This years WorldWideDeveloperConference WWDC 2011 sould out within 8 hours. So, bad luck if you’ve been on a transatlanic flight at that time. Today, the lucky ones of the iOS & Mac developer community, who managed to get a ticked this year, gather at the Moscone West Center in San Francisco. Probably, Apple will share the videos of all of the WWDC sessions for free with their registered iOS & Mac developers, like they did last year. And even if the Cupertino guys won’t stream Steve Jobs keynote live, we’ll get a video stream short after the event. For real live coverage we can rely on the all those people blogging from the keynote. The keynote begins at 10:00 AM PST (07:00 PM CET) and there are a lot of things to cover: The next version of Mac OS X called Lion, the next version of iOS for iPhones & iPads and Apples new cloud service iCould.
Here’s my link list for live coverage of the event:

• Tim Stevens & Darren Murphy for Engadget … Tim & Darren start their pre-keynote-roundup at 07:30 AM PST via UStream videostream and continue with the keynote coverage
  (Liveblog technology: UStream (not via iOS) & ? iOS-friendly engadget cms ?
• Ars Technica … live blog will start with the keynote
  (Liveblog technology: ScribbleLive, disabled for iOS).
• Greg Kumparak for TechCrunch … live blog will start at 08:45 AM PST – 17:45 CET
  (ScribbleLive, not iOS optimized).
• TheNextWeb … live blog will start at 09:30 AM PST – 18:30 CET
  (ScribbleLive, iOS friendly).
• Jason Snell & Dan Moren for Macworld… live blog will start with the keynote
  (Liveblog technology: CoverItLive, iOS-friendly)
• Technologizer … live blog will start with the keynote
  (CoverItLive, iOS-friendly).
• MacLife … live blog will start with the keynote
  (CoverItLive, iOS-friendly).
• Adrian Kingsley-Hughes for ZDNet … live blog will start with the keynote
  (CoverItLive, iOS-friendly).
• Arron Hirst for RazorianFly … live blog will start at 09:30 AM PST – 18:30 CET
  (CoverItLive, iOS-friendly).
• Gizmodo … live blog will start at 09:00 AM PST – 18:00 CET
  (Liveblog technology: unknown, iOS-friendly).

As soon as the keynote is available as a Quicktime stream, you’ll get an update here

Sure, the iPhone can not cope with the image quality of a good digital camera … but it’s great for snapshots and ShakeItPhoto- or Hipstamatic-experiments. That’s why I’m collecting a lot of pictures on my iPhone from time to time. Sometimes I sync the pictures with iPhoto. But I’m not always using the delete-after-import feature. The current version of iPhoto does not have any problems with that if you use the “Hide Photos Already Imported” option: iPhoto just ignores the old photos and only downloads the previews of the new ones in the import section.
But there is no way to delete all or a selection of these old photos in iPhoto, iTunes or on the iPhone. But the only solution to delete these photos one-by-one on the iPhone is not working with hundrets of photos. So, what to do?

Every Mac ships with a standard Apple utility which helps you out It’s called “Image Capture” (or on German Mac OS X systems “Digitale Bilder”). This utility shows all images on the iPhone. You can select all or only a selection of these pictures and you’re able to delete them right away! Here is how to:

1. Connect your iPhone via USB with your Mac.
2. If iTunes or iPhoto starts, wait for the sync, and press the iPhone-disconnect button within the itunes window. Make sure, that you quit iTunes and iPhoto.
3. Open “Image Capture” from the applications folder.
4. Select your iPhone in the left column and a list of the iPhone photos will be displayed on the right.
5. Select the photos, you want to delete – or select all pictures by pressing command-A.
6. Now press on the red delete button just beneath the list. If you’re sure, that you want to delete the pictures you can confirm the deletion. WARNING: You cannot recover the deleted photos – so be sure, that you imported them to iPhoto before!

