There is now a short video demonstrating the scanning process with Optiscan, at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9pB-i0xQKs

We are about to release the next version of Optiscan, featuring improved image processing algorithms, internationalisation (including Japanese), and bug fixes. It has been submitted to Apple, and will go on sale at the normal Optiscan price of $4.99. BUT – you can get Optiscan right now for $3.99, and benefit from the reduced price AND free updates.

Finally, we have a distribution mechanism for S60 applications. Despite all the problems with developing for S60 — the steep learning curve, the painful testing procedure, the complex UIs — the primary barrier to releasing an S60 product has always been the same. How do we sell the thing?! The success of the App Store is purely driven by the ease of distribution*, allowing a developer to ship applications around the world at the touch of a button. Prior to OVI, the only way to sell an app on S60 was to either do it yourself (painful and expensive), use Handango (which takes a 50% revenue share!), or talk to an operator (requires the patience of Job).

Obviously it is going to be harder to develop an S60 application than an iPhone one. But the S60 platform is so much more capable than the iPhone that we can hope to see seriously innovative applications out there. Admittedly these will be priced at a premium level. But quality applications will drive a market, and increase the popularity of the S60 platform. It will be interesting to see whether an S60 phone becomes a status symbol in the same way that iPhone has done – and whether the applications you have on your idle screen become as telling as they do on iPhone!

Time will tell. Airsource will certainly be watching OVI with interest.

* Let’s be clear what we mean here. Distribution is not the same as Marketing. You still need to market your applications, no matter how you sell them.

I have just spent four days in Barcelona at MWC catching up on the industry developments. The main topic on everyone’s lips was The App Store, and by “The” App Store I mean Apple’s, not Nokia’s OVI offering or any of the other contenders.

Let’s take a little look at OVI. Nokia claim that there is an initial market of 50 million handsets. I disagree. Unless Carphone Warehouse go out onto the high street and start pulling people into their store and upgrading their phones for them, the vast majority of smart phone users are not going to install the OVI software. There are two reasons. Firstly, the entire motivation for an App Store on device is that users are not prepared to go through the pain of downloading software and installing it. So why, exactly, are they going to download software (OVI) and install it? Secondly, developing applications for S60* is simply a lot harder than developing them for iPhone, and takes more time. Moreover, those applications need to be tested on the entire range of OVI devices. So the applications either need to cost more (for the same number of sales), or have a wider market (which they haven’t got). With over 10 million iPhones out there, all with an active user population downloading and buying applications, Nokia need a very substantial uptake of their S60 handsets just to get applications shipping at anywhere near the same price level.

It isn’t going to happen. You read it here first.

Tomorrow – why I think that OVI beats the App Store!

* I realise that OVI supports S40 — i.e. MIDP — as well. I am ignoring MIDP since you can’t do anything that useful in it (games notwithstanding). It’s even more restrictive than the iPhone SDK.

One of the features of Optiscan about which we thought quite carefully prior to the initial release was how to stay connected to our users. We included several entry points through which our users can send us feedback when they have trouble with the application.

Here is some analysis of the user reports we’ve had, some of which contributed to the new features we’ve been working on for our first post-1.0 release, which should be out shortly.

• Several users have reported a crash when selecting a contact created by Google sync. Contacts synced from gmail using Google’s Exchange server appear to have email addresses with no label (such as “other”, “work”, “home”, etc.). If you select such a contact, Optiscan 1.0.2 will crash. We have a fix for this issue but it will be a few more days before it’s available on the App Store. Work-around: add a label to your contact’s email address, or simply sync via a different method for the moment.
• What can we do with a QR code generated on the iPhone? During our pre-release testing, one of our beta testers asked this question. They wanted to (e.g.) email it to someone, or save it to their photo album. We didn’t add this feature for the initial release because we didn’t really believe it – we thought it would be obvious that sharing a QR code is something you do in person, with someone else with scanning the code you have displayed on your screen. We were, of course, completely wrong. Several reviews and feedback emails made this very clear to us. Chastened, we’ve added a feature to save a generated QR code to the photo album to the next release. At this point we’re not planning to support direct export by email due to limitations in the iPhone SDK (you will still have to go via the Photos app). If Apple opens up more functionality to us, we will issue an update allowing you to email straight from the app. Work-around: in the mean time, you can just take a screenshot and email that.
• Failed scans. Although we’ve found and fixed a few small image processing bugs identified as a result of user reports, Optiscan’s QR code scanning is actually pretty good. Most of the reports we get turn out to be people scanning visual codes that are not QR codes, or scanning QR codes that have been printed quite small, so that the iPhone camera struggles to cope. As for the former problem, we’re considering adding support for other 2D barcode formats, but the challenge when doing so is to avoid slowing down the scan process too much; this may take a bit longer to sort out. As for the latter, we have yet to add software deblurring, so in the meantime must refer users who really need this functionality to Griffin Clarifi, which adds an extra lens to help the iPhone camera focus at short range.
• Bad QR code generators. For instance, one user has sent us a picture of a QR code with the version bits inserted in reverse order (we’re introducing a work-around, ignoring the version bits where they’re clearly invalid). In another case, a certain website claims to generate QR codes encoding vcards but instead generates something that is a slightly broken and hence unparseable VCard (at least at present). There’s not a lot we can do about these, except try to extract email addresses and phone numbers that might be of use.

