Instagram - Android app from Instagram | Appolicious ™ Android App Directory:
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Monday, July 9, 2012
Sunday, July 1, 2012
Bila mana All The iPad Shopping Apps?
For a tech company founder in San Francisco, I’m a terribly late adopter of new technology. My buddy in med school had a smart phone before I did. The iPhone was out for a year before I bought the 3G. The iPad? I’m embarrassed to admit, I got my first one a month ago.
I held out on the iPad because I didn’t get it. It didn’t have retina display, and comparing the screen after looking at the iPhone 4, it just seemed… pixelated. My friends who had the original version bought them as a novelty, which quickly seemed to wear off. I didn’t know what I would do with one once I had one.
So, when I finally buckled and got the iPad 3, I came to the realization that the rest of the world had over 2 years ago: the iPad is an amazing consumption device. You don’t need a keyboard, because if you’re doing any work at all it will be to send iPhone length one-liner emails. Most of what you’ll be doing on the iPad is playing games, watching videos and shopping.
There’s a plethora of iPad games, and you can download almost any movie or tv show from iTunes, but the shopping experience leaves a lot to be desired. When I first turned on the iPad, I went through and downloaded all the popular apps I recognized. In the shopping / ecommerce category, this was Gilt and Fab.
Both of these companies have amazing iPad experiences. For a while, I was browsing them every day; not because I actually needed to buy anything, but because I enjoyed the virtual window shopping experience of browsing through amazing photos of cool looking products. As any retailer knows, getting people in the store is half the battle, and pretty soon I was back to buying things off Gilt (when I had previously sworn off of it after their fulfillment sent me the wrong thing on multiple orders).
Inspired to find some shopping apps that weren’t flash sales sites, I simply couldn’t find any decent ones. All the apps for department stores and brands seemed like screenshots of their websites. In most of them, I couldn’t even purchase anything.
The ecommerce experience for iPad has been dominated by the deals sites because the deals sites are the only retailers heavily innovating on the technology side. That doesn’t have to be the case. The thing that makes a Gilt or Fab iPad app stand out is that they are extremely polished and conducive to casual browsing, which leads to serendipitous discovery and purchase. Also, they have a great excuse to bring you back in their “store” with a push notification every day — they have a new batch of inventory for you to check out.
Therere a couple other reasons iPads are natural platforms for ecommerce. On iPads shoppers are in a different state of mind (they are relaxing instead of being distracted with work or IM), and are more likely to make impulse purchases. Also, because of the high switching cost of opening up new tabs in Safari or switching between apps (when compared with a browser), a well designed app can keep users engaged for much longer than they would be on the web.
I think the next generation of ecommerce apps for iPad will focus less on the discounting and more on creating an amazing curated browsing experience. Recently, I got a preview build of an app called Monogram by founder Leo Chen (who I’m now advising), which does exactly that: curates collections of clothing from around the web, bringing the user a personalized boutique that updates every day with new outfit suggestions. Like Gilt, the emphasis on the app is about browsing and discovery. When I’m using apps like Monogram and Gilt, I find myself spending more time and browsing/buying more products than I ever do on the web. Apparently I’m not the only one.
A couple things I think this next generation of apps will have to figure out:
Some way of differentiating their product inventory. Some will be vertically integrated companies that are bringing their own designs to market, like Everlane or Warby Parker. Others will focus on curation of existing products. I personally have been waiting for a store that curates the very best item I can own in every category, and tells me why it is the best.
A great offline experience. Few companies in the ecommerce space have focused on innovating on what happens after you checkout with your shopping cart, and they all happen to be owned by Amazon (Amazon, Quidsi, Zappos). I believe there’s a lot of room to innovate in how products are packaged and delivered, and not many people are doing that at the moment.
Right now the iPad is like an entire country of 60 million consumers with only a few stores competing for their purchases. The denizens of iPadlandia are waiting to buy your awesome stuff. Why are you not letting them?
Sunday, May 27, 2012
Saturday, May 26, 2012
Sunday, May 6, 2012
Tuesday, March 13, 2012
Iltifat Husain
Editor’s Note: Iltifat Husain is the founder and Editor-in-chief of iMedicalApps.com, a physician-operated technology review publication and is currently an Emergency Medicine resident physician at Wake Forest University’s School of Medicine.
The significant adoption of smartphones among physicians has not only led to an explosion of medical apps aimed at healthcare providers, but it has also cultivated an emerging trend of health and wellness apps aimed at empowering patients.
While great innovation is happening in the health and wellness mobile ecosystem, it’s difficult for patients and physicians to navigate through the large database of apps to
find ones they can actually use. My experience reviewing health and medical apps as a writer, combined with my experiences in a high volume Emergency Department that sees a diverse patient population, has allowed me to get a unique sense of this space.
Looking back, I’ve come to realize that there are three apps in particular that I routinely prescribe to my patients, as they are not only meaningful to physicians, but truly empower patients (and their families) and help them better understand their treatment and what’s going on with their bodies.
These three apps help patients and their family members get a better understanding of the cancer treatment process, help women in pregnancy understand their baby’s development, and help children and adults learn how to manage their diabetes.
All three apps are backed by venerable organizations already trusted by millions of patients worldwide. And just to make it clear up front: I have no relationships, financial or personal, with the developers or companies of the applications mentioned.
Monday, March 12, 2012
Geoloqi - Geoloqi - A powerful platform for mobile location, messaging, and analytics
Geoloqi - Geoloqi - A powerful platform for mobile location, messaging, and analytics:
Geoloqi makes it easy to add location to your applications
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Geoloqi makes it easy to add location to your applications
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Friday, March 9, 2012
Blue or Green
Android has become the world’s best-selling smartphone OS, but with the platform made free to OEMs, it’s perhaps natural for observers to jump on every story that looks like it points to Google suddenly trying to make money out of it in ways that it hasn’t before.
The latest chapter in that story comes from the newsdesk of Reuters, which last night published an article claiming that developers have been getting heat from Google to stop using third-party payment services from the likes of PayPal, Zong (also a part of PayPal) and Boku, and if they don’t — they would get ejected from Google’s app store, formerly known as the Android Market and now being marketed as Google Play. One small problem, though: Google says that nothing has changed in its policy and that the story is a non-starter.
That’s not entirely accurate; a few things have changed: Google rebranded its in-app billing service when it changed the name of the Android Market to Google Play earlier this week. It’s now called “Google Play In-app Billing.” And the company is making a concerted effort to drive more business through that app store.
Reuters’ story suggests that “Google is using its powerful position in the mobile apps market to promote an in-house offering,” and cites an incident from August 2011, when a developer was sent a note from Google ordering it to switch to Google’s own payment services, or else get rejected from the Android Market (now known as Google Play).
The rub is that Google’s service takes a 30 percent cut to Google on all transactions — same as Apple’s in-app payment service — but that some third-party payment services take less.
A Google spokesperson, however, tells us that in fact Google has had the same policies in place for in-app payments — requiring developers to use Google’s own service — since they were launched last March.
The exceptions to these, he notes, have been the same as before: if it’s a good that is not consumed within the app store — for example, a new clock from Amazon — then Google does not require developers to implement in-app billing to pay for it. But when it comes to content for the app itself, that’s when Google’s own billing kicks in.
“If [a developer] had been in breach of that, and we had only just noticed, that’s when we would send out a letter,” he said, explaining the letter that was sent out to a developer in August.
But while Google may not be changing its policies on how in-app payments are supposed to be used by Android developers, one area that does seem to be evolving is Google’s focus on making this into a more-used feature.
Given that the vast majority of app downloads are for free apps, there is always
The company last week expanded the number of currencies that it accepts for in-app payments — there are now eight: U.S. and Canadian Dollars, Euros, Pounds, Yen, and Danish, Norwegian and Swedish Krone. That gives developers who implement the service a wider market for distribution.
And in another incentive specifically for publishers, it looks like it is upgrading One Pass, the other in-app billing service it launched last year.
Unlike the in-app payments in Play, One Pass was Google’s specific offering for publishers, a route to selling editions and subscriptions via the Android platform.
Perhaps in a push to lure more publishers to Google’s own newsstand, Google takes only a 10 percent commission for One Pass transactions. Very little has been heard about One Pass since it launched a year ago, although the Google spokesperson noted that it’s in the process of getting upgraded “in response to publishers’ needs.” (We hope to find out more about what that means soon.)
Wednesday, February 8, 2012
Mobile Advertising with Mojiva's Mobile Ad Network
Mobile ad startup Mojiva is the latest startup to start throwing around the word “billion” in its press releases. The company says it now reaches one billion unique devices each month.
