Zynga‘s announcement of the Farmville iPhone app will be seen by some as just another game release. But this is actually a very important move from one of the most important social media companies in 2010.

#mce_temp_url#Today I hosted an app swap shop, sharing some of my favourites and taking suggestions from the wonderful people at London Media Camp 4. This is the net result, if I have forgotten some apps, or you wish to add more, then please leave a comment.

So, we didn’t get much traction on desktop/web apps apart from my suggestion of using wakoopa to track your software use and find ideas for new software. From the tweets, this wasn’t a great idea for some. We also discussed where apps stop and software starts, Tweetdeck and Spotify being two examples of ‘desktop apps’ that could also be software. We’ll leave that discussion for another day.

Twitter naturally became an animated topic with most of the audience favoring Tweetdeck on computer and on mobile device.  Tweetie was suggested as my personal favourite with Seesmic‘s Android app getting good reviews. Hootsuite gained some recommendations for its analytics power, although I personally feel it has been blemished by a lot of automated tweets which aren’t my bag. A British entry, Dabr was suggested by Caron @pcmcreative which is a good but basic Twitter client.

Oneforty.com was suggested as a good Twitter app store and  Socialoomph was mentioned as a tool to boost your productivity but I am not sure which category we stick that into.

Push notifications of emails, twitter replies and other information can be handled by Boxcar which I use on the iPhone. The app works to push notifications to your iPhone, automatically from Twitter (replies and DM’s) and by receiving forwarded email (that you set up) to your app. I find it very useful but find Boxcar is regularly minutes ahead of the actual message appearing on Tweetie or in my email account.

Tweetbeep was suggested as a better tool than Google Alerts to receive notifications of specific topics or keywords mentioned on Twitter – it is more of a service than an app.

Music! Bloom on the iPhone was well received as an expensive (relative to app costs) tool to create ambient music pieces. Apparently there are whole albums made from Bloom, so I must go and find them. Bloom has been created by Brian Eno and sits alongside Trope and Air, which are also from the same stable but not as good as Bloom. I am still looking to see if there is indeed a Bloom 2 out there [update: nope,not yet.]

Voiceband was shown by Dean. This iPhone app allows me to make noises [technical term] into the app and it will translate into musical instrument sounds, great for laying down some demo ideas. Four Track, Eight and Sixteen Track were also mentioned as worthy of a look. Wallander’s Wivi Band (premium and light) which makes brass instrument samples is another one on the musical list.

Shopping. I suggested Amazon as an awesome iphone app for shopping.Not only does it seamlessly integrate with my Amazon account but it also makes great use of the camera. The Reminders function of the app allows me to take a picture of anything, then by syncing the picture to the Amazon server, finds the product and shows you the price. 9 times out of 10 this works and has helped me many times.

From using the camera to take pictures, to using it as a barcode scanner, of which there are many apps available for both Android and iPhone. Couple this with an app like Shop Savvy which will take the barcodes and find the best price for your scanned item. Coupon App was also mentioned which needs some more research.

QR codes, again of which there are a number of readers [try this for iPhone, check this article for Android] were mentioned but are not used as much in the UK as they are in other European countries.

Location Based sharing and information was covered by my love of foursquare and other tools like Layar and Gowalla. foursquare, ‘the biggie’ allows any user to share their location by ‘checking in’ – either to a location someone has already added to the database or by adding your own details. Points are offered for adding new entries, checking in etc. which are then ranked against your friends that you have added from your twitter account and other sources. Points don’t make prizes but they could get you a free coffee or a cupcake from Hummingbird Bakery. Depending on how  you use it, foursquare could be a perfect tool for a hitman trying to follow  you. I’m trying not to think about that… Foursquare is on iPhone, Android and Blackberry.

Layar allows the user to see information relevant to their location, whether that is twitter peeps around me, panoramion photos or Brightkite information. There are also augmented reality apps available which could be cool.

