In creation of such rapid prototypes the Minimum Viable Product (MVP) idea is key. Neverthless, open source platforms such as WordPress is key enabler to the Lean Startup. This was the idea back when I shared 9 Minimum Viable Product WordPress Themes. The post turned out to receive pretty good interest among aspiring enterpreneurs. So I decided to share some more recent WordPress themes that can help in quickly launching your lean SaaS or App offering.

With the new iPhone iOS 4, you can distribute apps wirelessly without iTunes intervention. You still need to collect the appropriate devices id’s and create the appropriate provisioning profiles but if you already have those sending out files is easy.

How can you beta test an iPhone app? I can get it on my own device, and anyone that gives me a device, I can run it on theirs, but is there a way to do a limited release via the app store for beta testing?

Update: Also, see this question on getting your app onto phones without using the App Store.

http://www.blackboard.com/Mobile/Mobile-Learn/Device-Demos.aspx

Post Affiliate Pro appears to be the most broadly used of the more affordable affiliate management platforms.  Their customer service has been great as well – for example, they were willing to develop integration with a new vendor backend (Amazon Seller Central) at no cost to me.

Free solution – http://www.elitius.com/.  The site appears dormant and the codebase may be abandoned, but it’s a relatively full featured PHP package (to be downloaded and installed on your system) and the code is pretty easy to understand.  I hacked it to work for me, and it’s a good enough solution.

+1 for ShareASale. Having ran large (20,000+) ecommerce affiliate programs on SAS, Linkshare, CJ, Google Affiliate Network (previously Performics) – a fan of SAS. UI is admittedly a little rough as John points out. I am a fan of SAS not only because they are the underdog, but most of the folks there are good people with good reputations. Loved Linkshare back in the day, but not since the sale to Rakuten. If you want to research further, the go to place for most things affiliate is: http://www.abestweb.com. … We use ShareASale.com for our affiliate system.  They skim off the top like most affiliate networks, have a $350 set-up fee, and a minimum deposit of $100.  They do bill you a minimum of $20 a month I think in the event that your commissions to them aren’t at least that much.  Their UI makes me want to gouge out my eyes.  For a casual implementation though, it might be the right thing.  They do have good customer support, I will certainly applaud them for that.  I think they are a small team, probably less than 10 people, but run a fairly robust network especially in the baby and wedding space.  They are hands down the right choice compared to CJ or Linkshare for an entry level implementation like you are talking about.  But, seriously look at HasOffers, despite that $99 a month.  If you are serious about the affiliate business and are investing resources into it, you may want to spend the extra to do it right.

HasOffers can track your SAS, CJ, and Linkshare

accounts.  It is a great way to measure the performance between the

platforms.  However, with HasOffers you can also start to build your own

direct affiliate relationships.  Simply give them an affiliate login (or let

them sign up for your network), and they can start grabbing their affiliate

tracking links to start promoting.

Peter Hamilton, Vice President, Marketing

HasOffers |  peter@adappsolutions.com

AIM: peteradapp |  Twitter: @hasoffers

206-508-1318 ext. 1007

============

+1 for ShareASale (

http://www.shareasale.com/r.cfm?b=45&u=286971&m=47&urllink=&afftrack= ($550

setup fee + 20% transaction, $25 monthly minimum)), but the other affordable

(especially from a startup capital cost is clixgalore http://www.clixGalore

.com/PSale.aspx?BID=524&AfID=190389&AdID=26<http://www.clixgalore.com/PSale.aspx?BID=524&AfID=190389&AdID=26>

(about

a $75 deposit (it acts like a debit card) – 25% transaction) – I hate their

reporting system though)

We have a merchant that uses Post Affiliate Pro, the software is alright, my

biggest gripe is really just an operational issue around the payments from

the merchant, the networks really take a lot of the work out on both parties

by handling taking (through credit card/etc) payment from the merchants and

paying the affiliate via direct deposit/checks/etc.

We looked into HasOffers for a reporting system, but the lack of any

billing/collection/payment system was a deal breaker for us, we continue to

make all of our new Merchants signup with an affiliate network like

ClixGalore or ShareASale so we don’t have to wear the Accounts Receivable

“Hat” too much each month.

We’re rolling our own reporting software that logs into each of the networks

and aggregates commission data daily (a little bit like

http://www.affiliatereporting.com/), it wasn’t obvious to me if HasOffers

actually collected the payment information across the CPA networks

automatically or if this was more a manual process.

Additional Network Options:

http://www.google.com/ads/affiliatenetwork/ $1k setup + $1k deposit, 25%

transaction fee, $500/mo minimum

http://www.cj.com (about $3k setup fee, vary deposit) + 30% transaction

fee, $500/mo minimum

http://www.linkshare.com $5-$10k setup + 2-3% of total sales

http://www.buy.at (mostly UK focused, don’t have cost data)

https://www.pepperjamnetwork.com (no data)

http://www.avantlink.com/ ($1k setup, $500 deposit, 3% of total sales)

http://browsermob.com/website-load-testing

Website Uptime:
http://www.montastic.com/
http://browsermob.com/website-monitoring

http://acornheroes.com/2010/08/setting-up-an-automated-build-in-an-ios-environment/

http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/22-useful-chart-graph-diagram-generators/

http://creativenerds.co.uk/freebies/99-icon-sets-for-use-in-commercial-design-projects/

Make image move around the screen with UIAccelerometer
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Bvul1tjxOA

http://browsershots.org/

A full demo app is included so you can see all the goodies in action.

