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NEWS / THURSDAY, APRIL 1, 2010 / THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN / KANSAN.COM
TECHNOLOGY
iPad launch urges competitive apps
MCCLATCHY-TRIBUNE
SAN JOSE, Calif. — When the iPhone launched in 2007, apps were almost an after-thought.
But with the iPad, apps have taken center screen. Developers are scrambling to have their iPad programs ready in time for Saturday's launch or shortly thereafter. And on Wednesday, top Silicon Valley venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers — caught up in the enthusiasm for the forthcoming tablet
- announced it was doubling its Apple iFund for app code writers to $200 million
It's smart business.
Many of these programmers learned a lesson from the launch of Apple's hit iPhone. In a highly competitive market for games, media readers and other applications, it's critical
"They are scrambling like crazy.It's another form of land grab."
to be early. And a lucky few — no one will say who — have been given access to the iPad to get their apps ready on time. Such is the attraction of the iPhone — and now iPad — ecosystem that Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers announced Wednesday it was upping its venture bet on promising applications.
Being first to display iPad apps in the App Store gives developers an edge over competitors because being discovered is much easier when the number of iPad apps is small. Many will be lost in the crowd when the number of apps reaches into the thousands and then tens of thousands. There are now some 150,000 iPhone apps in the nearly two-year-old App Store.
PETER FARAGO
Vice president of
marketing at Flurry
for the iPad — either made exclusively for the new device or upgraded from the iPhone – will be available this weekend, but most speculate at least 200 will go on sale when Apple stores open their doors Saturday. In addition, most of the 150,000 apps that run on the iPhone will operate on the iPad.
It's uncertain how many apps
"It's definitely going to be important to be first out there," said Steve Demeter, a San Francisco developer whose puzzle game Trism was among the first apps in the App Store after it launched in July 2008. He says he made $250,000 in the first two months. The instant success enabled him to quit his job
writing software for Wells Fargo and start his own app development company, Deniforge.
"They are scrambling like crazy. It's another form of land grab," said Peter Farago, vice president of marketing
at Flurry, a San Francisco-based mobile analytics company that gives developers a tool that compiles information about the use of their applications. According to its data, 40 percent of the apps being developed for the iPad are games.
It's the ultimate street cred in the developer's world — getting hands on an iPad before it hits the market.
While it's important to get apps out early, sad Clive Downie, vice president of marketing for the game developer, it's even more important that the apps be of high quality.
"I think good games sell whenever, but good games that come out first are generally the titles that are the foundation of the (new) platform," he said.
Tanner Grubbs/KANSAN
Collin Watten, a senior from Lawrence, performs a segment on the xylophone Tuesday afternoon at Swarthout Recital Hall. Watten ended his performance on a single, large drum with the help and coordination of two other music students.
Sweet harmonies
Widespread Internet piracy hurting Spain
INTERNATIONAL
MCCLATCHY-TRIBUNE
Picasso and bullfighting are cultural touchstones in Spain. Now add Internet piracy.
The downloading and streaming of movies and television shows from the Web is a growing problem for the entertainment industry around the world. In a few key countries such as Spain, however, it has become what Hollywood executives are calling an epidemic that is forcing movie studios to consider no longer selling DVDs in the country.
A cavalier attitude toward piracy has made it mainstream behavior in Spain.
"Almost everybody I know
downloads movies," said Mercedes Carrasco, 45, a student from Caceres who downloads about two movies each week.
Said Juan, 41, an engineer from Madrid, "I don't think downloading movies for private use harms anybody." Juan, who declined to provide his last name, said he downloads five or six movies a month, including recently all six "Star Wars" movies. "It's like exchanging a book with friends."
The country's minister of cul
It's no surprise why average Spaniards think it's not a big deal: Unlike in the U.S., France and, under proposed legislation, Britain, piracy isn't against the law in Spain unless it's done for profit.
ture, a former filmmaker who is backing a bill that would make it easier to shut off access to Web sites that facilitate piracy, blames the problem on deep-rooted cultural attitudes.
