'Net Features : apps

Tablet Wars: Microsoft Grabs 7.4% Of Tablet OS Market

Pete Prestipino — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 13:20:00 GMT

Microsoft captured 7.4% of the global tablet OS market according to preliminary figures from Strategy Analytics' Global Tablet OS Market Share: Q1 2013 report, with three million Windows 8 tablets shipped in Q1 2013.

Microsoft’s share of the tablet operating system market is dwarfed by that of iOS and Android. Apple’s share in the first quarter was 48.2% and Android 43.4% according to Strategy Analytics.

Some analysts suggest that the only barrier to future growth for Microsoft’s tablet OS is the lack of applications. With a larger market share though, will Internet businesses, digital marketers, and app developers decide it is time to start developing apps for the Windows 8 experience?

Mobile Apps are a $30 Billion Big Business

Allison Howen — Mon, 26 Nov 2012 19:30:00 GMT

Mobile applications are a $30 billion business, according to new Market Data from ABI Research.

The market intelligence company reveals that cumulative mobile app revenues are forecasted to pass $30 billion by the end of this year, which is nearly double the amount that was reached by the end of 2011. The cumulative revenue includes money made from pay-per-downloads, in-app purchases, subscriptions and in-app advertisements.

“Consumers’ high interest in apps has for a long time been obvious from download volumes, but it’s 2012 that will go down in history as the year when the economic side of the business finally took off,” said ABI Research Senior Analyst Aapo Markkanen. “We’re no longer talking only about a short-term gold rush. Apps have become a major digital industry.”

It is also important to note that even though Apple was the catalyst behind monetizing mobile applications, Markkanen claims that Android developers are estimated to receive about one-third of annual app revenues.

SnapNames Comes to Android

Pete Prestipino — Thu, 25 Oct 2012 20:11:00 GMT

Looking to snap up a few domains for your portfolio while you're on the go?

If so, you're in luck; domain name auction marketplace Snapnames has released a new Android app for that exact purpose.

The app enables users to bid on domain names, view auction activity (bidding activity, number of bidders, time remaining, high bidder status) and recent auction activity (history).

The app unfortunately does not allow users to add new domains to an account, only bid on domains that were currently added through the SnapNames mobile site.

Snapnames released an app for iOS last month.

Wix Publishing Opens App Market

Pete Prestipino — Mon, 22 Oct 2012 18:45:00 GMT

Web publishing platform Wix has launched an app market for developer integrations. The new Wix SDK (software development kit) will provide an opportunity for developers to access the company's 25 million-plus users.

Apps available for Wix, much like any app for third-party integration, are designed to enhance the functionality of deployment. The market is launching today with 25 apps including those from Instagram, Tumblr, DaPulse (community forum) and RumbleTalk - to name but a few.

“Serving the Wix website owners is our number one priority," said Avishai Abrahami, Wix co-founder and CEO. "Our goal is to offer a wide choice of apps that provide the popular and niche features Wix users have been asking for or that address current and future market trends. By enabling developers to share their creative genius with our users, the Wix offering becomes dramatically better and the developers gain access to millions of new users for business growth.

“There are hundreds of thousands of talented developers out there already working on innovative apps that will change the way people experience the Web, and we are excited about having some of that talent be part of the Wix experience.”

Connecting the Dots between Devices

Amberly Dressler — Fri, 07 Sep 2012 17:30:00 GMT

What do brands like Kia Motors, Neiman Marcus, Sony Electronics, Fox Studios and popchips have in common? The Via.Me app from RadiumOne, which helps brands connect the dots between different devices, as Keith Belling, Founder and CEO of popchips, explains.

“The ability to easily publish content across multiple social platforms and create a consistent experience is a key reason why popchips is using Via.Me to enhance engagement with our audiences across the social landscape."

Via.Me, available on iPhone (launched in March) and Android (launched in Sept.), is a cross between Tumblr, Pinterest and Instagram, and has already attracted more than 12 million unique visitors to its destination website and 1 million users on its iPhone app.

The highlights of consumer features include:

Seventeen photo filters
Ability to upload multiple file types (photos, videos, audio and text)
Cross-posting across popular social networks like Facebook and Twitter
Instant notifications
Intuitive user interface

While members of this community appreciate the ability to upload multiple types of content to their different social media profiles, the Google Play reviews are mixed (3.9 overall rating). One user wrote, “This is a nice idea, but it's showing it's v1.0 colors. Took 3 times to crop the pic before I could apply a filter.” The user continued, “Going to keep the app installed and hope the buglets are fixed in upcoming fixes.”

Brands will undoubtedly also watch the apps’ evolvement, as marketers have the most to gain. According to a recent study from Lopez Research, mobile adoption has exceeded 120 percent in the United States. Since these individuals carry multiple connected devices, a unified experience across the platforms is paramount and expected.

“Today, brands can build Right Time Experiences that integrate context from mobile devices and social interactions to deliver the right information or ad at the right time,” said Maribel Lopez, Principal and Founder of Lopez Research. “Consumers do business with a brand, not a channel. Advertisers must provide experiences that bridge interactions across mobile, the Web and storefronts.”

To download and install Via.Me for Android, visit Google Play or www.Via.Me.

FreshDesk Launches HTML5 App for Mobile Customer Support

Administrator — Sat, 11 Aug 2012 13:30:00 GMT

Social customer service platform Freshdesk is bringing its help desk solution to mobile devices. The company’s new FreshMobile HTML5 mobile app enables supports teams to manage their help desk from both iOS and Android devices.

The FreshMobile app from Freshdesk allows support agents to create, save and reuse templates for replying to tickets - really useful as typing on a mobile device can be excruciatingly painful. Perhaps most unique in the FreshMobile app is the Solution Suggest feature, which suggests likely solutions from a client’s knowledge base.

“With customer support increasingly being viewed as an integral business function, help desks need to be able to resolve issues as they happen, no matter what time of the day,” says Girish Mathrubootham, CEO of Freshdesk. “With FreshMobile, support teams can be connected and solve customer issues in real-time, without being tied down to their desks.”

Distimo Gives App Developers More Visibility

Michael Garrity — Fri, 01 Jun 2012 15:00:00 GMT

Apps are a hot-ticket item these days, and as with any booming, young industry, there is a lot of room for improvement. Many developers have found themselves creating applications and then selling them into multiple app stores. But this isn’t always the most efficient way to promote one’s work.

Often, these apps can go overlooked by consumers simply because they didn't know where to look, or weren't aware of their availability.

This is an issue that app store analytics company Distimo has addressed with its latest product AppLink, a service that developers can use to create short URLs for their applications that takes users to landing pages built specifically for the app. These links can be tweeted, posted on Facebook and used in online and/or print marketing campaigns, and, of course, they can provide valuable insights on the app’s distribution.

Developers can also use the service to see how many consumers want their apps to appear on a platform that currently doesn’t support it.

The app’s landing page features an app screenshot, description, price information and links to the various platforms on which it is available. From here, visitors can also click a button to have the link emailed to them or scan a QR code, use Facebook and Twitter buttons to share it with their social media friends and use the appropriate links to find the app in the user’s relevant app store.

Distimo is offering AppLink free of charge and uses data already found in app stores to automatically create the landing pages, so users don’t have to upload anything (theoretically). Plus, it integrates right into the Distimo Monitor service.

Two Tech Giants Reach for the Cloud

Michael Garrity — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 23:00:00 GMT

The race to the cloud is heating up, and the last week has seen some pretty big cloud-related news from two of the largest technology companies in the world.

Microsoft SkyDrive
Like other major names in the tech industry, Microsoft has moved to the cloud with SkyDrive, an online storage service that is the meat of its cloud computing services (think: Amazon Web Services). Just yesterday, Microsoft rolled out some impressive new apps for SkyDrive that may prove to be a breakthrough moment for the company, at least in the cloud.

Perhaps the biggest revelation was desktop integration with Windows and Mac (although only the OS X Lion version).

In a move that is highly reminiscent of Dropbox, users will be able to access and save files in SkyDrive as if it were just any other folder on their computers, and everything they put in there will be automatically backed up in the cloud, safe and sound, as well as synced to other computers with access to the account.

A new preview application will allow Windows users to access, browse and stream files using a remote PC.

Microsoft also updated its mobile apps for iOS and Windows Phones, as well as launching a SkyDrive iPad application.

One major downside to this update is that the company is drastically reducing the amount of free storage it offers, from 25 GB to a paltry 7 GB. But maybe it’s not that bad, as Microsoft claims that less than 0.1 percent of current SkyDrive users actually use more than 7 GB. Plus, current customers who are using over 4 GB of storage will be upgraded to 25 GB for free, and new users will obviously be able to buy more storage, with a starting package that runs just $10 a year for 20 GB.

Google Drive
Google has also announced Google Drive, the company's first major attempt to bring its brand into the cloud.

After a long period of speculation, Google finally came clean with its announcement of Drive, which will work pretty much like SkyDrive, AWS and most other cloud services.

Users will be able to create, share, collaborate on and, of course, store all kinds of content in Drive, including photos, videos, documents, PDFs and more. This content will be available from basically anywhere, as Drive can be installed on both Macs and PCs, along with an app for Android mobile devices; the iOS version is in development.

Google has built Google Docs right into Drive to make it easy for users to create and work with others in real time on documents, spreadsheets and presentations. All shared content will allow users to add and reply to comments on anything (including image or video files), and Drive will notify them when other users comment on shared items.

And, no surprise, Google built in some handy search features, allowing users to search for keywords and filter results by file type, owner and other considerations. The service will even be able to recognize text in scanned documents with Opitical Character Recognition technology.

Drive is another component of Google's attempts to create a seamless experience for users across all facets of the Web, and it integrates nicely into other Google properties like Google+ and Gmail. It will also work with third-party applications for faxing documents, editing videos and more. These apps can be installed in the Chrome Web Store, with more additions on the way.

To start, users will get 5 GB of free storage. From there, they can upgrade to 25 GB for $2.49 a month, 100 GB for $4.99 a month or 1 TB for $49.99 a month. Paid accounts will also automatically expand a user's Gmail storage to 25 GB.

Google Challenges Facebook for Mobile Developer Attention

Michael Garrity — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 22:35:00 GMT

Mobile application development platform Appcelerator recently teamed up with the International Data Corporation (IDC) to analyze the social mobile application landscape, and their results show that Google is poised to give Facebook a run for its mobile money.

After surveying nearly 2173 Appcelerator application developers across the globe, the surveyors found that most of them have a rapidly growing interest in social mobile. These developers also feel that Google will be the key to implementing their social strategies over the next year because of the company’s “broad range of assets,” including Android, Gmail, Google+ and YouTube, among many others.

Google’s various offerings make the company an important figure in the social mobile world because of their closely linked integration with one another; 39 percent of the developer’s questioned said these Google assets are actually more important to their upcoming social mobile development than Facebook’s social graph. Overall, though, developers reported that they don’t feel like they have the proper knowledge or tools to take full advantage of social in their application strategies.

“This translates into a big competitive opportunity for Google – and potential significant risk for Facebook – especially because developers perceive Google as innovating faster than Facebook,” says IDC’s VP of Mobile & Connected Consumer Platforms Scott Ellison.

Unfortunately, it’s not all great news for Google. The survey also reveals that Android is seeing waning interest from developers because of its continued fragmentation, effectively propelling iOS much further ahead in terms of developer attention.

Meanwhile, HTML5 appears to be moving to the center stage with both pure mobile browser apps and hybrid apps, making it a new challenger to the long dominant native apps that have pretty much always ruled the mobile development arena.

Handwriting Recognition for iOS Apps

Pete Prestipino — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 16:25:00 GMT

Apple fanboys (and fangirls of course) have entered into a state of near hysteria over the release of the third generation iPad. That perhaps overly intense focus however might lead them to overlook some fabuously interesting tech now available for iOS.

Phatware just announced availability of its writePad SDK 3.0, which enables software developers to incorporate handwriting recognition into their iOS apps for iPads, iPhones, and iPod Touch devices. The WritePad SDK now boasts a handwriting recognition engine which is packaged as a single static library for all of its 11 supported languages into a single application.

The WritePad SDK recognizes natural handwritten text in a different handwriting styles including cursive, print and a mix of the two. it also recognizes dictionary and non-dictionary words such as names, numbers and mixed alphanumeric combinations. The best part however is that it does not require a user to train the software to achieve any notable level of accuracy.

WritePad SDK evaluation is free, while commercial redistribution is royalty-based. You can see the tech at work firsthand via Phatware's Writepad app in the video below.

25 Percent of Daily Deal Buys on Mobile Devices

Pete Prestipino — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 18:30:00 GMT

The mobile market for daily deals is significant, according to information released today from market leader Groupon.

The daily deal powerhouse announced that one-quarter of all Groupon vouchers were purchased via a mobile device. Groupon also indicated that both consumer and merchant app usage was up significantly year-over-year – increasing by more than three times from the previous December to more than 9 million. What’s even more impressive is that more than 12,000 of its merchant partners used Groupon’s merchant mobile app to redeem vouchers and track purchases.

“Groupon continues to change the way people shop locally,” says Mihir Shah, VP of Mobile, Groupon. “As smartphone adoption increases and the capabilities of our mobile products evolve, we look forward to harnessing the power of mobile to make it even easier for merchants partners around the world to run and market their businesses effectively.”

Five Productivity Apps for the Chrome Browser

Allison Howen — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 23:00:00 GMT

Apps are hard to escape these days.

Not only do they take up the screens of our smartphones and tablets, but they can also be downloaded on social networks and browsers too.

And finding really useful apps can be like digging for gold. So we decided to do the digging for you.

Check out this list of productivity apps for your Google Chrome browser:

BookedIN Appointment Scheduler

This is an appointment scheduling app for small businesses. Users just need to sign up for a free account and list their business' services. Then, BookedIn advertises the services on a public webpage that is created for the participating business. Clients can then book their appointments online. Features include a free public webpage for booking appointments, an online calendar, a client database, appointment reminders, a BookedIN button that can be added to websites, and more.

Screen Capture

The name of this app pretty much says it all. It can capture visible content from a tab, a region of a webpage or a whole page, and save it as a PNG image. Users can also edit the captured image before saving it, by adding highlights or text. Furthermore, the app recognizes horizontal scrolls and detects floating objects so it can avoid capturing them multiple times if the whole page capture requires scrolling.

SlideRocket

This app allows Chrome browser users to make presentations. The presentations can be accessed anywhere, including from iPhones and iPads because the software includes an HTML5 viewer. Slides can include audio and videos, and can be shared through links or embedded on a website or a blog. Additionally, users can measure impact and audience engagement through presentation analytics.

Aviary Image Editor

This photo editor allows anyone to change-up photos, from basic edits to complex effects. It includes more than 30 rich editing tools, a large database of image effects, blend mode, layers and more. Users can utilize this tool to create business cards and letterheads, build a PowerPoint slide background, create unique labels, crop photos or craft designs.

Spur

This app allows its users to critique their own, or someone else’s Web pages. It features tools for analyzing the gray scale of a site, intersections of a site, the color contrast of a site and more. Although this tool isn’t nearly as effective as testing different design elements on your page through A and B or multivariate testing solutions, it can, however, provide some insight into classic design principles.

Six Apps for Enhancing LinkedIn Profiles

Allison Howen — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 05:15:00 GMT

You can find an app store on just about any platform now-a-days, and LinkedIn is no exception.

