Apps, Software | featured news

In Steve Jobs fashion, Apple CEO Tim Cook kicked off the company’s Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco with a handful of key stats about its app ecosystem, which Cook called “an economy in itself.”

Tuomas Erikoinen, the man who drew the hit "Angry Birds" app, doesn't really resent his creation. He's just bored with it. He sees the game's grumpy, ball-shaped, wingless birds everywhere he goes, their furrowed brows staring him down. Here in Finland's capital, where "Angry Birds" began, Erikoinen's drawings have been turned into T-shirts, "plushie" stuffed animals and two brands of soft drinks -- Tropic and Paradise.

Made-in-China mobile devices are clicked on every continent. The same isn't true of Chinese mobile software, which is mostly aimed at domestic users. One company that reckons it has a product that crosses continents is UCWeb, a developer of mobile browsers that has gone head-to-head with Tencent's mobile platform in China.

Facebook's $1 billion acquisition of photo-sharing start-up Instagram has shifted the spotlight to the newest phenomena in mobile apps: uploading personal videos from smartphones.

Did "sexting" just get safer? Maybe, but probably not. A free and increasingly popular iPhone app called Snapchat allows users to take a picture, send it and control how the message is visible – between 1 and 10 seconds.

Poor Instagram users. First, their beloved photo-sharing application moves from iPhone-only exclusivity to the Android phone masses. A week later, Facebook swallows up the tiny startup behind the app for $1 billion. The purchase sparked worries that Facebook might shutter Instagram or change it for the worse by harvesting their personal information or shoving ads into their carefully curated photo streams.

Can a two-year-old photo sharing app really be worth $1bn? It would buy you some some 2,100 Rolls Royce Phantoms. Or 200 million mosquito nets to fight malaria. Or the whole of the New York Times company (with $50m change to spare). If you are Microsoft, it buys you some 800 AOL patents to fight the next patent war.

As AT&T gets ready to launch a new wave of Windows Phones to the pubic, independent analysis of Microsoft's app store reveals more than 80,000 applications have been submitted.

Here are six easy, inexpensive DIY solutions for creating apps for iOS and Android devices.