iPad / iPhone Video Chat Predictions

My prediction is the iPhone will get a video-chat camera in the next update. It's a very logical update that again steps ahead of most competitors. But the iPad won't for at least another generation or two.

My thinking why? Bandwidth vs Screen Size. The bigger the video, the more speed is needed.

On an iPhone, a video feed of 320x320 would fill the screen horizontally, still leaving space below for buttons. And an even smaller video window could be done if a thumbnail of your own video was displayed too in some sort of overlapping rectangles. With some eye-candy around the squares (and having them not overlap), it could likely get to a pretty small video dimension that needed to be sent over the Internet and it would still look good on the iPhone's screen.

AT&T and other cell phone providers might be able to handle that :)

A similar sized video rectangle would look not only look tiny on an iPad screen, it would look silly at that size. WiFi could handle the speeds needed to do a video size that would look reasonable (640x480 or something like that.) AT&T and other cell phone providers I think would struggle to do that.

So that's my predictions!

What a Week.

A week ago, we got the notice that both our Poker vs Girls and Poker vs Guys apps were removed from the App Store as part of the big purge of sexy apps. Definitely a bummer, they had been a good percent of our iPhone app income the past few months. (But not the biggest apps for us, the business tool FTP On The Go had that honor, and we still have the regular Heads Up: Hold'em poker game among many others.)

That led to an article on TechFlash. Which led this morning to an interview with KOMO4 TV News (in Seattle). I don't even know what might happen tomorrow. But silly things like people actually googling and finding this blog is one thing!

We also quickly did a new version of the poker games, Poker vs Strong Female Role Models. (pictures here) It's in review at Apple, we'll see what kind of splash that makes in the news when it arrives. {UPDATE: It got approved just fine. Get It Here}

That same day last week is when our little Knife Dancing game that had been lurking in the App Store for months finally decided to start growing..and growing...and growing.

We spent a few days watching in disbelief. Hardly able to post "we're at #20" on Facebook, before another one would post "And now #18". Posting on Facebook when our app passed the Facebook app was fun. And waking up on Wednesday to be the #1 free game and #2 free app.

So in the same week we've been sad to lose the strip poker apps, we've been amazed at how well Knife Dancing is doing--and how quickly it happened. And even more crazy, thanks to its In-App Purchase, it's been bouncing around on the Top Grossing lists as well. In the 30s to 40s. (At one point, I saw it at #27--above Grand Theft Auto at #28! Ridiculous.) We'll miss the income from the strip poker apps; but that's sure a huge consolation prize!

It's been a ride, seeing the downside of the App Store, where apps can be pulled with no notice...and the great side, where the right app can strike a chord and jump right to the top.