Today, EyeMags.com releases the People's iPhone Appstore. Now anyone can create their own simple iPhone apps and they can immediately by downloaded to iPhones and iPod touches.
Now non developers can build their own iPhone content applications and make them available to the public immediately using the EyeMags technology. EyeMags believe this is a world first and expect significant uptake of their service. The advantage for publishers is that these applications are automatically available for all other phone types at the same time.
EyeMags was developed two years ago by founder Robin Jewsbury while working with the Mippin.com team. EyeMags was a prototype system for developing some of the sharing features which were put into Mippin. “What surprised us was the huge uptake in the EyeMags service even though we did not promote it. Nearly 9,000 apps were created in two years and these are now all available for download to the iPhone as well as all other phones” says founder Robin Jewsbury. “EyeMags was such a success that we decided to create a new company, just for EyeMags so we could concentrate on it.”
The applications are simple content applications. They do not have the rich functionality that many Appstore apps have, so Robin Jewsbury does not see them as a direct competitor to the iTunes Appstore. It does, however, fill a need for people to publish their own content to the iPhone cost effectively and without waiting for weeks for it to be approved. Even though EyeMags are HTML5 Webapps the applications are very different to those on Apples own webapps site at http://apple.com/webapps. This site contains links to websites, whereas EyeMags applications can be installed, run full screen and can be run without network connection to the Internet once installed.
EyeMags is a free service for publishers and consumers of the content. Creation of iPhone applications remain free until the end of the year after which time there will be a small charge levied on publishers to enable it for publication. Anything created before that date will remain free. Additionally publishers will be able to pay a larger but cost effective fee for their apps to be built into native applications which can be published to the iTunes appstore.
You can see how easy it is to create and install an application and watch Robin Jewsbury demonstrate this in less than 5 mins at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N04WvI0xE0Q.
Specific EyeMag examples – on the iPod or iPhone go to the following urls:
http://eyemags.com/4956 world wonders
http://eyemags.com/24 http://eyemags.com/240 http://eyemags.com/23 City guides for London,
New York and Paris
http://eyemags.com/1068 http://eyemags.com/4343 http://eyemags.com/9493 Art or just go to http://eyemags.com on the iphone and browser the 9000 magazines which can be downloaded.
