I have been trying for quite a while to find a way to reach them to find out why my simple and straight forward ad for a cute free iPhone app I made (Find Now – shameless plug here) has been under review for 3 days now…

I started my saga to get support from AdMob by going to Contact Us on the AdMob website. This page is thoroughly detailing the physical addresses of all their offices on all four corners of the world, even linking to Google Maps to make sure that you can see their gorgeous buildings via street view.

A very useful site indeed if I wanted to hop onto a plane and go shake someone’s hand, or if I wanted to take out the AdMob engineers for a coffee. However, there is no email address, phone number or Skype ID as if they are afraid that somebody could actually want to talk to them without being first screened by the office building security guard. Not even a fax number. Or maybe they are old-fashioned and they prefer corresponding through hand written paper missives delivered to them by the mailman? Snail mail? Does anybody remember how that worked? Hello 80′s!

OK. Let’s guess. What could the email address be? Maybe support@admob.com?… BINGO! This is the email address…

Oh wait… No. This WAS the address until August 2011 when they probably decided to let go of the intern manning the email. This is the automated message I got when I wrote to the the above mentioned email address:

The support@admob.com email alias has been retired and is no longer being monitored for new tickets. If you have an existing, open ticket filed prior to August 22nd 2011, it will continue to be investigated as needed.

For all future technical issues, advertiser or publisher, please visit http://www.admob.com/home/contact to file a new ticket with the Google support team by clicking on the “contact us” button.

Google support team

Aha! So back to the Contact Us web page… I must have missed that useful “Contact Us” button…

Nope… there is no “Contact Us” button, but now I notice that there are social networking links on the bottom: Twitter and Facebook. Maybe that is where I need to go to get AdMob’s attention.

Hmmm… no luck there eithe. I cannot direct message on Twitter because they are not following me, and the associated website is sending me back to the AdMob website. The Google Mobile Ads Facebook page contains a lot of “recommendations” from people whom claim that the money in their AdMob account had vanished and that their efforts to contact AdMob were futile. Here are just a few:

“converted to Google and lost money I had in old admob account and cannot contact admob what gives?”
Dennis T.

“already more than 2 weeks I have not received payment from AdMob. AdMob possible fraudsters. please explain”
Yanuar P.

“Google Admob doesnot pay to publishers, my payments are stuck from July 2011 and still no response.. sent so many mails to Admob Team but no reply…”
Arti G.

Scary!!! What is happening? Are they preparing to close down and trying to get rid of their customers? Who does that? Will I ever see my money back?

If you had a similar experience please comment below and let me know!

We decided that the perfect smartphone search application should show results quickly and not require any typing. Also, because of the relatively small screen size of the mobile device, the app should hint if it found anything just beyond the visible screen boundaries.

The app should be able to automatically follow as the user moves about and should continuously discover points of interest. The interaction with the app should be brief and its operation obvious. A slick eye-candy UI devoid of clutter is also a must.

With all this in mind we built Find Now, a great little iPhone app that is now available for download in the Apple’s AppStore.

Find Now for iPhone is a free app that allows you to search for businesses using a minimalistic, clutter free, appealing user interface that does not require any typing. Use your fingertips to pan and zoom the map. Choose what you are searching for by scrolling a retractable wheel on the top.

Ask Find Now to follow you and it will show you new places as you approach them. See hints for places found just outside the visible map. Add businesses to your address book, call, or get directions from the app. Find the nearest coffee shop, bar, bank, ATM, flower shop, restaurant, liquor store, hair dresser, movie theatre or gas station without typing a thing.

This year it sold out in less than one hour!

Normally “Google I/O 2011 Sold Out in 59 Minutes” would be a great headline for Google.

Unfortunately Google is about to have a shock when, on May 10, 2011 the Moscone Centre in San Francisco will sport mostly empty seats…

Why is that? Well, because the whole rush to buy tickets was fed by the “bribe” (yes I am bold enough to say it!) Google gave last year to Google I/O attendees (including me). Everybody got at home in the mail, before the conference even started, a state of the art phone. No need to actually go to San Francisco, buy plane tickets, book a hotel…

This year everybody, developer or not, wanted that phone. The slew of free phone seekers shut out many serious developers like myself and my employees, people that were actually interested in what Google has to say, not in a piece of hardware.

So maybe I am wrong, and the grapes are just sour. Maybe most registered attendees this year are actual Google developers, and they will actually go to see the conference.

