ReadWriteWeb

As we head toward the final week of February, and the Winter Olympics in Vancouver get set to begin their second half of competition, it's that time again for the ReadWriteStart Weekly Wrapup. In this week's edition we've got some tips to get your iPhone app ranked higher, as well as a funding opportunity for getting your iPad app ideas off the ground. Our Never Mind the Valley series returns as we profile New York City, and in the most discussed topic this week we talk about Square's new mobile credit card scanner and its possible implications for small business.

If you're a mobile app developer, one of your biggest concerns is getting noticed. Companies like Smule and Tapulous already have recognized brands; however, for the independent app designer, the promotion process requires a fair amount of strategy. One proven method of increasing downloads is becoming listed as one of the App Store's top selling services. We spoke to faberNovel's Baptiste Benezet to find out how indie developers can hack the App Store ranking algorithm.

We have all been to an event where a 50/50 raffle was taking place to raise money for a particular organization or cause, but what if this same style of fund raising was applied to funding startups? Under30CEO, an online resource for young entrepreneurs, has teamed up with the developers of the BizBreak iPhone app to host the Limitless VC Contest. The winner will receive a cash prize including 50% of the app's revenue during the period of the contest, along with mentoring from five notable entrepreneurs.

Over the past few months, we here at ReadWriteWeb have been hard at work putting together our upcoming premium report on marketing in the augmented reality (AR) space. From our research we've discovered that for several years, desktop "webcam AR" developers have made created multi-million dollar businesses while the younger "mobile AR" companies have yet to really break the bank. Today, however, Dutch mobile AR company Layar may change the mobile AR landscape, as it has announced it will allow developers of AR layers to monetize their creations on the Layar platform.

It's coming up on three weeks since Apple announced its highly anticipated iPad device, and the news frenzy surrounding the announcement has begun to die down. As is the trend with many new devices, the response to the iPad has covered both extremes, from fans who claim the device will change the world, to haters wondering why anyone would spend a dime on it. One thing that is certain is that iPhone application developers are excited by the possibilities provided by the new tablet device, and now a new fund raising collaboration, AppFund, is looking to capitalize on this excitement.

Today at the Mobile World Congress 2010, Adobe announced several initiatives designed to cement their company's relevance in a world where Apple, one of the top smartphone players, has banned Adobe software from inclusion on all mobile devices including the iPhone, iPod Touch and the soon-to-launch iPad. Without Adobe's Flash runtime, thousands of websites don't work, streaming videos won't play and a number of online casual games are broken. Apple, of course, is fine with this, having worked around the issue thanks to the 150,000+ iPhone applications that deliver the same functionality...although sometimes for a fee.

Adobe, meanwhile, is focusing on the other up-and-coming smartphone platform, Google's Android OS, with the launch of their "AIR for Android" offering. With this and the newly announced Flash Player 10.1, wannabe mobile developers don't need to learn specialized code, but can instead leverage their existing development skills to build Flash and AIR-based applications. They can then have those apps run anywhere: PCs, Macs, Linux and mobile...including, surprisingly, the iPhone.

In January, the Austria-based company Mobilizy updated the Android version of its mobile augmented reality browser Wikitude to include a new feature they dubbed "Worlds," which are similar to the layers found in the alternatively popular Layar AR browser. On Thursday Wikitude 2.0 for the iPhone (version 4 on Android) was released on the iTunes App Store, brining these new Worlds to the iPhone.

Opera just announced that it plans to bring its mobile browser, Opera Mini, to the iPhone. The Norwegian company will give the press and its partners a sneak peek of the application during next week's Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. Opera Mini on the iPhone will include all of Opera's default features like Speed Dial, tabs and a password manager. Opera Mini for the iPhone will also feature Opera's compression technology, which compresses text and images on Opera's servers before they get sent to the phone. The question, however, is whether Apple will allow the application into the App Store.

AT&T just launched FamilyMap, the company's newest iPhone app, which allows you to track the location of your family members directly on your iPhone. The app (iTunes link) allows you to see the exact location of your cellphone toting family members. You can also set up recurring alerts, which allows you to check if your child arrived at school in the morning, for example. Given that this is an AT&T app, it doesn't come as a surprise that the service is only available if you pay a monthly subscription fee. Tracking the location of two phones costs $9.99 per month. For $14.99 per month, you can track up to five phones.

We are still in the early days of location-based apps, but according to new data from Skyhook, there are now over 6,000 location-based iPhone apps, 900 Android apps and 300 BlackBerry apps. Skyhook, the company that allows non-GPS enabled devices to triangulate locations by using nearby WiFi signals, also found that only a small number of these location-based apps are currently available across the three major app stores. There are currently only 43 cross-platform location apps.

