Mobile users acquired through “incentivized” installs can be valuable, according to a new study, if managed properly. The term refers to users who download a mobile application in exchange for something else – usually in-game virtual currency or goods. Traditionally, these sorts of users are thought of as somewhat disposable, simply serving as a way to boost an app’s rankings in iTunes…at least until Apple cracked down on the now-banned practice.
But a new study of mobile app traffic shows that, in certain cases, incentivized traffic can outperform organic traffic. Unfortunately, given the report’s source, it still leaves us with quite a bit of doubt. → Read More
A study released by Massachusetts-based application analytics firm Localytics today confirms my suspicion that we both love — and are quickly bored by — our mobile applications. And, perhaps, that studies will confirm just about anything.
In part 1 of its study, Localytics analyzed thousands of Android, iPhone, iPad, BlackBerry and Windows Phone 7 apps. Using its realtime app analytics service, they found that, while most smartphone users are willing to try new apps (as evidenced by the 10 billion downloads from the iTunes store), 26 percent of the time they download an app, use it once, never to use it again. → Read More
Palm certainly has been working on getting their app store populated. They kicked off a promotion back in February, which is ending soon, and has resulted in over 400 developers splitting up their share of a million dollars. Palm is also trying to increase interest in their applications by offering a 50% discount on the majority of their catalog, starting immediately. The good news for developers is that they will still be paid the full amount, despite the discount given to customers by Palm. → Read More
Check out this custom made iPhone app that robotics student Robert Stephenson created. Robert wrote this app to control his Hexapod robot using the the user inputs on the iPhone. → Read More
If you’ve never worked in an office where an unsuspecting co-worker gets an e-mail sent out on his or her behalf announcing that happy hour drinks are on the house, you haven’t LIVED! It’s the perfect way to teach someone that they should always, always, lock their computer whenever they head over to the break room to find that someone drank all the coffee and didn’t bother to make another pot. Those days may be about to end, though, thanks to Phoenix Freeze. → Read More
Not looking the soon-to-be-released Facebook for BlackBerry v1.5 get all the glory, Myspace has gone and loosed v1.5 of their own application. Our BlackBerry handset is giving us all sorts of trouble right now, so we’re not having any luck testing it out for ourselves – so let us know in the comments how it is. → Read More
MIT professor Hal Abelson started today’s final presentation for the school’s “Building Mobile Applications” class by saying, “A course like this couldn’t have existed ten years ago… maybe not even a year ago. Courses like this right now are unique, but in two years they’ll be completely ordinary.” What’s extraordinary is that on top of a full college course-load at one of the most challenging schools in the country, these groups of students built fully working mobile applications for Windows Mobile, Android, and Symbian devices while mentors from the likes of Google, Nokia, Bank of America, and Microsoft oversaw their progress. → Read More
A few weeks back, a sneak peek of a still-in-the-works BlackBerry App Center made its way out. Now RIM’s gone and given it the official treatment by way of press release. Unfortunately, there’s a bit of bad news right off the bat: While the BlackBerry Storm is expected to launch in November, the BlackBerry App Center won’t debut until March of 2009 – nearly five full months after the device’s release. Developers won’t have to wait quite as long to get their apps approved, with RIM opening the submission process come December of 2008. Developers can set their own prices via the Application Center Storefront, retaining 80% of the revenue for each sale (Compared to the 70% offered by Apple). While they don’t specify what will be done with the remaining 20%, we assume that it’ll be split between RIM, the carrier, and Paypal (who will be handling the financial parts of the transaction). That the launch of the App store is so late after the launch of the Storm is absurd. With a number of third-party groups (e.g Handango, BerryStore) already competing in the BlackBerry app-peddling arena, RIM’s going to have to buck for attention on their own platform. → Read More
Yesterday morning, a sizable chunk of the T-Mobile G1 pre-orders showed up prior to their expected arrival date of October 22nd. Filled with new-toy glee, the new Android users tore their boxes open, poked and prodded at the screen.. but something was wrong. Reviews said something about there being 50+ applications already available in the Android App Market. Even immediately after the device was announced, there were 18. By a count yesterday morning, there were only 13. As was to be expected, the internet quickly filled with conspiracy theories. Was Google shaving down the list to save bandwidth? Were they pulling off a significant chunk of the applications so that they could be rolled out over the days after launch, making the content stream seem torrential? → Read More
You’re looking at the BlackBerry Application Center, RIM’s answer to Apple’s App Store and Google’s Android Market. Same basic concept as the other two—you browse and buy applications that enhance your BlackBerry experience. The Application Center—we’re running out of variants of the term “application store!”—is set to debut with the BlackBerry Storm software version 4.7. All application data will be stored at the carriers’ locale; RIM is totally out of the loop as far as that goes. It’s supposed to differentiate the Application Center from the App Store in that regard—carriers can put the applications they want on their own little store. So there you have it, RIM’s attempt to cash into the nascent application craze. I can’ tell if it’s going after Wall Street (well, what’s left of it) or Main Street with this, and the Storm more generally. As if this one BlackBerry (out of how many?) will capture the same type of minshare that the iPhone already. Then there’s the G1. But, hey, should make for some interesting days ahead. → Read More
After disappearing off the app store for just over a month following an amicable take down request by THQ Wireless/LucasArts, the iPhone lightsaber simulator PhoneSaber has returned. Its got a new name and a new look, but all of the accelerometer based lightsaber swinging good times remain. Rather than being lame and just yanking the idea for themselves, THQ Wireless brought the original Phonesaber developer on board to retool the app as a promotion for The Force Unleashed. The simulator has been redubbed Lightsaber Unleashed, with “dueling music” and characters/dialogue from Force now included. Get it for free in the App Store. Make sure to hold on tight; smashing your iPhone against the wall will bring the Jedi battles to an end pretty quickly. → Read More
This morning, NewsGator released a small batch of usage statistics for the free iPhone RSS aggregator NetNewsWire, a port of the OS X application of the same name. According to the blog post by Josh Larson, NewsGator’s Community Manager, NetNewsWire has already seen over 200,000 downloads, 115,000 of which have signed up over the last 30 days. On average, NetNewsWire for iPhone users subscribe to 26 RSS feeds. One crazy blacksheep out there somehow handles over 2,800 feeds, which is absurd – I only pull down a few hundred, yet things can already seem a bit torrential at peak times. 2,800 feeds would be mind boggling. [Via TUAW] CrunchBase Information NewsGator Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More
Just in time to ride the tide of excitement from today’s G1 announcement, Google has released a video detailing all of the “google goodies that come preloaded” on the handset: Search, Maps, Gmail, Contacts, Calendar, and IM (Google Talk), with a strong emphasis on the over-the-air sync functionality. I can’t imagine what the “erick.the.cyclist@gmail.com” account inbox will look like in a few hours. → Read More
We’ve touched on it before, but to recap: Back in the day when modding your Xbox was a criterion of geekdom, Xbox Media Center was king. Pictures, videos, file streaming, skinning, application launching, script support – you name it, and Xbox Media Center could probably get it done. With its awesome codec support and surprisingly vast functionality, it quickly built up a significant following of fans. Over time, efforts began to bring the application to other platforms, and the project dropped the Xbox association from the name to be redubbed as the XBMC Media Center. After a few months of public alpha, Team-XBMC yesterday released a Beta version of the application for Mac OS X (Leopard and Tiger), Windows, and Linux in preparation for the stable ‘Atlantis’ release. → Read More
So, you’ve got a snazzy new iPhone. You like it alright, but wouldn’t it be better if Apple had just made dialing a number on the touchscreen really, really difficult? Don’t worry – MildMannered Industries understands. That’s why they’ve created Bakelite, a rotary phone style dialer for the iPhone. Why spend 4 seconds dialing a number when you can spend 45 instead? Jabs aside, it’s free and it might get a few be good for getting a chuckle out of that weird guy you know who laughs at everything, so here’s the iTunes link. → Read More
Not too long ago, Proximi gave iPhone users a glimpse of how copy and paste could work on their handsets with the release of MagicPad. Unfortunately, the copy and paste functionality only went as far as the limitations of Apple’s SDK allowed; while you could copy from one MagicPad document to another, you couldn’t copy from a MagicPad document to Safari. It wasn’t exactly what iPhone users were looking for, but it was the start of something awesome. Shortly after releasing MagicPad, Proximi released a proposal video for a cross-application copy and paste system. This inspired a developer named Zac White to start OpenClip, a non-profit and open-source project aimed at putting as big of a dent in the app-to-app copy/paste problem as possible without breaking the rules of Apple’s SDK. Read the rest at MobileCrunch >> → Read More
Not too long ago, Proximi gave iPhone users a glimpse of how copy and paste could work on their handsets with the release of MagicPad. Unfortunately, the copy and paste functionality only went as far as the limitations of Apple’s SDK allowed; while you could copy from one MagicPad document to another, you couldn’t copy from a MagicPad document to Safari. It wasn’t exactly what iPhone users were looking for, but it was the start of something awesome. Shortly after releasing MagicPad, Proximi released a proposal video for a cross-application copy and paste system. This inspired a developer named Zac White to start OpenClip, a non-profit and open-source project aimed at putting as big of a dent in the app-to-app copy/paste problem as possible without breaking the rules of Apple’s SDK. So how does it work? From OpenClip’s FAQ: “OpenClip utilizes a shared space on the iPhone. Applications that use the OpenClip framework can access this common area to write to and read from, allowing copy / paste between participating apps.” By implementing the OpenClip framework, any developer can add Copy/Paste functionality to their own applications. Sure, it’s still not a perfect solution — It only works between the applications which have been OpenClip-enabled (read: not Safari), and no one’s really sure if Apple’s going to be too pleased with what could be considered a loophole — but a handful of developers are already standing behind the project, and more will undoubtedly sign up as word gets out. If nothing else, this might just push Apple to consider copy/paste as high of a priority as much of their userbase does. [Via MacRumors, Video Via Cali Lewis at GeekBrief.tv] CrunchBase Information Proximi Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More
Charming It looks like Time mag didn’t get the memo that says nothing negative is to be written about Facebook. Funny (well) thing is, it’s the same thing I complained about nearly a year ago: too many stupid application requests. Yup, Facebook users, it seems, are fed up with the myriad application requests they get each and every day. A zombie has bitten you, do you want to bite back? Become a fan of Web 19.0! Free [virtual] petrol! Puppies for Tibet! And so on. Yeah, it’s annoying, and partially the reason why I cut my visits from once a day to maybe a few times a week. And yes, I (and Time) know that you can now hide all those dumb requests, but, to me, it’s the principal of the matter. What was once a simple site—when is this paper due, random person from class?—metastasized into something sinister and hardly recognizable. And of course, the application creators argue the exact opposite. It’s “fun” to get application request every 15 seconds, makes you feel special and well liked. Does it? “It is a positive action that people like sending to their friends,” said the creator of such important breakthroughs as Send Good Karma. How needy do you have to be to feel validated by Facebook app requests? I just find it funny that the site was co-opted by the “how do we monetize the friend feed?” crowd. via Drudge Report → Read More
Y’all know I hate those stupid Facebook applications. Every single last one of them, including the “Arrested Development” one, and I’m pretty sure that’s the best TV show I’ve ever seen. But if there’s one way to revitalize rapidly shrinking newspaper circulation, it’s to write about Facebook and its wild and crazy apps. Some mom did just that. I’m still overwhelmed with excitement. It’s like this. Some mom, possibly a desperate housewife, is Facebook friends with her daughters. (Coolsville!) When she found that her daughters were trading virtual “naughty” things like thongs and copies of Candide, she wanted to know what possessed her daughter, so virtuous and true, to do such a thing. → Read More