You can read Matt’s full writeup on MGImageUtilities here:
MGImageUtilities Writeup By Matt Gemmell

http://maniacdev.com/2010/07/easily-adjust-your-images-for-the-ipad-or-iphone-retina-display/

The Github Is Here:
ShareKit Github

Check out the homepage and documentation here:
ShareKit Drop In Share Library

I recently ported several of my apps from the iPhone to the iPad, and thought it would be useful to share some of what I learned along the way.

In this tutorial, you’ll get hands on practice porting an iPhone app to the iPad. We’ll take a simple app I wrote that displays a list of board games and lets you rate them, and we will port it to the iPad.

Along the way, we will cover how to test the device you’re running on, how to handle autosizing and orientation, how to make different versions of a XIBs for the iPad, how and when to use the new iPad elements, and more!

http://www.raywenderlich.com/1111/how-to-port-an-iphone-application-to-the-ipad, by Ray Wenderlich

Alternatively:
You can download older versions of Xcode by logging into Apple Developer Connection – Downloads and ADC Program Assests (http://connect.apple.com) – You will need to be a member of the developer program to login.

Once on the site, from the Downloads section, choose Developer Tools – you will be shown with a list of all Xcode versions, back to 1.0 released in October of 2004.

http://unbounce.com
Unbounce lets marketers build, publish and test landing pages (e.g., split testing; A/B testing) without IT or software.

http://wingify.com
Hassle-free A/B, split and multivariate testing. Visually design test variations. No page tagging. No repeated fiddling with code. Step-by-step, wizard driven interface. Statistics based intuitive reports.

11 Excellent Solutions for Making Your Website Mobile Friendly
http://webdesignledger.com/tools/11-excellent-solutions-for-making-your-website-mobile-friendly

http://www.androidpeople.com/

=========================

CGRect newInfoButtonRect = CGRectMake(infoButton.frame.origin.x-25,

infoButton.frame.origin.y-25, infoButton.frame.size.width+50,

infoButton.frame.size.height+50);

[infoButton setFrame:newInfoButtonRect];

For recording screens on a Mac, as well as background audio, microphone audio, etc.

Camtasia for Mac is Screen Recorder and Presentation Software – record your screen with audio, webcam video, and more to create presentations, product demos …
www.techsmith.com/camtasiamac/

With ScreenFlow screencasting software, you can capture the contents of your entire desktop at the same time as your video camera, microphone and computer’s …
www.telestream.net › Home › downloads

Snapz Pro X allows you to effortlessly record anything on your screen, saving it as a QuickTime® movie or screenshot that can be e-mailed, put up on the web …
www.ambrosiasw.com/utilities/snapzprox/

Screenium 1.2 has arrived: More features and flexibility, further improved quality and performance for A/V capture. More compatible with older Macs, …
www.synium.de/products/screenium/index.html

With ScreenFlow screencasting software, capture the contents of your Mac desktop, your video camera, microphone and computer’s audio.
www.telestream.net › Home › downloads

http://iphonedevelopment.blogspot.com/2009/02/longer-spinning-blurring-v20.html

http://iphonedevelopment.blogspot.com/2009/01/longer-spinning-blurring.html

http://beardedpony.wordpress.com/2009/03/03/howd-you-get-that-cool-urban-spoon-type-animation/

http://mycodeteacher.com/viewfree.php?vid=photoshopiphone

http://quickconnect.pbworks.com/Using-Enterprise-Synchronization

http://code.google.com/p/iui/wiki/Introduction

Theme Switcher (choose option):

http://www.remi-grumeau.com/labs/iui/

Application of PNGOUT to the the PNG files in the template yields significant size reduction:
- iUI 0.31: from 17675 to 8874 bytes (17 files)
- iUI-0.40-dev2: from 17296 to 8252 bytes (20 files)
http://code.google.com/p/iui/issues/detail?id=224

http://www.mailchimp.com/api/

http://api.jangomail.com/

http://www.campaignmonitor.com/api/

http://www.iphonedevx.com/?p=853

OmniGraffle Prototyping iPhone Dev, was for flowcharting but is great for doing prototyping, designing with stencils.

http://www.omnigroup.com/applications/OmniGraffle/

Graffletopia, Stencils for OmniGraffle

http://graffletopia.com/categories/iphone

Other prototype and prototyping tools for iPhone:

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/02/05/50-free-ui-and-web-design-wireframing-kits-resources-and-source-files/

