“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.” — Steve Jobs. R.I.P.

(Source: mr-xs-world)

How to present like Steve Jobs…oh yeah

Check out this great presentation on how to develop a super zen presentation style like Steve Jobs. He works hard at it but ultimately it comes down to taking a structured, focussed approach to telling a compelling story that the audience love from beginning to end.

As Jobs says himself, ‘simplicity is the ultimate sophistication’.

The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs

View more presentations from Carmine Gallo.

Note the link here to Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers, which theorises that people at the top are there because they work hard and have on average put in a hell of a lot of hours to get there. Read more on ‘The 10,000 Hour Rule’.

10 Useful resources for iPhone developers

So I’ve starting looking into iPhone development, coming from a background in Ruby on Rails, Flash and a little PHP.

• Have a look at the best apps and undersand why they are popular: A Look At Some Of The Best iPhone Apps Of 2008. Check out what is hot and rising at Appism.
  
• Understand what is being rejected by the app store and why: Rejected! 10 iPhone Apps That Didn’t Make Apple’s App Store . See this story on AppStore rejects that got their apps into Android.
• Think outside the box. Understand how the iPhone is working with other devices: iPhone apps that foretell the future.
  
• Think about devices combos: iPhone + computer , iPhone + home automation, iPhone + video, iPhone + on-demand media, iPhone + gaming
• Understand iPhone app usage behaviour. Nice post here at Mobile Orchard on usage behaviour.
  
• Read the latest stories, most popular posts and other useful nuggets over at Digg.
• Understand some of the iPhone’s weaknesses (see comments).
  
• Understand what other developers are adding to their wishlist of features - it will help to understand where people are heading with new functionality. See iPhoneWishbook.
• Pricing: Check out this interesting post on iPhone app pricing. Basically the jump from FREE to $0.99 obviously reduces popularity, but the jump from $0.99 updwards doesn’t have such a reducing effect. An interesting study in retail pricing?
  
• Get started at the iPhone Dev Centre. Check out the getting started guides, including some useful videos.

I’m getting started in iPhone development

Having been a fledgling Rails developer for 3 years now I’m taking the plunge into the iPhone app world. Clearly everyone’s at it. With the announcement that Hulu will launch their own iphone app shortly how long before the BBC launch their own iPlayer app?

The app store has hit 1 billion downloads. Everyone’s loving it. Time to jump on the bandwagon too. Woohoo!

So I’m heading to the Apple Developer’s Wiki to get started. And I’m studying what apps didn’t make it to the app store and were rejected.