Mobile_Apps 184
Does your Facebook mobile app suck? Here’s why
6 days ago by robert.spencer
For the past year or so, I’ve noticed that my Facebook mobile apps have slowed down with each screen tap. I used to tap the screen and see the latest posts or photos fairly quickly. Now I see the “Loading” message more than anything else. Even worse: I’m constantly pulling the screen down to refresh the data, even when tapping a Facebook notification takes me to a supposedly updated post. I’m not sure when that behavior started, but it’s quite annoying and happens on both my Android and iOS devices.
I long suspected these problems had much to do with Facebook’s use of various Web technologies, since much of the mobile platform was built with web standards and technologies such as HTML5, surrounded by a native wrapper for Android or iOS. But I’m not a developer, so I couldn’t be sure. Now I am, thanks to Dirk de Kok’s detailed post at Mobtest, which tests mobile applications.
The gist of the problem, at least for iOS (and likely for Android as well, at least partially) is two-fold. One problem concerns HTML use with UIWebViews but without support for Nitro, which is Apple’s JavaScript engine. The second happens because the app makes different data calls for similar, but out-of-sync information. Here’s a pair of excerpts to explain:
“For a starter, caching of unchanged content cannot be controlled by the developer. The FB app downloads the whole timeline HTML every time, and it is up to the UIWebView to determine whether it needs to download images, stylesheets etc again…. Also, to communicate from the UIWebView to the native app, a Javascript bridge is needed. This is tricky stuff, slow and not really thread safe.”
“For notifications, messages and friend requests regular REST calls are done, returning XML data. First check is to see what number of new notifications are there, then the actual content is retrieved in a separate call. As far as I can tell, the Facebook service calls return inconsistent information. When you check too fast what new notifications are awaiting you, you don’t get the new information.”
I recommend reading de Kok’s entire analysis because he explains in further detail how all these moving parts are working together in a less than optimal way, illustrating the exact behaviors I’ve seen in the Facebook mobile app. I think it’s great that Facebook is adding new features and improvements on a regular basis and I understand that by using Web technologies, it can make these changes on the server side; you don’t have to update your Facebook app as a result.
But for the time being, I’m going to switch to m.facebook.com in my smartphone browser. I did some testing this afternoon and the experience is far faster, up to date and generally offers the same features as the native mobile app.
Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.
Connected world: the consumer technology revolutionSocial media in Q1: commerce and discovery dominatedHyperlocal: opportunities for publishers and developers
Android
CSS
Facebook
html5
iOS
javascript
Mobile_Apps
from google
I long suspected these problems had much to do with Facebook’s use of various Web technologies, since much of the mobile platform was built with web standards and technologies such as HTML5, surrounded by a native wrapper for Android or iOS. But I’m not a developer, so I couldn’t be sure. Now I am, thanks to Dirk de Kok’s detailed post at Mobtest, which tests mobile applications.
The gist of the problem, at least for iOS (and likely for Android as well, at least partially) is two-fold. One problem concerns HTML use with UIWebViews but without support for Nitro, which is Apple’s JavaScript engine. The second happens because the app makes different data calls for similar, but out-of-sync information. Here’s a pair of excerpts to explain:
“For a starter, caching of unchanged content cannot be controlled by the developer. The FB app downloads the whole timeline HTML every time, and it is up to the UIWebView to determine whether it needs to download images, stylesheets etc again…. Also, to communicate from the UIWebView to the native app, a Javascript bridge is needed. This is tricky stuff, slow and not really thread safe.”
“For notifications, messages and friend requests regular REST calls are done, returning XML data. First check is to see what number of new notifications are there, then the actual content is retrieved in a separate call. As far as I can tell, the Facebook service calls return inconsistent information. When you check too fast what new notifications are awaiting you, you don’t get the new information.”
I recommend reading de Kok’s entire analysis because he explains in further detail how all these moving parts are working together in a less than optimal way, illustrating the exact behaviors I’ve seen in the Facebook mobile app. I think it’s great that Facebook is adding new features and improvements on a regular basis and I understand that by using Web technologies, it can make these changes on the server side; you don’t have to update your Facebook app as a result.
But for the time being, I’m going to switch to m.facebook.com in my smartphone browser. I did some testing this afternoon and the experience is far faster, up to date and generally offers the same features as the native mobile app.
Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.
Connected world: the consumer technology revolutionSocial media in Q1: commerce and discovery dominatedHyperlocal: opportunities for publishers and developers
6 days ago by robert.spencer
My Robotic Kitchen Planned This Dinner Party at SXSW | Food+Tech Connect
8 weeks ago by chelciesansmerci
In the talk, we demoed a rough prototype of a dinner planning app we built as a proof of concept. The app empowers a dinner party planner to customize, scale, and shop for a menu, then organize all of the required steps into one master to-do list. The central inspiration for what Will and I created is essentially a digitized version of the professional chef’s mind, where flexibility and adaptation are the hallmarks of the cooking approach…
food
technology
mobile_apps
8 weeks ago by chelciesansmerci
Receipt tracker Lemon hits 1 million users, adds Mint-like features
12 weeks ago by boonerang
Mobile expense tracker Lemon launched in October with a simple way for people to track their expenses by taking pictures of their receipts using their phones. The service has proven pretty popular with 1 million users signing up in less than four months. Now, the company is looking to go beyond just receipt storage into Mint territory with a new update that helps categorize, filter and total up spending.
Previously, Lemon was more of a Dropbox for receipts. Users took pictures of their receipts or took email receipts and forwarded them to their Lemon.com email address. Lemon extracts data from the receipts about the merchant and product making it easy for people to track their spending. But now, with Lemon 3.0, users can have their purchases organized by category, so they can better see where their money is going to. They can also get a summary of labeled items and a daily spend linear graph. There’s also new ability to sort and filter transactions and a family plan, so up to 10 members of one family can pool their receipts to see how the whole household is spending collectively. A Lemon app is available for iOS, Android, BlackBerry, Windows Phone and Symbian.
The basic service is free to scan an unlimited number of receipts, get a summary of spending and export receipts and data. A premium data plan, which provides additional features to track spending, taxes and gain more complete records, is $9 a month, or $50 a year. The family plan starts at $3 per month or $20 for a year. And a $4 a month business plan for companies is also on the way.
Wences Casares, the founder and CEO of Lemon said the latest update gives users more tools to track their overall spending. He said over time, Lemon will also add budgeting features, taking Lemon even further into Mint territory. But he said Lemon is not aiming for the same base of users.
“We see Mint as a service for people who are serious about about personal finances. We want to appeal to customers who are more casual about finances because most people don’t have the time or discipline to dig into receipts,” Casares said.
What I like about Lemon is that it’s good for tracking cash transactions. While services such as Mint can automatically connect to checking and credit accounts, users have to manually enter their cash payments. With Lemon, they can make sure all those little payments here and there are accounted for. That is, if they remember to take a picture of a receipt. But with the way Lemon is set up, it’s designed to make it easy to do that.
Users may balk at the pricing of the premium plans. And some users have complained of bugs and a more cluttered UI with the latest update. But many are finding it’s a good way to keep on top of their spending. I think this is helpful to avoid the clutter of receipts in my wallet, though it takes some discipline to keep snapping pictures of receipts. But when you do, there’s that nice feeling of throwing away some excess paper and knowing you’ve got the data in the cloud.
Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.
Facebook’s IPO filing: ideas and implications12 tech leaders’ resolutions for 2012Updated: Forecast: global mobile subscribers, 2010–2015
Business/Finance
lemon-com
Mint
mobile_app
Mobile_Apps
personal_finance
from google
Previously, Lemon was more of a Dropbox for receipts. Users took pictures of their receipts or took email receipts and forwarded them to their Lemon.com email address. Lemon extracts data from the receipts about the merchant and product making it easy for people to track their spending. But now, with Lemon 3.0, users can have their purchases organized by category, so they can better see where their money is going to. They can also get a summary of labeled items and a daily spend linear graph. There’s also new ability to sort and filter transactions and a family plan, so up to 10 members of one family can pool their receipts to see how the whole household is spending collectively. A Lemon app is available for iOS, Android, BlackBerry, Windows Phone and Symbian.
The basic service is free to scan an unlimited number of receipts, get a summary of spending and export receipts and data. A premium data plan, which provides additional features to track spending, taxes and gain more complete records, is $9 a month, or $50 a year. The family plan starts at $3 per month or $20 for a year. And a $4 a month business plan for companies is also on the way.
Wences Casares, the founder and CEO of Lemon said the latest update gives users more tools to track their overall spending. He said over time, Lemon will also add budgeting features, taking Lemon even further into Mint territory. But he said Lemon is not aiming for the same base of users.
“We see Mint as a service for people who are serious about about personal finances. We want to appeal to customers who are more casual about finances because most people don’t have the time or discipline to dig into receipts,” Casares said.
