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Report: Apple Acquires Poly9 Mapping Company
According to reports from the Quebec City newspaper La Soleil, Apple has recently acquired Poly9, a Canadian online mapping design house. The employees have apparently relocated to Cupertino where they will work on Apple’s mapping team.

Poly9 developed mapspread.com, an online GIS tool, and a Flash-based virtual globe called Free Earth that was behind popular map visualization sites like the NORAD Santa Tracker and also powered waypoint tracking for Garmin Communicator, among other sites. You can still see Free Earth and the list of sites that use it at globe.poly9.com even though the main website at poly9.com is down. Integration with other sites was possible through a JavaScript API that Poly9 developed.

Poly9 is the second big mapping acquisition for Apple. Last year, Placebase was also brought over into the fold as well. Placebase was a competitor to Google Maps that specialized in customizing the maps with customer data and locations. Placebase developed its own JavaScript API called PushPin to provide this customization.

The O’Reilly Report noted a link between Poly9 and Placebase back in 2007 when it pointed out that Free Earth was getting locations from the geodata marketplace available through the PushPin API. It seems clear now that Placebase and Poly9 have been aware of each other for at least a few years. It seems doubtful that Apple is acquiring the company for its Flash globe application, but a group of developers that is intimately familiar with the Placebase API, and capable of producing their own JavaScript API, which would be incredibly valuable to Apple if they are, as we suspect, in the midst of producing their own API for mapping data that developers could use in iOS and/or web apps.

Just yesterday, Om interviewed ex-Apple JavaScript guru Charles Jolley about the complimentary relationship between HTML5 and native iPhone apps. Jolley was heavily involved in the SproutCore JavaScript frameworks used on the MobileMe web apps.

It certainly seems likely that Apple is looking at native Cocoa and JavaScript APIs that could be used in web apps like MobileMe (think Find My iPhone) and iOS apps. It is particularly interesting that Poly9 and Placebase specialized in adding layers of data on top of maps, so that their customers could customize the mapping and globe applications to display all kinds of data. Such a framework for iOS would enable a whole new generation of apps that could take custom placemarks and points of interest and display those on top of the map.

The iPhone has already enabled location-based services like Fourquare, Gowalla, and others to expand their reach with customers that have location-aware, always-connected devices. The next version of iOS could have something even more exciting to make really useful mapping applications and interesting location-based services because the Poly9 and Placebase engineers will add their biological and technological distinctiveness to the Apple mothership.

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Evernote Turns Itself Into a Platform With "Trunk"
The handy digital memory software maker Evernote today is launching “Evernote Trunk,” a platform for integrated productivity applications that it will sync with, market and sell.

Evernote is an early “freemium” success story, with 80,000 premium subscribers and 12 percent revenue growth per month for the last two years (for a lot more on the company’s freemium model, see this previous post). Today, most Evernote customers use the app to coordinate their note-taking across at least one mobile device and at least one desktop. Now the company is using that strength to help out other companies and add functionality it hasn’t built itself with 100 “items” (aka apps) from 67 companies at launch. Trunk is available for Evernote’s Windows, Mac and web apps today, the iPad next week and mobile devices after that.

Evernote CEO Phil Libin said this is “not another app store,” but rather a way to showcase and integrate apps. “We want to help these creative nerd engineering types make money for building something useful.” Libin was speaking at a dedicated Evernote press conference in San Francisco, which was a bit odd considering the small scale of this announcement.

Trunk items include voice transcriptions (with Dial2Do), social functionality (with Seesmic), group support (with SAP), PDF annotations and business card handling. Evernote will also offer “branded notebooks” with lifestyle content from publishers including Make Magazine on topics including travel, wedding planning and gadgets that users can annotate and “obsess over,” said Libin.

Evernote wants its partners to both augment and take a piece of its freemium model. It promises it will soon add the ability for developers to charge within Trunk and earn affiliate revenue. Apps can also be region-specific; for instance, a German app called Paperboy takes pictures of newspapers or magazines so a user can read them later, and the Japanese device airpen records physical writing in digital form.

Libin said he hopes future Trunk projects will include games, education, semantic analysis, recommendations and templates.

Meanwhile, Evernote is also pursuing the crazy newfangled idea of retail sales; as an experiment, it will sell an Evernote starter pack with Sourcenext in Japan, including a three-month starter subscription. Always ready with a quip, Libin said, “This may be the first time anybody’s ever put a cloud service in a box — a retail box … which explains why it’s so light.”

Related content from GigaOM Pro (sub req’d):

Handwriting Recognition: A Killer App for the iPad?

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Before Applegate, There was Gizmododom
At WWDC, Steve Jobs all but begged the audience to take as close of a look as possible at the little notches separating the stainless steel bands that surround the newly announced iPhone 4. Acknowledging Gizmodo’s capture of an iPhone 4 in the wild, Steve made a point of singling out the gaps between the stainless steel bands to which there had been much speculation across the blogosphere as to their function.

“It turns out, this is part of some brilliant engineering,” Steve tells the world at WWDC, “which actually uses the stainless steel band as part of the antenna system.” Little did Steve know that he was asking the world to take special notice of what was soon to become a much bigger issue that no one at that time could have possibly imagined.

So how could one of the world’s top engineering companies have missed such a prevalent usability issue like the now infamous ‘grip of death’? By also being one of the worlds most secretive companies. It may just be a matter that the secrecy at all costs finally took its toll on Apple. It is very likely that since most smart phones today try to mimic the iPhone that no one would have noticed the new iPhone 4 form factor from Apple during its pre-release field testing. But for extra measure, it is even more likely that they were all issued cases that helped conceal the identity of the phone even further. One can only imagine the feeling that all field engineers at Apple had on that fateful Monday morning in April as they all frantically ran looking for their field test unit. The question is, what happened next?

Was field testing cut short? Was it interrupted at all? Were the cases used throughout field testing what prevented engineers from discovering the antenna issue that now haunts Apple? It is very likely that something happened and that field testing was impacted in some way due to the media frenzy that ensued from April all the way up to the announcement at WWDC. Although engineers were likely not able to reproduce the same death grip on the test units that consumers can all too readily reproduce today, they all likely had their own implementation of a death grip on the phones throughout the remainder of the testing activities that led up to the June release. The most plausible scenario would be that the use of cases to help conceal the identity of the new iPhone prevented data from reaching Apple as to the ill effects of handling the phone in certain positions.

When it comes to conducting field tests, perhaps someone should have told Apple, “just don’t test it that way.”

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Apple Finally on Twitter?
Although the iPhone and the Mac are extremely popular devices for using social media, Apple is one of the only major technology companies not to have a clear presence on Twitter or Facebook. A hint arose yesterday that Apple may finally be peering outside its walled garden. Apple Senior Vice President of iPhone Software Scott Forstall signed up for Twitter and has a “verified account” to show he is indeed the Scott Forstall from Apple.

While Scott already has thousands of followers, he’s currently only following Conan O’Brien, who recently tweeted “I found a huge design flaw in my new iPhone. People get angry when I talk on it during a funeral!”

Behind the times

While Apple makes the products that we all use to get involved in social media, the company itself is way behind the curve in this area. Although Apple provides marketing tweets from such accounts as iTunesTrailers and iTunesMusic, it has yet to use Twitter or Facebook to respond to customer concerns about Apple products. In sharp contrast to Apple, its U.S. partner for the iPhone, AT&T, has a great presence in social media. Tweet a problem to @attcustomercare and its crack team resolves the problem in a jiffy. Post on its Facebook wall and receive similar executive class service. Personally, they’ve solved my problems on more than one occasion.

When people complain on Twitter about a surly Genius, or a botched online order, the voice of Apple is silent. Steve Jobs might respond to some of your select emails, but apparently if you tweet instead of write him directly, you won’t be heard by Steve or for that matter anyone at Apple. Don’t even think of making him your friend on Facebook or connecting with him on LinkedIn! Of course, Apple employees can be involved in social media on a personal level, although obviously they can’t speak on Apple’s behalf. Their reluctance to be involved in social media is atypical of the tech industry.

Why has it taken so long?

Apple likes having strict control over communication, with one voice and one venue for communication: Apple’s PR department. Unlike other companies that encourage their executive staff and customer service personnel to go out and meet their customers and address their concerns, Apple stays away. This may simply be because Apple doesn’t think it has to. It considers the Genius Bar and its Tech Support department to be the proper way of getting your concerns addressed. While Apple has lots of informal fans and followers on social media, Apple has yet to get involved in this international conversation, until perhaps today.

Could Scott’s Twitter account be a new method of damage control for Apple and possibly even help iPhone owners with problems? As “Antennagate” spun out of control, Steve Job’s response “you are holding it wrong” conflicted with Apple’s official statement that it’s not a hardware problem, but a software issue. Thus it seems logical that the head of iPhone software might be the first official verified account from Apple. Why verify with Twitter unless you are going to speak on behalf of Apple? Imagine how different the problem might have been perceived if people weren’t using social media like Twitter, Facebook, and blogs to amplify and broadcast their their concerns? People are shouting because it doesn’t seem like Apple is listening.

If Apple had been fully engaged in the world of social media, would Antennagate have reached the level it did? Possibly not. iPhone owners would feel the issues were being addressed and Apple was working on the problem. Not responding to your customers concerns except through random CEO emails and rare formal press releases is not the way to do public relations, unless of course you work for Toyota or BP. I encourage Scott and his team to step up to the plate and start addressing not just the antenna concerns, but the variety of other problems iPhones owners have.

Alternatively, this could all be an elaborate hoax and a testament to user frustration that Apple isn’t addressing their concerns.

If you have a problem with your iPhone, tweet @forstall and you might just get a response. And if that doesn’t work, you can simply follow my previous guide on getting satisfaction from Apple.

So what should Scott’s first tweet be? What will your first tweet to him be?

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Apple Opens Safari Extension Gallery Submissions
Apple has opened up the Safari extensions gallery for third-party submissions in preparation of opening the gallery to the public. While you can install extensions now, you need to first know where to download them.

It’s a good bet that the average user probably doesn’t know anything about the extensions yet. We’ve compiled a list of 25 of our favorites, but Apple’s gallery will open up extensions to a wider audience, much like its downloads page did for third-party Mac OS X apps.

If you are a developer, submitting your extension is fairly simple. Apple has a form to fill out in the Safari Dev Center, and it’ll send an email to let you know when you’re extension has been received. When we walked through the submission process, Apple sent us this email:

“Thank you for submitting your Safari Extension.

Apple reviews all submissions and reserves the right to omit, edit, or reject any submission. Please note you will not receive any further notifications.

We appreciate your interest in Safari.”

Based on this reply it seems like the extensions Gallery may be subject to the same approval process as the App Store. Firefox has a similar review process for hosting addons at addons.mozilla.org, similar that is in that there is a process. Mozilla has been handling extensions for a long time, and has the process finely tuned. When submitting an addon for Firefox, the addon is available immediately and labeled “experimental,” and requires the user to acknowledge and accept the risk of using an addon that has not been reviewed by an editor. Mozilla has clear rules about what is acceptable and what is not, and has a page that addresses the review process directly. So far, I have not found the same for Safari.

Google Chrome also has extensions, but in a much looser, less controlled environment than Firefox or Safari. According to Google:

Most extensions won’t go through an approval process before being listed in the gallery. The exception to this rule are extensions which utilize the NPAPI interface, or extensions which access file:// URLs

Google’s rules are loose, but at least they are not vague. I hope that as development on Safari progresses, and the extensions gallery matures, the rules defining what is allowed and what is not are more clearly defined.

If you are interested in developing your own Safari extension, check out our beginner tutorial which walks you through creating a very basic “Hello World” extension.

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