9-Year-Old Writes Popular iPhone App

Tim Berners-Lee blasts those chipping away at its 'egalitarian principles'

(NEWSER) - Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the British engineer credited with inventing the World Wide Web, has a message for us: Social networking sites, app developers, and other entities, if left unchecked, will ruin his creation—which now belongs to all of us. "The web evolved into a powerful, ubiquitous tool because it was built on egalitarian principles," he writes in Scientific American , but "some of its most successful inhabitants have begun to chip away at its principles." His complaints:

• Social networking sites: They are "walling off information posted by their users from the rest of the Web," making each site "a closed silo of content, and one that does not give you full control over your information in it."
• Smartphone apps: "It is better to build a Web app that will also run on smartphone browsers," rather than a "closed" smartphone app, he writes, adding that he is especially wary of the iTunes store, which is not an "open marketplace."

Game to shut baby up met stunned outcry from children's groups

(NEWSER) - An iPhone application urging users to shake a virtual baby to death to shut it up has been pulled after an unsurprising outcry from child welfare groups, reports the San Jose Mercury News reports. A representative for Apple—which is nearing its billionth app download—refused to comment on how the app made it past the vetting team in the first place. More»

(NEWSER) - Apple has a lot of nifty apps for its iPhone, but apparently the novelty wears off in a hurry. A new analysis shows that many people download them, then promptly forget about them, Apple Insider reports. Just 20% of people use free apps the day after download; at the end of the month, it's down to 5%; after 3 months, it's virtually nil. The numbers for paid apps were only slightly better. More»

The gold rush continues in Apple's App Store

(NEWSER) - With more than 20,000 iPhone apps available, it seems inevitable that most would make peanuts. But Ethan Nicholas’ tank artillery game, iShoot, raked in $600,000 in one month——$37,000 on its best day—proving the gold rush is on in the App Store, Wired reports. The store provides a platform for selling and distributing software, allowing individual coders to match software giants in their reach, provided their products are good. More»