Eideard

Rebecca and Trent Dupaix of Eagle Mountain, Utah, spent a year searching for their dream home. The couple, who have five children, considered 15 to 20 houses before finding “the one.”

They were thrilled when they closed on a $227,000, rock-and-stucco home with five bedrooms and two and a half baths in March 2009.

But four months later, when a local television reporter was doing a story on housing taxes in their subdivision, the Dupaixs discovered that their sales contract included a “resale fee” that allows the developer to collect 1 percent of the sales price from the seller every time the property changes hands — for the next 99 years…

A growing number of developers and builders have been quietly slipping “resale fee” covenants into sales agreements of newly built homes in some subdivisions. In the Dupaix contract, the clause was in a separate 13-page document — called the declaration of covenants, conditions and restrictions — that wasn’t even included in the closing papers and did not require a signature…

Freehold Capital Partners, a real estate financing firm founded by the Texas developer Joseph B. Alderman III, has been leading the charge. According to William White, Freehold’s chief operating officer, the firm has signed up more than 5,000 developers who are adding the covenant to developments worth hundreds of billions of dollars that will be built out over the next decade in 43 states…

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Daylife/Getty Images used by permission

Apple says that WWDC 2009 has completely sold out, marking the second time in as many years that its annual developers conference will fill to capacity as programmers descend on San Francisco to hear the latest on Mac and iPhone software development.

This year’s conference sold out in a little over four weeks, nearly twice as fast as last year’s event, which was the first time in the show’s history that Apple was forced to halt the registration process.

WWDC has grown dramatically in recent years, prompting Apple to move the event from the original underground Moscone Center into the modern new Moscone West building. In 2007, Apple set a record for WWDC attendance with 5,000 developers from around the world. This year’s conference will see even more attendees…

The Cupertino-based company is expected to use its opening keynote at this year’s conference to show off a feature complete version of Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard. It’s also a likely stage for the electronics maker to take the wraps off its third-generation iPhone hardware, a move which would mirror that of years past.

With my background in sales, I look at news like this very differently from pundits who only count their analysis in fanboys or anti-fanboys. Essentially, this still is a conference for developers. There are dozens of workshops training and educating those who develop for – or support – the OS X platforms.

So, what this tells me about is opportunities to make a living, build a business. There will always be a tiny and tidy corner for naysayers to gather, point fingers and declaim about Apple’s lack of religious purity. Meanwhile, the fracking company not only makes money – they make it easier than most to make money on your own.

A software engineer who wrote what he calls a “terrible” and “crap” app in less time than it typically takes to eat lunch has since watched it shoot to the top of Apple’s App Store, where it’s now generating over $200 an hour despite being a free download.

22-year-old High Gloss has worked on more than 20 other iPhone apps for an iPhone software developer…In just 20 minutes, he wrote Sound Grenade, which is currently listed third under the top free apps, in the wild card category of “Utilities”.

“The goal of my app was to create a tool for people to annoy others,” Gloss wrote in a blog entry at his website. He set a one-hour time limit to write and upload it to Apple. “The end product was Sound Grenade, which is a really terrible app, one button turns a sound on or off, period. For 20 minutes’ work, I thought it would be interesting to take the ride.”

“You can imagine my shock when I checked the App Store page on the first day to see 50 glowing reviews. Two days later, another 50 reviews. Five days later, Sound Grenade is in the top ten free apps almost everywhere in the world.”

Gloss said he’s troubled by how popular “crap” can be on the App Store, calling it “a sad state of where the world seems to be at.” However, he still had high praise for the App Store concept. “I really enjoy the App Store, I think it is amazing,” the New Zealand-based programmer said. “If you know what you’re looking for, you can find an app and download it either paid or free in a very minimal amount of time from almost anywhere in the world.”

At first, Sound Grenade was completely free. Once it entered the Top 50, High said he decided to switch to an ad-supported model. Now, after processing a million ad requests in 24 hours, the app is generating upwards of $200 per hour in clickthrough revenue.

I love his final quote: “Every idea that I don’t do, for being too rubbish or stupid, could have been in the top 100.”