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'A' Is for 'Apple' and 'App' Application. A computer program or the set of

software that the end user perceives as a single entity as a tool for a well-defined purpose. (Also

called: application program; application software.)

The iPhone application VR+ connects to major

social networks.

-http://en.wiktionary.orglwiki/app/ication#Noun

A s characterized byWikipedia, "[A] smartphone is a mobile phone offering advanced capabilities, often with PC-like

functionality ... ; it is a miniature computer that has phone capa­bility" [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smartphone]. "The iPhone is a line of Internet- and multimedia-enabled smartphones designed and marketed by Apple Inc. [that] ... functions as a camera phone ... , a portable media player .. . , and an Internet client, with e-mail, web browsing, andWi-Fi connectivity .... " In

addition, it enables text messaging and visual voicemail. The

first generation iPhone model was introduced in late June 2007; the iPhone 3G, an enhanced version that supports faster 3G data speeds and an assisted GPS (Global Positioning System) was

introduced in July 2008. The most recent model, the iPhone 3GS

has improved performance, a high-resolution camera with video capability, and voice control; it was announced and released in mid-June 2009 [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPhone).

In 2009, nearly 25 million iPhones were sold, giving Apple a 14.4% share of the worldwide smartphone market, placing it third

32 SEARCHER • The Magazine for Database Professionals

Gerald McKiernan Associate Professor/Science and Technology Librarian

Iowa State University Library

in global sales behind Nokia and Samsung [http://www.gartner. com/it/page.jsp?id=1306513). It is projected that at least 36 mil­lion iPhone units will be sold this year and 48.5 million units in 2011 [http://www.appJeinsider.com/articles/10/01/06/piper_ 15_8m_us_iphone_sales_in_20 lO_even_ withouC verizon.html).

Launched early in September 2007, the iPod touch "is a portable media player, personal digital assistant, and Wi-Fi mobile platform designed and marketed by Apple Inc . ... with

wireless access to the iTunes Store .. . and ... to Apple's App Store,

enabling content to be purchased and downloaded directly on the device . ... " The second-generation iPod touch was unveiled a year later and featured "external volume controls, a built-in

speaker, a contoured back, built-in Nike+, Bluetooth support,

and the ability to connect a microphone .... " The late 2009 iPod touch, released in September, uses the iPhone as 3.1 operating system and is available with 8, 32, or 64GB of flash memory. The

32- and 64GB versions include the same microprocessors, graph­ics engine, and RAM as the iPhone 3GS, as well as voice control,

a remote, and a microphone, among other functionalities and accessories [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPod_touchl [http:1 1

www.apple.com/ipodtouch/what -isl ipod.htrnll . By the end of2009, an estimated 32.5 million iPod touch units

were sold, doubling sales through June 31 , 2009, and signifi­cantly outselling iPhone in that fiscal quarter [http://theapple blog.com/20 1 0 10 1/281 ipod-touch-now-outselling-iphonel. One analyst estimated that iPod touch sales would exceed those for iPhone for the first time by the end of the first quarter of2010 [http://brainstormtech . blogsJortune.cnn.com/2010/01l081

how-many-ipods-did-apple-selll. According to the market research flIm Gartner, Inc. [http:1 1

www.gartner.com].in 2009, Apple Computer, Inc. accounted for more than 99% of all mobile app sales as well as those made available free of charge. In that year alone, iPhone users down­loaded 2.5 billion apps from Apple App Stores [http://www.

apple.com/iphonel apps-for-iphonel. TbeApp Store reached the 1 billion download mark in April 2009 and the 2 billion mark in November 2009; in early January 2010, the total reached 3 bil­lion [http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-10424973-37 .html].

Based on Gartner's estimates and other analysis, Apple will control at least two-thirds of the mobile app market, with more than 4.5 billion apps expected to be downloaded by the end of 2010. Free downloads will account for 82% of all downloads in 2010 and for 87% of the estimated 21.6 downloads in 2013 [http://www.gartner.com/itlpage.jsp?id=1282413l .

The recent introduction of the iPad [http://www.apple.com/ ipadl, the Apple tablet computer announced in late January 201 0, is expected to increase Apple's share of the mobile app market [http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2010/01/apple-responsi ble-for-994-of-mobile-app-sales-in-2009.arsl. The iPad device itself sold 1 million units in its first 28 days. For most of that time only the iPad Wi-Pi version was available, with the iPad 3G ver­sion not available until the end of April.