What I like about Lemon is that it’s good for tracking cash transactions. While services such as Mint can automatically connect to checking and credit accounts, users have to manually enter their cash payments. With Lemon, they can make sure all those little payments here and there are accounted for. That is, if they remember to take a picture of a receipt. But with the way Lemon is set up, it’s designed to make it easy to do that.
Users may balk at the pricing of the premium plans. And some users have complained of bugs and a more cluttered UI with the latest update. But many are finding it’s a good way to keep on top of their spending. I think this is helpful to avoid the clutter of receipts in my wallet, though it takes some discipline to keep snapping pictures of receipts. But when you do, there’s that nice feeling of throwing away some excess paper and knowing you’ve got the data in the cloud.
Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.
Facebook’s IPO filing: ideas and implications12 tech leaders’ resolutions for 2012Updated: Forecast: global mobile subscribers, 2010–2015
12 weeks ago by boonerang
Crowdsourcing Tool Of The Day: Banjo
february 2012 by sociologjourno
It is a scene familiar to many reporters: There’s a news story breaking, but you can’t get on location and no one’s giving any official comments because the situation is still developing. How are you suppose to find and access sources?
Thanks to Twitter, Facebook and a plethora of smartphone apps, newsrooms now have an entirely new toolbox available to them in breaking news situations. And here’s another one to add to the kit: Banjo. continued…
New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
Tool_of_the_Day
tools
Andy_Stettler
Banjo
crowdsourcing
mobile_apps
from google
Thanks to Twitter, Facebook and a plethora of smartphone apps, newsrooms now have an entirely new toolbox available to them in breaking news situations. And here’s another one to add to the kit: Banjo. continued…
New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
february 2012 by sociologjourno
Expertsourcing (Or, How to Test a Product Without Losing It in a Bar)
january 2012 by boonerang
Graphic courtesy uTest
When an Apple engineer lost a iPhone 4 prototype in a Silicon Valley bar in 2010, it drew attention to a serious new problem for tech companies: not employee security or scoop-hungry tech blogs, but how to test new products under real-world conditions to flag and fix bugs before they affect consumers.
It doesn’t matter whether you’re a giant global megacompany or a brand-new startup. Software that works perfectly in the lab can (and will) break in the wild. And once you enter mobile, testing software on different devices, platforms, carriers, regions and scenarios will push the quality assurance (“QA”) departments of even companies with the greatest resources to the breaking point, too.
“Once you’re outside of the firewall, you’re dealing with clogged grids and devices jumping from tower to tower at high speeds,” says Matt Johnston, chief marking officer of software testing company uTest. “Users might be on three or more different varieties of Android. They might change out their SIM cards and go to Europe…. All of this makes the testing matrix vastly more complex.”
uTest has developed a powerful model to solve this problem: It contracts with both companies and product testers. These testers are drawn from a global network of well-credentialed users (“mostly QA professionals with five or more years of experience,” Johnston says) who can collectively cover almost any conceivable product permutation.
uTest’s clients include Google, Microsoft and the BBC, as well as media, gaming and health care companies, plus smaller software startups. Instead of scaling up their own QA teams, sending engineers out into the wild, or contracting with another company that may only conduct an additional series of lab tests, companies can get exactly the testers they need to cover the situations they can’t test themselves.
So clients get all three things they need to complement their own in-the-lab tests: outside expertise, a numerically elastic/crowdsourced team that can be scaled up or down to suit specific needs, and real-world, in-the-wild testing. Johnston and uTest call it “expertsourcing.”
Each expert has a profile (among other things) that specifies their location, hardware (everything from their desktop to streaming media devices), software platforms and expertise level. Experts are paid based not just for participation or number of bugs found, but whether the bug is accepted/rejected by the client, whether it’s reproducible, and how helpful spotting the bug and the user’s report is to the client.
This is where the user’s career experience and expertise pays off. “It’s all about boosting the signal-to-noise ratio,” Johnston says — a real problem in non-expert crowdsourcing, like a wide-open public beta. It also helps uTest identify their best testers and steer more work to them. Some of these VIP testers, Johnston says, “make more from uTest on nights and weekends than they do at their 50 hour/week day jobs.”
This makes them an important resource for clients concerned about security. Companies are particularly concerned not only about avoiding lost-iPhone-style press, but protecting their IP and fixing critical bugs in private. Technical audit trails including watermarks and proxy servers provide a first line of defense. Not only do testers sign a blanket NDA with uTest and in some cases additional legal agreements directly with the tester not to discuss their work or any bugs, uTest can lean on its VIP testing pool for security-critical assignments.
uTest boasts 10,000 completed projects without a single security breach or press leak. “Never mind the client,” Johnston says. “We’ve made these people so much money over the years, they would never dare cross us.”
Continue reading ‘Expertsourcing, or How to Test A Product Without Losing It In A Bar‘ …
Cool_Apps
Crowdsourcing
global_business
Android
expertsourcing
Google
Matt_Johnston
Mobile
mobile_apps
Patrick_Copeland
quality_assurance_testing
Software
uTest
from google
When an Apple engineer lost a iPhone 4 prototype in a Silicon Valley bar in 2010, it drew attention to a serious new problem for tech companies: not employee security or scoop-hungry tech blogs, but how to test new products under real-world conditions to flag and fix bugs before they affect consumers.
It doesn’t matter whether you’re a giant global megacompany or a brand-new startup. Software that works perfectly in the lab can (and will) break in the wild. And once you enter mobile, testing software on different devices, platforms, carriers, regions and scenarios will push the quality assurance (“QA”) departments of even companies with the greatest resources to the breaking point, too.
“Once you’re outside of the firewall, you’re dealing with clogged grids and devices jumping from tower to tower at high speeds,” says Matt Johnston, chief marking officer of software testing company uTest. “Users might be on three or more different varieties of Android. They might change out their SIM cards and go to Europe…. All of this makes the testing matrix vastly more complex.”
uTest has developed a powerful model to solve this problem: It contracts with both companies and product testers. These testers are drawn from a global network of well-credentialed users (“mostly QA professionals with five or more years of experience,” Johnston says) who can collectively cover almost any conceivable product permutation.
uTest’s clients include Google, Microsoft and the BBC, as well as media, gaming and health care companies, plus smaller software startups. Instead of scaling up their own QA teams, sending engineers out into the wild, or contracting with another company that may only conduct an additional series of lab tests, companies can get exactly the testers they need to cover the situations they can’t test themselves.
So clients get all three things they need to complement their own in-the-lab tests: outside expertise, a numerically elastic/crowdsourced team that can be scaled up or down to suit specific needs, and real-world, in-the-wild testing. Johnston and uTest call it “expertsourcing.”
Each expert has a profile (among other things) that specifies their location, hardware (everything from their desktop to streaming media devices), software platforms and expertise level. Experts are paid based not just for participation or number of bugs found, but whether the bug is accepted/rejected by the client, whether it’s reproducible, and how helpful spotting the bug and the user’s report is to the client.
This is where the user’s career experience and expertise pays off. “It’s all about boosting the signal-to-noise ratio,” Johnston says — a real problem in non-expert crowdsourcing, like a wide-open public beta. It also helps uTest identify their best testers and steer more work to them. Some of these VIP testers, Johnston says, “make more from uTest on nights and weekends than they do at their 50 hour/week day jobs.”
This makes them an important resource for clients concerned about security. Companies are particularly concerned not only about avoiding lost-iPhone-style press, but protecting their IP and fixing critical bugs in private. Technical audit trails including watermarks and proxy servers provide a first line of defense. Not only do testers sign a blanket NDA with uTest and in some cases additional legal agreements directly with the tester not to discuss their work or any bugs, uTest can lean on its VIP testing pool for security-critical assignments.
uTest boasts 10,000 completed projects without a single security breach or press leak. “Never mind the client,” Johnston says. “We’ve made these people so much money over the years, they would never dare cross us.”
Continue reading ‘Expertsourcing, or How to Test A Product Without Losing It In A Bar‘ …
january 2012 by boonerang
3 Unique Android Alarm Clocks To Get You Out Of Bed Faster
december 2011 by mattbc
Getting up early in the morning is one of the most dreaded moments of the day for most of us. A cozy and warm bed, competing with dark winter days and cold bathrooms, doesn’t make it any easier. One thing that makes a huge difference in starting the day, is a good alarm clock, one that does a little more than emit annoying sounds or badly tuned radio stations.
Maybe one of the Android apps introduced in this article can help you wake up a little easier tomorrow morning.
Smart Alarm ClockThis app tracks your sleep movement to find the best time to wake you up in the least disturbing and hence smartest way possible.
The time you set is when the alarm clock will go off for sure. This is helpful, for example if you forget to put the phone next to you or if it slides off the mattress and cannot track your movement.
Some advanced options are exclusive to the pro version. In the free version you can choose your favorite alarm sound, enable vibration, or have the volume increase gradually.