Community GPS? Waze for the iPhone offers a free app that allows you to navigate streets based on content provided by the user, which could be cool in a highlly populated and connected city, but not so good if your in the jungle…

Harold was taking shots using panolab (free, premium), enabling mutiple shots to be easily stitched together, I will see what he has. Dean and Caron were also taking live streaming video of our session using bambuser and QIK respectively. I plan to make a separate post comparing the video quality of these two apps.

For iPhone users connected to Microsoft Exchange we had the recommendation of IM Notes, plugging a hole in the current Exchange set up. With IM Notes, one can sync the notes ‘over the air’ which currently can only be achieved through wired connections to your computer. I’m struggling to find a link for that so I’ll have to come back to it.

For offline reading of articles and web pages we had a good recommendation of Instapaper which allows you to save pages and files from your computer to the Instapaper serve/app (and to the Kindle) and then read them when offline (you will need to sync the app for it to work.) The Tweetie iPhone app has an option to save content to Instapaper. Of a similar nature is Read it Later, which does the same job.

Talking of Kindle, the Kindle app for the iPhone works well to connect your Kindle account and ensure you have the books and content available on your Kindle and on your iPhone. The coolest thing I heard about this was that it will remember your place in the book (the Kindle does) and will share this with your app, so you can keep reading, regardless of platform.

For those of  you on roaming data contracts or GSM, iCall was suggested as a cool alternative to Skype, the neat feature allowing you to transfer a mobile call to iCall and keep talking. I need to try that one.

Want mobile search, proper mobile search? Try Taptu - it is a search engine for mobile devices that delivers results based on mobile optimisation (sites that work on mobile) rather than the standard Google algorithm.

And finally, something we didn’t cover – for those of you looking for amusement, or more importantly, distractions for the kids, try Balloonimals (watch the video) (light, premium).

So, thank you to all the attendees of MediaCamp London 4, that was a great session (lets do it again, soon!) I am sorry I haven’t mentioned yo all in this post, leave a comment and I will happily credit you for your finds. Did I miss anything? Let me know.

–

If you want to see more app suggestions, have a look at www.thenextweb.com/apps where I write, along with a host of other talented writers, part of the wider www.thenextweb.com.

This is my first post from the wordpress iPhone app. It seems useful, allowing me to publish content or save it locally which is very handy.

I can include tags and it has all my categories saved but doesn’t recognise the additional plugins. So, to add my SEO data, and the homepage image I will need to log in ‘properly’.

I’ll add a photo now but expect this will also need to be resized. Actually I can’t do that – cab get the picture onto wp but not into the post. Something for later then. (update, it actually worked!)

It is useful, though and quite quick to write so I will use it again to get initial blogs written but may not actively publish from here due to the factors outlined above.

I’ll publish now and tidy up later.

Gameloft, the french mobile game maker of such hits as Assassin’s Creed, and The Settlers have announced that they ‘and other software developers were reining in their Android development budgets because the app store was not as nice as iTunes (very true) and they weren’t making as much revnue as iTunes (expected.)

The article doesn’t mention which other developers are cutting back, but quotes Gameloft finance director Alexandre de Rochefort,

We have significantly cut our investment in Android platform, just like … many others,

This announcement that they have cut their investment is interesting but not really a surprise if they are measuring the investment with direct sales, given they have a duty to their shareholders. However, I don’t believe this news is a ‘death knell’ for Android but merley the decision of a public company to scale back investment in an unproven market.

The news that they are selling 400 times more games on iphone [than Android] and that iphone apps are 13% of its profits is a sign of a successful and mature [in relative terms] market. What this report does not tell us is how much they had invested in Android Apps, nor how much they have scaled back.

Given that Android has the potential [at least according to Gartner] to leapfrog the iPhone by 2012, one would hope that Gameloft continue to invest in Android development, even if it is billed as ‘research and development’ rather than immediate income generation.