Of those devices, about 224 million are in the United States, Mojiva says. The United Kingdom, Germany, and Italy, account for 33 million, 10.6 million, and 8.7 million devices, respectively. Overall, Mojiva says it’s serving 45 billion ad requests in 190 countries.(When mobile ad network Millennial Media filed for an IPO last month, it said it reached 200 million unique users worldwide and claimed 40 billion ad impressions per month.)
Mojiva CEO Dave Gwozdz said via email that 2011 was a big year for the company. The network saw “roughly 350% growth … in many different areas,” including revenue, ads served, and publishers in the network, he said — and the company’s ad serving business,
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Showyou
Social video browsing app Showyou just launched version 3.0 of its iPad application, a major update with a ton of new features. Competing in a hot space with competitors like Fanhattan, Shelby.tv, Squrl, Vodio and others, Showyou offers a grid-like view for browsing the videos your friends are sharing on social networks like Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, YouTube and Vimeo. Once connected, you can watch any of the over 30 million videos indexed by the Showyou search engine.
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Showyou
Social video browsing app Showyou just launched version 3.0 of its iPad application, a major update with a ton of new features. Competing in a hot space with competitors like Fanhattan, Shelby.tv, Squrl, Vodio and others, Showyou offers a grid-like view for browsing the videos your friends are sharing on social networks like Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, YouTube and Vimeo. Once connected, you can watch any of the over 30 million videos indexed by the Showyou search engine.
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Thursday, February 2, 2012
The Trade Show Is Dead: Samsung Not Launching Galaxy S II Successor At MWC | TechCrunch
The Trade Show Is Dead: Samsung Not Launching Galaxy S II Successor At MWC | TechCrunch:
Samsung is no doubt looking to eliminate the gap between announcement and launch. Hot products like the Galaxy S II can hold the Internet’s attention only so long. Despite the message of Sammy’s current ad campaign, the company wants to curate a launch that will get consumers excited enough to camp outside of stores for the phone — and launching at a trade show just doesn’t work this time.
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Samsung is no doubt looking to eliminate the gap between announcement and launch. Hot products like the Galaxy S II can hold the Internet’s attention only so long. Despite the message of Sammy’s current ad campaign, the company wants to curate a launch that will get consumers excited enough to camp outside of stores for the phone — and launching at a trade show just doesn’t work this time.
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Wednesday, January 25, 2012
buzzdoes - Effective App Distribution Tool | Mobile Apps SDK for iOS & Android
buzzdoes - Effective App Distribution Tool | Mobile Apps SDK for iOS & Android:
Register your application and start earning money through automated viral distribution. Every buzzdoes-related download is added to your credit.
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Register your application and start earning money through automated viral distribution. Every buzzdoes-related download is added to your credit.
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Sunday, January 15, 2012
Saturday, January 14, 2012
Social Discovery Leader Tagged Acquires Topicmarks | Tagged
Tagged’s mission is to help strangers meet each other online, so it has to offer friend suggestions of people you’ll like and who’ll like you back. That’s why it acquired Topicmarks, a natural language processing and machine learning company. Topicmarks will allow Tagged to analyze the profiles of its 100 million registered users and match them with others with similar interests and vocabulary. Topicmarks’ technology, CEO, CTO, and 3 senior engineers will join Tagged in exchange for cash and stock. Its existing service will remain active for the foreseeable future.
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Wednesday, January 4, 2012
Sunday, January 1, 2012
"First beverage manufacturer? Start the deployment of Wi-equipped vending machines Fi "| News Releases 2011 | About Us | Asahi Soft Drinks
"First beverage manufacturer? Start the deployment of Wi-equipped vending machines Fi "| News Releases 2011 | About Us | Asahi Soft Drinks:
Asahi Soft Drinks Co., Ltd. (head office in Tokyo, Fumio Kikuchi, President), Asahi Calpis Beverage (Tokyo head office, President Keizo Kuwabara) The deployment of vending machine, free wireless communication services "Freemobile" ※ adopted, and vending machines Free Wi-vending machines around with Fi and the ability to spot, from 2012, the first beverage manufacturer to expand. ※ Freemobile Http://Www.freemobile-Wifi.com
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Asahi Soft Drinks Co., Ltd. (head office in Tokyo, Fumio Kikuchi, President), Asahi Calpis Beverage (Tokyo head office, President Keizo Kuwabara) The deployment of vending machine, free wireless communication services "Freemobile" ※ adopted, and vending machines Free Wi-vending machines around with Fi and the ability to spot, from 2012, the first beverage manufacturer to expand. ※ Freemobile Http://Www.freemobile-Wifi.com
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