iPhone App Reviewed, Approved by Steve Jobs Himself

This is the second time in less than a week that a developer reaches out to Steve Jobs himself over a rejected iPhone application. However, unlike the developer of the ‘limited’ Kaching app, Pointy Heads Software has already seen its API-infringing app approved after Apple’s CEO gave it a closer look.

Ars Technica reports that a persuasive e-mail from Pointy Head developer Brian Meehan to Steve Jobs helped the Knocking Live Video app become the first approved iPhone app capable of streaming live video over 3G and WiFi connections. With the app relying on a private API (application programming interface) to enable its video-streaming feature, it wasn’t very surprising to see it rejected. However, as the story goes, Meehan decided it was worth giving it another shot, being utterly convinced the Knocking Live Video app was definitely App Store material.

"We are focused on phone-to-phone, not uploading to the Web," Pointy Head developer Brian Meehan explained to Ars. "Who really cares about fleeting moments other than friends and family seeing it as it happens? With Knocking people share what they are doing right now. Our testers have referred to knocking as a 'visual tweet,'" he said.

"When it was rejected, I decided not to give up and reach out directly to Steve Jobs via e-mail," he told Ars. "I reached out to Apple to reconsider our application due to its potential to culturally change how people share live moments phone-to-phone." The tech-focused site reveals the developer made his case "in a way that was not about me or our app, rather about being a life-long user of all Apple products, about how I believed in Apple and that I believed Jobs would respond." Meehan even "humbly" requested Steve Jobs to give the app a try himself, in order to convince Apple’s CEO of the quality of the product.

Not long after these events had unfolded, an Apple executive contacted Meehan to discuss the app’s rejection, which, to the developer’s surprise, had been "reversed." The order to reverse the app's rejection came "directly from the top," the executive reportedly told Meehan. Hours after the phone conversation had ended, the Knocking Live Video app was approved in the App Store.

There’s some good news for iPhone owners too! The first 50,000 downloads of Knocking Live Video are absolutely free. Hurry up and download your own copy today.

Download Knocking Live Video (Free)

As most reports covering this topic say, this is yet another move in the right direction for Apple. The company has been widely criticized for lack of communication with iPhone developers. Recently, however, Apple seems to have picked up the pace in offering more transparency, as well as loosening up some of its approval / rejection policies.

440,000 PlayStation 3 Consoles Sold for Thanksgiving

Sony is claiming that the week which ended on November 29 has seen the PlayStation 3 home gaming consoles sell more than 440,000 units in the United States. The Thanksgiving holiday is traditionally regarded as the start of the holiday season and a lot of people flock to stores in order to take advantage of a variety of deals, most of them heavily discounted, targeting everything from clothes to gaming consoles.

Sales of hardware also tend to have a spike in the week immediately after Thanksgiving and companies like Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft are quick to point out their performance during this period in order to built momentum for their products.

Patrick Seybold, who is the senior corporate communications director at Sony, stated that “The 2009 holiday season got off to an amazing start for PlayStation, with all key retailers showing a significant increase for PS3, PSP and key holiday titles over Black Friday and the holiday weekend.”

The PlayStation 3 is said to have been favored by players because of its power, the library of videogames available for it and because of the capabilities of the PlayStation Network. Seybold added that “In today's economy, consumers are drawn to items that offer the most value for their money, making the PS3 an ideal choice for those who want a comprehensive gaming and entertainment system all in one package.”

The PlayStation 3 seems to be the big winner among the home consoles in the last six months of 2009. Sony launched a new version of the device, called the Slim, which uses less power and is also smaller while offering the same computational power and slashed the price to match that of the Xbox 360 Elite. The PS3 has dominated hardware charts in the United States since the move and is poised to perform well in November and December.