With today’s announcement that Apple has achieved over 100,000 apps in their app store we look at how apps need to work with social communities to enable their full growth and return potential.

These are my links for July 8th through July 9th:

• Social Gold: Virtual Economy Platform: Currency, Payments, Analytics | – Social Gold powers virtual currency and payment solutions for some of the most popular online games on social network applications, including Lil’ Green Patch, Mafia Wars, and many more.
• Collection: Illustrations from our books – Remix! – This collection contains sets of illustrations from our books and which are under a CC license. In the coming weeks, we will be posting more illustrations from our books. Feel free to experiment with these images and create your own stories (or use it in whatever way you want). Leave us a link if you try your hand at creating something, so we can also see what you came up with.

These are my bookmarks for June 24th from 16:54 to 17:12:

• Read It Later Launches New iPhone App (But if You Don’t Like It, You Can Build Your Own!) – Read It Later, a cross-platform browser extension for saving online articles for later reading, has just debuted their newly updated iPhone application. This latest version introduces a number of useful features for voracious mobile readers including support for articles spanning multiple pages, support for sites requiring logins (like WSJ or NYT), new sharing features, and a lot more.
• Mafia makes money from Twitter (but you didn’t hear it from us) | Digital | Revolution – LONDON – Social media gaming start-up Lolplaying is turning to the Mob to generate revenue from Twitter, with the launch of a game that allows users to turn their followers into La Cosa Nostra.
• Once Touted As A Google Killer, Cuil May Deal With Search King – Yahoo! News – Cuil , the upstart search site launched by former Google engineers to a wave of publicity last year, isn't too cool to do business with its supposed rivals, Google or Yahoo.
• Google wants to make friends with your agency | Search | Revolution – Google is testing the new AgencyLand platform in the US with agences including Aegis' Carat Interpublic's Initiative and WPP's Ogilvy and plans to roll it out to all major search spenders.

These are my links for June 2nd through June 3rd:

• How to: hide portions of text to Google on your WordPress blog – Hiding a portion of text to Google is damn easy, but not everyone is aware of this method. Simply use the following html comments in your source files (or in WordPress editor, in html mode) to hide a specific sentence or text to Google robots.
• WordPress › Lock Out « WordPress Plugins – This plugin will allow you to put your website into Lock Out mode to prevent access while you preform upgrades or maintenance on your site. Includes the ability to upload a pre-made html file for use as a placeholder page while in lock out mode or build your own online. The login page is still accessible and will allow only the user role you set to view the site normally while in lock out mode.
• 13 Beautifully Designed Mac and iPhone App Websites | Web Design Ledger – The Apple brand is synonymous with good design. It also seems that a lot of applications made for Macs and the iPhone seem to possess a little something extra when it comes to aesthetics. The designers of these apps do a great job in carrying over that same high level of quality in branding. This is evident in the applications themselves as well as their websites. Most of these sites all share certain qualities such as excellent use of color, big highly detailed icons, and pixel perfect buttons.
• Google AJAX Feed API – Dynamic Feed Control Wizard – Embed a Dynamic Feed Control on your web page and let your users see customized views of the feeds. Customize how the dynamic feed control should be displayed, and this wizard will write the code for you.
• Turn iPhone Photos into Postcards – No Stamps Required! – Are you an iPhone-equipped world traveler? If so, then you're going to love Postino, the latest app from AnguriaLab. This mobile application lets you take iPhone photos and turn them into postcards which you can send to your family and friends. And no, they don't mean "e-cards" (although Postino supports those, too) – they mean actual, printed out, physical cards send through the good ol' fashioned snail mail service.
• Micro Persuasion: What is the Future of Twitter? Only You Know – Yesterday during my keynote on the future of Twitter at the TWTRCON conference in San Francisco I decided to do something different. For one day, at least, I put away PowerPoint and fired up a mind mapping program (in my case I use Mind Node for the Mac).
• Blogsalot – Now, look. I want to talk about John Mayer. Not because I'm recently obsessed with him. Not because his song Waiting For The World To Change is one of the best things I've heard in ages (despite being released three years ago) or because he's way better looking than I am (bastard). No. I want to talk about John Mayer's approach to releasing an album in a marketing context.

