they're similar in design or from the same manufacturer.

Check out this video that shows Breeze in action:
Cascada Mobile Breeze from Cascada Mobile on Vimeo.

In addition, Breeze developers will receive a line of code they can put on their web sites, blogs, or social network profiles that let their visitors download the app by entering their mobile number. Breeze takes care of the distribution via SMS, WAP Push, and direct download. To subsidize the cost of distribution, the apps are ad-enabled. However, developers wanting to go ad-free can pay for the use of Breeze in order to do so.

Should Programming Be Left To the Professionals?

So, now we have an application that lets everyone program web apps (Iceberg) and a platform for building mobile J2ME apps, what's next? If this trend is to continue, the next big move would be to let novice developers build their own iPhone applications, you would think. But the real question is do we actually want amateurs building apps for our mobile devices? Or would you rather that was left to professionals?

You can try some Breeze applications for yourself from here. (Ooh, mobile Twitter!)

Oliver Goldman recently posted an entry on his Adobe company blog, declaring:

"Adobe AIR supports enterprise deployment. There; I've said it. We've had a bit of trouble getting this message out, so I wanted to be clear about this right up front."

Curious about what kind of apps were really being used in the enterprise, we contacted Adobe to get some details. What we found out was that several big name companies have already starting using AIR on the corporate desktop, using apps to provide everything from real-time informational updates to employee directories. Below is a look at some of the apps in use today.

Enterprise AIR Apps

Employee Directory

Of course, one of the first deployments of AIR is going to be at Adobe, where they've been dog-fooding their own platform for a while now. At Adobe, one of the apps that they use is an employee directory which shows employee names, titles, details, photos, presence, and where that person is in the company hierarchy. Companies wishing to build their own employee directory app can use the sample app available here to do so.

Employee Directory Sample

Sales Team Apps

Another application used by Adobe and others is an app built for the sales team which allows them to enter customer issues, prioritize them, escalate them, and track them. The beauty of this app is its capability for offline mode - something which would benefit any sales team. When offline, sales professionals can enter in issues, and when they're back online those issues get synced back to the company's servers. To get started building an application for a sales team at their own company, a developer can access the Salesbuilder app available here.

Salesbuilder Sample App

Executive Dashboard

At Sharp in Japan, company employees use an executive dashboard built on AIR that shows things like incoming orders, inventory levels in different warehouses and factories, and the throughput of that inventory through every stage of the production process. (No screenshot available)

Customer Account Updates

In the finance industry, the international corporation that is Deutsche Bank has deployed Adobe AIR to their desktops which lets employees actively monitor activity on their customers' accounts. The AIR solution provided a better alternative to what they had used prior - a browser-based application that required hitting the "refresh" button to see updates. Said Mike LaCava, Director and Global Head of Internet Channels in Global Transaction Banking at Deutsche Bank, AIR let them "leverage the power of the desktop and the Web to immediately deliver customized desktop notifications that will keep our clients well-informed and empowered while they carry out their daily activities."

NASDAQ Market Replay

Another real-time use of AIR in the finance industry comes from NASDAQ, where an AIR app called NASDAQ Market Replay lets financial professionals replay market activity in detail at any point in time - even drilling down into an individual stock to view its historical performance. Here, AIR shows its ability to work with an extremely large data set, which is something that wouldn't be quite as instantaneous in a browser.

NASDAQ Market Replay

Apps for Salesforce

SaaS technology and services company, Model Metrics, has released an on-demand AIR application that leverages salesforce.com's new PaaS (Platform-as-a-Service) Force.com to build an app called Accelerate4Pharma. This app is designed for the pharmaceutical marketing, sales, and customer service processes. Again, it was the online/offline switching capabilities that prompted the company to choose Adobe AIR and Flex.

Model Metrics Accelerate4Pharma

While those are just a sampling of apps, there are still other companies using Adobe Flex and Adobe AIR, including: Atlantic Records; BBC; Business Objects; FedEx Corp.; Loyalty Management Group (Nectar); Nickelodeon/MTVN Kids and Family Group's Neopets; and Wilson Sporting Goods.

Sample & Featured Apps

For any company wanting to deploy AIR apps internally, the Adobe Developer Center features code and sample apps for numerous applications like Lineup, an app that lets you browse your Exchange calendar; S3E, an app that provides a simple user interface for reading, writing, and deleting files stored on Amazon's S3 data storage services; Timeslide, an app that delivers notifications to the desktop; and more.

You can also get access to completed, business-ready AIR apps like Agile Agenda, a project manager application; SearchCoders, a forum reader, blog reader, chat client, notepad, and bookmark manager designed specifically for developers looking for Flex-related information; among others.

Deploying AIR

For I.T. admins, getting the Adobe AIR apps to the desktop is as easy to do as using whatever deployment tools are already in place, like IBM Tivoli or Microsoft SMS. The redistribution site has more details on this.