The App Store The Apple App Store [http://www.apple.com/iphone/app

storel "is a service for the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad created by Apple Inc. which allows users to browse and download applica­tions from the iTunes Store that were developed with the iPhone SDK" (Software Development Kit) and published through Apple. In January 2010, it offered more than 100,000 free and pajd apps for the iPhone and iPod touch models [http://www.apple.com/ ipodl compare-ipod-modelsJ [http://news.cnet.com/8301-135

79_3-10424973-37.htmll. As of mid-March 2010, there were nearly 195,000 App Store apps, created by more than 32,000

www.Jnlotoday.comfsearcher

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unique publishers. On an average day, more than 680 apps are submitted for review and approval [http://148apps.biz/app­store-metrics].

From the App Store, customers from more than 75 countries can select apps from 20 categories, notably games, business, news, sports, health, reference, travel , etc. [http://www.apple. com/pr/library/2010/01 105appstore.htrnlj . In mid-March 2010, the most popular app categories were Books (28,705 active), Games (24,551 active), Entertainment (20,656 active), Education (11,056 active), and Utilities (9,788 active) [http://148apps.biz/ app-store-memcs] .

Since its establishment, a number of web sites have emerged to assist potential users and buyers in assessing approved apps in the App Store. Founded in early 2009, the AppStore HQ [http:1 1

www.appstorehq.coml.is "the leading independent search and discovery platform for iPhone applications." To identify the lat­est, most noteworthy new iPhone apps, the "AppStoreHQ searches through thousands ofblog and Twitter posts daily to iPhone apps," scoring each mention based on the authority of the source, recal­culating its app rankings several times a day in order to provide the most accurate and timely social app rankings [http://www. appstorehq.coml media-resources).

- -iPhone

Your iPhone gets better with every new app. ApplIClIIOf\J. 'or rPhofIt IIf Ale, nottt't\9 you've ''o'er set" on ~ mobil, phonf' Explote IoOmt 01 our fJVOOtt lPP' nul. 'lId ~~I "IO¥o'lMy &/1_ IPhone 10 do ~" mort

Apps for Everything

.... .............

Apps IOf Apps lor Appslo< Appslo< CDoks ICHping Current tho Gte .. OUtdoors Musk

" -

Browse Staff Picks

June 2010 33

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--- ---------

From the AppStoreHQ homepage, users can not only browse the most recent Hottest iPhone Apps on the Web and Hottest

iPhone Apps on Twitter, but can also review the Best iPhone Apps, Free iPhone Apps, and the Best iPhone Games, as well. In

addition, one can browse by category (e.g., books, education,

reference). Users can also search for specific apps in all cate­gories or limit the search to more than 2 dozen categories. From

within a category (e.g., books) , one can also browse ranked apps

by price tiers, rating, or release date. In mid -March 2010, Panelfly Comics, A Christmas Carol, and

Epoch 01: Monkey and the Moon Patrol were representative

apps in the Books category, while in the Education category, 300 Essential SAT Vocabulary Words, Musee du Louvre, and Nursing

Exam Lite were among the most highly rated apps. In Reference,

Baby Name Wizard: The World Baby Name Book, Jumble Solvr, and Beer Me LITE fell into tills category. In the Games category,

Doodle Bowling, Paper Toss, and The Graveyard Lite were rep­

resentative apps. The general themes of CBS Sports NCAA March Madness On Demand LITE, ESPN 2010 World Cup, and Tee­

ToGreen Golf Pebble Beach were typical of the Sports apps. In Travel, Hotel Navigator, Lonely Planet Travel Guides, and Miller

Lite TaxiFinder were representative.

While some consider many apps as trivial or of very limited

personal and professional value, an increasing number of apps have been developed to facilitate access to significant and sub­

stantive educational, informational, and research resources

and sources.

Books

Kindle for the iPhone

Amazon Kindle [http://Amazon.com/Kindle] "is a software and hardware platform developed by Amazon.com .. . for ren­dering and displaying e-books and other digital media." As of March 2010, three hardware models - Kindle (November 2007),

Kindle 2 (February 2009) and Kindle DX (June 2009) - were avail­

able. An international version of the Kindle 2 with a built -in (high­

speed) wireless modem became available in mid-October 2009,

offering connectivity in more than 100 countries. Each model lets

users download the full text of books, magazines, newspapers,

and blogs from Amazon.com via Whispernet, the free Amazon

cellular network, as well as from other content providers [http:/ /

en. wikipedia.org/wiki/ Amazon_Kindle#Content].

As of mid May 2010, more than 500,000 publications were

available from the Kindle Store alone. Book genres available for

the Kindle encompass fiction, nonfiction, business and invest-

34 SEARCHER • The Magazine for Oalabase Professionals

ing, children's chapter books. computers and internet. politics

and current events. reference. religion and spirituality. science. sports. textbooks. and travel. In addition. access to select

national and international newspapers is also available, most

notably the Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune, Denver Post, Hous­ton Chronicle, The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, The

Wall Street]ournal. Washington Post. Financial Times, Le Monde, Shanghai Daily. International Herald Tribune, and The Times

(London). The Atlantic, Forbes, Newsweek. The New Yorker, The

Economist, and U.S. News & World Report are among a select group of national and international magazines also available [http://www.amazon.com/kindle-store-ebooks-newspapers­

blogs/b?ie=UTF8&node=133141011J. Users can also access more than 1.8 million titles from the

Internet Archive [http://www.archive.org/details/texts] and more than 30,000 titles from Project Gutenberg [http://www.guten

berg.orgJ [http://www.amazon.com/gp/b/?node=2245146011].

