Though it’s but a baby in the app world, Vine is already making brands, advertisers, and especially media industry members chomp at the bit for some 6-second looping action.
The latest to join the herd is Marvel, who has posted a six-second teaser trailer for its upcoming “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.” TV series. For those who were fans of the Avengers and other Marvel films, this should be a sweet… → Read More
The global mobile messaging app space is the new social battleground. Startups that would have had little chance of unseating Facebook’s dominance on the web are attacking Zuckerberg’s empire by refocusing social networking around the mobile phone contacts book. Enter your phone number, and these apps already know who all your friends are. No need to go laboriously recreating your social… → Read More
Google Now is a great feature for Android users, and now those who are on iOS devices. The idea is that the more you use Google products, the more it learns about you and the better information it can spit at you proactively. However, if you try to interact with Google Now, specifically on which sports teams you’d like to follow, the app will crash. Not only will Google Now crash, but… → Read More
Facebook didn’t realize just how important widgets, docks, and app folders were to Android users, and that leaving them out of Home was a huge mistake. That’s because some of the Facebookers who built and tested Home normally carry iPhones, I’ve confirmed. Lack of “droidfooding” has left Facebook scrambling to add these features, whose absence have led Home to just 1 million downloads in a month. → Read More
Google is well known for its regular bouts of spring cleaning when it kills off a number of products in one fell swoop, but it also sometimes makes quick changes in between the bigger announcements. One of those has now hit its portfolio of SMS-based products aimed at users of lower end devices: Google has quietly closed down SMS Search. → Read More
China now has more active iOS and Android devices than the U.S., up from about 40-50 million in circulation the last time I visited in late 2011. What that means is local entrepreneurs can finally build scalable mobile software businesses. iDreamSky is one of the companies riding this wave. → Read More
After a legal kerfuffle with the band Rush’s management company (no, seriously), the team at Anthm saw their social playlist app get unceremoniously booted from Apple’s App Store. So what’s a down-on-their-luck team of app creators to do? Why, give the app a bunch of new features, a mild facelift, and a new name — Jukio — before pushing it into the wild again. → Read More
Facebook is not the only company to invest in development of products that take better advantage of the Android homescreen. South Korean messaging app KakaoTalk also recently announced its intentions to release a rival Android launcher. And now, Highland Capital, Andreessen Horowitz and others have invested $1.8 million into Aviate, an ex-Googler backed intelligent homescreen for Android… → Read More
Serial entrepreneur with too many ideas rattling around in your head? Then you’re going to like this one: a new mobile app called Elevatr will help you keep track of your inspirations, as well as develop a business model, in order to turn your passing thoughts into plans actually worth pursuing some day.
The beautifully designed app was dreamt up by New York-based David Spiro, a recent college… → Read More
Tweetwall, a Twitter display provider for events (you know, for “tweet walls”), which has been used by customers including CNN, PayPal, Yahoo, Intel, eBay, Microsoft, the Obama campaign, Sprint, and more, is today launching a revamped version of its service. The updated version of Tweetwall has been rebuilt from the ground up, and is also accompanied by a new iPad application offering… → Read More
Facebook Home’s circle of supported devices has just got a little wider. The Android launcher which Facebook unboxed with much fanfare back in April was only initially available for download to four devices but that select club now has a couple of new members, according to Android Central: namely HTC’s flagship HTC One device, and also the flagship Samsung Galaxy S4. → Read More
Another move in the oh-so-hot mobile messaging space today: South Korea’s Kakao Inc, which owns the KakaoTalk cross-platform mobile messaging app, has inked an agreement with digital marketing company IGAWorks to bring its mobile ad product, adPOPcorn, to the messaging app. IGAWorks will also provide adPOPcorn to game developers whose products integrate with KakaoTalk. → Read More
Messaging app Line, which recently announced it has passed 150 million users, has withdrawn a function from its iOS app that allowed users to gift paid-for stickers to each other by paying for them with a virtual currency. The change, spotted earlier by The Next Web, was made at Apple’s request, said the company in a blog post today. → Read More
If you’ve been using OpenTable to reserve tables at your favorite restaurants, the latest update for Android will help you discover new places to eat a little better and keep track of everything you have going on. It also got some of that Holo design lovin’. → Read More
Though Snapchat has been picked on, picked apart, and blown up in the media, the technical aspects of the service are still somewhat mysterious to the average user. A new research report from a company called Decipher Forensics is looking to shed a little light on how the service “deletes” photos you send through Snapchat.
