Find and Call Is the First Malicious App in the App Store Ever

When the App Store was launched five years ago, there were three main reasons for it; it made it easy for developers to get their apps noticed, it made it easy for consumers to an app to download, and it protected users from malicious apps.

Well, how did it do? A fluid interface and design made it fare very well for getting apps noticed and letting people notice them. And as for the third reason, the App Store has gone five years without a single malicious app being found. But now, for the first time ever, an app with malware made it into the App Store.

This app was called Find and Call. While it wasn't a top selling app, it had a lot of downloads, mainly from Russians, because the description text was in Russian. It served as a address book, where you would keep the information of your contacts so you could call them.

But that's not all it did. Apparently, the app stored information about the contact information of the user in the developers servers. The company then sent text messages to these users advertising the application. The developer had found a way to make it appear as if the text message was from the user of the app. In addition to this, the information of the users contacts was sent to companies that would spam them.

Luckily, however, less than a month after the release of the app, some users were able to contact the developer of the app, who claimed that the spamming was due to a bug. Knowing that this information was false, they contacted Apple, who promptly removed the app from the App Store.

“The Find & Call app has been removed from the App Store due to its unauthorized use of users’ Address Book data, a violation of App Store guidelines,” said Apple. They also noted that iOS 6 will include notifications when third-party apps access users' data.

Twitter tried to buy Instagram before Facebook did

 Last week, Facebook bought Instagram for $1 billion, neutralizing an incoming threat for Facebook and making nine Instagram employees instantly rich. Apparently, Facebook didn't have any competition for this acquisition. Or did they? Not if a New York Times report claiming that Twitter tried to acquire Instagram in the months before Facebook did is true.

According to the report, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey tried to acquire Instagram in the months before Facebook tied up the deal, but they only managed to raise the price that Facebook paid to $1 billion. It's not hard to tell that Dorsey isn't happy about this; all his spokespeople declined to comment, and he no longer uses Instagram to upload photos to Twitter.

The report also includes information about how Instagram will change after its acquisition by Facebook. The app isn't going away, but it'll be working with Facebook to build the service. Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, said that they'll try to "build on Instagram's strengths, not absorb its features." You'll still be able to post pictures onto other social networking sites, And yes, that list will include Twitter.

iTether is Back With HTML5 Version

Amidst a chaotic scene on the web (AT&T ranting, Tether's site going down with all the traffic, tweets and posts everywhere), Tether's $15 iTether app, which let you tether devices to your iPhone without a monthly charge, was somehow allowed on the app store (even though Apple actually came to the CEO's house to test out the app, and said they would let it in). It reached the Top 10 app downloads list in a matter of hours, but 20 hours after they accepted the app, Apple removed the app from the store, likely after complaints from AT&T and Verizon.

 "It was clear from our initial application iTether, there was enormous demand within the iPhone ecosystem," says Tim Burke, CEO of Tether. "It was unfortunate that Apple decided to remove our application, only 20 hours after we launched. However, this caused us to innovate. Our underlying patent-pending technology behind Tether for iPhone is unlike anything on the market."

Tether's new version for the iPhone is purely based on HTML5 and creates a completely wireless connection over AdHoc. This circumvents the need of buying the application directly from Apple's App Store and allows any iPhone or iPad with a data connection to allow tethering.
Well, Tether now has a new solution; an entirely HTML5 based tethering system. Their new system, which is available from Tether's site for only $30 per year, uses HTML5 in a completely wireless system (thanks to AdHoc), where you don't need to download anything from the app store to tether for much cheaper. Yes, there is a yearly charge this time, but it's much better than AT&T's $20/mo. tethering plans.

Apple Hits 25 Billion App Downloads. And 500 Apps Downloaded Every Second (Update: The Winner is Announced!)

25 billion     Total app downloads
15 billion     Apple's current rate of app downloads per year
550,000       Apps on the App Store
45,000         avg. downloads per app
10,000         credit, in dollars, on the iTunes gift card the winner of Apple's countdown promotion got
476              apps downloaded every second from the App Store
9                  days longer it would've taken to hit 25 billion if Angry Birds was never introduced
4                  years since the introduction of the App Store
3.6               avg. app downloads per person on the Earth

True, a lot of things in the world of technology are quite shocking, but it's hard to find numbers like this. I mean, who would guess that almost 500 apps are being downloaded every time the second hand on their clock moves? As ridiculous as these numbers may sound, Apple isn't stopping any time soon.

The App Store just reached 25 billion downloads, and somebody (their name has yet to be revealed) has won a $10,000 iTunes gift card as a reward for downloading the 25 billionth app. If you saw the counter during the promotion, you have a sense of how successful Apple is (The thousands digit counter was turning every 2 seconds. Literally.).

Update: The winner of the promotion was an unnamed person in China, who downloaded "Where's My Water" as the 25 billionth app. Congratulations!

Apple Allows Free Tethering App iTether, Then Pulls it Hours Later

Believe it or not, Apple briefly allowed iTether, an app that allowed you to tether other devices to your iPhone, in the App Store before pulling it. In the few hours that the $14.99 app was available, it almost instantly became the top grossing app in the entire store. The app was so popular that all the traffic made the Tether website go down, making it impossible to run the iTether app because the app connects to the website on every run. People who got the app before it was pulled will still be able to use the app.