When he woke in the woods in the dark and the cold of the night he'd reach out to touch the child sleeping beside him. Nights dark beyond darkness and the days more gray each one than what had gone before. Like the onset of some cold glaucoma dimming away the world. His hand rose and fell softly with each nr~'l'lrl11

The Kindle app on the iPhone

On March 3, 2009, Amazon.com launched an application called Kindle for iPhone [http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/ kind le-for-iphonelid302584613?mt=8#] in the i1unes App Store that allows iPhone and iPod touch users to read Kindle content on these devices. Through the "Whispersync" technology, "cus­tomers can synchronize reading progress, bookmarks, and other information across devices" [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Amazon_Kindle]. Though Amazon's Kindle software is propri­etary, thls move by Amazon freed potential Kindle users from having to buy the Kindle hardware.

Among many features, the Kindle for iPhone app allows users to purchase a Kindle publication; read the beginnjng of any book free of charge; freely download any Kindle titles previously bought; adjust the text size and add bookmarks; tap and hold on a word to create a note or a rughlight; read in portrait or land­scape mode; and tap on either side of the screen or flick to turn pages, and pinch to zoom book images [http://itunes.apple. com/usl app I kindle- for -iphonel id302584613?mt=8#].

Since its initial expansion to iPhone, Amazon has introduced Kindle options for PCs, Macs, and iPad.

Questia Library

Questia Media [http://www.questiameilia.comJ is "a leading provider of information and educational resources," providing one of the "world's largest online collection of complete books, journals and articles" [http://www.questia.com/aboutQuestia/ about.htmlJ.lts Questia Library "is a powerful research library covering a vast array of subjects in the humanities and social sci­ences, from history to philosophy and art to economics," offer­ing access to more than 76,00 complete books, 155,000 journal articles, 185,000 magazine articles, and 1.1 million newspaper articles [http://www.questia.com/aboutQuestia/exploreUbrary. htmlJ. It has input from more than 300 acclaimed humanities and social science publishers [http://www.questia.com/about

Questial about.htmlJ. Questia Ubrary "is organized in an easy-to-use category

structure that can be browsed with efficiency, allowing ... [users) to quickly drill down to one of 6,700 specific research topics ... or ... search the full text of all of the books and articles, to locate relevant publications, plus search withln books to locate spe­cific pages of interest" [http://www.questia.com/aboutQuestia/

about.html]. In September 2009, Questia Media released Questia Ubrary for

the iPhone and iPod touch, an app that enables users to access its entire collection [http://smartmobiletoday.com/?p=243] . The app is available from the App Store in iTImes for 99 cents, giving users

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I ~RAF-< MOBILE

permanent access to 5,000 public domain books and 1 week of access to every publication in Questia Library. After 1 week, users may purchase additional access to the full library through iTImes on a nonrecurring basis. With the iPhone app, current Questia sub­scribers can have free mobile access to their previously selected content for as long as a subscription is active [http://itunes.apple. coml usl app I questia -library I id331637962?mt=8#J.

A Questia account is also accessible online, where users can create project folders to manage and store their work. At ques­tia.com, users can quote and cite publications, create automatic bibliograprues, bookmark pages, add items to one's bookshelf, take iligital notes, and make/view highlights. Within the Ques­tia Library application, one not only has mobile access to the entire Questia collection, but can also bookmark pages, add items to his or her bookshelf, and view the rughlights created at questia.com [http://www.questia.com/questialibraryplusJ .

Databases

arXiview

Designed by Dave Bacon, a theoretical physicist at the Uni­versity of Washington, arXiview [http://dabacon.org/arxiviewJ is an iPhone application billed as "a very easy way to surf the last few weeks of arXiv" [http://arxiv.org/postingsJ. Developed by Paul Ginsparg, then of the Los Alamos National Laboratory and now of Cornell University, arXiv.org provides open access to more than 592,000 (03-13-201) eprints in physics, mathematics, computer science, quantitative biology, quantitative finance, and statistics [http:/ I arxiv.orgJ.