A similar app is Sleep Cycles Alarm Free. It actually looks a little more advanced than Smart Alarm Clock, however, I didn’t find it convenient to use on my tablet.
Gentle Alarm (trial)Gentle Alarm allows you to set alarms that will fade in over a period of time. The only limitation of the trial is that you cannot set alarms for Wednesdays.
On all other days, however, you can set multiple alarms with different profiles, for example to change the sound, strength of vibration, length of fade-in, or display brightness.
You can even control snooze and pre-alarm settings, for example to start a sound half an hour before your alarm goes off.
Gentle Alarm lets you pick sounds from a list of presets, including ringtones or nature sounds. Moreover, you can add your favorite wake up song or sound if the mp3 is on your device or choose an entire playlist.
Relax and SleepMaybe your issue with getting up in the morning has its roots in not being able to fall asleep at night. Here is an app that can help you drift off into dream land.
Relax and Sleep comes packed with over 30 ambient sounds, including melodies, everyday noises, and nature sounds. You can star your favorite sounds to be listed on top. Whenever you want to relax for a moment, take a nap, or fall asleep, combine your favorite sounds and adjust their volumes to play simultaneously.
To pick a random combination, you can also enable the magic wand in the top right and shake your device. Once you have found the perfect combination, set the stopwatch timer. You can let the sounds fade out after the countdown completes or play an alarm to wake you up from your nap.
Relax and Sleep also offers an alarm. Unfortunately, it does not support the ambient sounds.
Turning your old Android phone into an alarm clock was also one of the suggestions in Matt’s article 5 Alternative Uses For An Old & Out Of Date Android Phone. Also have a look at The Best Alternative Alarm Clocks for Windows, Mac, and your Mobile.
The following Android alarm clocks were profiled in our Directory:
Zazu: Wake Up To Weather Reports, News or RSS FeedsSmarter Alarm Free: Wake Up To News, Weather Reports, Emails or TasksRelax & Sleep: Relaxing Sounds of Nature AppWhat helps you to get up in the morning? Do you have any tips and tricks you can share?
Image credits: wavebreakmedia ltd
Similar Stuff The Best Alternative Alarm Clocks (Windows/Mac/Mobile) Capture.NET: A Swiss Army Knife For Your PC [Windows] 3 Apps To Get You Out Of Bed & Get Your Morning Started [Mac]
Google_Android
alarm
android
clock
Mobile_Apps
from google
Maybe one of the Android apps introduced in this article can help you wake up a little easier tomorrow morning.
Smart Alarm ClockThis app tracks your sleep movement to find the best time to wake you up in the least disturbing and hence smartest way possible.
The time you set is when the alarm clock will go off for sure. This is helpful, for example if you forget to put the phone next to you or if it slides off the mattress and cannot track your movement.
Some advanced options are exclusive to the pro version. In the free version you can choose your favorite alarm sound, enable vibration, or have the volume increase gradually.
A similar app is Sleep Cycles Alarm Free. It actually looks a little more advanced than Smart Alarm Clock, however, I didn’t find it convenient to use on my tablet.
Gentle Alarm (trial)Gentle Alarm allows you to set alarms that will fade in over a period of time. The only limitation of the trial is that you cannot set alarms for Wednesdays.
On all other days, however, you can set multiple alarms with different profiles, for example to change the sound, strength of vibration, length of fade-in, or display brightness.
You can even control snooze and pre-alarm settings, for example to start a sound half an hour before your alarm goes off.
Gentle Alarm lets you pick sounds from a list of presets, including ringtones or nature sounds. Moreover, you can add your favorite wake up song or sound if the mp3 is on your device or choose an entire playlist.
Relax and SleepMaybe your issue with getting up in the morning has its roots in not being able to fall asleep at night. Here is an app that can help you drift off into dream land.
Relax and Sleep comes packed with over 30 ambient sounds, including melodies, everyday noises, and nature sounds. You can star your favorite sounds to be listed on top. Whenever you want to relax for a moment, take a nap, or fall asleep, combine your favorite sounds and adjust their volumes to play simultaneously.
To pick a random combination, you can also enable the magic wand in the top right and shake your device. Once you have found the perfect combination, set the stopwatch timer. You can let the sounds fade out after the countdown completes or play an alarm to wake you up from your nap.
Relax and Sleep also offers an alarm. Unfortunately, it does not support the ambient sounds.
Turning your old Android phone into an alarm clock was also one of the suggestions in Matt’s article 5 Alternative Uses For An Old & Out Of Date Android Phone. Also have a look at The Best Alternative Alarm Clocks for Windows, Mac, and your Mobile.
The following Android alarm clocks were profiled in our Directory:
Zazu: Wake Up To Weather Reports, News or RSS FeedsSmarter Alarm Free: Wake Up To News, Weather Reports, Emails or TasksRelax & Sleep: Relaxing Sounds of Nature AppWhat helps you to get up in the morning? Do you have any tips and tricks you can share?
Image credits: wavebreakmedia ltd
Similar Stuff The Best Alternative Alarm Clocks (Windows/Mac/Mobile) Capture.NET: A Swiss Army Knife For Your PC [Windows] 3 Apps To Get You Out Of Bed & Get Your Morning Started [Mac]
december 2011 by mattbc
Path revamps with ‘Path 2′: A diary for the social, mobile world
november 2011 by doffm
This past spring, the team at Path realized it was time for a change. The San Francisco-based startup had debuted its flagship photo sharing app (accompanied with a serious amount of media buzz and some mixed reviews) in November 2010, and had spent the first several months post-launch working to perfect the original product.
“Six months ago we stopped. We just said, ‘Okay, what are people really using Path to do?’” Path co-founder and CEO Dave Morin said in an interview this week. The company surveyed Path users and found that many were using the app to remember moments in their daily lives — it wasn’t just about sharing photos, it was about cataloging personal memories for themselves. “Ultimately we realized that we had to completely re-imagine Path.”
Path 2, the new version of Path that is launching Tuesday for both iPhone and Android, is what’s emerged from that redesign effort. But to think of this as the 2.0 version of Path would be a big mistake: Path 2 is a dramatically different product than the app the company launched one year ago.
A diary for a mobile and social world
Path 2 aims to be a “smart journal” that catalogs all the big and small moments of your daily life. Along with your photos and videos, the new app has features that let you keep track of your thoughts, the music you’re listening to, where you are, who you’re with, and even when you wake and when you sleep. You can choose to keep each update entirely to yourself, share it with your Path contacts (limited to 150 based on Dunbar’s number), or share it publicly via Facebook, Twitter, or Foursquare (Tumblr support is on the way.)
Path 2 screenshot (click to enlarge)
Morin took me through an in-depth demo of Path 2, and for me it had the perfect combination that I look for in the increasingly crowded world of mobile apps: It was both beautiful and actually useful. Lots of people — myself included — maintain personal blogs or use social media sites partly for the same reason that they would maintain a diary: To personally remember what they’ve done. Every New Years’, I vow that I will be better about tracking the little things that make up my days by keeping a journal, but I typically start slacking off on it a couple months in. With Path 2, it could be a lot easier to keep my resolution: It’s on my mobile phone which makes it easy, and the social options make it more fun.
More complexity, more competition
With this redesign, Path is going more squarely into competition with services such as Evernote and even Facebook, the platform on which it was conceived as a much simpler photo-sharing app one year ago. When asked about this, Morin stressed that Path is different from Facebook on several counts: “We’re private by default and always will be, while Facebook is often public by defualt. We’re a tech company, Facebook is a media company. We’re a freemium business, and Facebook is advertising driven.” He was more accepting of an Evernote comparison, but pointed out that many people use Evernote primarily to keep track of their business lives. “What Evernote does for work, we do for life.”
Path 2 music post (click to enlarge)
This move also brings up questions for Path that weren’t there when it was a simple photo sharing app. When you position your service to be something as personal as a diary, users have the right to be a bit more demanding than they would with a more standard social app. For example: Path 2 still does not have a one-button export feature for all your content, although Morin says this is on the way. Right now, the only way to get all your data from the system is by sending an email request to customer service.
Also, the ability to view and analyze your Path data from other perspectives — say by zooming out to see an annual timeline, or a month view — is not yet available. These types of features could be made possible if Path releases an API, which Morin says is a definite possibility for the future.
But will it have staying power?
The question of money is an important one here. Many web startups don’t start thinking seriously about revenue in the first couple years of business, but if you’re going to use an app as your personal journal, you want to have confidence that it will stay around for a while. Evernote, for example, is a profitable business: The company charges $45 per year for its premium app and the company’s CEO Phil Libin has been forthright about his mission to make Evernote a going concern for the next 100 years.
