春聯與對聯

我的第四個 iPhone 軟體, 春聯與對聯 (Chinese Couplets), 今天進了App Store.
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/chinese-couplets/id438346456?mt=8

就像前三個產品一樣, 書的內容都需要經過一番校對和整理。我常用網際網路上的內容來和我的資料比較。但是這次的經驗, 倒是非常獨特。或許春聯和對聯不是太冷門的題目, 許多網站都有相關的內容。但是這些內容的抄襲率太高, 而且錯誤百出。我有時只是為了搜尋一個特定的詞句, 可以找到十多個有相同內容的網頁。而當中的錯誤也都十分相似, 甚至雷同。古人印書, 因為交通及通訊的不便, 校對是件難事。所以一篇文章或是詩詞常有兩三種版本。今天的電子刊物也能有類似的現象, 也讓人開了眼界。

Second and third iPhone applications

My second and third iPhone/iPad applications are now on the App Store. They are Chinese calligraphy copybooks (字帖) using Chinese Surnames (百家姓) for model characters.
百家姓字帖-仿歐陽詢體
(http://itunes.apple.com/ph/app/chinese-surname-calligraphy/id427523658?mt=8) and
百家姓字帖-仿顏真卿體
(http://itunes.apple.com/ph/app/chinese-surname-calligraphy/id431207772?mt=8)

It was a fun project to work on. I reused the code from my first product and spent a little more time on the contents. It was a quick and easy job for this new product release. The aspect of "universal application", Apple's lingo for applications designed for both Apple iPhone and iPad, was what I was experimenting with. For an image-centric calligraphy model book, it seems to be a fit for a universal application. However, it is not that straightforward for other types of applications. For other product ideas that I have, it may make sense to put more user interface elements into the iPad branch. If I choose to go down that path, The "universal" application may become two applications that present different user experiences. I am not sure user experience bifurcation is a good idea. Maybe my thinking of putting more ingredients to a bigger screen is on a wrong track.

That aside, it was fun to design and create an application for two different types of devices. The visual impact from a bigger screen compared with that on a smaller screen is obvious. Supporting universal application may put more design constraints on a product. But I think it will be a basic requirement for many future applications from me.

My first iPhone application

I just released my first iPhone application on Apple App Store. The title is called "Tang Poems for the Youth" [幼學唐詩].

This application is for a very niche market, that is, people who have learned traditional Chinese. For me, this is a good opportunity examining the theory of long-tail market. As an independent iPhone application developer, I don't have a lot of resources or time. It is important to me that I don't have to resort to some esoteric programming tactics or interfaces to accomplish what I wanted to do. It is also equivalently important that I don't have to test through many different devices with different capabilities and screen real estate. In a sense, I created an application that appears to be outside of the main stream using mostly common programming interface on a generic platform, and made the product available on all the iPhone OS products For that, I praise iPhone and iPod Touch.

A friend asked me whether I will port this application to the Android platform. I am a registered Android developer though I have not put much of an effort in it. Android is an "open" platform for device manufacturers. It is no more open than Windows Mobile or iPhone OS for an application developer. It will take over iPhone in terms of volume, just like Symbian of yesterday. It will be a fragmented market for a developer like me. I will put more efforts in making my application iPad ready before having some quality time with Android.

In the meantime, there will be more titles coming out from me. I will see how far this long-tail theory will take me, and Apple.