The features and functionalities of arXiview include the abil­ity to do the follOwing:

• Browse arXiv categories by date. • Keep up to date not just on the latest day's posting, but

postings from the last week or any date desired. • Search the arXiv by author, title, full text, with and with-

out restrictions to specific categories of the arXiv. • Save preprints to one's iPhone for later, offline browsing. • Organize offline readings in self-named folders. • Email oneself or others preprint information for later ref­

erence. • Read PDFs in both landscape and portrait mode. • Arrange arXiv categories and subcategories in any order

of preference for quick access. -http://physicsworld.com/blog/2009/04/

researchJeuolution_in_the -pal. html

Juno 2010 35

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iSSRN (Social Science Research Network)

iSSRN [http://tinyurl.com/y9v4gcaJ is a free iPhone app that "provides instant access to the Latest Social Science and Human­ities research in the SSRN eLibrary from scholars around the world" [http://www.ssrn.comJ. The Social Science Research Net­work (SSRN) is "devoted to the rapid worldwide dissemination of social science research and is composed of a number of spe­cialized research networks in each of the social sciences" (e.g., accounting, economics, information systems, legal, manage­ment, marketing, and political, among several others).

Each SSRN's network encourages the early distribution of research results by publishing submitted abstracts and by soLic-

Through its nature.com iPhone application, users can

access science news stories.

iting abstracts of top-quality research papers around the world. The network now has hundreds of journals, publishers, and institutions as partners in publishing, providing working papers for distribution through SSRN's eLibrary and abstracts for pub­lication in SSRN's electronic journals.

The SSRN eLibrary consists of two parts: an Abstract Data­base containing abstracts on more than 276,500 scholarly (as of March 2010) working papers and forthcoming papers and an Electronic Paper Collection currently containing more than 227,300 downloadable full-text documents in Adobe Acrobat PDF format. The Library also includes research papers from a number of fee-based partner publications [http://www.

ssrn.com] [http://ssrnblog.com/2009/ 11 I 191 ssrns- iphone­app- issrn- is-available] [http://scholarship20.blogspot.com/ 200S1 061 social-science-research -network.htmlj.

Journals

iResearch App (American Institute of Physics)

In early October 2009, the American Institute of Physics (AlP), "one of the world's largest publishers of information in the phys­ical sciences and a leader in the field of electronic publishing," announced the launch of its new mobile e-Reader application,

iResearch [http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore. woal

wa/viewSoftware?id=331339330&mt=S].

36 SEARCHER The Magazine lor Database Professionals

iResearch is "an offline e-reader that enables users to save PDF files locally to their device and view them offline without a Wifi or cellular connection. Users navigate through the journals, the volumes and issues to select an article they wish to read. A user will be automatically logged in with their institutional IP Address ifthey are online within a quaJifying address range, or he/she can enter their username/password to obtain access. When the PDF has been loaded to the device the user can select to save the file locally onto the iPhone/iPod Touch. Once the PDF is saved locally the user can read the article off-line" [http://sci

tation.aip.orgl labsl C3 I iresearch.jsp]. The journals available in the iResearch application include

Applied Physics Letters, Biomicrojluidics, Chaos, Journal of Applied Physics, The Journal of Chemical Physics, Journal of Mathematical Physics, Journal of Physical and Chemical Refer­ence Data, Journal of Renewable and Sustainable Energy, Low Temperature Physics, Physics of Fluids, Physics of Plasmas, and Review of Scientific Instruments [http://www.aip.org/press_

release I iPhoneApp.htrnl].

Nature Publishing Group Mobile iPhone App(s)

The Nature Publishing Group (NPG) [nature. com] is "a pub­lisher of high impact scientific and medical information in print and online. [It] ... publishes journals, online databases, and services across the life, physical, chemical and applied sci­ences and clinical medicine" [http://www.nature.com/np~/ company_info] .

Through its nature.com iPhone application [http://itunes. com/apps/naturecomj, users can access science news stories and the latest published research from Nature Publishing Group on their iPhone. New articles that are published are pushed straight to the user's iPhone, where the full text can be read immediately or saved for later viewing.

The "nature.com app has been designed to make reading sci­entific content on the iPhone a rewarding experience. A fast, attractive interface lets ... [one accessj the news and [needed] research .... " Users can select journal titles of interest or execute saved searches on nature. com (or PubMed) to retrieve newly added content. All can skim citations and abstracts on the smart­phone; nature.com subscribers can subsequently read the full text of nature. com articles on a desktop or laptop workstation after saving the search results [http://www.nature.com/mobileappsj.

More to Come Keep reading this column. When it comes to mobile comput­

ing' this is only the beginning. •

COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

TITLE: ’A’ Is for ’Apple’ and ’App’SOURCE: Searcher 18 no5 Je 2010

The magazine publisher is the copyright holder of this article and itis reproduced with permission. Further reproduction of this article inviolation of the copyright is prohibited. To contact the publisher:http://www.infotoday.com