Apple opens up, releases App Store Review Guidelines

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n addition to relaxing restrictions on app development for its mobile operating system, Apple also announced today that it would publish its App Store Review Guidelines so that developers know what goes into reviewing their apps. We’ve embedded the guidelines below in PDF form, along with some highlights.

In the introduction to the guidelines, Apple makes it clear how it views app curation: “If you want to criticize a religion, write a book. If you want to describe sex, write a book or a song, or create a medical app.” The company says it views apps differently than books or songs, which it doesn’t curate.

Apple’s generic guidelines in the introduction aren’t entirely surprising. Some gems include:

• “We have lots of kids downloading lots of apps, and parental controls don’t work unless the parents set them up (many don’t). So know that we’re keeping an eye out for the kids.”
• “We have over 250,000 apps in the App Store. We don’t need any more Fart apps. If your app doesn’t do something useful or provide some form of lasting entertainment, it may not be accepted.” [Emphasis mine]
• “We will reject Apps for any content or behavior that we believe is over the line. What line, you ask? Well, as a Supreme Court Justice once said, “I’ll know it when I see it”. And we think that you will also know it when you cross it.”
• READ THE REST AT   http://venturebeat.com/2010/09/09/apple-opens-up-releases-app-store-review-guidelines/

Youth is great for many things and one of those can, and should be risk and adventure. Most mega successful business ventures spawn from stupidity, lack of planning and sheer will to succeed.

Here’s how four ultra-successful twentysomethings leveraged their brilliant ideas into major businesses online. And how you can, too.

Out of Her Closet, a $50 Million Business
Susan Gregg was 17 and heading off to Carnegie Mellon University, and she had a problem: a closet overstuffed with one-of-a-kind vintage shoes and dresses. The solution? Open an online boutique.

ModCloth.com was headquartered in her dorm room and run with the help of her high school sweetheart, Eric Koger. The two drove from Pittsburgh to their South Florida hometown several times throughout college to haul up stock. By the end of their senior year in 2006, ModCloth was getting 60,000 visitors a month, and plenty of them were asking for more.

Gregg–a double major in German and business, and now married to Koger–knew what to do. First, she raised the capital: $50,000 in credit card debt, plus loans from Koger’s uncles, student loans and a second mortgage. Then she hired designers to create an original, vintage-inspired collection. “I Googled, ‘Where can I buy wholesale clothing?’” Gregg-Koger recalls. She found the Magic Trade Show in Las Vegas, wandered the booths, asked questions and found her designers.

These days, as co-founder and chief creative officer, Gregg-Koger, 25, still handpicks all the clothes, shoes and accessories featured on the site (most sell for less than $100) and seeks out designers who fit ModCloth’s aesthetic. Koger, the CEO, oversees the technical side. The site gets around 2 million visitors every month and is on track to surpass $50 million in sales this year. They’ve raised $20 million in new funding to open up offices in San Francisco and Los Angeles this summer, and employee numbers are close to 150, and rising.

Gregg-Koger says ModCloth’s biggest advantage is the fact that she is ModCloth’s ideal customer: “Other companies might say, ‘We need to get on this social networking stuff,’ whereas it was intuitive for us. If I have a Facebook account, and my friends do, my business should.”

ModCloth’s future is “social commerce,” she adds. That is, in developing a site that involves customers even if they’re not actually buying. ModCloth recently introduced a “Be the Buyer” program, which lets customers choose which styles go into production, and a “Name It and Win It” contest. The idea is to leverage crowdsourcing and encourage customers to share and comment–and get excited about clothes that will be available in a few months.

“But that’s like version 0.5,” she says. “There’s a lot more coming.” –Jennifer Wang

View the remaining three at http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/217183