Path, which has 20 employees, is not at a point where it can cover its own costs. Path 2 is a totally free app and Morin says he has no plans to start running ads. The business model is a “freemium” one, but for now the only premium products Path sells are small: Additional photo filter options and the like. Path has other premium offerings in the pipeline, Morin tells me, and the good news is the company won’t have to worry about keeping the lights on for a while: It has taken on some $11 million in funding since its inception.
All in all, Path 2 is a great looking app and it stands a chance to become a big hit in the months ahead. But if it wants people to really be serious about committing to the new app, Path could do well to outline its financial plans a bit more firmly for prospective users.
Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.
Connected world: the consumer technology revolutionNewNet Q3: Facebook remakes headlines in social mediaFlash analysis: the tech startup investment environment, Q3 2011
Android_apps
Facebook
iphone_apps
Mobile_Apps
Path
photo_sharing_apps
Startups
vc_funded_startups
from google
“Six months ago we stopped. We just said, ‘Okay, what are people really using Path to do?’” Path co-founder and CEO Dave Morin said in an interview this week. The company surveyed Path users and found that many were using the app to remember moments in their daily lives — it wasn’t just about sharing photos, it was about cataloging personal memories for themselves. “Ultimately we realized that we had to completely re-imagine Path.”
Path 2, the new version of Path that is launching Tuesday for both iPhone and Android, is what’s emerged from that redesign effort. But to think of this as the 2.0 version of Path would be a big mistake: Path 2 is a dramatically different product than the app the company launched one year ago.
A diary for a mobile and social world
Path 2 aims to be a “smart journal” that catalogs all the big and small moments of your daily life. Along with your photos and videos, the new app has features that let you keep track of your thoughts, the music you’re listening to, where you are, who you’re with, and even when you wake and when you sleep. You can choose to keep each update entirely to yourself, share it with your Path contacts (limited to 150 based on Dunbar’s number), or share it publicly via Facebook, Twitter, or Foursquare (Tumblr support is on the way.)
Path 2 screenshot (click to enlarge)
Morin took me through an in-depth demo of Path 2, and for me it had the perfect combination that I look for in the increasingly crowded world of mobile apps: It was both beautiful and actually useful. Lots of people — myself included — maintain personal blogs or use social media sites partly for the same reason that they would maintain a diary: To personally remember what they’ve done. Every New Years’, I vow that I will be better about tracking the little things that make up my days by keeping a journal, but I typically start slacking off on it a couple months in. With Path 2, it could be a lot easier to keep my resolution: It’s on my mobile phone which makes it easy, and the social options make it more fun.
More complexity, more competition
With this redesign, Path is going more squarely into competition with services such as Evernote and even Facebook, the platform on which it was conceived as a much simpler photo-sharing app one year ago. When asked about this, Morin stressed that Path is different from Facebook on several counts: “We’re private by default and always will be, while Facebook is often public by defualt. We’re a tech company, Facebook is a media company. We’re a freemium business, and Facebook is advertising driven.” He was more accepting of an Evernote comparison, but pointed out that many people use Evernote primarily to keep track of their business lives. “What Evernote does for work, we do for life.”
Path 2 music post (click to enlarge)
This move also brings up questions for Path that weren’t there when it was a simple photo sharing app. When you position your service to be something as personal as a diary, users have the right to be a bit more demanding than they would with a more standard social app. For example: Path 2 still does not have a one-button export feature for all your content, although Morin says this is on the way. Right now, the only way to get all your data from the system is by sending an email request to customer service.
Also, the ability to view and analyze your Path data from other perspectives — say by zooming out to see an annual timeline, or a month view — is not yet available. These types of features could be made possible if Path releases an API, which Morin says is a definite possibility for the future.
But will it have staying power?
The question of money is an important one here. Many web startups don’t start thinking seriously about revenue in the first couple years of business, but if you’re going to use an app as your personal journal, you want to have confidence that it will stay around for a while. Evernote, for example, is a profitable business: The company charges $45 per year for its premium app and the company’s CEO Phil Libin has been forthright about his mission to make Evernote a going concern for the next 100 years.
Path, which has 20 employees, is not at a point where it can cover its own costs. Path 2 is a totally free app and Morin says he has no plans to start running ads. The business model is a “freemium” one, but for now the only premium products Path sells are small: Additional photo filter options and the like. Path has other premium offerings in the pipeline, Morin tells me, and the good news is the company won’t have to worry about keeping the lights on for a while: It has taken on some $11 million in funding since its inception.
All in all, Path 2 is a great looking app and it stands a chance to become a big hit in the months ahead. But if it wants people to really be serious about committing to the new app, Path could do well to outline its financial plans a bit more firmly for prospective users.
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Connected world: the consumer technology revolutionNewNet Q3: Facebook remakes headlines in social mediaFlash analysis: the tech startup investment environment, Q3 2011
november 2011 by doffm
The mobile app is going the way of the CD-ROM: To the dustbin of history
november 2011 by doffm
Pages: 1 2
“Forget being in love with the open web and all that touchy-feely stuff.”
Jay Sullivan is Mozilla’s vice president of products, and for a spokesperson of one of the open web’s dearest darlings, he’s on a tear.
“If you want to have a variety of mobile apps, it gets expensive… that’s a lot of apps to build,” he told VentureBeat in a recent interview.
Sullivan is making a strong case against building native apps and for the mobile web as the new platform to (literally) end all platforms.
Now, a number of developments make his words especially timely. Yahoo has just announced Yahoo Cocktails, a set of tools for developers to use that make web apps look and behave more like native apps. Mozilla is working on tools to help developers sell web-based apps to mobile device users, enabling them to make profits just as developers in the iTunes App Store or Android Market can now do.
Even Adobe is scrapping Flash for mobile phones and pinning its hopes on HTML 5 for the mobile web. “HTML5 is now universally supported on major mobile devices, in some cases exclusively,” wrote Danny Winokur, Adobe VP and General Manager of Interactive Development.
“This makes HTML5 the best solution for creating and deploying content in the browser across mobile platforms.”
It looks like mobile apps may be headed the same direction as multimedia CD-ROMs did a decade ago. Sadly for mobile apps, they don’t even have a useful second life as drink coasters.
But parties on the other side of the fence say it’s too soon to play Taps for apps. App advocates say mobile web enthusiasts are indulging in pipe dreams while the rest of the world is still working on proprietary technology stacks that do, now, what HTML5 has so far failed to deliver. Even if they admit that building for the mobile web will eventually be cheaper, faster and easier, it’s at least few years away from reality.
In the Mozilla Foundation’s new offices overlooking the San Francisco Bay Bridge, Sullivan — an unapologetic HTML5 advocate — sits in a conference room and rapidly deconstructs the assumption that to get your software onto a mobile phone you have to build a native application.
But he doesn’t resort to the familiar (and tired) ideologies about freedom from corporate technological tyranny that figure large in Mozilla’s current ad campaign. Rather, he gets downright practical.
First, he explains the obvious: Each mobile ecosystem has its own technology stack, its own operating system and programming language. That means developing apps requires a different skill set and a separate development process for each ecosystem.
At the end of the day, building a mobile web app instead of two or three or four native apps just makes more economic sense. “HTML5 is less expensive,” he says. “There’s always some stuff around the edges that won’t work perfectly, but compared to writing in seven different languages, it works.”
For developers, it’s technologically more manageable to build one mobile web app than a half-dozen or even just two native apps. And given the state of mobile web standards, we’re quickly approaching a point where end users can’t tell the difference between the two. All that’s really left is a business model for mobile web apps, Sullivan contends.
“When the web offers a more easy to access business ecosystem to developers, it will become more attractive.”
A better package
In conversations with organizations like Mozilla and Yahoo, in talks with mobile developers — basically, anyone who doesn’t have an explicit interest in promoting a single mobile operating system like Android or iOS — one trend is becoming quite apparent:
The app as you know it is dying.
It’s like the CD, an expensive package for digital information, a package that is increasingly becoming unnecessary and obsolete.
And just as with the CD, all we’re waiting for is a better delivery method to come along and kill it off.
The challenges to that shift are partly technical and partly cultural. Mobile web apps first must meet consumer demands for high quality and performance. And as previously noted, developers need to be able to market mobile web apps.
Yahoo is one company working on the first challenge. Bruno Fernandez-Ruiz is Yahoo’s platform vice president, and he is working on what he calls “a bunch of tricks to make web applications feel native.”
“We don’t want to emulate native, it has its own paradigm. What we want to do is create a new class of experiences. Something that’s the same across phones, TVs, tablets — the web is a paradigm that is cross-platform.”
But however much Mozilla or Yahoo might want to see the mobile web overtake native apps as a paradigm for ideological reasons, those who have to approach the problem practically in the here-and-now still have to deal with native issues and stacks.
“I absolutely believe that the mobile web is going to continue to grow rapidly,” says Jeff Haynie, who co-founded Appcelerator, a company specializing in getting web developers up and running on mobile OS platforms.
But, Haynie says, it’s too soon to discount the opportunity afforded by apps.
“That’s a huge opportunity for developers worldwide,” he continues, talking about mobile web apps. “But those compelling native experiences across lots of devices are where opportunity is going to be in the near-term. Consumers have come to expect a very high bar from experience, like the Flipboards and Instagrams that you just can’t acheive now with a web app.”
Referring to Mozilla et al., Haynie says, “These companies have many, many web developers — their foundation is the web. That’s what they’re yearning for, how to leverage that. That’s the promise of the web…
“The real question is, how do you let web developers build applications that span the native experience and the web?”
Web advocates, not surprisingly, have answers: New technologies and new marketplaces for making money from web apps.
New technology for the new mobile web: JavaScript and Node
JavaScript and Node.js are two key technologies that will make the transition from native apps to web apps possible.
“JavaScript is LISP in disguise. It’s as powerful as any functional programming language can be,” says Yahoo’s Fernandez-Ruiz.
And with JavaScript-based Node.js in the equation, he says, “It’s hard to tell if this will be the next Ruby on Rails, but this could be.” (Ruby on Rails is a platform for developing web applications that has become wildly popular in the past few years, thanks to the speed with which developers can create sites and apps using it.)
JavaScript and Node are core components of Yahoo’s Cocktails, a new suite of tools to help developers make their mobile web apps look and feel indistinguishable from high-quality native apps. Fernandez-Ruiz says that in early previews, responses from mobile developers have been positive and enthusiastic; everyone wants to get their hands on it.
Getting content to run consistently across all mobile and device platforms is a daunting task, and to date, many companies are trying to tackle it by translating code from one OS’s language to another, e.g. Objective C for iPhone development to Java for Android development.
But the code that comes out on the other side of such translations is too often spaghetti, and trying to solve the compatibility problem programmatically isn’t a long-term option.
Instead, said Fernandez-Ruiz, “We decided to solve the problems of the next three years rather than the problems of today.”
Ideally, Yahoo wants to eliminate the multi-language scenarios that introduce complications for developers. That’s the goal of Cocktails. One Cocktail product, called Mojito, uses JavaScript and Node to run a single codebase both on client and server side.
“We’re not making any difference between the front end and the back end,” says Fernandez-Ruiz. “For us, it’s the exact same code.”
Manhattan, another Cocktail, is a Node.js hosted environment for Mojito. Apps can be wrapped in a native shell and shipped to the iTunes App Store or the Android Market or simply run in a browser, and Manhattan helps to speed up the user experience access across high- and low-speed networks and to run apps on platforms that don’t have full HTML5/CSS3 support.
While Node has been shown to have insane performance benefits, Fernandez-Ruiz says, “We’re not using it for event-driven, low-latency reasons, although those are there. We’re using it because it runs JavaScript on the server side.”
JavaScript is evolving, he says. “The next generation of JavaScript will make the it a compelling, high-performance programming language for the web. This is a new class of web apps that are cross-environment, continuous, fluid experiences.”
And for the end user, Fernandez-Ruiz says that jumping from one interface on a TV to another interface for the same service on a tablet or smartphone or PC is disturbing. “But with HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript, you can have apps that look and feel the same.”
This is something we saw in action when we reviewed LinkedIn’s latest suite of mobile apps, which are Node-powered and web-heavy. Even the native apps for iOS and Android relied heavily on the mobile web for a lot of pages and features, and the mobile web version of the app looks and functions exactly the same as the native versions.
For Yahoo’s purposes, Fernandez-Ruiz continues, “Node.js is part of the puzzle, to execute code on the server side. But the premise is the same: It’s not native; it’s the web.”
Yahoo will also be introducing other Cocktails, including Windjammer and Screwdriver, in the near future.
But Haynie says the web-app-in-a-native-wrapper model should be regarded with some caution.
“That kind of hybrid application — we’re seeing almost no one using that rig[…]
dev
mobile
VentureBeat
mobile_apps
mobile_web
mobile_web_apps
native_apps
from google
“Forget being in love with the open web and all that touchy-feely stuff.”
Jay Sullivan is Mozilla’s vice president of products, and for a spokesperson of one of the open web’s dearest darlings, he’s on a tear.
“If you want to have a variety of mobile apps, it gets expensive… that’s a lot of apps to build,” he told VentureBeat in a recent interview.
Sullivan is making a strong case against building native apps and for the mobile web as the new platform to (literally) end all platforms.
Now, a number of developments make his words especially timely. Yahoo has just announced Yahoo Cocktails, a set of tools for developers to use that make web apps look and behave more like native apps. Mozilla is working on tools to help developers sell web-based apps to mobile device users, enabling them to make profits just as developers in the iTunes App Store or Android Market can now do.
Even Adobe is scrapping Flash for mobile phones and pinning its hopes on HTML 5 for the mobile web. “HTML5 is now universally supported on major mobile devices, in some cases exclusively,” wrote Danny Winokur, Adobe VP and General Manager of Interactive Development.
“This makes HTML5 the best solution for creating and deploying content in the browser across mobile platforms.”
It looks like mobile apps may be headed the same direction as multimedia CD-ROMs did a decade ago. Sadly for mobile apps, they don’t even have a useful second life as drink coasters.
But parties on the other side of the fence say it’s too soon to play Taps for apps. App advocates say mobile web enthusiasts are indulging in pipe dreams while the rest of the world is still working on proprietary technology stacks that do, now, what HTML5 has so far failed to deliver. Even if they admit that building for the mobile web will eventually be cheaper, faster and easier, it’s at least few years away from reality.
In the Mozilla Foundation’s new offices overlooking the San Francisco Bay Bridge, Sullivan — an unapologetic HTML5 advocate — sits in a conference room and rapidly deconstructs the assumption that to get your software onto a mobile phone you have to build a native application.
But he doesn’t resort to the familiar (and tired) ideologies about freedom from corporate technological tyranny that figure large in Mozilla’s current ad campaign. Rather, he gets downright practical.
First, he explains the obvious: Each mobile ecosystem has its own technology stack, its own operating system and programming language. That means developing apps requires a different skill set and a separate development process for each ecosystem.
At the end of the day, building a mobile web app instead of two or three or four native apps just makes more economic sense. “HTML5 is less expensive,” he says. “There’s always some stuff around the edges that won’t work perfectly, but compared to writing in seven different languages, it works.”
For developers, it’s technologically more manageable to build one mobile web app than a half-dozen or even just two native apps. And given the state of mobile web standards, we’re quickly approaching a point where end users can’t tell the difference between the two. All that’s really left is a business model for mobile web apps, Sullivan contends.
“When the web offers a more easy to access business ecosystem to developers, it will become more attractive.”
A better package
In conversations with organizations like Mozilla and Yahoo, in talks with mobile developers — basically, anyone who doesn’t have an explicit interest in promoting a single mobile operating system like Android or iOS — one trend is becoming quite apparent:
The app as you know it is dying.
It’s like the CD, an expensive package for digital information, a package that is increasingly becoming unnecessary and obsolete.
And just as with the CD, all we’re waiting for is a better delivery method to come along and kill it off.
The challenges to that shift are partly technical and partly cultural. Mobile web apps first must meet consumer demands for high quality and performance. And as previously noted, developers need to be able to market mobile web apps.
Yahoo is one company working on the first challenge. Bruno Fernandez-Ruiz is Yahoo’s platform vice president, and he is working on what he calls “a bunch of tricks to make web applications feel native.”
“We don’t want to emulate native, it has its own paradigm. What we want to do is create a new class of experiences. Something that’s the same across phones, TVs, tablets — the web is a paradigm that is cross-platform.”
But however much Mozilla or Yahoo might want to see the mobile web overtake native apps as a paradigm for ideological reasons, those who have to approach the problem practically in the here-and-now still have to deal with native issues and stacks.
“I absolutely believe that the mobile web is going to continue to grow rapidly,” says Jeff Haynie, who co-founded Appcelerator, a company specializing in getting web developers up and running on mobile OS platforms.
But, Haynie says, it’s too soon to discount the opportunity afforded by apps.
“That’s a huge opportunity for developers worldwide,” he continues, talking about mobile web apps. “But those compelling native experiences across lots of devices are where opportunity is going to be in the near-term. Consumers have come to expect a very high bar from experience, like the Flipboards and Instagrams that you just can’t acheive now with a web app.”
Referring to Mozilla et al., Haynie says, “These companies have many, many web developers — their foundation is the web. That’s what they’re yearning for, how to leverage that. That’s the promise of the web…
“The real question is, how do you let web developers build applications that span the native experience and the web?”
Web advocates, not surprisingly, have answers: New technologies and new marketplaces for making money from web apps.
New technology for the new mobile web: JavaScript and Node
JavaScript and Node.js are two key technologies that will make the transition from native apps to web apps possible.