These are my bookmarks for June 2nd from 13:54 to 14:56:

• Google AJAX Feed API – Dynamic Feed Control Wizard – Embed a Dynamic Feed Control on your web page and let your users see customized views of the feeds. Customize how the dynamic feed control should be displayed, and this wizard will write the code for you.
• Turn iPhone Photos into Postcards – No Stamps Required! – Are you an iPhone-equipped world traveler? If so, then you're going to love Postino, the latest app from AnguriaLab. This mobile application lets you take iPhone photos and turn them into postcards which you can send to your family and friends. And no, they don't mean "e-cards" (although Postino supports those, too) – they mean actual, printed out, physical cards send through the good ol' fashioned snail mail service.
• Micro Persuasion: What is the Future of Twitter? Only You Know – Yesterday during my keynote on the future of Twitter at the TWTRCON conference in San Francisco I decided to do something different. For one day, at least, I put away PowerPoint and fired up a mind mapping program (in my case I use Mind Node for the Mac).
• Blogsalot – Now, look. I want to talk about John Mayer. Not because I'm recently obsessed with him. Not because his song Waiting For The World To Change is one of the best things I've heard in ages (despite being released three years ago) or because he's way better looking than I am (bastard). No. I want to talk about John Mayer's approach to releasing an album in a marketing context.
• Alexandra Roumbas Goldstein – I’m a writer, editor and social media / online communities somethingorother for a leading UK animal charity. I’m also happy to write for others, so please do email me if you’d like a chunk of my keyboard time.

These are my bookmarks for May 14th from 17:54 to 20:51:

• Google LatLong: Tips & Tricks: Jog your memory with saved locations – For places I don't visit frequently, the hardest part about finding them on Google Maps can be remembering the right address. The dentist's office or a museum, for example — places I've found on Google Maps before, but not quite recently enough to remember the exact address to search for a second time. Fortunately, when I'm signed in to my Google account, Google Maps automatically saves the addresses I search for. The Saved Locations list can hold up to 100 different places — an indispensable address book that I add to each time I search for somewhere new.
• Waiting for the Billionth Download – O’Reilly Radar – Over the next week, the iTunes App Store is set to record its billionth download, an impressive milestone given that it launched less than a year ago. Granted the actual usage of most apps is spotty. To mark the event, I'm updating a few charts that I produced for previous posts.
• #googlefail – Twitter Search – The trending twitter topic of Google #fail
• Apple has made no more than $20-45m in revenue from the app store « Lightspeed Venture Partners Blog – About a month ago Apple announced that one billion iphone apps have been downloaded in the first nine months. That’s an amazing number. I wondered how much money Apple was making from the app store.
• Reports point to widespread Google outages | Digital Media – CNET News – Many people found Google's search site was extremely slow or inaccessible Thursday, and other reports pointed to troubles with other properties including YouTube, Gmail, Google Analytics, Google Maps, Google Docs, AdSense, and Blogger.
• It’s Down! The Day Google Stood Still (Updated) – ReadWriteWeb – We have seen our fair share of failures from web based products, but this morning, for a large number of users (at least in the U.S.), it looks like every Google service has been either wiped off the Internet or is running extremely slow for a large number of users. Even Google Search is only creeping along slowly right now, and YouTube, Google Reader, Blogger, Google Analytics, Gmail, Google Maps, and Google Apps are pretty much unavailable as well.
• Cloudy day: Google falters; Packets lost in key cities | Between the Lines | ZDNet.com – We’re getting various reports via that Google services are down or at least sucking some serious wind. The service appears to be back as of noon-ish EDT in New York City, but packets are still being lost around the globe. The fail whale Google style: