Soon Twitter users will be able to use the service’s official photo-sharing and uploading features from their favorite third-party apps. The company has made photo upload functionality available to developers.

Twitter introduced its media upload API Monday to allow developers to attach images — in PNG, JPG, and unanimated GIF formats — to tweets.

The release comes ahead of Apple’s Twitter-infused iOS 5 update, and is clearly intended to get app makers and users acclimated to the new photo-sharing option.

“Photos are a fundamental way that people share context, information, jokes, and personal moments on Twitter,” Jason Costa, developer relations manager, wrote in a post on Twitter’s developer blog. “Following last week’s wider release of photos to Twitter.com users, we’re ready to share our media upload API.”

Twitter will also soon equip its own mobile apps with photo upload support, Costa says.

Twitter’s photo-sharing and uploading service, powered by Photobucket, was pushed out to all users last week. It competes directly with Twitter photo-sharing apps such as Twitgoo, Lockerz, TwitPic and yFrog.

Developers wishing to leverage the Twitter photo upload API will need to adhere to the service’s display guidelines and rate limits.

Image courtesy of Flickr, shawncampbell

More About: api, Photos, twitter

For more Dev & Design coverage:

• Follow Mashable Dev & Design on Twitter
• Become a Fan on Facebook
• Subscribe to the Dev & Design channel
• Download our free apps for Android, Mac, iPhone and iPad

Go to Source

Advertise here with BSA

Creating web apps and sites for the Mobile Web has its own sets of challenges and techniques. From UIs optimized for fingers instead of mouse cursors to the bandwidth limitations that most portable personal devices have, developing for mobile devices requires a paradigm shift for those of us who’ve traditionally created products aimed at desktops.

To help you rapidly deploy cross-platform mobile apps and websites, there’s a wide range of JavaScript frameworks you can take advantage of.

Some common characteristics of JavaScript mobile web development frameworks:

• Optimized for touchscreen devices: Fingers as input devices instead of mouse cursors provide an extra set of challenges in user interface design. Mobile web development frameworks provide standard UI elements and event-handling specifically for mobile device platforms.
• Cross-platform: Support for multiple mobile device platforms such iOS and Android allows you to get your app to a wide range of users.
• Lightweight: Because of current bandwidth limitations, a stronger emphasis on lowering file weight is placed into mobile web development frameworks.
• Uses HTML5 and CSS3 standards: Most mainstream mobile devices have web browsers that support HTML5 and CSS3, and so mobile web development frameworks take advantage of new features available in these upcoming W3C specifications for a better user experience.

In this article, you’ll find my top picks of JavaScript mobile web development frameworks you should consider using to build your next mobile web app or website.

1. jQuery Mobile

jQuery Mobile, a framework that will help you rapidly and confidently develop mobile app user interfaces across popular mobile device platforms like iOS and Android, is perhaps the most popular project out there.

The framework boasts a lightweight code base (weighing in at 20KB when minified and gzipped) and a huge bevy of standard user interface elements that mobile device users are accustomed to, such as switches and sliders.

See jQuery Mobile in action by going to its demo page (it doubles as the framework’s official documentation).

If jQuery isn’t your thing, check out MooTools Mobile, a MooTools plugin by MooTools core developer Christoph Pojer and Dojo Mobile, which leverages the Dojo API to help developers rapidly build apps for mobile platforms.

2. Titanium Mobile

This powerful and robust mobile web development framework allows you to use your existing HTML, CSS and JavaScript knowledge to make native-like mobile apps for iOS and Android.

As one of the bigger mobile web development frameworks out there — with over 300 APIs and an active developer community — you know you’ll often find help and support from peer developers.

Titanium Mobile supports native UI elements for iOS and Android like table views, tabs, switches and popovers. It also has features that enable you to interact with the mobile devices’ camera and native file storage system.

3. The-M-Project

The-M-Project is another solid JavaScript framework that takes advantage of new HTML5 features for easier and better mobile app development.

The framework follows the popular model-view-controller (MVC) software architecture pattern, which is a huge selling point for many developers.

It has offline support so that your users can continue working without an Internet connection (they can then sync up to the server next time they’re online) and excellent documentation (the project has a Getting Started guide for new users of the project).

To witness The-M-Project in action, check out their showcase, which includes items like the ToDo App and KitchenSink (a showcase of all the UI elements included in the framework).

4. Jo

Jo is a framework aimed at developers working on HTML5-capable mobile devices such as those the use the iOS, webOS, Android and Chrome OS platforms.

It has standard, native-like UI elements such as the web form widget for your login screens and the popup widget that you can use for providing extra information when a user clicks on an interface element.

See the demo page on their site, which includes a screencast displaying Jo in action on multiple devices and mobile platforms.

5. xui.js

If you need something super lightweight and you only need features for standard client-side development tasks such as DOM manipulation, event-handling, Ajax and a few animation effects, check out xui.js. xui.js packs a punch in such a tiny package (4.2 KB when gzipped).

xui.js provides targeted builds for specific mobile browsers such as WebKit and IE mobile for when you’re developing apps strictly towards a particular mobile device operating system.

6. EmbedJS

EmbedJS is a JavaScript framework for embedded devices (which includes mobile phones, TVs, tablets and so forth).

What’s great about EmbedJS is that it has multiple builds for specific platforms and browsers such as iOS, Firefox, Android, etc., which translates to an optimal user experience and less code to serve to your users. And if you’d like to customize your build, the creators provide you with the EmbedJS Build tool.

EmbedJS is based on Dojo, so if you’re familiar with the Dojo API syntax, you’ll be able to use EmbedJS right away.

7. zepto.js

zepto.js is a mobile JavaScript framework built specifically for mobile WebKit browsers (e.g. Safari and Chrome). It prides itself in its minimalist development philosophy, which translates to simplicity for helping developers get stuff done quickly. What’s more is that this JS framework is ultra-lightweight at only 5KB.

The zepto.js syntax borrows from, and is compatible with, jQuery — a welcome plus for many developers.

To learn more about this framework, see developer Thomas Fuchs’ presentation of zepto.js.

8. DHTMLX Touch

DHTMLX Touch, a free HTML5/JavaScript framework optimized for touchscreen devices, brings you the ability to craft beautiful mobile web apps quickly.

The DHTMLX Touch UI Designer is a visual editor for building mobile user interfaces, and it’ll help you construct top-notch UIs with minimal coding.

Check out samples of DHTMLX Touch in action, which includes a menu app for the iPad (perfect for restaurants) and Book Shop (a proof-of-concept demo for an e-store offering books).

9. Mobilize.js

Mobilize.js is a JavaScript framework for porting your existing website to a mobile-friendly version. It’s easy to integrate into your site because it does everything on the client-side, and has facilities for detecting mobile browsers so that you can serve them the mobile version of the site.

WordPress users might want to check out the Mobilize.js WordPress plugin.

10. ChocolateChip Mobile

ChocolateChip Mobile is a JavaScript framework developed towards future-forward web browsers. It shares syntax similar to jQuery or Prototype.

The resemblance to jQuery doesn’t stop at the syntax — for example, like jQuery, it can handle events through binding and delegation, and has methods such as .css and .toggleClass.

You can grab ChocolateChip Mobile’s source code off GitHub.

Other JavaScript Libraries for Mobile Web Development

• jQTouch: a jQuery plugin specifically for Android and iOS devices.
• jqpad: a web development framework built and optimized for iPad development.
• iUI: a user interface framework for making iPhone-like web apps.
• Sencha: an HTML5 mobile web development framework (suggested by Steven Roussey)

Related Content

• Building Mobile Web Apps the Right Way: Tips and Techniques
• Mobile Web Design: Is It Worth It?
• Mobile Web Design: Best Practices
• Related categories: JavaScript and Tools

About the Author

Jacob Gube is the Founder and Chief Editor of Six Revisions. He’s also a web developer/designer who specializes in front-end development (JavaScript, HTML, CSS) and also a book author. If you’d like to connect with him, head on over to the contact page and follow him on Twitter: @sixrevisions.

Go to Source

So it’s timely that software testing marketplace uTest is today expanding to offer security and localization testing services. That means it will have an end-to-end suite of testing services for web, desktop or mobile apps, adding to its existing services like functional, usability and load testing. uTest CEO, Doron Reuveni says the startup is aiming to become a ‘one stop shop’ for real-world testing.

READ MORE

Go to Source

No U.S. denizens are going to miss Symbian. The lack of traction of Nokia’s smartphone system in the U.S. doomed it, with iOS and Android the final nails in the coffin. Yet, in a stop at VentureBeat, Weber said that the reliance of Android and iOS on the native app is “outdated.” Weber was not specifically talking about HTML5 mobile Web applications but rather the “hubs and tiles” central theme of Windows Phone 7. Later in the week, Amazon released its popular Kindle application to the mobile browser (Safari on iOS for now) with the HTML5 Kindle Cloud Reader, skirting Apple’s App Store and the draconian rules that goes along with it. Perhaps there is a trend here. Between the Windows Phone approach and the supposed coming wave of HTML5 web-based apps, is the native application soon to be “outdated?” That is the topic of this week’s ReadWriteMobile poll.

Sponsor

The excellent developers at Pinch/Zoom know a thing or two about native apps and HTML5 deployment. Brian Fling posted an “Anatomy of HTML5” article on the company’s blog Swipe earlier this week that shows that, while HTML5 is powerful, it is also difficult to deal with. The average app developer may like the idea of HTML5, but it is much easier to build native apps for the various mobile platforms. In the near future, it will take big tech companies with a plethora of developers, like Amazon or Facebook, to come out with dynamic HTML5 mobile apps for the masses.

On Wednesday, research firm Gartner came out with its “Hype Circle for Emerging Technologies” for 2011 that shows the path of development and mainstream adoption for bleeding edge tech. While HTML5 was not mentioned specifically, “mobile application stores” are well past the peak of hype, through the “trough of disillusionment” and well on their way up the “slope of entitlement” to the “plateau of productivity.” Gartner is essentially saying that mobile app stores are here, established and soon to be the norm when it comes to mobile software deployment.

Yet, there is that big Amazon stick in the mud. The Amazon Cloud Reader is, at its core, a Web-app that can work offline. This, as some have pointed out, is a game-changer not just for mobile, but for how the entire Web operates. It may be a sign of the future, but does it make the app ecosystem “outdated?”

Vote in the poll and let us know your thoughts in the comments. How long do you envision the native-app model to be the dominant form of mobile software?

Is The App Ecosystem Outdated or Soon To Become Outdated?

Discuss

Go to Source

Launching officially to the public today is a new venture called MediaCore, brought to you by Damien Tanner and Stuart Bowness, the former of whom was responsible for Pusher, a solution that adds realtime tech to apps that was funded by the Heroku guys, among others, back in June.

Tanner and Bowness are launching MediaCore to provide any old small business with the ability to roll out their own YouTube, allowing the organizations to control that experience from end-to-end. In other words, MediaCore is a SaaS video publishing platform (complete with mobile apps) that provides any user or organization with the ability to create and control their own video site. And it’s all about good looks.

As to how it works, customers upload content into the platform’s cloud-based infrastructure and let videos play through MediaCore’s player, which, among other things, automatically determines which browser the user is connecting with so that they don’t have to worry about differences between Flash and HTML5. The player sorts that out for you, using HTML5 whenever possible.

Visitors can browse video collections through a cool visual guide, and the platform allows owners to easily organize their videos by category, or tag, and automatically sorts content by relevance and popularity. Users can add logos, backgrounds, and play with CSS to customize the appearance of the site. Plus, you can add your own domain, take advantage of podcasting, and quite a few other nifty tools. Considering the fact that creating a full-service video platform is no easy feat, MediaCore is offering a pretty cool white label solution that looks good and doesn’t require a lot technical know-how.

MediaCore is currently offering a 15-day free trial, and after that, plans start at $99 a month. Those plans include custom domains, white label player, custom branding, automated encoding, social video embeds, etc. But the best part is that Android and iOS apps come with every account, while managing to look pretty damn good, too. Coming next? According to Tanner and Bowness, it’s private video, profiles, and paywalls.

To get the platform off and running, the startup is in the process of closing a seed round of angel funding from Andrew Wilkinson, the founder and CEO of MetaLab and Jesse Ma of Gawker Media. While the founders declined to give specifics, the round is likely in the hundreds of thousands. (Of dollars, that is.)

When I asked them what the inspiration was for MediaCore, they told me that other video platforms out there are stacked with engineers and often pay little attention to design, resulting in crappy interfaces and a series of botched user experiences. So, after running an open source version of MediaCore for a year, they’re bringing their SaaS platform to market, in an attempt to lead with design first and make it easy to use.

The beta version of the platform has already attracted over 1,100 companies, including London University, Mentor Graphics, TechVibes, Indiana University, and a variety of Fortune 500 companies. As one might guess from its early customers and the scalable cloud storage, the product is aimed at SMBs, but the founders told me that within the year they will be launching a series of personal plans that will be offered below the current $99-a-month pricing.

MediaCore also plans to launch a Tumblr-like theme store in the near future, which will allow users to buy themes and customize their sites, all working via an API (a la Tumblr).

All in all, when the paywalls roll out and a proper iPad interface drops, MediaCore is probably going to essentially be the video version of OnSwipe. Is that a good thing? You tell us.

For more, check out MediaCore at home here or a front-end demo, click here.

Go to Source

Facebook has responded to a privacy scare meme likely deriving from a recent HackerNews thread called “Facebook has your complete phonebook”  both with an official post on Facebook’s Wall and a personal message from a Facebook Messenger engineer Ben Gertzfield on HackerNews.

In its efforts to dominate all modes of human communication (yay Messenger!), Facebook has chosen to match up and de-dupe numbers both on your Facebook Friends List and your mobile Contacts to form one Contacts coherent list, that only you can see. For those of you that didn’t realize that Facebook now has the contact information of sundry aunts, bosses, dry cleaners, etc this may come as a shock.

Facebook’s official response:

“Rumors claiming that your phone contacts are visible to everyone on Facebook are false. Our Contacts list, formerly called Phonebook, has existed for a long time. The phone numbers listed there were either added by your friends themselves and made visible to you, or you have previously synced your phone contacts with Facebook. Just like on your phone, only you can see these numbers.”

Fair enough. So why the uproar? Well it is pretty eye-opening to see friends’ numbers you didn’t even think you had (wow, I should really call that random person and catch up) just by clicking on this link. How did Facebook get those numbers in the first place? With your permission of course!

As HackerNews user ‘extension’ points out, enabling contact synching on the Facebook mobile apps will result in something similar to the following message:

“If you enable this feature, all contacts from your device (name, email address, phone number) will be sent to Facebook and be subject to Facebook’s Privacy Policy, and your friends’ profile photos and other info from Facebook will be added to your iPhone address book. Please make sure your friends are comfortable with any use you make of their information. [Cancel] [I Agree]“

So by agreeing a) you basically chose to upload information you’ve inputted into your phone to Facebook and b) people have chosen to give you the numbers. But yeah, it’s your fault buddy —  people will [Agree] to just about anything these days to avoid the monotony of reading something that remotely sounds like a TOS, even if it’s only two sentences.

Still not assured? You can remove the phone numbers you’ve imported to Facebook Contacts by clicking on this link https://www.facebook.com/c​ontact_importer/remove_upl​oads.php?r=%2Fphonebook.

Facebook still owns your immortal soul though.

Image: joeshlabotnik

Go to Source

Twitter images, the Twitter photo hosting service we broke the news of in late May, has now rolled out to all Twitter users, according to Twitter Public Relations representative Sean Garrett.

Users who did not have the feature before will see a camera at the far left of their status update box, beckoning that they upload an image. You can choose an image from your desktop under 3 MB and it will get embedded to your Twitter status like below. If you feel like you’ve made a mistake you can just click on the X to delete and pick another image.

Photos uploaded through Twitter will be hosted through Photobucket and appear as a pic.twitter link and image for those who follow you and a “Click to display media” message for those who don’t. Users will not be able to see images from Protected accounts.

Users who feel ambitious can add a hashtag to their images and the images will show up in Twitter’s new fleshed out Photo and Video search feature, visible to the right side of your tweet pane when you click through to search for hashtags. You can also use the shortcuts “sv” and “sp” to search for photos and videos directly from the Twitter.com homepage.

Twitter tells me it has yet to enable the feature for its mobile apps, and the ability to tweet directly from the iPhone camera will waiting for the launch of iOS 5 in the fall.

Twitter plans on launching user Galleries, another feature that has yet to be enabled. As of yet all the individually uploaded pictures are one offs, but Galleries will eventually aggregate all pictures a user has ever uploaded including those from services like Twitpic and Yfrog.

While the baked in upload functionality launched to everyone today is seamless and simple to use, the eventual launch of Galleries (where all user photos can be viewed in one place) will herald Twitter’s true foray into the photo-sharing business and the real threat to third parties like YFrog. Until then we wait.

Go to Source

Because the stream of realtime palaver that is Twitter needed even more ways to be consumed on even more devices, the company has just announced that it’s started to roll out an HTML5-based Twitter.com for iPad, and that all iPad users should have it accessible within the week.

The app is full HTML5 and an improvement over the current one-paned experience of the Twitter mobile site on the tablet. Not surprisingly it is reminiscent of a hybrid of Twitter.com and the mobile apps and was based on Twitter’s HTML5 client for iPhone and Android, Twitter mobile engineer Manuel Deschamps tells me. The HTML5 web app will be rolled out to all users within the week, eh hem, beating Facebook which has yet to launch its own HTML5 initiative Project Spartan.

Says Twitter representative Carolyn Penner, “The HTML5 app provides a great option for people who prefer to use the browser over native apps. Its two-column view is consistent with the Twitter experience you’re used to (on Twitter.com), and it takes advantage of touch gestures and other device capabilities.”

Screenshot above.

Go to Source

The MyHabit app includes all of the functionality a the website, and allows users to view detailed product pages, videos and images, and purchase items directly from their phones In addition, customers can preview the week’s calendar of events and receive start of sale reminders from specific brands before they sell out.

M-commerce is a growing segment of the business for Amazon, and many other e-retailers like eBay. In fact, Forrester estimates that mobile commerce in the U.S. will reach $31 billion by 2016.

As we’ve seen with other flash sales sites, mobile offerings are particularly popular because of the short time-frame in sales. Other recently launched Amazon mobile apps include barcode scanning app Price Check, shopping iPad app Window Shop, and a Gold Box deals app.

Go to Source

Vanity metrics are things like registered users, downloads, and raw pageviews. They are easily manipulated, and do not necessarily correlate to the numbers that really matter: active users, engagement, the cost of getting new customers, and ultimately revenues and profits. The latter are more actionable metrics. As First Round Capital’s Josh Kopelman recently advised on Founder Office Hours, “The real data is retention and repeat usage.” Startups that focus on the real metrics can make their products better, attract more customers, and make them happier.

It is important for startups to properly instrument the data they track so that they can get a handle on the true health of their business. If they track only the vanity metrics, they can get a false sense of success. Just because a startup can produce a chart that is up and to the right does not mean it has a great business. A mobile apps could have millions of downloads but only a few hundred thousand active users, or a freemium website might see exploding traffic growth but barely any conversions to paying users.

Many startups, of course, track one set of numbers internally and selectively share another set of vanity numbers externally with the press. The worst is when startups try to pitch us with raw growth numbers (we are up 400%), but without any context (400% from what, 1,000 users or 100,000?). We always ask for more meaningful numbers, but those are not always forthcoming.

The vanity metrics aren’t completely useless, just don’t be fooled by them. There are ways to back into real numbers from the vanity metrics. VC Fred Wilson blogged today about his 30/10/10 rule: 30 percent of downloads or registered users are active once a month, 10 percent are active once a day, and 10 percent of the daily users will be the maximum number of concurrent users. These are the patterns he is seeing in his portfolio companies and the startups pitching him.

Startups would be better off, however, reporting real metrics from the start. Vanity metrics can catch up to them, especially if those numbers do not correspond to the real numbers. Facebook is a great example of a company that focuses on the right numbers. Even in its college-only days, it would always talk about daily active users (the users who come back every day) and how fast it took them to take over a particular campus. If more startups would measure and share the right metrics from the start, the rest of us would focus on them too.

Photo credit: Skye Suicide

Go to Source

As designers and developers working on either traditional websites, web apps or mobile apps, we can have a tendency to become too narrowly focused on features. We create lists of functionality (either on our own or together with our clients), and determine that our product needs to be able to do this thing or perform that action. As an example, over the course of the past few days, I’ve been neck deep in concepts of functionality, as I’ve been working on a number of flow charts that map out the proposed functionality for a new site that I am working on.

From such a perspective, it’s all too easy to set about implementing the listed functionality and, once it’s all in place, believing that we have created a feature-rich and usable product.

However, the presence of all the desired functionality doesn’t mean that the product is necessarily usable in and of itself. Being able to do something is not always synonymous with being able to do it easily. Often, the opposite is true. Key or advanced features can be buried so far down in a chain of menus and navigation, options and preferences, that it becomes all but impossible to perform a simple, desired action without the assistance of an instruction booklet or extensive road map.

To put it in simple, though somewhat mathematical terms: ability does not equal usability.

Can You Change the Ringtone?

As a perfect example of this issue, I recently had a conversation with a colleague that happened turn to the topic of mobile phones. With more than a hint of frustration in her voice, she told me about the difficulties she was having with her phone when it came to changing her ringtone.

Yes, the ringtone.

It may seem like a relatively mundane and commonplace sort of functionality, but my colleague had no end of difficulty in figuring out to make the change. I even grabbed her phone and worked on it for a few minutes myself and simply couldn’t any logical (or even illogical) way of performing the desired action.

With a bit more time and experimentation, we did, eventually, manage to figure it out. However, we had go through a number of different menus that involved the device’s somewhat obscure profiling system. To be honest, it would probably still take me at least another five minutes to figure it out if I had to do it again.

Fortunately for me, I use an smart phone which, when compared against my colleague’s phone, has a much higher level of usability. I can just open up my settings, chose sounds and then change my ringtone. It’s quick, easy and highly intuitive.

In both cases, the phone in question has the ability to change ringtones, but with my colleague’s phone the feature is all but unusable because it is so difficult to find.

Potential Keys to Usability

With this discrepancy between ability and usability, then, how do we take a product or interface from a state of merely being able to do something to the point where it can be done in a usable and intuitive way. Well, there are probably dozens (if not hundreds) of different things that we could talk about, but since our phone example was primarily a menu issue, here are just a few navigation-based ideas.

Expectation-Based Paths

The biggest hurdle that both my colleague and I encountered in the mobile phone example was that we simply could not find our way down through the phone’s menu system to the required feature. We both tried all kinds of different paths. I know that I even tried the same ones several times.

Part of that repetition was clearly the result of thinking that I may have missed what I was looking for the first, second or even third time I looked. More than that, however, it was also bred from a natural human behaviour known as expectancy.

This wasn’t the first time that I’d changed (or, rather, tried to change) the ringtone on a mobile device. As such, I came to the task with a certain set of expectations as to how I would need to go about completing the task. Those expectations, however, were not only proven wrong, they were also frustrated by my inability to determine an alternate solution.

One common example that I like to use when talking about this kind of expectation (or, to put it another way, these kinds of design conventions) is the power button. Based on the near-universal symbol that has been adopted across a wide range of appliances and devices, I have developed an expectation through which the symbol should lead powering a device on or off. To a lesser, extent, I also expect that power buttons and/or switches would be marked with this symbol.

The near-universal symbol for power brings with it certain expectations when used on devices and machines

If either of these expectations were subverted in some way—perhaps by using a different symbol or using the symbol in another context—my expectations would be frustrated, and as a result I could be confused, irritated or even angered.

When designing a new system, always keep expectation in mind. If you’re at all familiar with your platform (web, mobile, desktop etc), you should have a basic set of expectations yourself, which can form the foundation. Beyond that, though, do your research. Examine how others have solved a given problem and take note of trends and patterns that you see.

It’s not about stealing or ripping off, though. The chances are good that these patterns have either emerged in direct response to existing sets of expectations, or that their frequent repetition is ultimately setting the groundwork for a new set of expectations.

There’s nothing wrong with a little bit of innovation in terms of functionality and navigation, but there does come a certain point when a user will want to rely on their own experience and expectations to guide them.

Multiple Paths

Traditional menu architecture tends to be very singular and hierarchical. Just think about a common drop down menu, either in a website or an application. Generally speaking, you will have your main menu items, beneath which there will be a number of sub menu items, many of which will trigger different actions or options. Some of these items may even have sub menus of their own, allowing for extensive multi-dimensional navigations.

This works well (up to a point—dozens of nested sub menus can become burdensome), but there is really nothing out there to state that the hierarchical pattern is the alpha and omega of navigation. This is especially true on the web. Based on the very nature of the hypertext, internal links provide users with the ability to move from one page to another, based on how they are responding to content, rather than how that content is arranged.

Wikipedia is great example of a site that uses the power of internal links as part of its core navigation technique

Remember, that they key to any information-based site (or application) is to get users to what they are looking for as quickly and painlessly as possible. From a usability standpoint, multiple, well-considered and well-managed access paths provide users with a variety of different ways to arrive at the same point, thereby increasing the probability that they will, in fact, get there. Wikipedia (and other wikis) are a great example of this. In fact, with the possible exception of search, the interlinking of articles is likely the most important form of navigation on their site.

Of course, as with nearly anything, we still need to work within reason. Having too many paths can be paralyzing, confusing or dizzying—possibly even all of the above—and lead users along a continuous cycle of link-clicking. Focus on logical navigation paths that will make sense to different types of users, not just on creating as many different paths as possible.

After all, it’s called the web, not the maze.

Contextual Help

Another technique that can be very helpful, especially in large and more complex sites or applications, is the use of contextual help—that is to say helpful cues, hints or suggestions that are actually provided based on a user’s actions or their current context.

For instance, when I was developing Survd, I knew that there would be some elements of the interface that new users might not grasp immediately. With this mind, I elected to add simple, contextual help icons (rendered as a familiar question mark) beside some of these items. When the user hovers over these icons, a simple tooltip appears explaining what the interface item is and why it’s important.

A simple little help icon provides contextual help in the Survd interface

I’ve found that it’s a simple, noninvasive way to increase overall usability (I’ve even released a super simple little jQuery script that can allow you to do the same thing in your site or web app). Plus, for more advanced users, I also added in an option to turn the contextual help off. This way, users who are more familiar with the interface and don’t need the help can actually remove the icons entirely.

Another form of contextual help might involve tracking the user’s behaviours, either within a single session or across multiple sessions. Then, based on those behaviours, you can provide additional cues or shortcuts that will allow them to accomplish what they’re trying to do more quickly and efficiently.

Google’s Chrome browser does this really nicely by providing a default homepage that lists the eight sites that you have visited the most recently. It’s a nifty little feature that actually adapts to your browsing habits, and which could be migrated to a number of different types of applications.

Conclusion

There are, of course, many other things that we could talk about when it comes to how to improve usability. To come back to the point at hand, however, the important thing to remember is that just because you can do something doesn’t mean that a product has good usability. Instead, usability is measured (at least from my perspective) by the relative ease with which the feature is accessed or the function is executed.

As designers, I believe that a key component of our job should be facilitate that ease as much as possible.

Exclusive Content

To thank you for subscribing to my feed, I am including exclusive, feed-only content for you at the bottom of each post!

Current Freebie Code – 7ev165dd

Go to Source

They’re serving a market for ads and coupons that used to be the domain of the local newspaper, but if you listen to their executives talk, news media get only a passing mention. Are these targeted local deals services cutting news organizations out of the market that used to keep them afloat, just like craigslist did to their classifieds?

Sponsor

News as an industry has always been subsidized by advertising and promotion of local businesses. The news attracts a lot of eyeballs, as the advertising industry likes to call human beings, so it makes a good vehicle for local promotions. Now, though, information hubs that aren’t for news, like search pages, mobile apps and email inboxes, use up a lot of eyeball-time.

News used to have the advantage of knowing its audience; people looked to news sources for a particular kind of information, so advertisers could focus their efforts on that audience. But now, Web users give off that kind of data with every click of their mouse, and technology powerhouses can use that data to cater to them, even from a distance. Has this eroded the news industry’s advantage as an ad platform?

These mobile- and social Web-based deal services have leveraged the scale of the Internet to build something that feels local, even if it isn’t, and they’ve done so with great skill, technology, and people-power. Without a doubt, in a financial sense, targeted deals are good for customers. But lots of local businesses complain that these campaigns offer them a raw deal. They may attract short-term customers, but they might come with a sacrifice in quality, bringing people who are only interested in getting a discount, rather than becoming loyal.

That’s not a universal opinion. In response to these criticisms, analysts have come to the defense of daily deals with relatively straightforward suggestions for how to make them work for small businesses, even if it takes some rearranging. But if there’s one thread upon which supporters and critics agree, it’s that these local discount campaigns are not for everyone. There is no one-size-fits-all solution.

If that’s the case, news organizations still have a chance. They’re enabled by Web technology, too. They can track their audience’s interests very specifically, since they can see what stories and topics interest them day in and day out, and they can use social media to generate rich conversations on top of those stories. This can help them build a content strategy that attracts and develops reliable target audiences and connect them to local businesses. Local news can’t be replicated from elsewhere; it has to be created in close contact with its audience and their community. It also has to be very well done in order to keep its audience interested, and that’s expensive. But the kind of intimate familiarity local news can forge between neighbors and businesses might prove invaluable if bolstered by good information technology.

But practically everybody’s looking to stake a claim in this gold mine. Banks are looking to trade their rich customer data for deals, too. And Facebook might be able to offer local businesses the most direct line to their customers, and they’d have much less overhead doing so than a news site. As we reported earlier this year, 70% of local businesses use Facebook for marketing already. It’s clearly an effective way to reach customers.

If news organizations are going to to keep a piece of this business, they’ll need to match high technology with great content, and they’ll have to do everything they possibly can to keep the conversation lively, timely, and dependent on their stories.

Disclosure: Jon Mitchell freelances as managing editor of Neighborhood Notes, a local news site in Portland, Oregon.

Discuss

Go to Source

Sponsor

At the time of the initial launch, Qualcomm showcased an app called “Mavs AR,” built in collaboration with the Dallas Mavericks. To use the app, you simply pointed your phone at a Dallas Mavericks virtual and a virtual game would appear directly on top of it.

While a clever bit of fun, it didn’t feel like game-changer for mobile, and perpetuated the belief among some that AR is just a bunch of over-hyped silliness. Similarly, the current set of games and gimmicks out now, many of which also use Qualcomm’s SDK, don’t really seem to be demonstrating the potential of this technology.

AR’s roots are in aircraft assembly, where it was used to deliver virtual instruction manuals.  It seems odd that as it made the transition to mobile, those same types of practical use cases are still missing in favor of marketing initiatives (AR ads in your magazines and movie posters!) as well as games.

But that may not be the case forever, thankfully.

In June, Jay Wright, Senior Director of Business Development for Qualcomm, said that he was working with two big-name retailers to put out some of the first truly useful mobile apps involving instruction manuals. One will be an app that helps show you how to load ink in your printer, just by pointing your phone at the printer itself.

Now that the AR SDK is in the hands of the iOS developer community, we hope to see other helpful implementations of the technology, too. