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Paid Apps Work on an Apple Platform, for Google Not So Much

Posted on 01. Sep, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey. 1 Comments

The key incentive driving most application developers is this: will I make any money? Sure, some will develop apps for fun, but the vast majority that drive quality applications are going to do it for money. While this appears to be a profitable enterprise for those working on an Apple platform, it doesn’t appear to be as lucrative for Android. Take this chart provided by Business Insider.

What is the main factor driving this discrepancy? Back in March, I wrote a piece for ReadWriteWeb discussing how Google needs more content and more platforms to drive advertising sales. Because of this they embrace a culture of giving things away. Although Apple was once of the mantra “Rip. Mix. Burn”, it’s clear that they want to charge for everything on their closed platform.

And there’s nothing wrong with Apple doing that. They don’t have the same type of advertising strategy in place that Google does. Judging by the chart above, Google plans on a hefty ad-supported model for applications going forward.

What does this mean for the Chrome Web Store, slated to launch next month? While Apple takes a juicy 30% share of paid app revenue from developers on their platform, for the Web Store Google will only take 5% for browser-based webapps. There are two ways to look at that: for one, Google appears confident that they will be able to make money from an ad-supported model.

The other is that the company is creating an incentive for developers to create paid apps where they get 95% of revenue as opposed to 70% using the conventional Apple strategy that other application directories are following. The question is, will people pay for applications on a traditionally free web-based model or will it mostly be ad-supported?

Chrome Web Store Appears in Chrome 7

Posted on 30. Aug, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey. 1 Comments

The newest version of Chrome 7 now includes the Chrome Web Store icon when you open a new tab.

This screenshot was taken from the 7.0.510.0 release of Chromium, which you can download from here. When you click on the icon it leads you to the official Chrome Extensions site. When the Chrome Web Store is launched, extensions and webapps will both be featured on the site.

The Chrome Web Store is expected to launch in October and will feature webapps and web games. There is a developer preview available right now if you’re interested in creating your own webapps.

Chrome Dev Hits Version 7; Native Client Part of Release

Posted on 26. Aug, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey. 4 Comments

While Chromium has been perched at version 7 for about a week or so, it was only today that the development channel of Chrome was updated to version 7.

So what’s new? Along with the typical release fixes, Native Client is getting closer to reality in Chrome 7. That means webapps are going to be able to directly use a computer’s hardware resources to run processes, making them working like native applications.

As DownloadSquad’s Lee Mathews points out, you can check out a couple of Native Client demos right here if you’re using version 7 with the switch “–enable-nacl”. You can see it here in the Task Manager of my browser.

Note that Native Client is still experimental, on my machine it ran the above applications very slowly. But hey, it’s the first release.

Video: Uploading Your App to the Chrome Web Store

Posted on 25. Aug, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey. 3 Comments

Since the Chrome Web Store has not officially launched yet, here’s what you need to do to upload webapps right now.

Unlike extensions, this has a payment system built in. You can even set up a free trail, incremental payments or a one time fee.

Developer Preview of Chrome Web Store Available

Posted on 19. Aug, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey. 2 Comments

The Chromium Blog just posted that a developer preview of the Chrome Web Store is now available. It’s incredibly important to get development folks on board with this app environment, and it looks like everything is being carefully detailed here from resources to get started as well as payment and authentication infrastructure.

There’s been a lot of concern what the Chrome Web Store will actually be, and it’s clear here that it will be the defacto place to get your Chrome extensions and applications all from one central secure place. Judging by this video, there’s been a lot of thought put into defining how these webapps are going to work.

Three Great Webapp Resources

Posted on 16. Aug, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey. 0 Comments

While we’re patiently waiting for get our web application fix from the soon to be launched official Chrome Web Store, here are some great places where you can check out the capabilities of what today’s browsers can do. You might be surprised to find out that webapps can do what native applications can, and that it may not be much longer before everything is centered around the (gasp) cloud.

FreeBrowserGamer

I came across FreeBrowserGamer when I was looking for something to play that required a no-frills approach within the browser, and this site certainly fills that need. Whether you are interested in 2D or 3D games you’ll find something original and challenging. When you look at the 3D games and their categories, you start to see that some of these titles actually have depth and quality which suggests that developers are putting money into browser based games such as Guns of Icarus (pictured below) and Earth Eternal.

Chrome Experiments

Despite its appearance, the Chrome Experiments site is one that was created by Google to show off what one can do with a little JavaScript and HTML5. Some interesting ones include social drawing applications, new and innovative ways to look at how we can mashup online video and remakes of games from the good old days. While the name suggests that this is a Chrome-only site, much of the applications here work just as well in Firefox, Opera and Safari.

HTML5 Games

This site claims to be the “largest directory of HTML5 games” and they do not disappoint. Whereas FreeBrowserGamer focuses more on original and 3D gaming that often requires a plugin installation, HTML5Games offers more of the 2D variety as well as a good selection of classics. Of course, there are some intriguing titles such as Galactic Inbox which is clearly a game that prods fun at the folks over at Google and Slither, a take on the classic game Snake but with a twist. There is also a section devoted to games that can be played on mobile devices.

Each of these sites offer something a bit different depending what you are looking for in an interactive browser experience. Hopefully you find what you’re looking for, and let us know if there’s something really cool on one of these sites that we should share.

Keylight – A Musical Chrome Experiment

Posted on 11. Aug, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey. 0 Comments

Seeing interesting new webapps is always fun, especially if they consist of using the new interactivity of the web in ways I have not yet seen before. Witness Keylight, created by Stockholm-based developer Hakim El Hattab using JavaScript and the HTML5 canvas tag.

By double clicking on different places of Keylight, you create points that generate sounds. The “playhead” then bounces around creating a succession of notes. There are six different levels of tempo you can modify as well in the upper right. This can create a nice little ditty at best or some really terrible dirge depending on where you place the points.

Once you have perfected your masterpiece, you can share the URL with whomever you would like, since the webapp saves it as a permalink you or anyone else can return to later.

Keylight can be hard on the ol’ CPU but that’s because of the way it was coded. According to Hakim, “It does eat up a lot of CPU, mostly because the sound effects are generated/synthesized through code at runtime rather than playing audio files from the server.”

Check out Keylight right here.

App Support Turned on in Chromium by Default

Posted on 03. Aug, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey. 0 Comments

DownloadSquad’s Lee Matthews is reporting today that the switch once required to use webapps as tabs in Chromium has been turned on off and is now standard in the browser. This pretty much means the same feature is going to start trickling down through the rest of the browser channels sometime soon.

This is a pretty cool feature; tabs have been transformed from simple web pages into something more “application-like” complete with icons. There are currently apps for Facebook, Dropbox, Reader and more. If you want information on how to do this right now, here is my article on it.

We should see these features in stable builds very soon. The pace of Chrome development is starting to speed up as we hurtle towards the fourth quarter when Chrome OS tablets/netbooks are slated to arrive from major manufacturers.

The Multiuser Sketchpad – Social Doodling in the Browser

Posted on 27. Jul, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey. 0 Comments

In what may be one of the strangest – or awesomest – Chrome Experiements I’ve seen, longtime web experimenter Mr. Doob has come out with the Multiuser Sketchpad. Sure, it sounds pretty ho-hum when I put it in words, but this HTML5 based webapp is really cool once you try it out. Here is a fast-forwarded clip of a doodle.

The Multiuser Sketchpad reminds me of scribbling stuff on my desk in high school, but in a fascinating colloborative way. I’ll profess that I’m no artist, but some of the people who doodle on this really have some ability.

Experiments like this are just unbelievable. It’s really hard to describe what watching this is like, so just try it out yourself. The web is going to further innovate with next generation browsers and cloud operating systems. It just makes every new social tool available to anyone. Go ahead, get your doodle on!

More Installable Webapps for Chrome Available

Posted on 16. Jul, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey. 5 Comments

Once you’ve taken the time to add in the apps that are packaged with Chrome 6/Chromium, you can also add others. These are usually built with the .crx extension file name.

Vlad Nastasiu has put on his web site a good array of these – Facebook, Youtube and Google Reader to name a few. DownloadSquad also has an extensive listing. You can follow the Chromium Apps discussion group for more ongoing information as well.

1. Make sure that you have enabled apps in Chromium/Chrome 6.

2. Download the .crx file to your computer.

3. With the enabled-apps shortcut of Chrome open, you can open up the .crx file.

You’ll get a screen like this.

Confirm, and you’re good to go! Want to know how to make your own apps in Chrome? Check out Google’s Guide to Installable Web Apps.

How to Use Chrome Webapps Right Now

Posted on 16. Jul, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey. 5 Comments

Here are screen-by-screen steps on how to add the Calendar, Docs and Gmail apps to your Chrome browser. This is what this will look like when you are done.

Your tabs for the three will look like this.

Additionally, when you open a new tab, you’ll get a window that looks like this.

1. Download Chrome 6.

Firstly, you need to get the Chrome 6 development build for this to work. Here is a direct link to download it.

2. Add a Command Line Flag to your Chrome Shortcut.

This is easy, just go to your desktop and right click on your Chrome icon. Select Properties. In the Properties window, you’ll need to add a space and then the flag “–enable-apps” at the end of the Target location.

Hit OK.

3. Go into Developer Mode.

Open your shortcut of Chrome (remember, you have to use this one in order for this to work in the future). Navigate in the omnibar to chrome://extensions

Click on Developer Mode over on the far right.