Rogue Sheep wins Apple's stamp of approval

Excerpts from the blog

Talk about a nice debut: Fremont software-development shop Rogue Sheep won an Apple Design Award for its very first iPhone App.

Rogue Sheep started working on its "Postage" app a few months ago and finished just in time to enter the design contest, which concluded at this week's Apple Worldwide Developer Conference in San Francisco.

"Postage" is a $4.99 application ($2.99 until Wednesday) that turns photos into postcards before they're sent from an iPhone. Apple's award site said, "Postage sets a new standard for attractiveness and ease of use in an iPhone app."

Rogue Sheep was started five years ago as an Adobe development shop by former Adobe engineers Christopher Parrish, Daniel Guenther, Matt Joss and Jeff Argast.

Parrish said they hope to consult with companies looking to develop iPhone apps and build more apps on their own. They've already seen a surge of traffic since the award was announced Tuesday night.

"It definitely looks like it's going to be one of the bigger bumps we've had," Parrish said.

Question about iPhone 3G S

I'm looking forward to trying Apple's new Snow Leopard OS, but it's hard to miss the harrumphing about Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference news. AT&T is getting some of the heat (for holding up new iPhone features on its network), but not all. Is the reality distortion field on the fritz?

Barron's Tech Trader noted that Apple stock fell for three days since the WWDC began Monday and said Apple may be cutting iPhone production:

Collins Stewart analyst Ashok Kumar asserted in a research note Wednesday morning that Apple (AAPL) has reduced its planned June quarter iPhone production to 4.6 million units from 5.2 million. Kumar attributed the data to "checks" with Hon Hai, which manufactures the phone for Apple. Kumar maintains a "buy" rating on the stock but writes that "if current build plans hold, they present a risk to Apple."

From Macworld, on Apple being secretive about the specs of the iPhone 3G S it unveiled this week:

"All Apple wants you to know about the iPhone 3G S is that 'the S simply stands for speed,' to quote Apple's senior vice president of worldwide product marketing Phil Schiller — speed at opening apps, speed at playing games, speed at downloading stuff on the network. How does that speed get in there? Let's not go there."

Update: If you're curious, the 3G S specs are trickling out elsewhere. A T-Mobile Netherlands Web site reportedly posted some, according to MacRumors: a 600 MHz processor and 256MB of RAM, compared with the 412 MHz processor and 128 MB RAM in the current iPhone.

Playing the name game

If you're a Facebook user getting ready to stake your name claim when the site changes its URL scheme at 9:01 p.m. Friday, you might want to check Chris Messina's blog post about "the battle over your digital identity."

Messina, a San Francisco blogger and "open Web" advocate, discusses the context around Facebook, Twitter and other Web services using names in the URLs of personal pages:

These companies "are racing to achieve namespace dominance over your online profile. This is what Tim O'Reilly warned about in his definition of Web 2.0. He said that one of the new kinds of lock-in in the era of [cloud computing] will be owning a namespace. There you have it — who are you going to trust to own yours?"

But most people probably won't worry about this stuff, and they'll be glad if it gets easier and more logical to find people on these sites.

This material has been edited for print publication.

Brier Dudley's blog appears Thursdays. Reach him at 206-515-5687 or bdudley@seattletimes.com.