If you really want to dig some golds from App Store - the software market for iOS devices (such as iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch). You should not miss to read and know about App Store Review Guidelines.

How come the guideline comes up? Back in 2010 April, Apple restricted iPhone development to only allow use of their developer tools. It means you could not use some cross platform development tools such as PhoneGap, Appcelerator and Adobe Flash. Also, after a few months, Apple further blocked applications from sharing data with many companies, blocking applications that "collect, use, or disclose to any third party, user or device data" unless needed for the application or to serve advertising through "an independent advertising service provider whose primary business is serving mobile ads". That means you could only advertise on your own or join Apple's iAd advertising platform.

Finally in 2010 Sep, Apple has changed the policy that they "listened to our developers" and "we are relaxing all restrictions on the development tools used to create iOS apps, as long as the resulting apps do not download any code.". At the same time, Apple has also published App Store Review Guidelines to help developers understand how their applications are reviewed and then allowed or rejected by Apple.

So now developers are free to use third party development tools and choose their advertising partners while they are keeping the review guidelines in mind.

Much of the rules in the guidelines are common-sense but some highlights noted by Rob Pegoraro of the Washington Post that you might be careful, such as:

• 2.11 Apps that duplicate apps already in the App Store may be rejected, particularly if there are many of them.
• 2.12 Apps that are not very useful or do not provide any lasting entertainment value may be rejected.
• 3.1 Apps with metadata that mentions the name of any other mobile platform will be rejected. ...
• 9.3 Audio streaming content over a cellular network may not use more than 5MB over 5 minutes. ... 
• 15.3 "Enemies" within the context of a game cannot solely target a specific race, culture, a real government or corporation, or any other real entity.

Now we could see that App Store seems to become a more open place. Since there are already 400,000+ apps by 2011 Jan. Apple is now sweeping out some low-quality apps and copycats from the store.

URL is a very core part of the Internet. It is much more than a address or resource locator. It doesn't like your mobile number which is just a meaningless random numbers.

There's good URL design, there's bad URL design, and there's everything in between – it's subjective. But it is quite obviously to see which is good and which is bad.

For example, considering this: http://www.apple.com/iphone/how-to-buy/

And this: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsphone/en-us/buy/7/phones.aspx

It is clear that I don't need to tell you where the first URL points to. But for the second one, it points to a list of available Window Phone 7 phones. It's not about Apple and Microsoft but obviously the first one is better because it is short and readable. The second URL could be simplified or organized to :

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsphone/buy/en-us

or even get rid of default region: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsphone/buy

Why it does really matter? I couldn't tell you it is a must but it makes sense for the eyeball economics. A beauty URL has more chances to be tweeted or shared on the facebook. And you won't click a strange or unknown URL.

If you are developing a website. You should take time to design your URL structure. Don't leave it up to your framework. Don't leave it up to chance. Think about it and craft an experience. URL Design is a complex subject.

But that doesn't mean there aren't best practices for creating great URLs. Kyle Neath has written a great article to show you some best practices in URL design and explain why new HTML5 javascript history APIs are so exciting to work with.

Source: http://warpspire.com/posts/url-design/