“JavaScript is LISP in disguise. It’s as powerful as any functional programming language can be,” says Yahoo’s Fernandez-Ruiz.
And with JavaScript-based Node.js in the equation, he says, “It’s hard to tell if this will be the next Ruby on Rails, but this could be.” (Ruby on Rails is a platform for developing web applications that has become wildly popular in the past few years, thanks to the speed with which developers can create sites and apps using it.)
JavaScript and Node are core components of Yahoo’s Cocktails, a new suite of tools to help developers make their mobile web apps look and feel indistinguishable from high-quality native apps. Fernandez-Ruiz says that in early previews, responses from mobile developers have been positive and enthusiastic; everyone wants to get their hands on it.
Getting content to run consistently across all mobile and device platforms is a daunting task, and to date, many companies are trying to tackle it by translating code from one OS’s language to another, e.g. Objective C for iPhone development to Java for Android development.
But the code that comes out on the other side of such translations is too often spaghetti, and trying to solve the compatibility problem programmatically isn’t a long-term option.
Instead, said Fernandez-Ruiz, “We decided to solve the problems of the next three years rather than the problems of today.”
Ideally, Yahoo wants to eliminate the multi-language scenarios that introduce complications for developers. That’s the goal of Cocktails. One Cocktail product, called Mojito, uses JavaScript and Node to run a single codebase both on client and server side.
“We’re not making any difference between the front end and the back end,” says Fernandez-Ruiz. “For us, it’s the exact same code.”
Manhattan, another Cocktail, is a Node.js hosted environment for Mojito. Apps can be wrapped in a native shell and shipped to the iTunes App Store or the Android Market or simply run in a browser, and Manhattan helps to speed up the user experience access across high- and low-speed networks and to run apps on platforms that don’t have full HTML5/CSS3 support.
While Node has been shown to have insane performance benefits, Fernandez-Ruiz says, “We’re not using it for event-driven, low-latency reasons, although those are there. We’re using it because it runs JavaScript on the server side.”
JavaScript is evolving, he says. “The next generation of JavaScript will make the it a compelling, high-performance programming language for the web. This is a new class of web apps that are cross-environment, continuous, fluid experiences.”
And for the end user, Fernandez-Ruiz says that jumping from one interface on a TV to another interface for the same service on a tablet or smartphone or PC is disturbing. “But with HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript, you can have apps that look and feel the same.”
This is something we saw in action when we reviewed LinkedIn’s latest suite of mobile apps, which are Node-powered and web-heavy. Even the native apps for iOS and Android relied heavily on the mobile web for a lot of pages and features, and the mobile web version of the app looks and functions exactly the same as the native versions.
For Yahoo’s purposes, Fernandez-Ruiz continues, “Node.js is part of the puzzle, to execute code on the server side. But the premise is the same: It’s not native; it’s the web.”
Yahoo will also be introducing other Cocktails, including Windjammer and Screwdriver, in the near future.
But Haynie says the web-app-in-a-native-wrapper model should be regarded with some caution.
“That kind of hybrid application — we’re seeing almost no one using that rig[…]
november 2011 by doffm
Atari Greatest Hits app lands in Android Market, Star Raiders awaits your download
november 2011 by locuna
Jealous of your iOS-carrying companions who have been blasting Asteroids for months on their handsets and tablets? Prepare to quell your rage, as Atari has announced that its Greatest Hits app has launched for Android devices. Surpassing 3.5 million downloads in the iTunes App Store, the company has expanded the offering to Google OS faithful -- and it'll come with Missile Command for free, along with a 100 title catalog looking back on 30 years of gaming. Once you grab that install, you'll have your pick of 25 game packs for a buck each or you can spring for the whole lot for a cool Hamilton. The app is available now for both tablet and smartphone users, should you prefer a larger screen when your Centipede addiction strikes. For a full list of titles, hit the PR button after the break before checking things out for yourself in the Market.Continue reading Atari Greatest Hits app lands in Android Market, Star Raiders awaits your download
Atari Greatest Hits app lands in Android Market, Star Raiders awaits your download originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 06 Nov 2011 08:36:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink | Android Market | Email this | Comments
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Atari Greatest Hits app lands in Android Market, Star Raiders awaits your download originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 06 Nov 2011 08:36:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink | Android Market | Email this | Comments
november 2011 by locuna
China: The New Mobile App Dragon
november 2011 by alexj
China experienced 870% growth in app sessions between January and October 2011, according to Flurry Analytics.
china
mobile
mobile_apps
november 2011 by alexj
Garmin Fit Apps and ANT+ adapter announced
october 2011 by cmiles-reading
UPDATE: Looks like the ANT+ adapter for iPhone will be available later this week.
Garmin has announced the Garmin Fit app for iPhone and Android this morning, and an ANT+ adapter for the iPhone (that link wasn’t live when I posted this, but it probably will be later this morning). This is Garmin’s first fitness app, allowing users to track speed, pace, distance, time and calories. And at $0.99, it’s likely to gain a lot of users pretty quickly.
With an ANT+ enabled Android phone, or the $49.99 ANT+ adapter for iPhone, you’ll also be able to pair Garmin heart rate and cadence accessories with your phone.
Two more screen shots and then the full news release, which has more details…
Garmin International Inc., a unit of Garmin Ltd. (NASDAQ: GRMN), the global leader in satellite navigation, today announced Garmin Fit™ for iPhone and Android – its first fitness app that lets users track metrics such as speed, pace, distance, time, calories and with the help of Garmin accessories displays heart rate and cadence. Garmin Fit also maps and automatically uploads workouts to Garmin Connect™. Garmin also introduces its ANT+™ adapter for iPhone allowing users to use their Garmin ANT+ accessories with their iPhone.
“Garmin Fit is the ideal solution for users who are new to the fitness tracking landscape and for those looking to stay totally connected,” said Dan Bartel, Garmin’s vice president of worldwide sales. “To be able to utilize Garmin’s powerful fitness accessories with the same device that plays music, makes calls and uploads workouts automatically to share and analyze, makes Garmin Fit a must have app.”
Whether running on a local trail, cycling around the neighborhood or traveling for business Garmin Fit makes it easier than ever to see how far, how fast and where users have been. Garmin Fit ensures users will never be stuck without a way to track their workouts even when they forget to charge their Forerunner™ GPS enabled watch or fail to pack it for a trip. With the tap of a button Garmin Fit displays time, distance, pace and calories and even allows users to control their music from within the app. Never miss that important call – during a workout users will also be able to view and answer incoming calls and text messages without interrupting Garmin Fit ($0.99 USD).
Upon completion of a workout, users will be asked to name the activity and will have the opportunity to input notes about how the workout went or what the weather was like. The data will then be automatically sent to the user’s account in the ever-expanding and free Garmin Connect™ community (http://connect.garmin.com). Here users can quickly and easily log their workouts, track their totals, set goals, share workouts with friends and family and participate in an online fitness community of more than 70 million activities around the world. Garmin Connect displays metrics such as time, distance, pace, elevation and heart rate. This information is shown through charts, illustrations, reports and a variety of map representations including street, photo, topographic, and elevation maps. Garmin Fit will display the previous 30 days of Garmin Connect history as well as charts directly on users’ smartphones — giving them an extra tool to achieve their goals.
With Garmin’s ANT+ adapter for iPhone, available now at www.Garmin.com ($49.99 USD), users will be able to monitor and record their heart rate and cadence directly on their phone when paired with those optional accessories. One such accessory is a footpod sensor – which allows users who are training indoors to track their speed, pace, distance and run cadence.
Garmin Fit is the latest solution from Garmin’s expanding fitness segment, which focuses on developing technologies and innovations to enhance users’ lives and promotes healthy and active lifestyles. Whether it’s running, cycling, or other athletic pursuits, Garmin fitness devices are becoming essential tools for athletes both amateur and elite. For more about features, pricing and availability, as well as information about Garmin’s other fitness products and services, go to www.garmin.com/intosports, www.garmin.blogs.com andhttp://twitter.com/garmin.
Featured
iPhone
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Mobile
Mobile_apps
ANT+
Garmin_Fit
from google
Garmin has announced the Garmin Fit app for iPhone and Android this morning, and an ANT+ adapter for the iPhone (that link wasn’t live when I posted this, but it probably will be later this morning). This is Garmin’s first fitness app, allowing users to track speed, pace, distance, time and calories. And at $0.99, it’s likely to gain a lot of users pretty quickly.
With an ANT+ enabled Android phone, or the $49.99 ANT+ adapter for iPhone, you’ll also be able to pair Garmin heart rate and cadence accessories with your phone.
Two more screen shots and then the full news release, which has more details…
Garmin International Inc., a unit of Garmin Ltd. (NASDAQ: GRMN), the global leader in satellite navigation, today announced Garmin Fit™ for iPhone and Android – its first fitness app that lets users track metrics such as speed, pace, distance, time, calories and with the help of Garmin accessories displays heart rate and cadence. Garmin Fit also maps and automatically uploads workouts to Garmin Connect™. Garmin also introduces its ANT+™ adapter for iPhone allowing users to use their Garmin ANT+ accessories with their iPhone.
“Garmin Fit is the ideal solution for users who are new to the fitness tracking landscape and for those looking to stay totally connected,” said Dan Bartel, Garmin’s vice president of worldwide sales. “To be able to utilize Garmin’s powerful fitness accessories with the same device that plays music, makes calls and uploads workouts automatically to share and analyze, makes Garmin Fit a must have app.”
Whether running on a local trail, cycling around the neighborhood or traveling for business Garmin Fit makes it easier than ever to see how far, how fast and where users have been. Garmin Fit ensures users will never be stuck without a way to track their workouts even when they forget to charge their Forerunner™ GPS enabled watch or fail to pack it for a trip. With the tap of a button Garmin Fit displays time, distance, pace and calories and even allows users to control their music from within the app. Never miss that important call – during a workout users will also be able to view and answer incoming calls and text messages without interrupting Garmin Fit ($0.99 USD).
Upon completion of a workout, users will be asked to name the activity and will have the opportunity to input notes about how the workout went or what the weather was like. The data will then be automatically sent to the user’s account in the ever-expanding and free Garmin Connect™ community (http://connect.garmin.com). Here users can quickly and easily log their workouts, track their totals, set goals, share workouts with friends and family and participate in an online fitness community of more than 70 million activities around the world. Garmin Connect displays metrics such as time, distance, pace, elevation and heart rate. This information is shown through charts, illustrations, reports and a variety of map representations including street, photo, topographic, and elevation maps. Garmin Fit will display the previous 30 days of Garmin Connect history as well as charts directly on users’ smartphones — giving them an extra tool to achieve their goals.
With Garmin’s ANT+ adapter for iPhone, available now at www.Garmin.com ($49.99 USD), users will be able to monitor and record their heart rate and cadence directly on their phone when paired with those optional accessories. One such accessory is a footpod sensor – which allows users who are training indoors to track their speed, pace, distance and run cadence.
Garmin Fit is the latest solution from Garmin’s expanding fitness segment, which focuses on developing technologies and innovations to enhance users’ lives and promotes healthy and active lifestyles. Whether it’s running, cycling, or other athletic pursuits, Garmin fitness devices are becoming essential tools for athletes both amateur and elite. For more about features, pricing and availability, as well as information about Garmin’s other fitness products and services, go to www.garmin.com/intosports, www.garmin.blogs.com andhttp://twitter.com/garmin.
october 2011 by cmiles-reading
Nokia Maps plus HTML5 equals offline mobile maps
october 2011 by doffm
The mobile web version of Nokia Maps now looks and behaves more like a standard native application on Google Android and Apple iOS devices, thanks to HTML5: The navigation service now provides offline downloading of maps. This ability can reduce mobile broadband data charges or allow map usage in areas that have limited or no wireless data service.
Enthusiast site Android Community noted the updates on Monday by way of the HandHeld Blog. In addition to the downloadable maps, the service — found at http://m.maps.nokia.com — also adds public transit directions to supplement the existing walking and driving navigation as well as points of interest (POI) and guides to the local area.
Nokia’s mapping service is arguably one of the best software products to come from the Finland-based handset maker, and this update makes it even better. Why else would Microsoft decide to integrate Nokia Maps in the Windows Phone platform going forward? I used the web version of Nokia Maps earlier on Monday, finding it to be so full-featured that it was almost difficult to believe it to be a web application.
LoadingNextPreviousPicture 1 of 6 nokia-maps-1-save-local
The offline mapping mode is welcome, especially when many smartphone owners pay for set amounts of wireless data. Google, too, recently introduced downloadable maps, partially for this reason. Nokia’s implementation is somewhat limiting, though, at least in my short tests. The initial geographic area I wanted to map was too large, so Nokia Maps wouldn’t save it. I had to keep zooming and cropping before saving.
The end result was a reasonable size — about 15 square blocks of Philadelphia — and I had to boost the storage limits allocated to the service to get the 19 MB area map downloaded. Nokia calls these “neighborhood maps,” so if you’re planning to visit several areas, each neighborhood will have to be downloaded separately. That differs from Google’s solution, where I was able to grab a map of 10 square miles. Once you have a local map from Nokia stored on the device, you don’t have access to the guides and POIs, but you can zoom in for greater detail, just like Google’s version.
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Enthusiast site Android Community noted the updates on Monday by way of the HandHeld Blog. In addition to the downloadable maps, the service — found at http://m.maps.nokia.com — also adds public transit directions to supplement the existing walking and driving navigation as well as points of interest (POI) and guides to the local area.
Nokia’s mapping service is arguably one of the best software products to come from the Finland-based handset maker, and this update makes it even better. Why else would Microsoft decide to integrate Nokia Maps in the Windows Phone platform going forward? I used the web version of Nokia Maps earlier on Monday, finding it to be so full-featured that it was almost difficult to believe it to be a web application.
LoadingNextPreviousPicture 1 of 6 nokia-maps-1-save-local
The offline mapping mode is welcome, especially when many smartphone owners pay for set amounts of wireless data. Google, too, recently introduced downloadable maps, partially for this reason. Nokia’s implementation is somewhat limiting, though, at least in my short tests. The initial geographic area I wanted to map was too large, so Nokia Maps wouldn’t save it. I had to keep zooming and cropping before saving.
The end result was a reasonable size — about 15 square blocks of Philadelphia — and I had to boost the storage limits allocated to the service to get the 19 MB area map downloaded. Nokia calls these “neighborhood maps,” so if you’re planning to visit several areas, each neighborhood will have to be downloaded separately. That differs from Google’s solution, where I was able to grab a map of 10 square miles. Once you have a local map from Nokia stored on the device, you don’t have access to the guides and POIs, but you can zoom in for greater detail, just like Google’s version.
Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.
App Developers: Are You Ready for HTML5 and Metered Data?Mobile Q3: the fight for OS domination continuesThe future of mobile advertising, 2011 – 2016
october 2011 by doffm
Nokia Maps plus HTML5 equals offline mobile maps
october 2011 by jgordon
The mobile web version of Nokia Maps now looks and behaves more like a standard native application on Google Android and Apple iOS devices, thanks to HTML5: The navigation service now provides offline downloading of maps. This ability can reduce mobile broadband data charges or allow map usage in areas that have limited or no wireless data service.
Enthusiast site Android Community noted the updates on Monday by way of the HandHeld Blog. In addition to the downloadable maps, the service — found at http://m.maps.nokia.com — also adds public transit directions to supplement the existing walking and driving navigation as well as points of interest (POI) and guides to the local area.
Nokia’s mapping service is arguably one of the best software products to come from the Finland-based handset maker, and this update makes it even better. Why else would Microsoft decide to integrate Nokia Maps in the Windows Phone platform going forward? I used the web version of Nokia Maps earlier on Monday, finding it to be so full-featured that it was almost difficult to believe it to be a web application.
LoadingNextPreviousPicture 1 of 6 nokia-maps-1-save-local
The offline mapping mode is welcome, especially when many smartphone owners pay for set amounts of wireless data. Google, too, recently introduced downloadable maps, partially for this reason. Nokia’s implementation is somewhat limiting, though, at least in my short tests. The initial geographic area I wanted to map was too large, so Nokia Maps wouldn’t save it. I had to keep zooming and cropping before saving.
The end result was a reasonable size — about 15 square blocks of Philadelphia — and I had to boost the storage limits allocated to the service to get the 19 MB area map downloaded. Nokia calls these “neighborhood maps,” so if you’re planning to visit several areas, each neighborhood will have to be downloaded separately. That differs from Google’s solution, where I was able to grab a map of 10 square miles. Once you have a local map from Nokia stored on the device, you don’t have access to the guides and POIs, but you can zoom in for greater detail, just like Google’s version.
Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.
App Developers: Are You Ready for HTML5 and Metered Data?Mobile Q3: the fight for OS domination continuesThe future of mobile advertising, 2011 – 2016
@CNN
Android
Google
GPS
html5
iOS
maps
Mobile_Apps
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Nokia
Nokia_Maps
POI
from google
Enthusiast site Android Community noted the updates on Monday by way of the HandHeld Blog. In addition to the downloadable maps, the service — found at http://m.maps.nokia.com — also adds public transit directions to supplement the existing walking and driving navigation as well as points of interest (POI) and guides to the local area.
Nokia’s mapping service is arguably one of the best software products to come from the Finland-based handset maker, and this update makes it even better. Why else would Microsoft decide to integrate Nokia Maps in the Windows Phone platform going forward? I used the web version of Nokia Maps earlier on Monday, finding it to be so full-featured that it was almost difficult to believe it to be a web application.