"Traditionally in Mediterranean countries, it's hard for people to understand that immaterial things can be worth as much as material things," said Angeles Gonzalez-Sinde.
Piracy is reshaping the movie business in Spain, much as it has done to the music business around the world. In 2003, there were 12,000 video stores in the country. By the end of 2008, there were 3,000.
isn't filling the gap. Apple Inc.'s iTunes, the world's biggest digital media store, doesn't sell movies or television shows in Spain, as it does in Britain, France, and Germany.
Legitimate digital distribution
Between 2006 and 2008, illegal movie downloads in Spain went from 132 million a year to 350 million, according to research firm Media-Control GfK, at the same time that the number of DVDs sold or rented fell by 30 percent. Some studios now see Spain as a "lost market." People are downloading movies in such large quantities that Spain is on the brink of no longer being a viable home entertainment market for us," said Michael Lynton, chairman of Sony Pictures Entertainment.
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NATIONAL
Area 51 veteran shares experiences
VANCOUVER, Wash. — After every five decades, guys like James Nocce finally get to tell their stories about Area 51.
Yes, that Area 51.
The one that gets brought up when people talk about secret Air Force projects, crashed UFOs, alien bodies and, of course, conspiracies.
The secrets, some of them, have been declassified.
Noce, 72, and his fellow Area 51 veterans around the country now are free to talk about doing contract work for the CIA in the 1960s and '70s at the arid, isolated Southern Nevada government testing site.
Their stories shed some light on a site shrouded in mystery; classified projects still are going on there. It's not a big leap from warding off the curious 40 or 50 years ago to warding off the curious who now make the drive to Area 51.
The veterans' stories provide a glimpse of real-life government covert operations, with their everyday routines and moments of excitement.
Noce didn't seek out publicity.
But when contacted, he was glad to tell what it was like.
"I was sworn to secrecy for 47 years. I couldn't talk about it," he says.
In the 1960s, Area 51 was the test site for the A-12 and its successor, the SR-71 Blackbird, a secret spy plane that broke records at documented speeds that still have been unmatched. The CIA says it reached Mach 3.29 (about 2,200 mph) at 90,000 feet.
But after September 2007, when the CIA displayed an A-12 in front of its Langley, Va., headquarters as part of the agency's 60th birthday, much of the secrecy of those days at Area 51 fell away.
Advance warning to UFologists: Sorry, although Noce and other Area 51 vets say they saw plenty of secret stuff, none make claims about aliens.
"I was sworn to secrecy for 47 years. I couldn't talk about it."
But on to the secrecy part.
at the site. It was, in CIA parlance,
"a black project."
JAMES NOCE Area 51 veteran
Noce remembers always getting paid in cash and signing a phony name to the receipt during his several years of working security
Noce says he has no paperwork showing that he worked at Area 51 for the CIA. He says that was common. Others who got checks say they came from various companies, including Pan American World Airways.
But Noce is vouched for by T.D. Barnes, of Henderson, Nev., founder and president of Roadrunners Internationale, membership 325.
Roadrunners is a group of Area 51 vets including individuals affiliated with the Air Force, CIA, Lockheed, Honeywell and other contractors.
Barnes is the one who says he got checks from Pan Am, for whom he had never worked.
for the past 2 years, they'd meet every couple of years at reunions they kept clandestine. Their first public session was last October at a reunion in Las Vegas at the Atomic Testing Museum.
For the past 20
As age creeps up on them, Barnes, 72, an Area 51 radar specialist, wants the work the vets did to be remembered.
And Barnes himself has someone quite credible to vouch for him: David Robargue, chief historian for the CIA and author of "Archangel: CIA's Supersonic A-12 Reconnaissance Aircraft."
Robarge says about Barnes,
"He's very knowledgeable. He
never embellishes."
Barnes says that the way membership in the Roadrunners grew was by one guy who worked for the CIA telling about another buddy who worked at Area 51, and so on. Barnes says other Area 51 vets vouched for Noce.