These installations can even be customized in three different ways: 1) Enable/disable automatic AIR updates (good for locked-down environments), 2) Enable/disable the installation of AIR applications (to limit users to the apps already on their machines), and 3) Enable/disable the installation of AIR applications with unknown publishers (to limit users to only installing apps from known publishers.) More information is available in this whitepaper. (P.S. On the last page is an email address where you can bug Adobe for GPOs, which aren't available yet).

As far as making any pre-built apps for SMBs available, Adobe isn't there yet, and they may never be - they typically just provide technologies for others to build upon. However, there is a chance for seeing more productivity apps in the future in the same vein as the current acrobat.com AIR app (which, by the way, is really worth the download).

Acrobat.com AIR App

UPDATE: Adobe AIR for I.T. Administrators just launched today.

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Android: Like iPhone, But Open

The session at "Introduction to Android" on Wednesday was full, with everyone wanting to get a look at the latest version of Android. They were not disappointed. The comparisons to the iPhone were obvious: a home screen with colorful icons, a GUI you can interact with via finger taps and swiping gestures, and a built-in maps program.

However, unlike the iPhone, whose popularity led to numerous unauthorized third-party apps prior to the launch of the official SDK, Google is actually encouraging developers to create applications for Android and rewarding them for doing so with cold, hard cash thanks to the Android Developer Challenge. (See our previous coverage here). This has led to numerous third-party applications ready to flood the market when the phone goes to launch, regardless as to which developers win the big prizes (Pictured: Teradesk App). According to PCWorld, Google Developer Advocate Jason Chen told the Android breakout session that developers won't need to get Android applications certified by anyone nor will there be any hidden APIs accessible only to handset makers or mobile operators. Even the phone's homescreen and widgets will be customizable - that's a much different take than the locked-down iPhone - and one that caters to users who like to make their phones their own.

Kicking iPhone's Apps

Then there are the official Google apps: why use plain old Google Maps (although that is available) when you can use Street View? The Wednesday demo of Google Maps Street View on the phone proved this will be one of the most popular applications the phone will carry. With its built-in compass and accelerometer, Steve Horowitz, Android's engineering director, showed how he could physically turn around and the phone's screen would pan to the left or right accordingly.

Also shown were Android's notification service that displayed new emails, missed calls, and calendar appointments and its unique ability to unlock the phone using any pattern you wish - even via a line of "connect-the-dots" on the screen which you drag your finger across.

Combine these with the current 50 Android Developer Challenge winners (see below), and you've got a worthy challenger to the iPhone throne.

What's Missing

The only glaring omission from Android so far is multi-touch - the iPhone feature that allows for actions like the two-finger pinching movement used to shrink photos. However, Android project leader Andy Rubin said that Android could accommodate that technology if handset makers use multitouch-capable screens. But Android doesn't even require a touchscreen to work - the platform can be extended to non-touchscreen devices which would allows users to navigate by simply using a phone's buttons or a trackball.

Also Not To Be Missed

It's worth noting that the mobile battle isn't going to just occur between Android and iPhone. Microsoft's new mobile OS, Windows Mobile 7, for example, may also be a worthy competitor in this arena. When WiMo 7 arrives sometime in 2009, it will allow for touch gestures, motion gestures (moving the phone to perform an action), and includes a revamped UI, a new version of IE that does tabbed browsing, and applications like Windows Live Maps.

Of course, then there are many people who are still quite content, if not downright addicted to, their Blackberry phones. Like Windows Mobile, which works with Microsoft's Exchange Server, the Blackberry also has a strong userbase in the business world thanks to RIM's enterprise-friendly server products that many I.T. administrators use.

Whether there will be one overall winner in the mobile OS space is yet to be seen, but it's likely that the market will stay as segmented as it is today.

There's still no exact deadline for Android's launch - only that it will be sometime in the second half of 2008.

The video above comes from the Android Community where there are a number of photos and videos posted from the conference.

The company has a network of developers and designers which it will employ to create prototypes or full products based on ideas submitted by entrepreneurs. In return, it will take an equity stake in the app it helps create. Prototype Invest will evaluate ideas submitted to it based on merit as well as the character of the entrepreneur who pitched it.

"There are so many great ideas wasted for the wrong reasons - we are here to change the rules of the game," Christensen told me. According to Christensen, any entrepreneur who is unhappy with the results of their relationship with Prototype Invest can walk at any time.

Prototype Invest has a lot riding on trust -- in fact they say on their front page that "without trust we simply can't exist" -- which means that ideally, anyone willing to fork over an idea to the service has not only been told that ideas are a dime a dozen, but also truly believes it. Prototype will work out contracts and the amount of equity taken on a case by case basis, and Christensen tells me that they're open to signing an NDA with entrepreneurs prior to being pitched.

But there will need to be a certain amount of trust on both sides that ideas won't be stolen or misappropriated.

Along with development services, Prototype Invest also offers to help entrepreneurs pitch their idea (and newly minted prototype) to investors, which makes sense given that Christensen and team will only make money if the app is a success. At some point in the future the team is also considering offering Y Combinator-style microfunding.

Will Prototype Invest work? It's hard to say, but there is little doubt that they won't lack for ideas being sent their way -- they are a dime a dozen, after all.