With the introduction of the new iOS 4 (and the shiny iPhone 4’s), Carrot certainly hasn’t been lacking in ideas for new apps. Likewise we’ve been getting plenty of requests and ideas coming our way from clients. Everyone wants their apps to be iOS4 ready, but not many know what that actually means. The most hype we’re seeing is dealing with iAds and multitasking, so let’s take a quick look at this new hotness.

Firstly, iAds. There are two sides to this awesome Apple foundation. There’s the app side and the ad side. The ad side is where the meat and potatoes are; these are the companies that are investing their time and money to make interactive HTML5 advertisements. App side is the plate that displays the garnished ads, and Apple made this process deceptively easy – in just a few minutes iAd support can be added to almost any app. With Carrot’s web and mobile experience we’re in a prime position for working with both sides of this delicious meal.

The new feature that people get a little stuck on is multitasking. iOS4 does support this, but to a limited extent. Apps can’t run willy-nilly doing whatever they want, whenever they want – there are strict limitations in place for multitasking. Let’s break it down; there are 4 “types” of multitasking for apps:

Audio: Music apps, like Pandora, can stream audio.
Location: GPS apps, like TomTom, can give directions.
VoIP: Phone apps, like Skype, can continue the call.
Backgrounding: Everything else.

Audio, location, and VoIP can leave an application running as long as the audio is playing, their location is needed, or they are making a call. There is no time limit on how long an app can be running in the background with these settings, but that’s all they should be doing.

The fourth way to keep an app running, “backgrounding”, is limited. We can do a lot of things, but only for a short amount of time. By default it’s around 10 minutes, but the phone can still close the app forcefully if it needs the memory. The only interaction we can have with the user during this time is push notifications. It’s mostly to allow the phone to finish what it’s doing before getting closed permanently.

For the most part, when you see that a basic app has become “Multitask Ready” it usually just means they set it up so it saves data in different states before closing. That way when the app opens again that data is ready to go, taking less time to reach the point you were at before you closed it. Granted, it’s all a little more complicated than that, involving different states an app can be in (active, suspended, in the background, and terminated), but that’s a quick look at the options.

The good news is that Apple lets us schedule push notifications locally from an app. Now we don’t need to register with Apple’s push notification service depending on the type of tasks we want to accomplish. These local notifications are a great way to remind users when apps are closed. Say if we wanted them to put in a specific set of numbers every 108 minutes, we can schedule a notification to happen 108 minutes after they enter the numbers to remind them to do it again. The downside to this method is they need to open the app in the first place.

Get all that? I know, it was a lot. By now you must be bursting with app ideas, so share them with me on Twitter @antrants. Better yet, if you’re in Brooklyn, drop by Carrot Creative and grab a beer with me. I know a great little place with free wifi where we can romance about the new iPhone.

This article is copyright © 2010 

Crasher Squirrel: LOL

Lady Gaga’s Telephone video: WTF

Carrot Creative’s Halloween Costume: Geeky

Buzzfeed has been featuring snapshots of the viral web in realtime on their popular website since 2006.  They highlight the kind of things you’d want to pass along to your friends; obscure subcultures breaking into the mainstream, outrageous videos or ordinary guys having their 15-minutes of fame.

Now, thanks to Carrot Creative’s mad development skills, Buzzfeed has taken their content mobile!  The BuzzFeed iPhone app is the best way to stay up to date with the latest viral videos, images, links, and buzz while on the go. The app features the BuzzFeed.com front page, most popular posts, as well as LOL, WTF, OMG, Cute, Geeky, Trashy and Viral Feeds. The app is available FOR FREE at the iTunes App Store.

‘Cause let’s be honest, when you’re waiting for the bus to take you across town, wouldn’t it be great to browse great viral content like OK Go’s new video?

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Dumbo loft, check.
Free Brooklyn beer, check (thank you RRE Ventures).
Everyone in room geeking-out over mobile apps, check.

This pretty much sums up the Monday Mobile Brooklyn event this past Monday night where our very own Robert Gaafar, Carrot Creative’s CEO presented our submission to the NYC Big Apps contest: “Where Brooklyn App?”

In case you missed it, this application allows users to tour key Brooklyn points of interest through an augmented reality lens and create a social atmosphere for other travelers to document their trip.

Data Sets

1. Directory of Historic Houses
2. Directory of Parks Disability Accessibility Facilities and Programs
3. Directory of Playgrounds
4. Directory of Recreation Centers

Integration Features

1. Augmented Reality
2. Google Maps
3. Facebook Connect
4. Twitter OAuth
5. Foursquare
6. Flickr

Where Brooklyn App is not available yet. We are currently waiting for approval from Apple.

Bobby rocked it obviously but there were other fun and innovative presentations like the Sit or Squat public restroom locator. Our friend Phil from PegShot sharing the photo/video application that “pegs” your location with a picture or video. My personal favorite, NYC Broken Meters to help city drivers find free parking but utilizing the city data.

Thanks again to Mobile Monday Brooklyn for organizing another excuse for the digital minds from Brooklyn and Manhattan to get together in one room to share, learn, and well, drink.

Peace out luddites, you don’t stand a chance in Brooklyn.

This article is copyright © 2010 

Chris Petescia contributed to this report

After decades of research, countless Erlenmeyer flasks, and several weeks of hapless finger-painting, we’re finally able to announce the launch of The Onion Microfiche. The first-ever iPhone app that delivers a world of Onion headlines directly to your Oxford shirt pocket.

Onion aficionados know the true essence of any story lies in its headline. In fact, many headlines are so brilliant they stand alone without any article associated with them. We worked closely with the creative minds at The Onion to build an application that took the most advanced mobile platform on the market today and saddled it with the tactility of a cold-rolled steel, dust-ridden library microfiche machine. Flick through recent headlines, as well as 20 years worth of vintage Onion gold. Flag your favorites for viewing offline or share them with your friends via Twitter, Email, or Mobile Facebook Connect. We’ve even included authentic microfiche sound-effects (cough, Mr. Parr).

It was thrilling to not only work with the folks at The Onion, but refreshing to find they’re as hilarious and good natured as you’d expect; we’d often spend half of our calls just making witty puns. What cunning linguists we are. We hope you enjoy using it as much as we enjoyed working on it.

You can read through the rave reviews from Mashable, The Guardian, and Read Write Web or experience it yourself by heading over to the iTunes App store.

PS We dropped in a slight nod to some of our more seasoned geek followers on the opening screen of the app—can you spot it?

Edit 3:34p: We’re now the number one paid news app in the iTunes app store!

This article is copyright © 2010 

This July will mark the one-year anniversary of Apple’s App Store opening for business. Applying the music store commission model to applications meant that developers (after school entrepreneurs to full-fledged software companies) can not only develop for cutting edge devices & technologies with support, but also find digital distribution at the source with freedom to charge as they see fit. Now having just surpassed 25,000 apps (Fortune), it’s interesting to see what some of the most successful have been. Games to software extensions to business portals: what users consider to be their personal “top apps” likely range all across the board. Some of the best are undoubtably simple lifehacks & convenience apps, likely from the same time-saving minds who develop browser extensions & plugins.

Also across the board is the “marketing,” design and user experience of these 25,000+ apps (Note- It’s also worth acknowledging the many apps available to jailbroken devices since long before the appstore, too). It’s been interesting- from all sources- to find apps from “beautiful- but useless”, to “diamonds in the rough.” Good ideas have suffered my negative judgement and frustration due to poor GUI or even before that, ugly screenshots on the appstore (in true judgement of a book by its cover).

The day the Store launched, I remember there being multiple “flashlight” apps and ultimately decided based on “free” in the end. There were no shortage of novelty apps early on… one that comes to mind was a branded beer game where navigating a pint across a bar earned the user an accelerometer-powered beer (simulated beer filled the screen/glass and responded to tilt). That lasted about 3 days before its hold on app button real-estate was conquered by its uselessness. Neat design and visual appeal but utterly worthless after the initial “wow!” wore off. There are a number of free and low-cost reading (literature) applications that source public domain works, but the most expansive (library wise) of which seems to interpret an unformatted text file without margins or justification. While you can alter some text attributes like size and color, it’s harder on the eyes than reading on a full computer screen. Sadly the app is well built and an excellent idea, yet too difficult to use in practicality due to poor design.

