Article by George Norman

On 10 Mar 2009

The developer of the Full Screen Web Browser iPhone app, Ben Chatelain, is not exactly pleased with the fact that cracked versions of the software application he came up are being used by a large number of people, so he has come up with a novel means of combating this issue. What he did is fit the iPhone app with detection capabilities; once a pirated version of Full Screen Web Browser is detected, the software is not immediately shut down, even though that might be a possibility. Instead, the user is permited to run the cracked version for a period of 10 days before getting a notification (see picture at the bottom of the article).

Ben Chatelain explains: “Within four days of the initial release, a Google Alert informed me of the fact that a cracked copy of Full Screen Web Browser 1.0 had been made public. I was infuriated and immediately began researching ways to have the app detect when it was cracked and to do something nasty like shut down or self-destruct. The solution that I came up with is for the app to simply detect whether it has been compromised and to send that data over the wire to our server. All of these simple server pings are logged along with the unique device identifier (UDID) so that illegal usage can be tracked. Then, the server controls a demo period; after 10 runs a message is presented which gives the choice of visiting the Full Screen Web Browser page in the App Store (iTunes link) or exiting the app.”


It stands to reason why Ben Chatelain is crossed with all of this since Full Screen Web Browser has been legitimately downloaded by more than 66,000 times since it was released last month (February 12th). In a relatively short amount of time this iPhone app has become one of the most downloaded pieces of software in numerous countries. Ben Chatelain hopes that the message will spur feeling of guilt in the people using cracked versions of his software and will consequently purchase it.

Since Ben made it more than obvious that he needs to be paid for his work in order to feed his child, I don’t see how you could come up with an excuse for pirating Full Screen Web Browser.

Other times you will definitely need to come up with a good excuse, and since you might not be able to come up with one in a snap, you must know that there is an iPhone app to address your needs – Excuse Maker. This app is capable of generating general excuses, excuse for being late, for missing work, for not showing up to a date, for when the police pulls you over, and random excuses.

If you would like to get Full Screen Web Browser, an iTunes download location is available here.
If you would like to get Excuse Maker, an iTunes download location is available here.





Tags: Apple, iPhone, iPhone Apps, Full Screen Web Browser, Excuse Maker

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