Am I just a sore loser? Let’s look at the numbers:

Last year 4000 seats were sold in 50 days. That was a record! This record was undoubtedly fueled by the give away of a phone at the conference in 2009. I have to admit that this was one of my reasons to register last year to start with. But in order to get the phone you had to actually go to the conference, make that investment in time and travel spending, to prove you care for Google, not for the free phone.

This year, the same amount of people registered in about 1 hour, despite a horrendous user experience (the registration system was mostly down). This is at least a 1200 times uptake in interest, while the conference price even went up a bit… Did Android, or any other Google technology catch the eye of the developers in the past year in such a great regard? I did not see the signs so far.

Let me know if you have a different opinion. And I’m eager to see how many of the registered attendants actually travel to San Francisco.

This is an easy-to-use app – the map itself is the input. You can pan and zoom to the place you are searching, or press a button and the app follows your location as you move.

The results show on the map as they are found, and they can be filtered using a nice graphical “category selector” that can hide.

Photograph by: Ian Lindsay, PNG

Today Vancouver Sun got a great article about Apple’s iPad and the many iPad/iPhone developers in BC. I am proud to say that the article features a photo of me and my iPad. The picture was taken at the great trade show F5-Expo Refreshing Business Strategies held today in Vancouver .

My new iPad

Here we are! Now that the iPad is out, and that the iPad development documentation is public, the BCIT iPhone Application Development course (MDIA 2652) will include iPad specific development topics.
I will also make my  new iPad available to the students to touch, to use and to test their applications. How cool is that?

The iPhone Application Development course (MDIA 2652) that I teach runs every Saturday from 9:00AM to 12:00PM, and is ideal for technical people with some application development experience under their belt. This course is heavily hands-on. It starts with the basics of iPhone application development, but during the length of the course touches all the areas necessary to build a high quality iPhone (and soon iPad) application.

A second course is the iPhone Software Design (MDIA 1445) taught by David Drucker. This course is less technically inclined, and focuses on application design, user interface architecture, and user experience. MDIA 1445 is looking at mobile specific UI design issues with an emphasis on Cocoa Touch and UIKit topics. This course runs Saturdays from 1:00PM to 4:00PM in the same Mac classroom as MDIA 2652, and would make a perfect pair with the morning iPhone Application Development course.

The third course is a must for anybody looking at starting any entrepreneurial activity around the iPhone, iPad or any other mobile device. In the iPhone Business Development course (MDIA 2649) students learn how to combine business strategy and design to assess market opportunities and develop successful iPhone products. The course’s instructor is CBC’s Jonathan Carrigan. Jonathan is a phenomenal presenter and I highly recommend attending his course. The MDIA 2649 course runs Thursday evenings from 5:30PM to 8:30PM in the same Mac lab as the other two courses.

The course has been revamped to cater mostly to software developers, starting with the basics, but going pretty fast into Objective C and Cocoa Touch programming details. Find a more complete description here.

What does it teach?

• Tools: how to use XCode to create a new iPhone application, how to add a new class file and how to create your own view class. Using Interface Builder: drag and drop, inspector tabs, custom classes, connecting graphically objects, outlets and actions.
• Programming: practical examples of implementing the Model View Controller design pattern, outlets and actions, member variable naming conventions, forward class declaration, deriving classes, and overriding methods.
• Frameworks: UIKit concepts: creating a custom UIView by overriding drawRect, and the use of needsDisplay and needsLayout. Core Graphics concepts: context, path, current position, adding to path, stroke, fill.

Read more…

But with the end there comes a new beginning. The Winter 2010 semester of the BCIT iPhone course is starting, and the registration is now open (see http://www.bcit.ca/study/courses/mdia2652). As I told before, experienced, or not so much, all developers interested in switching to iPhone application development are welcome to register.

Let me remind you that the course is running in a classroom fitted with Intel based Macs at the Downtown Vancouver BCIT campus. Students do not need to purchase expensive equipment since Macs are available in the classroom, and all assignments can be done using the iPhone simulator. However, in order to get a full experience out of the course we recommend that students have, at least, their own iPhone or iPod Touch devices. Please note that BCIT students who do not currently have an Intel based Mac can purchase one from an Apple Store (or online) at a discount.

New this semester:

• All students qualify for Apple’s iPhone Developer University Program (a $99 value)

• The course has a new excellent textbook (released on October 30, 2009):

iPhone for Programmers
Author: Paul Deitel, Harvey Deitel
Publisher: Prentice Hall
ISBN 978-0-13-705842-6

If you register you have a copy waiting for you in the BCIT bookstore.