PDF templates from fullofdesign
http://www.fullofdesign.com/posts/iphone-app-wireframe-template/

and from http://www.uistencils.com/

21 Prototyping, Mockup, and Wireframing Tools for iPhone App Development
http://iphoneized.com/2009/11/21-prototyping-mockup-wireframing-tools-iphone-app-development/

iPhone and iPad Development GUI Kits, Stencils and Icons
http://speckyboy.com/2010/04/30/iphone-and-ipad-development-gui-kits-stencils-and-icons/

iMockup for iPad Mockups
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/imockups-for-ipad/id364885913?mt=8

Rapid wireframe sketching in Google Docs
http://googledocs.blogspot.com/2010/05/rapid-wireframe-sketching-in-google.html

iPhone GUI PSD Version 4iPhone GUI PSD Version 4
http://www.teehanlax.com/blog/2010/06/14/iphone-gui-psd-v4/
[download]

MockApp for PowerPoint (PPT) and Keynote
http://mockapp.com/download/
MockApps on your iPhone
How-to Video for MockApp

21 Tools for Prototyping, Mockup and Wireframing iPhone/iPad/iTouch Apps
http://iphoneized.com/2009/11/21-prototyping-mockup-wireframing-tools-iphone-app-development/

How to prototype interactive iPad applications in 30 minutes using keynote
http://blog.amirkhella.com/2010/06/16/how-to-prototype-interactive-ipad-applications-in-30-minutes-or-less-using-apple-keynote/

http://sqlitebrowser.sourceforge.net/

• Musopen is an online music library of copyright free (public domain) music. We want to give the world access to music without the legal hassles so common today. There is a great deal of music that has expired copyrights, but almost no recordings of this music is in the public domain. We aim to record or obtain recordings that have no copyrights so that our visitors may listen, re-use, or in any way enjoy music. Put simply, our mission is to set music free
• http://www.freesoundtrackmusic.com — some free tracks, but you have to mention the website in order to use them
• http://www.soundrangers.com — music loops for $50 each, sound effects for $2 each
• http://www.jamendo.com — music track license for your games/apps at $36 each

Sounds and sound effects:

• The Freesound Project (www.freesound.org) — free sounds for iPhone projects
• http://www.soundsnap.com – They cost a bit but are huge
• http://www.flashkit.com – Free, no need to register and you can find some nice sound effects
• http://www.soundrangers.com — music loops for $50 each, sound effects for $2 each
• http://www.superflashbros.net/as3sfxr/ – roll your own sound effect, very cool

http://www.iphonedevx.com/?p=888

http://www.iphonedevx.com/?p=863

http://www.tuaw.com/2010/01/07/iphone-devsugar-simple-table-badges/

http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=338638678&mt=8

Replace the id parameter with your app’s id. You can get it by Copy Link on the iTunes software.

On iPhones and iPod touches this link will open the application in the App Store (without going to a browser first), while clicking it in a web browser will load the same title through iTunes.

From http://www.iphonewebdev.com/examples/hideurl.html

The URL bar is hidden on load when running on the iPhone. It will do nothing on other browsers. The code:

<script type="application/x-javascript">

if (navigator.userAgent.indexOf('iPhone') != -1) {
        addEventListener("load", function() {
                setTimeout(hideURLbar, 0);
        }, false);
}

function hideURLbar() {
        window.scrollTo(0, 1);
}

</script>

http://www.iphonedevx.com/?p=813

http://www.iphonedevx.com/?p=891

http://www.iphonedevx.com/?p=817

http://howtomakeiphoneapps.com/2009/07/how-to-make-your-iphone-app-send-email-with-attachments/

http://www.markj.net/iphone-tweet-from-ad/

http://www.microstockphoto.com

http://www.freedigitalphotos.net

http://www.stocklib.com/

http://www.alexstockphoto.com/

http://www.123rf.com

http://budgetstockphoto.com/

http://www.google.com/search?q=micro+stock+photos+for+$1+an+image

http://mobisoftinfotech.com/blog/iphone-open-source-applications/

http://github.com/erica/iphone-3.0-cookbook-

http://www.gourmetapps.com/

and cool code snippets:
http://iphone-dev-tips.alterplay.com/search/label/cocoa%20touch%20snippet

There are two open-source solutions for multiplatform creation:

1. PhoneGap (http://www.phonegap.com)
2. Appcelerator (http://www.appcelerator.com)

Comparison discussion of two platforms: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1483039/which-should-i-choose-phonegap-or-titanium

PhoneGap sample:

To-do: http://pointlessprogrammers.com/?p=150

Tutorial: The Easiest Way to Build your First iPhone App

Not free, but worth taking a look at:
http://tritoneapps.com/

http://iphone.appstorm.net/roundups/design/30-gorgeous-iphone-app-interfaces-icons/

Also:
http://moneybookapp.com

And:
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/beats-bpm-metronome/id317205763?mt=8

30 iPhone Apps with cool Interfaces http://ow.ly/1z6ze

Icons for iPhone & iPad apps
http://glyphish.com/ (proxy, save to computer and remove “.pdf” from filename)

http://woorkup.com/2010/01/10/best-practices-to-develop-perfect-websites-for-iphone-and-mobile-devices/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+Woork+(Woork+Up+|+A+Fresh+Charge+of+Creativity)

http://iphonedevdepot.com/HomePage#Development_Tools