What we’re most proud of with this app is how much love it’s getting from users. Last year, the app got 27 years of man-use in four days, with one person using the app more than 500 times a day (drop us a line if you're reading this!)

We can't wait to see the engagement from golf fans this year.

Photo: Darren Clarke using the app

A key innovative feature is the live-stream timeline with statistics, curated social media , leader changes, and weather updates. The interactive map of the course enables fans to locate golf players using real-time GPS tracking. The Open Championship app comes to iPad for the first time this year, with a beautiful and fully customised user interface on both iPhone and iPad, as well as Android smartphones. The Open runs from July 15th to July 22nd at Royal Lytham & St. Annes Golf Club in Lytham St. Annes, Lancashire.

New features include: * Live news and social media timeline * Player GPS tracking * Multiple live TV and radio channels * An experience culminates in wider coverage than terrestrial TV, and including Airplay to Apple TV capability.

"We're excited to have Future Workshops as our exclusive mobile apps partner. Golfers are tech-savvy and expect cutting-edge experiences on and off the course. Our partnership with Future Workshops enables us to continually reinvent mobile sports consumption for our prestigious brands, such as The Open Championship and The Rules of Golf," said Kevin Bain, Digital Media Manager of The R&A.

For the third year, The Open apps enjoy an outstanding reception, evidenced by the high session times in previous years, with an impressive aggregate use of over 27 man years during four days of competition in 2011. Future Workshops are also the makers of The Official Rules of Golf, and World Amateur Golf Rankings apps for The R&A.

"We feel we have revolutionised the mobile experience for sporting events. Your iPad or smartphone is now the primary way to experience this world class competition. This is demonstrated by the number of high quality video channels, inclusive of key news coverage and a “Behind the Ropes” channel to follow the crowd,” said Future Workshops founder and CEO, Matt Brooke-Smith, “It’s all available to enjoy on this great viewing platform.”

“We all love and use apps and most of us are avid sports fans. So we we’re all consumers and value the importance of a high quality app experience. While we focus on making everything great technically, it’s very important for us to make apps that are fun to use.”

• Ends -

About The R&A Based in St Andrews, The R&A organizes The Open Championship, major amateur events and international matches. Together with the United States Golf Association, The R&A governs the game worldwide, jointly administering the Rules of Golf, Rules of Amateur Status, Equipment Standards and World Amateur Golf Rankings. The R&A's working jurisdiction is global, excluding the United States and Mexico. The R&A is committed to working for golf and supports the growth of the game internationally and the development and management of sustainable golf facilities. The R&A operates with the consent of 144 organizations from the amateur and professional game and on behalf of over thirty million golfers in 130 countries.

About Future Workshops Founded in summer of 2008 by CEO Matt Brooke-Smith, Future Workshops conceive, design, and build top, award-winning mobile apps for blue chip enterprise and high end consumer brands. We are a 100% focused mobile development agency and thought leaders in the enterprise and consumer apps industry. Based in Spitalfields, London, our multilingual team travels to clients around the world. Preferred Supplier to the financial sector, we work with with clients such as Credit Suisse, UBS, RBS, Saudi Telecom, QlikTech, The R&A, and with brands such as Empire magazine, and Parkers car guide.

The apps are available for download here: [apps.theopen.com] (http://apps.theopen.com)

Recently Google bought Motorola for over 12 billion dollars. The deal is controversial, as the reasons for it are not clear - will it drive more revenue, or put Google in a bad situation long term?

Here are summaries of our favourite articles on the deal.

Google blog: Supercharging Android: Google to acquire Motorola mobility

The acquisition of Motorola will enhance competition and will help Google in their patent war against Apple and Microsoft. For Google, another reason to buy Motorola was the hope that it will supercharge the Android ecosystem.

The Register: Has Google wasted $12bn on a dud patent poker-chip?

Google bought Motorola for 12 billion to shore up Android, in order to own more patents, and possibly acting in panic after losing a recent patent battle with Apple (Nortel).

Darling Fireball: Balls

There are two suppositions as to why Google bought Motorola. Firstly that their recent biding behavior was a well-thought out strategy. They bid for the Nortel patents to increase the price, so that Apple had to pay more. Now with the Motorola deal Google has as many patents as Apple, so perhaps the Google-Motorola deal was planned all along.

Alternatively, Google lost the bidding war for the Nortel patents; they were in a bad position and that’s why they needed to buy Motorola, so why buy the entire company? Because Motorola knew that without their patents they are worthless and they knew that Google needed more. This is why they didn’t just accept a deal to sell or license their patents, in a similar way to Microsoft with Nokia.

Gigaom: Guess who else wanted to buy Motorola?

Google was bound to buy Motorola because Microsoft was also interested in a deal. If Microsoft had bought Motorola, Google would have been in big trouble regarding their lack of patents. Comments on the article: Motorola will help Google to enter into hardware competition against Apple and Microsoft. With Motorola they can now compete against the iPad or the Apple TV, which wasn’t the case with the Google tablet and Google TV. They are trying to take some of Apple’s tablet market share.

Hacker News: Google buys Motorola for 12 billion

The main reasons are to acquire the Motorola patents, to enter the hardware market and to improve Android and its ecosystem.

There are some questions about this “fusion”. Because Google is a software company and Motorola a hardware company, people are wondering whether Google will be able to improve Motorola’s hardware and retain important employees in this domain. However, maybe they will just focus on their software and simply add it to Motorola’s hardware as a way to improve their products. Alternatively they could just leave the hardware part of the company alone and concentrate on the patents.

Techcrunch: Defending Android

The main reason Google bought Motorola was their patents, but now that they’ve bought them, it could help them to enter the hardware market. This would put them in competition with Apple and Microsoft, providing they run the two companies well. Combining software and hardware knowledge helps in innovation (e.g. Apple). This deal opens many possibilities for Google, but we don’t really know yet which path they will take.

Mobile Opportunity: Google and Motorola: What the !*%?

Mobile Opportunity believes that Google wants to run a hardware business, that’s why it didn’t buy Interdigital and its patents. The writer of the article asserts that Google is unable to run a hardware company because a very different philosophy is required. Still, Google want to show everyone that they are capable of doing it. Also, there could be a problem with other Android licensees not being happy with the deal, and there is a chance they could be interested in talking to Microsoft about Windows Phone. Finally, Apple currently rules the hardware market and they could be working on something completely different while Google is playing catch up with hardware-software integration.

There are now two possibilities for Google, either to take Motorola’s patents but sell the rest of the company, and then return to business as usual, or to integrate Motorola into the company. This will need some change in their internal culture but could promote new competition in systems design.

Our opinion

It appears that Google had few patents - something that Motorola had in abundance. This is a clear reason for the deal. However, they must also do something with the rest of Motorola - that probably means using the acquisition as a means to enter hardware competition with Apple and Microsoft rather than just selling it off or running two separate businesses. It will certainly be a difficult challenge for Google!

Victor & Issam

Feel free to come and visit any time!

HP

The Touchpad drew much interest near the entrance of the MWC App Planet, with people up and down the hall perplexed that HP only had one demo unit. The new version of webOS is responsive, smooth and intuitive. The integration between phone and tablet is excellent, allowing you to share call notifications, SMS and websites, and the wireless charging dock also looks a must have accessory. Cupertino, start your photocopiers (please!).

Samsung

The Samsung booth (if you can call something the size of France a booth) was well trafficked, with Samsung showing off their new 4.5" Super AOMLED Plus screen. Expectations at MWC were for Samsung to continue producing the top Android devices in 2011.

Sony Ericsson

Disappointingly, the Xperia Play (aka Playstation Phone) will only support Playstation 1 titles. I’m sure this will be remedied in the future, but the Playstation phone needs to be a big winner for SE.

LG

The LG Optima has a 3D screen which left me feeling a little seasick. 3D screens on mobile are gimmicky, but will generate column inches for LG. Impressively, the Optima can also capture video for 3D playback.

Microsoft/Nokia

I didn’t see stands from either Microsoft or Nokia, but people were positive about Windows Phone 7, the feeling being that Nokia made the correct choice for the time being. In his keynote, Eric Schmidt mentioned Google would welcome Nokia back to Android should things not work out. Flip-flopping would be hugely damaging to Nokia.

Google

Eric Schmidt gave an excellent keynote, confirming that 300,000 Android devices a day are being registered. He also underlined Google's commitment to data availability for the masses as well as society’s elite. A relatively unimpressive demo of Android Movie Studio on the Motorola Xoom was given.

RIM

RIM and Blackberry Developer Days had a huge presence at MWC as part of their developer outreach for the Playbook. Development options for the Playbook are bewildering, essentially fully native Apps are not supported at launch with RIM pushing developers towards Adobe Air or WebWorks - which compiles down to an Adobe Air App with a single web control inside. RIM announced that they would give a free Playbook to any developer submitting a WebWorks app before device launch.

Supporting five (HTML5, WebWorks, Air, J2ME, Tablet OS SDK) development platforms is an attempt to attract developers from different backgrounds, but gives the appearance of hedged bets and corporate compromise.

WAC/OneAPI

The GSMA are making efforts to unite operators under their OneAPI program, but until this is fully supported in at least the US or the UK I expect developer interest levels to be low.

The Big White Elephant in the room

Apple’s PR machine goes into overdrive during industry events, and they released interesting rumors throughout MWC. iPad 2/3, iPhone Nano seem possible, physical keyboards and larger screen sizes fanciful. I expect the iPad 2 press announcement in short order.

Matt

Where the is Fausto Coppi?

We are a premium iOS App development agency located just off Brick Lane in East London. We work with a wide range of clients such as ITV, The Open Championships and Martina Cole to deliver innovative top quality products for consumers and businesses.

We are looking for a project manager who has the following attributes:-

Technical - knowledgable and interested in the technical complexity of delivering products Agile - experience of working with in an agile and iterative way Enthusiastic - understand the advantages of Apple's approach to curation and vertically integrated platforms Professional and presentable - comfortable speaking to clients regularly and managing expectations, requirements and budgets Adaptable - able to adapt to a wide range of projects and clients

Please get in touch via careers@futureworkshops.com No recruiters

-- Image credit - David Steadman via Creative Commons

Firstly, The Open Championships 2010 App (for which we partnered with Lightmaker) has been widely promoted by Apple, and has reached the #1 free sports app spot. We can't wait to see what effect the event itself will have on the number of downloads the App receives...and thats not the only App we are bringing to market for the event!

Secondly, Future Workshop's director Matt Brooke-Smith wrote an article for .net magazine, which was featured in the "technique" section. Thanks to Dan Oliver at .net for making this happen!

There are a number of Fully Blown Twitter Clients on the App Store today (Tweetie 2 is a favourite for us - such clean design!), so we decided to stand on the shoulders of giants by creating a Complementary App.

Complementary Apps allow you build an extremely focused product, whilst delegating functionality to other fully featured Apps. In our case, we wanted to focus on reading local Tweets, meeting other Twestival attendees, and keeping up to date with local fundraising activities principals. We also enabled local Twestival administrators to update schedule information on their profile page that would be fed real-time to the App. Everybody would then know about last-minute changes to local plans!

Our App would then connect to the user's selected Twitter client, where they would be able to compose and send Tweets using the local hashtag or Twitter handle. This way we removed a large amount of complexity (uploading photos, videos, location etc), in order build a great Twestival App.

I've posted an infographic below, illustrating the difference between Fully Blown and Complementary Apps. Feel free to grab and reuse!

Figure 1 - An infographic illustrating Complementary Apps

Update: The Official Twestival Blog has some coverage of the iPhone App here

Update 2: The Huffington Post has a nice article on the Twestival, include a paragraph on the App here

Offer

Competitive Salary based on experience Yearly Bonus 25 days holiday Company iMac and iPhone 3GS Work with experienced iPhone developers and designers Create successful Apps for household brands and cutting edge startups

Details

Future Workshops is an iPhone app development agency based just off Brick Lane in central London. We have experience building apps for some of the world's leading brands and companies, from media and publishing to investment banking. Our apps have reached the number one slot in their iTunes category, and also been featured by Apple. We pride ourselves on releasing our apps when - and only when - they are quality controlled to the highest standard, and like to consider ourselves some of the best iPhone developers in the UK!

We are looking for an experienced and highly skilled iPhone Objective-C developer, who is also passionate about design, user experience and Apple's products and ecosystem. Attention to detail, and an ability to be creative in developing technical solutions to functional requirements are key.

The applicant must have good, demonstrable knowledge of the key components of iPhone development including but not limited to Objective-C, Cocoa Touch, XCode, Instruments including Leaks, debugging, and Foundation and UIKit APIs.

The company is small and nimble, yet growing very quickly. This is an exciting opportunity to be involved with new products at an early stage and have considerable influence. For this reason the candidate must be innovative and competitive, a fast learner and a good teamworker, ambitious and hard working, keen to participate in design/code workshops and undergo constructive criticism of their work.

Technical Skills

Demonstrable iPhone/Mac OS X development experience with proven track record of success (eg excellent reference apps) Proficiency in Objective-C using the Cocoa/Cocoa Touch APIs Knowledge and understanding of Foundation/UIKit APIs, and memory management techniques An understanding of how to design user interaction and experience for the iPhone Ability to work with web services in a coupled solution

Personal Skills

Attention to detail Creativity Ownership, ambition and a competitive nature Ability to work alone and in a team Project management skills A passion for Apple products

Optional

Core animation experience Open GL knowledge (can be non-iPhone) Store Kit experience Push Notification experience Experience in working with Agile development methodologies Experience in working with iPhone design methodologies

Please send CVs to careers@futureworkshops.com

Photo credit Cordey via Creative Commons

With the assumption that Apple expects people to own both a Tablet, an iPhone and a desktop or laptop computer, we assert that moving iTunes to the cloud is now an urgent necessity.

Currently, iTunes requires you to physically connect your device to your computer in order to syncronise content. This is a broken model - something that is obvious just as soon as you a) purchase a new device, b) purchase a new computer, or c) dare to own more than one computer. All of the best content services that exist for the iPhone today syncronise between a web interface/thick client/native app via the cloud.

With Apple's purchase of Lala, it now possesses the brains, and the IP to make this happen. As reported by Micheal Roberts, an overlooked part of the Lala service was the music locker - in essence cloud based storage and streaming for your music collection. Lets imagine the music locker concept applied to iTunes. It would also have to store and provide instant access to:-

Apps Data and Settings for Apps Mail, Contacts and Calendar Settings (not hosting) Photos Video

The public at large will expect an album created in iPhoto on your desktop be available for browsing on Tablet, and settings for your email App on iPhone to match with those on a Tablet, just as long as the iTunes account used is the same on both.

Given the way Google integrates the cloud into Chrome O/S and Android, Apple need to move quickly on this or risk falling behind. Although we expect Apple's vertical integration strategy to keep the iPhone ecosystem ahead on devices and O/S, the seamless experience offered by cloud services cannot be ignored.

...and we're not talking about Mobile Me!

Photo Credit notsogoodphotography via Creative Commons

Opinion of the new form factor ranges from the uninspired, that the device merely has a larger screen than the iPhone, to the breathtaking - it may be Apple's redefinition of computing, and Steve Job's swansong.

Its exciting to read the latest on a new product in the blogosphere, and one of the most considered and best written articles on the tablet is here, on the Daring Fireball blog.

Whatever is announced on the 26th of Jan, you can be sure we will be at the Apple Store Regents Street on the morning of release!

Photo used under Creative Commons from Selma90

Update 5/1/10 00:37 - Looks like the Apple event will now be on the 27th Jan.

We believe healthy portion of this success was due to the simple, polished, fun design of the App. I hope that others can benefit or take inspiration from the process Future Workshops follows, detailed below.

Application Definition Statement

The Application Definition Statement is the most valuable part of the App design process. It is a single sentence that describes what the App will do, who it is for, and what will differentiate it from its competitors. Its role is to keep everybody focused on why somebody would use your App.

"Parker’s makes it simple for the average car buyer to choose the best deal, wherever they are"

Concept

Once we had created our ADS we spent some time thinking through our basic concept. Apple categorises iPhone Apps into three distinct types, of which we chose to place Parker's in the third:-

1. Immersive

2. Productivity

3. Utility

Parker's primary usage scenario is in a high pressure situation - allowing the car buyer to respond to a pushy second hand car salesman - so the App needed to enable fast access to a complicated database of information (price by manufacturer, model, year plate, milage and options)

Wireframes

Wireframing the App was a process that took longer than everybody expected. However, as every good software engineer knows, spending more time planning means less rehashing later. One tricky issue was part exchange, as setting this up requires a number of interactions: enter your existing car, enter the car you want to buy, indicate you want to part exchange one for the other. After solving this we ensuring it was easy for the user to reverse any state changes. This has the effect of encouraging the user to explore the interface and so discover advanced functions, much as in the excellent Tweetie.

Wireframes were put together in Photoshop, and printed out on large A3 sheets before being scrawled all over in marker pen!

Figure 1 - An early stage interaction diagram put together by our partners at The Noble Union

We chose to model Parker's on Apple's Weather App - a well understood interface which puts a two dimensional dataset (cities/temperatures) at the users' fingertips, with functions to add/remove/reorder hidden behind the main screens. It translated well to our cars/prices dataset.

Pixel Perfect Designs

Creating pixel perfect designs is the most important phase for any brand stakeholders, as this is when they will finally get to see something resembling an iPhone App! Parker's was no exception, and a number of changes to colour palette and logo placement were made as a result.

The Noble Union created a strong car theme for the App. Items appear as though they are Top Trump cards, with backgrounds ranging from wooden trim to cracked black leather, and buttons look and act like vehicle radio buttons.

Figure 2 - Designs corresponding to Figure 1

After all the designs were signed off, we were finally ready to begin coding!

Delivery

The QA process for Parker's was stringent. We lost count of the number of times we ran through our test scripts! One gotcha was memory warnings, which would cause UIViewController classes to lose references to lazily initialised UIViews, often during the process of taking photos on the iPhone 3G. Repeated QA allowed us stop this issue occurring in any logic path.

We worked hard at enabling the App for social media. Buying a used vehicle is, by nature, a social process - one might ask acquaintances for their opinion on a purchase, or advertise a car for sale.

The product of an awful lot of hard work left us, and our customers, very happy.

Finally, work with The Best!

Last but not least, we worked with high caliber partners whilst creating Parker's. Top design studio The Noble Union, project/account management teams MobiKats and Entropy Digital, and of course Bauer Media.

Right now, anybody involved in the iPhone market in the UK holds a decent hand. With T-Mobile and Orange merging, and Orange and Vodafone to sell the iPhone by 2010, only 3 will be left out in the cold. And that is before considering the forthcoming Apple tablet.

This, of course, means there is a larger than nano sized opportunity for well executed and marketed iPhone products in 2010, assuming that users can discover them amongst the 70,000+ other apps.

So that covers iPhone - surely this implies that Objective-C is also a decent bet?

Its not quite that simple. There are a number of other methods of generating native iPhone content. Such is the size of the prize, that recently Adobe have recently thrown their hat into the ring with Notus Indeed, it appears that a number of apps already on the store have been created using this authoring environment.

Noted iPhone blogger/author Jeff LaMarche believes this will cause a flood of poorly executed Apps. This may be true, but I also believe that there are some truly excellent Flash designers out there who will raise the bar - and that will benefit everybody i.e. Inkstrumental, which I cannot wait to download!

However, its up to the Objective-C engineers out there to prove that these authoring tools cannot rival hand-coded iPhone native Apps in terms of quality and diversity. Its time to double down on Objective-C, and ensure these Apps not only rival, but surpass, those produced automatically.

Matt Brooke-Smith

Photo used under Creative Commons from Phil Romans