Tether is an application that allows your Mac and PC to take advantage of your smartphone's data plan, providing you access to the Internet on your laptop anywhere there is cellular coverage from your smartphone.


Tether is easy to install, easy to use, works practically anywhere, and is very cost-effective.


To download the PC software visit:
http://tether.com/i/Tether-iPhone.exe


To download the Mac software visit:

http://tether.com/i/Tether-iPhone.dmg

 It is certainly possible that Apple pulled this app when carriers of the iPhone objected to their approval of this app. This seems likely because Apple asked the developers a lot of questions and asked for a demo, so they certainly knew what the app they were accepting was capable of doing. However, carriers have been known to hate free tethering apps. A few months ago, AT&T started to send out text messages to users who had been illegally performing free tethering on their iPhone by jailbreaking it and using apps like MyWi that can only be downloaded on jailbroken phones.

This scene seems almost identical to 2008, when Apple approved a similar app called Netshare that allowed you to tether devices to your iPhone, but very quickly pulled it. In a few years, Apple would allow tethering on the iPhone, but only with additional plans starting at $20/month.

More Fuel Added to the Kindle Fire

Next week, we'll get to see if the $200 Kindle Fire really will be a match for Apple's iPad. A price $300 lower already gives it a pretty good advantage, but now Amazon has announced that they've got even more coming.

First, they announced that "several thousand" apps will be available on the Kindle Fire, including Facebook and even Hulu. That doesn't sound like it have as many apps as the iPad (over 100,000), but it's quite a start anyway

Second, they said that over 400 magazines will be coming to the Kindle Fire; all in full color! Some of the magazines include The New Yorker, Reader's Digest, and Us Weekly.

Third, they announced that interactive books will soon be coming to the Kindle Fire. These interactive books will have built in audio and even video. That sure puts paper to shame.

4 top apps on the app store involve flying animals!

Have you noticed that the top 4 apps on the app store all involve flying animals? Number 1 is Air Penguin. This game involves a penguin jumping from iceberg to iceberg, doing flips while he does so. Sometimes, he uses his feet as propellers to make him fly. Number 2 and number 3 are Angry Birds Rio and Angry Birds, respectively. These involve flinging birds at pigs. Number 4 is Tiny Wings. This has a bird with tiny wings that you make fly by using hills as jumps. Is this pure coincidence, or do we like to play games involving flying animals for some reason?

The winner is...

Gail Davis of Kent, UK officially won the App Store promotion (see post "Apple to offer $10,000 iTunes gift card to the person who downloads the ten billionth app!) by downloading Paper Glider as the 10 billionth app! She will receive a $10,000 iTunes gift card from Apple. It's really smart of Apple to do this, because they don't actually lose any money this way.

The App Store reached 10 billiion downloads!

The App Store for iPhone, iPod and iPad has hit 10 billion downloads! It took only 2.5 years, compared to 7 for the iTunes Store to hit that landmark. The winner has not yet been revealed.

Update: Gail Davis of Kent, UK won this competition by downloading Paper Glider as the ten billionth app. She will receive a $10,000 iTunes gift card

Apple to offer $10,000 iTunes gift card to the person who downloads the billionth app!

Now that the App Store is under 250 million downloads away from the ten billionth download (Wow! Thats 10,000,000,000!), they are offering an iTunes gift card of $10,000 to the purchaser of the billionth app downloaded! Here's what they say:

As of today, nearly 10 billion apps have been downloaded from the App Store worldwide. Which is almost as amazing as the apps themselves. So we want to say thanks. Download the 10 billionth app, and you could win a US $10,000 iTunes Gift Card. Just visit the App Store, and download what could be your best app yet.

Only 11 months ago, Apple did almost the same thing to celebrate the 10 billionth iTunes download! Considering that the App store has only been around for 30 months, ten billion downloads is a heck of a lot.

Update: The ten billionth app was downloaded by Gail Davis. The app was Paper Glider. She will receive a $10,000 iTunes gift card.

Apple is trying to patent "App Store"!

Ever wonder why RIM, Samsung, Google, and all those other app makers don't just call their store "App Store" like Apple does? That's because Apple has trademarked the term "App Store"! That's why RIM (makers of BlackBerry phones) calls their store "App World", Google (makers of Android) calls their store "Android Market", and why Samsung calls theirs "Samsung Apps". Now Microsoft is trying to take away their trademark. They say "it makes other companies choose misleading names for their app stores." I agree with Microsoft; it's time for Apple to stop. They even tried to patent multitouch years ago!

The Mac App Store has Opened!

Yes, you saw that correctly; the Mac App Store is now open! Apple told us it would open in summer 2011 along with Mac OS X Lion, but they decided to open it now! Though it only opened days ago, it already contains more than a thousand apps like Compartments (a home inventory app), Flight Control HD, webpage-designing apps, image editing apps, workout partner apps, drawing apps, recipe apps, and more! And yes, Angry Birds is on there also. This really is something Microsoft will have to compete with. My guess is that the next version of Windows could have an app store.