According to Decipher, Snapchat photos are renamed with a .jpgnomedia… → Read More
Just a week after rolling out the latest version of its Firefox OS simulator, Mozilla has announced that it’s offering a nifty new proposition to would-be FFOS developers. If you’ve got an idea for a killer HTML5 application and the technical chops (or at least the drive) to make it a reality, Mozilla wants to give you a Firefox OS developer device. → Read More
App beta testing service TestFlight launched its closed Android beta back in February this year, and now the company is making those tools available to any and all. The private beta has included some 5,000 developers, who have incorporated TestFlight services into 4,500 apps, which have been downloaded over 50,000 times by eager Android beta testers. → Read More
Though Foursquare is now busy trying to take on Yelp, one of its more rewarding, but personal, use cases (now that the fervor around badges and mayorships has died down), is its ability to add insight and data around your check-ins. Often after registering your location, the app rewards you with a little encouragement or commentary via a pop-up message. Today, the service is making these little… → Read More
Dish.fm, the recently relaunched restaurant recommendation app which focuses on the best menu items, as opposed to overall venue reviews, is today rolling out an update which expands the service into more of a dish search engine than local utility. The company had previously allowed you to see the best dishes nearby and compare dishes inside a restaurant, but now the app also helps you find the… → Read More
BlueStacks, the startup known for bringing Android apps to PCs and Macs, has been growing like a weed. Last week, the company announced that it had passed the 10 million user milestone, nearly half of which were added in the first quarter of this year. Today, hot on the heels of the news that OUYA has landed $15 million from Kleiner Perkins to bring its affordable, $99 Android-friendly gaming… → Read More
Since the launch of personalized magazines this March, social magazine maker Flipboard has added 6 million new users to its platform, bringing its total number of users to 56 million – and that’s before the feature even arrived on Android, which now comprises roughly half of Flipboard’s user base. Today, that changes as the personalized magazine option arrives on Android phones… → Read More
Line, a free-at-the-point-of-use messaging app made by NHN Japan Corp which recently passed 150 million users, has announced earnings for Q1 2013 — revealing for the first time how much of its revenue comes from game in-app purchases and how much from its other shtick: stickers. Line uses free social messaging and gaming services as its hook to draw in users, and monetises via paid add-ons. → Read More
Facebook appears to be close to making another billion-dollar acquisition to once again ramp up its mobile efforts: according to three reports in the Israeli press at Calcalist and sister publication Ynet and The Marker (all in Hebrew), Facebook has approached Waze, the social mapping and traffic app maker, and is now in advanced due dilligence on a deal that Calcalist puts at between $800… → Read More
Nokia has given its S40-based range of touchscreen Asha smartphones another push to try to keep up with the low end reach of Google’s Android platform today. The mobile maker has announced a new addition to the range — the Asha 501 — which also ushers in a new version of the Asha touch UI that’s designed to be quicker and slicker, and has a strong focus on swiping gestures. → Read More
The latest to join the cadre of startups offering tools for more private sharing outside of Facebook’s massive footprint is not, in fact, another startup, but rather another media giant: Disney. Citing its “rich heritage in storytelling,” Disney’s Interactive division, best known for games, sites, and virtual worlds like “Where’s My Water?,” “Temple… → Read More
OpenSignal, the UK startup that has made a name for itself with its Android and iOS apps that crowdsource cell phone coverage based on data picked up from users’ devices, is branching out into another area that consumers love to obsess about: the weather. Today, the company is launching a new app for Android devices, WeatherSignal, which takes data gathered from different sensors, such as light… → Read More
Crosswa.lk, a mobile application discovery which just over a year ago arrived on the iPhone as an improved version of Apple’s “Genius,” has been quietly building a new product over the past several months, as tides have turned against apps which serve to recommend or promote other apps. The new Crosswa.lk, instead of being a consumer-facing service, now offers tools to push apps… → Read More
When this generation looks back to retell the best and most amazing past times of the early oughts, surfing YouTube will undoubtedly be on the list. But as we shift to a more mobile lifestyle, content discovery — with particular regards to internet video — is becoming less and less fluid.
That’s why betaworks is today launching Telecast, a new service that bundles internet video… → Read More
Boston-based Localytics is fleshing out its mobile app analytics and marketing platform in a major way today with a variety of new features to help not just with customer acquisition, but also with monitoring and maintaining customer relationships over the lifetime of an app. The three big new areas Localytics now addresses with its platform are Lifetime Value Tracking, Customer Acquisition… → Read More
Since launching in 2010, HealthTap has been on a mission to bring the proverbial “house call” back to healthcare — virtually speaking, of course. With more than 80 percent of people turning to online resources (and to Dr. Google) for health-related information — from insurance to basic diagnostics — HealthTap set out to give people a better alternative to using Google or WebMD for their health… → Read More
Austin, TX
Seattle, WA
San Diego, CA
Menlo Park, CA
Berlin, Germany
Boston, MA