LoadingNextPreviousPicture 1 of 6 nokia-maps-1-save-local
The offline mapping mode is welcome, especially when many smartphone owners pay for set amounts of wireless data. Google, too, recently introduced downloadable maps, partially for this reason. Nokia’s implementation is somewhat limiting, though, at least in my short tests. The initial geographic area I wanted to map was too large, so Nokia Maps wouldn’t save it. I had to keep zooming and cropping before saving.
The end result was a reasonable size — about 15 square blocks of Philadelphia — and I had to boost the storage limits allocated to the service to get the 19 MB area map downloaded. Nokia calls these “neighborhood maps,” so if you’re planning to visit several areas, each neighborhood will have to be downloaded separately. That differs from Google’s solution, where I was able to grab a map of 10 square miles. Once you have a local map from Nokia stored on the device, you don’t have access to the guides and POIs, but you can zoom in for greater detail, just like Google’s version.
Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.
App Developers: Are You Ready for HTML5 and Metered Data?Mobile Q3: the fight for OS domination continuesThe future of mobile advertising, 2011 – 2016
october 2011 by jgordon
Android this week: Nexus Prime launch; Google’s mobile growth; universal translator
october 2011 by jgordon
Samsung and Google jointly delayed a U.S. press event last week that was expected to see both the next version of Android as well as the first phone to run it, dubbed the Nexus Prime. The actual name may vary based on which network operator carries it, but the Prime is anticipated to raise the bar as a flagship Android handset.
I received direct word of the event postponement and now have an invite for the rescheduled event. As it’s slated for Oct. 19 in Hong Kong, I’ll have to pass on attending, but will have an update after the news hits thanks to a live video feed.
The Nexus Prime has already appeared in a video demonstration that loosely validates some of the rumored specifications, such as a 4.65-inch display with 1280×720 resolution, on-screen software buttons in place of capacitive or hardware buttons, and the Ice Cream Sandwich version of Google Android.
Google’s quarterly investor call took place this week, with CEO Larry Page saying Ice Cream Sandwich was “soon to be released.” Other interesting Android data shared by Page indicates Google’s growing momentum in the mobile market:
190 million total Google Android devices have been activated.
Mobile revenues for Google have grown 2.5 times in the last 12 months with an annual run-rate now topping $2.5 billion
Google Maps has expanded in August by 40 countries, now supporting 130 nations.
Of course, the populations across that many countries often speak different languages. Google Translate for Android gained broader support for an experimental feature that allows two people to converse in real-time, with both speaking in their native language.
Conversation mode already supported English and Spanish, but this week gained a dozen new languages: Brazilian Portuguese, Czech, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin Chinese, Polish, Russian and Turkish. The software requires a button press before each person speaks, but can greatly assist when visiting a foreign country.
Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.
Mobile payments: forecasts, technologies and opportunitiesMobile Q2: Smartphone growth surges; iPad’s rule continuesA Global Mobile Handset Platform Forecast, 2011 – 2015
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I received direct word of the event postponement and now have an invite for the rescheduled event. As it’s slated for Oct. 19 in Hong Kong, I’ll have to pass on attending, but will have an update after the news hits thanks to a live video feed.
The Nexus Prime has already appeared in a video demonstration that loosely validates some of the rumored specifications, such as a 4.65-inch display with 1280×720 resolution, on-screen software buttons in place of capacitive or hardware buttons, and the Ice Cream Sandwich version of Google Android.
Google’s quarterly investor call took place this week, with CEO Larry Page saying Ice Cream Sandwich was “soon to be released.” Other interesting Android data shared by Page indicates Google’s growing momentum in the mobile market:
190 million total Google Android devices have been activated.
Mobile revenues for Google have grown 2.5 times in the last 12 months with an annual run-rate now topping $2.5 billion
Google Maps has expanded in August by 40 countries, now supporting 130 nations.
Of course, the populations across that many countries often speak different languages. Google Translate for Android gained broader support for an experimental feature that allows two people to converse in real-time, with both speaking in their native language.
Conversation mode already supported English and Spanish, but this week gained a dozen new languages: Brazilian Portuguese, Czech, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin Chinese, Polish, Russian and Turkish. The software requires a button press before each person speaks, but can greatly assist when visiting a foreign country.
Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.
Mobile payments: forecasts, technologies and opportunitiesMobile Q2: Smartphone growth surges; iPad’s rule continuesA Global Mobile Handset Platform Forecast, 2011 – 2015
october 2011 by jgordon
Jawbone's Up wristband warms up at AT&T store, wants you faster, stronger
october 2011 by cmannes
Jawbone's fitness-obsessed wristband appears to be closing in on the retail finish line. The Up pairs with what appears to be an iOS app, (no news on whether an Android version is in the pipeline), and will pile on the guilt about your disgustingly sedentary lifestyle. You can have the luxury of feeling like a weight loss reality show contestant by scheduling "get up and move" reminders when you've succumbed to watching back-to-back mediocre sitcoms with a Doritos family bag chaser. There's also a sleep tracker and a challenge tab to plot your amazing weight loss journey (or descent to an early demise) against friends and family. It'll monitor what you eat, and even tell you which foods "help you feel your best." (We think it's cake.) No word on price or arrival date just yet, so you'll just have to put up with Autom until we hear more.
[Thanks, Luke]
Jawbone's Up wristband warms up at AT&T store, wants you faster, stronger originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 13 Oct 2011 16:56:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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[Thanks, Luke]
Jawbone's Up wristband warms up at AT&T store, wants you faster, stronger originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 13 Oct 2011 16:56:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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october 2011 by cmannes
Large Hadron Collider Debuts Google Android App, Says No Thanks To iOS
october 2011 by patrix
Ready to find the Higgs boson particle? A newly released Google Android app which provides live results from the Large Hadron Collider has debuted thanks to scientists at Oxford University and the application is 100% free to use.
The CERN approved application provides a live feed into what particles are being smashed at the moment and imagery is shown using computer-generated 3D models which allow users to see the particles from every angle.
According to Android Market statistics more than 10,000 people have already downloading the application.
Writing about the application Dr. Alan Barr wrote on the University of Oxford’s science blog:
“For ages I’d been thinking that with the amazing capabilities on modern smart phones we really ought to be able to make a really great app—something that would allow everybody to access the LHC data,” while adding, ”We’ve squeezed in a bunch of cool features. If you want to learn about the science of the LHC, then you can play with the animated tutorials. Then you can stream videos to your phone about the construction of the detector, and its operation.”
Users should be aware that not all data will be shown because the Large Hadron Collider uses several gigabytes of data every second.
According to PCMag:
One notable feature is called “Hunt the Higgs,” a game that sees the user try to find the Higgs boson, the so far never-seen particle that physicists predict will help explain how matter has mass (the LHC may find evidence of its existence in 2012). The game involves looking at slides of reactions and trying to discern which particles are present. It’s just a game, however—not actual research.
At this time the application is only available for Google Android based devices and programmers for the application have no plans to release an Apple iOS version.
Large Hadron Collider Debuts Google Android App, Says No Thanks To iOS is a post from: The Inquisitr
Mobile
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Mobile_Apps
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The CERN approved application provides a live feed into what particles are being smashed at the moment and imagery is shown using computer-generated 3D models which allow users to see the particles from every angle.
According to Android Market statistics more than 10,000 people have already downloading the application.
Writing about the application Dr. Alan Barr wrote on the University of Oxford’s science blog:
“For ages I’d been thinking that with the amazing capabilities on modern smart phones we really ought to be able to make a really great app—something that would allow everybody to access the LHC data,” while adding, ”We’ve squeezed in a bunch of cool features. If you want to learn about the science of the LHC, then you can play with the animated tutorials. Then you can stream videos to your phone about the construction of the detector, and its operation.”
Users should be aware that not all data will be shown because the Large Hadron Collider uses several gigabytes of data every second.
According to PCMag:
One notable feature is called “Hunt the Higgs,” a game that sees the user try to find the Higgs boson, the so far never-seen particle that physicists predict will help explain how matter has mass (the LHC may find evidence of its existence in 2012). The game involves looking at slides of reactions and trying to discern which particles are present. It’s just a game, however—not actual research.
At this time the application is only available for Google Android based devices and programmers for the application have no plans to release an Apple iOS version.
Large Hadron Collider Debuts Google Android App, Says No Thanks To iOS is a post from: The Inquisitr
october 2011 by patrix
The phone that works like a bank - The Globe and Mail
september 2011 by jerryking
PREET BANERJEE | Columnist profile | E-mail
Globe and Mail Update
Published Tuesday, Sep. 27, 2011 10:26AM EDT
Last updated Wednesday, Sep. 28, 2011
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Globe and Mail Update
Published Tuesday, Sep. 27, 2011 10:26AM EDT
Last updated Wednesday, Sep. 28, 2011
september 2011 by jerryking
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