A good app meets both functionality of some value to the user (time saving, entertaining; whatever) and solid GUI and UX, not just one or the other. However, before this can fully be determined, the app has to be downloaded. I realized, as I am sure most other App Store users have, that deciding to download an application really comes down to a balance of a few factors:

1) Price – the obvious “how much is it, and is it worth the cost for gain?” question. Free goes alot farther in convincing me to give up button space or risk the addition of another application screen on my device, especially against priced/pricey alternatives.

2) User review & ratings – a child of Amazon’s user reviews, I always take these into account and can pick out the worthwhile ones in a heartbeat. However, that’s only if I’m not scared away by a low star rating (anything under 3/5 stars turns me off). Assuming I press in for more info, the price often correlates to how many reviews I read. Unless an app has near 5/5, I am inclined to read more extensively of users’ opinions before committing any hard earned dollars to it. Often it is here that I find recommendation for a competitor app, and have even chosen a paid one over the free from this user input route. I trust user feedback at LEAST as much as marketing. It’s also worth noting that some of my favorite apps, particularly the ones that I have had the longest, make note of their attention to user feedback in their updates.

2) Marketing – Now that multiple screenshots are available for applications in the info space, I really judge an app by these (if it passes the star and review tests). Sometimes I even flick down to this part right away, if I am comparing similar apps. I am sure I have overlooked many great ideas simply based on visual appeal (or lack of), unfortunately. As a user, I assume that the screens shown here are the best indications of the look & feel and features the app has to offer. Did you have your little cousin make make a quick GUI (with his pirated copy of photoshop) to save some money on skinning your killer app? It will likely make a difference…

So enough blabber: as Carrot starts pushing out iPhone apps for our clients (and we can announce them publicly), you can tell us how well we do. In the meantime, here’s some favorite iPhone/iTouch apps from the @carrotcrew:

Bobby:
Sol Free: A classic game that we all know and love, that dates back to the days of Windows ’95, it’s Solitaire. Now it lives in all of its glory on the iPhone, looking better then ever and quickly cures any case of boredom.
> Honorable mention: Shazam

Chris:
Classics: Of all the Free literature apps out there for Apple products, the reading experience is by far the best here. Their public domain collection of books are each laid out with excellent overall spacing & typesize, and great contrast between “page” and type that doesn’t wear on the eye. Their novel drag-to-turn page effects and other design elements are done beautifully, lending to make this app the best reading experience available on small screen devices.
> Honorable mentions: Instapaper and iZen Garden or Koi Pond

Kyle:
Instapaper: This is the missing link between my RSS reader, twitter links and shared links from friends. Offline reading is perfect for train rides – and compared to offline RSS apps – I don’t have long downloads for articles I may not even be interested in.
> Honorable mentions: Tweetie and iShoot

Maury:
Tweetie: The vein in my neck has ceased to throb since I downloaded this phenomenal example of modern programming skill. Seriously, it’s so well done I cry with joy every time I open it.
> Honorable mention: Tumblr (this is so well done I get all furklempt just thinking about using it. A slick UI plus amazing mobile access to the addictive tumblr platform make this app a winner.)

This article is copyright © 2010 

Citizen journalism is the most informative innovation in the mobile space since the introduction of the camera phone, and our good friends at CBSEyeMobile are leading the way with their new application developed specifically for the iPhone. It’s already been featured on several sites including TechCrunch, Mashable, and TUAW since launching last week and is garnering fabulous reviews from all around the blogosphere.

We’re very excited to be working with the CBSEyeMobile team to build other amazing social network integration tools and can’t wait to see what else the team has up their sleeves.

Try out the latest craze to hit the iPhone here.

This article is copyright © 2010