So in summary, if something doesn’t work, tell us and we’ll fix it. If Optiscan doesn’t do what you want it to, tell us, and we’ll fix that too.

We’ve had quite a lot of feedback about Optiscan, from various sources. Where possible we’ve replied, but in some cases email addresses haven’t been correct, and in others no reply is possible — such as on the App Store Reviews.

We’re currently working on an update for Optiscan which will include the following features:

• Handle QR codes with invalid version bits — we found that there is at least one generator out there which produces technically invalid codes. Since it’s possible for us to support these, we will.
• Add a setting for “When code recognised, just launch the URL with no confirmation query”.
• Improve handling of partially shadowed images.
• Improve handling of blurry images.
• Localization into Japanese and several other languages.
• Tap-and-hold to save a barcode to the gallery.

We are, of course, still collecting feedback at optiscan-feedback@airsource.co.uk

We’ve added a brief FAQ for Optiscan, which is available here.

An old colleague of mine who used to work at Microsoft told me that he once went to a global summit, to find people standing on tables shouting “Show Me The Money”. As a business strategy, it doesn’t work too badly. It fell out of favour in the 2000 bubble, but we’re all older and wiser now. Right?

I went down to London last night along with Nick (CEO) to visit the Mobile Monday event, rescheduled from last week due to England’s inability to cope with any snow. It was kindly sponsored by Ikivo and OMTP. Unfortunately we didn’t take any pictures as we were all too busy playing with Optiscan on our phones, but we did listen to the speakers.

The general theme of the evening was the construction of a widgets platform supporting mobile, but not exclusively so, and incorporating all sorts of fun things. One aspect seemed to be lacking from the discussion though, and come the Q&A, both our hands shot up. Nick got the mike and said “Sounds great. But how do I make money out of it”.

We just launched Optiscan on iPhone, and one of the key reasons for choosing that platform was the way we can talk to one person – Apple – and sell around the world. If we want to get operator tie in on just about any other platform we need to go talk to umpteen different operators, and maybe ship in six months time if we’re very lucky. Apple takes a week or two. It’s just easy, and lets us focus on development and on marketing.

An open widgets platform is fantastic – provided that all the operators and manufacturers get together and implement it in the same way, with exactly the same financial structures, and no subtle differences to APIs such as we see with BREW or MIDP. If it happens, great. But in the meantime, I won’t be holding my breath. I’ll be following the money.

Airsource are delighted to announce that Optiscan is now available for purchase.

Optiscan is a professional quality QR Code tool, featuring by far the fastest scanner available on the App Store. Optiscan automatically locates and scans QR codes in the camera viewfinder. No more failed scans or blurry barcodes. Scans well from paper, monitors and other device screens.

• Share contacts, web addresses and text with other devices.
• Scan a wide variety of QR code data formats, including locations, email addresses and phone numbers.
• Save specific QR codes for quick sharing — perfect for sharing your business card.
• Keeps a history of QR codes created and shared for easy recall.
• Want to scan or generate codes in French? Japanese? No problem. Optiscan supports UTF-8, ISO-8859, and Shift-JIS.
• Select the contact details you want to send, to ensure the right people get the right information.
• Safari lets you save images (tap and hold the image) to the photo gallery – and Optiscan will decode them for you.

Optiscan runs without a network connection, and keeps your data private. Why put up with anything less?

Optiscan is available right now from the AppStore, priced at $4.99, £2.99, or €3.99 If you’d like to review the application, then promotional iTunes codes are available. Please email, mentioning the website where your review will be posted.

I discovered an incredibly useful resource yesterday – Mobclix. Among other things, they let you see a graph of how your iPhone App Store application – or anyone else’s – is getting on. For instance, here’s Home Barista. (more…)