Apple has posted a shocking, if vague, warning to iPhone app creators in its developer forums: submit an app that uses user location data "primarily" for targeting advertisements and that app will be sent right back to you to be changed.

Many mobile developers are planning on monetizing their apps precisely through location-based advertising. There's no clear criteria for how much advertising is too much, and perhaps Apple will exercise discretion in recognizing advertisements as merely supplemental to other features in many apps, but the language used by the company is wholly disconcerting and is another great example of the perils of developing on a closed platform like the iPhone. This is crazy.

Swiss researcher Nicolas Seriot claims it's possible for "rogue" applications to make their way into the iTunes App Store where they could then be used to steal personal data from victims' iPhones. According to Seriot's research, the problem has to with Apple's lax approval process for applications as well as a flaw in an iPhone security feature that provides access to more data than is necessary. If a malicious application was installed on someone's iPhone, it could use this loophole to quietly harvest personal data including phone numbers, address book information, the phone's unique identifier and more. Then, using the phone's Internet connection, it could send that data back to remote servers, all unbeknownst to the iPhone's owner.

The Google Enterprise blog has a post tonight about some new features being unveiled that should assuage some of the critics who discount the security of using Google Apps on a mobile device.

The new features permit corporate IT policies to be enforced from the customer's Google Apps console across different mobile devices with the exception of Android smartphones, which will eventually have similar features.

Apparently Microsoft is talking profit in the midst of 15 straight quarters of losses, according to a Paid Content article this morning. The company is looking to Bing to pull it out of its nearly four-year long slide, Yusuf Mehdi, Microsoft senior vice president of online business, said in an interview last night with Reuters.

According to the interview, Bing is looking at becoming a "credible No. 2" as soon as Microsoft closes a deal with Yahoo, making Bing the backbone for Yahoo search. We do see a few areas where Bing has been gaining ground and wonder if Microsoft may be able to come back out of the red.

The latest word on Skype for 3G is "soon" according to a blog post on its website today. You may have missed out last week, amid all the iPad hubbub, but Apple removed its restriction on VoIP calls on 3G with the release of its latest iPhone SDK.

The return of Skype to the iPhone is something we've not-so-patiently awaited since it was banned only a short time after being released last March, and it looks like we won't have to wait much longer. And this time around, we're hoping video chat isn't far behind.

The iPad has been this week's media darling with active discussion about the device's merits, a look at how it fails to encourage AR innovation and of course, this morning's announcement of a developer fund. Although it's exciting from a consumer standpoint, between the iPhone, Android, Blackberry and now the iPad, application developers have their work cut out for them. While consumers may flock to the new tablet, the thought of locking more developers into the purgatory of the Apple approval process is one that few will celebrate.

"I still can't believe this! All this hype for something so ridiculous! ... I want something new! I want them to think differently! Why oh why would they do this?! It's so wrong! It's so stupid!"

Sound familiar? That wasn't a reaction to yesterday's Apple iPad launch, that was a MacRumors commenter in 2001 reacting to the launch of the iPod. The iPod, the device that symbolized personal electronics more than any other product in the last decade, was widely criticized when it was unveiled. It was "just another MP3 player."

Yesterday's iPad launch continues to dominate the tech news today. Besides announcing the iPad, however, Apple also quietly announced a major change to its iPhone policies yesterday: Apple now allows developers to use a 3G connection to make VoIP calls. The first application to make use of this is iCall (iTunes link), but chances are that Skype, Truphone and other VoIP providers are already working on updated iPhone apps as well.

With yesterday's reveal of the iPad now past, we can finally put myth and speculation behind us and focus on the reality that is Apple's entry into the tablet PC business. Whether the iPad is revolutionary or evolutionary is still hotly debated, but what we do know is that the computer, despite its elegance and blazing fast speed, is a decidedly first-generation device. Although one day after the product's announcement may be too soon to discuss what's coming in the next version of the iPad, we've already come across several reasons to wait... and some of those reasons are hidden away in the new iPad SDK (software development kit) itself.

The iPad is clearly one of those universal technologies that will be as useful in the home as in the office. Much like the iPhone, people will want it for work simply because it will be useful for getting work completed. Like any Apple product, it's easy to use. It's lightweight. And it's mobile. Plus, this baby is as sleek as it gets.

We expect to see a similar trajectory for the iPad in the enterprise as the iPhone has had in recent months.

Apple reported its earnings earlier this week. The company reported that iPhone usage doubled since last summer after the introduction of the 3GS. The iPad with 3GS service will be available in 90 days. Our bet is that by next fall we will be reporting similar news about the iPad as we have about the iPhone.