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iTunes Instant: Search iTunes at high speed thanks to 15-year-old developer
If you've heard of Google's instant search, then you'll be right at home with iTunes Instant. We're all aware that iTunes doesn't have the most friendly of search engines, but thanks to youthful developer Stephen Ou, searching the iTunes store just got a whole lot easier. iTunes Instant doesn't just give you suggestions or recommendations as you type in a search query, it actually gives you real-time search feedback (album and artwork in this case) as you enter a query, character by character. Possibly the best thing about iTunes Instant is that it's the work of Ou, a 15-year old based in the Bay Area in California. According to TheiLoop, Ou developed iTunes Instant in under three hours, using Apple's own Search API. Ou says that iTunes Instant "will make your life better." And we're inclined to believe it. Trying to search for an artist that you can't quite remember the name of in iTunes can produce some rather unfruitful results. Using iTunes Instant just might be the ticket to solving such frustrating queries. Try iTunes Instant for yourself here. If you're interested in searching the App Store instead of the music store, Jordan Satok's App Store Instant on App Of The Day uses similar techniques. Satok and Ou are buddies, and Ou contributed to the development of the app search tool as well. [hat tip to 9to5Mac]
Finding an app in a haystack
As of July 11th, the iPhone/iPod touch App Store housed 56,081 different apps according to Jeff Scott of 148apps.com.Taking a quick look, I found over 400 different fart apps. This alone is pretty scary and would lead me to believe that any app that might be either useful or funny, or even totally pointless, has so many variations that without knowing an app name, searching for something that interests me would soon become a Herculean task. Apple hasn't made this easy since using the iTunes store search is pretty rough and usually brings up many choices that don't seem to contain what you want. i really hope that Apple addresses this in the future since the current method just isn't nearly good enough.As is often the case, intrepid app aficionados have jumped into the fray and given us some help in finding just the right app: Freeappalert.com prints a listing, updated daily, of apps that have just gone from paid to free. This is a great place to start a search because more than once have I run into the situation where I bought an app and later found that a free one did just as good if not better. To give you an example, the site has listed fifteen apps that just went free today, July 13th. They also provide a listing of apps that became free over the last few days. Appshopper.com lets you search by topics such as: what's new, what's free, what has been updated, and what has changed in price. The site mentions that it's still in testing and more features will be forthcoming. Recent additions to the site include buttons for "Want it" and "Have it." 148apps.com, along with listing what's new and free, relates their favorite 148 apps along with tracking 148 games, both free and paid, as well as 148 general apps, again both free and paid. Iviewer.com is in the midst of collecting apps from readers. They are looking for apps that haven't appeared in any top 10 lists. This doesn't seem as if would provide as broad a field of information as the other sites. Macworld's App Guide is the best-organized and most functional site I've found. Apps are categorized by type, which alone saves a lot of time. Price reductions are noted as well as groups of popular apps featured. The nicest part of the site is a really functional search box that puts the one found in the iTunes store to shame. Type in a phrase and you will get nicely sorted, useful results. I've found this to be less than complete, but as someone once said: 'in the land of the blind, the one eyed man is King.' Try some of these out and see if it helps you successfully navigate through the quickly increasing mountain of apps.I know that I haven't scratched the surface of sites that can help with app searching, so please tell us what you have found and what makes your site discovery unique and especially helpful in marketing iPhone/iTouch apps.