One of the most obvious features on the iPhone 4 & iOS 4 is “Folders for Apps” to organize your apps. This is how you can cope with the food of apps – at least on your own iPhone. iOS 4 automatically names the folder and you directly can customize the name. But what about changing the name later on?

Creating folders for apps

• If you’re in rearrange mode – by tapping and holding on an app on the home screen until the app icons start to shake – creating folders is easy and intuitive: You only need to drag an app icon over an other app icon and the iOS instantly creates a folder and automatically names it.
• The folder opens up and shows the included apps.
• You can change the automatic generated folder name by clicking into the rounded white name field.

Rename an existing folder for apps

• Changing existing titles of folders for apps is only working in the app rearrange mode.
• So, you have to tap and hold one of the app icons on the home screen until the icons start to shake.
• Then you tap on the folder you want to rename. The folder opens up so you can see the apps and the title in edit mode.
• You only have to click on the title. Now the keyboard appears and you can rename the folder.
• Just press the home button once you are finished to exit the rearrange mode.

Hope this saves some time.

Yesterday, Steve Jobs presented the next iPhone OS generation to the developer community as well as to the interested public. Now, iPhone developers have access to experiment with iPhone OS 4 SDK and can optimize their apps for the new operating system. This summer, Apple will roll out the new OS to iPhone- and iPod-touch-users. This fall iPhone OS 4 will also be available for the iPad.
It’s quite obvious, why Apple is revealing the next version of their mobile OS now: The app developers need to implement the new features – like multitasking – to their apps … only if they do so, the iPhone OS 4 will be a success. But, calm down, Steve Ballmer: It will be a success
This is a quick overview over the 7 tentpole features, Steve Jobs and Scott Forstall (Senior Vice President iPhone Software) presented at the event (Quicktime-Video-on-Demand of the event):

1. Multitasking – specific functionalities, like audio or VoIP, can run in the background, now. Also fast switching between apps by preserving the exact status within the app can now be enabled. To achieve all this in a battery- and cpu-preserving way, app developers need to integrate these new features explicitly by using those new APIs. Apple provides the developers with seven multitasking services via the iPhone OS 4.0 SDK:
   - Background audio … example app: Pandora
   - Voice over IP … example app: skype
   - Background location … example apps: tomtom, Loopt
   - Push notification
   - Local notifications
   - Task completion … example app: Flickr
   - Fast app switching … example app: TapTap
2. Folders – Now, apps can be organized within folders. Using folders, you can install a maximum of 2.160 apps instead of 180 on your iPhone
3. Mail – Improved Mail-app with unified inbox, multi Exchange accounts, fast inbox switching, threaded messages and open attachment with apps.
4. iBooks – the iPad iBook-Reader and the iBookstore are transformed for the iPhone.
5. Enterprise – the operating system addresses the needs of major companies for handling large installations of iPhones as their corporate communication devices:
   - Even better data protection
   - Mobile Device Management
   - Wireless app distribution
   - Multiple Exchange Accounts
   - Exchange Server 2010
   - SSL VPN support
6. Game Center – Now, game developers can use the social gaming network built into the native iPhone SDK:
   - Invite Friends
   - Automatic Matchmaking
   - Leaderborads
   - Achievements
7. iAd – Mobile Advertisement – Apple implements a mobile advertisement service deep into the iPhone OS itself. The revenue share is an industry “standard” of 60% for the developer and 40% of the advertisement revenues for Apple.

Again, Apple achieved to integrate a bundle of innovations into the next iPhone generation … very good news for the growing number of iPhone-developers. Other players in the mobile industry, like Google’s AdMob, have to expect heavy seas ahead. This leads me to one of these wonderful Bob Dylan songs: “The times they are a changing …”

Happy Valentine’s day 2010!

Last year, 30 German iPhone developers joint their forces and reduced their app prices to the max to make you smile on Valentine’s day … this year everything is bigger: Now more than 80 apps are reduced to the max to please our customers.
CompareMe shopping utility is also available for $0.99. So check out AppsForSale.de maybeyou’ll find a real bargain. Only on 14.02.2010!