Since the OS 2 software was “officially” released this weekend, we’ve been “experimenting” with “new” ways to interact with native applications which were not possible under the various 1.x versions. One is SMS, another is the App Store.

Native iPhone application support allows you to present website content which has unique capabilities available to users of Apple mobile devices. In conjunction with the OS 2.0 software release, the App Store launched and 10 million apps sold in the opening weekend - but we mainly wanted to know how to link to Super Monkey Ball from our iPhone microsite.

As it turned out, it’s not much different from the technique we’d outlined for linking to the iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store. To link from your website to an application in the App Store, use the “tell a friend” link on the application page in iTunes to email yourself a link to the application, then copy the link and format it as a standard hyperlink:

<a href="http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=281966695&mt=8">Super Monkey Ball</a>

Which will produce this link: Super Monkey Ball

On iPhones and iPod touches running OS 2.0 tapping this link will open the application in the App Store, while clicking it in a web browser will load the same title through iTunes. As noted in the comments, this feature has been disabled in 2.1 - a bug has been filed with Apple and we will let you know when we hear anything further.

There you have it. A simple, effective way to target content in the app store via your iPhone friendly website. Who knows, maybe there could be some affiliate opportunities. Let us know what you think in the comments!

-Shaun Mackey

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