LinkedIn Applications are designed to enrich a user’s profile, but for those of you that haven’t rummaged through the networking site’s apps, here are a few that have caught our attention:

WordPress

Show off your blog content! This app syncs Wordpress blog posts with LinkedIn profiles. Additionally, blog posts can be filtered with a LinkedIn tag, in order to make sure content is relevant to the LinkedIn’s professional community.

SlideShare

Share presentations and documents within the LinkedIn network. This app allows users to upload content such as portfolios, resumes, conference talks, PDFs, marketing and sales presentations. The app supports many different formats and allows YouTube videos and audio to be embedded into presentations. It is available and can sync with both LinkedIn and Facebook social networks.

Creative Portfolio Display

This is a great app for resume building. It allows users to showcase creative work by uploading their portfolio to the Behance Network, which is a free online platform for creative professionals. Then, users can create an unlimited number of multimedia projects and select which ones are displayed on their profile.

Google Presentation

The Google Presentation app allows users to showcase presentations directly on LinkedIn profiles. Users can either upload a Powerpoint file or use Google’s free online application to create a presentation. The app presents a great avenue for visually displaying professional accomplishments.

Reading List by Amazon

Find out what your peers have been reading. This app allows LinkedIn users to share their favorite books with each other. Once the app is installed, users can add books that they are currently reading, planning to read and have already read.

Huddle Workspaces

Huddle Worspaces enables different workspaces to be created for different groups of connections. By separating connections, LinkedIn users can choose to share specific content with specific people. This app is great for teams that are working together to exchange documents and ideas.

Consumer Behavior Driven By Mobile Apps

Pete Prestipino — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 14:21:00 GMT

The debate regarding mobile apps versus Web consumption is getting hotter and hotter - and clearer and clearer. The rate of adoption, according to Mobile analytics firm Flurry, is outpacing both the PC revolution of the 80's and the Internet boom of the 90's.

Since 2007, in fact, more than 500 million iOS and Android smartphones and tablets have been activates and by the end of 2012, Flurry estimates that the cumulative number of those devices actives will surpass 1 billion.

What's even more impressive is that roughly 40 billion applications have already been downloaded from the App Store and Android Market. In the summer of of 2011, Flurry's published a report on how the average smartphone user began spending more time in their mobile apps than they do browsing the Web. Flurry just updated its data and found that the usage gap just keeps getting bigger.

Interactive consumption has continued to change over the last 18 months between the Web and mobile native apps according to Flurry. The chart from Flurry above indicates that smartphone and tablet users now spend over 90 minutes each day using applications while time spend on the Web has shrunk. What this means is that users are replacing their website usage with applications. The growth is slowing however. The time spend in mobile apps rose 23 percent from December 2010 to June 2011 but just over 15% from June 2011 to December 2011.

More on Flurry Analytics from Website Magazine:

- Flurry's Web Analytics Tool Gets Update
- A Flurry of Analytics Data for Mobile Apps

BrightCove App Cloud Available

Administrator — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 22:30:00 GMT

Wouldn't it be nice if you could develop that next killer app in the cloud? Well you can! Cloud content service Brightcove has made App Cloud, an end-to-end platform for the development, deployment and operation of native apps for iOS and Android smartphones and tablets, available to the general public.

App Cloud combines an open HTML5 Web development model with "intelligent" cloud services to accelerate app development, optimize performance, measure effectiveness, and enable dynamic updates to installed apps. Developers use HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript and the App Cloud software development kit (SDK) to create apps.

“The App Cloud beta program has been very well received over the past few months, and we have been impressed by the quality, breadth and creativity of the apps developed by our beta users,” said Ashley Streb, Vice President of Technology at Brightcove. “Now, any organization can take advantage of App Cloud to easily build, deliver, and manage dynamic, custom content apps across multiple devices for a superior end user experience.”

Brightcove indicated that more than 1,200 individual users have participated in the App Cloud beta testing program and several App Cloud-powered apps are currently available for download through the iTunes App Store and Google's Android Market including apps from the U.S. Department of State and Lifetime Networks.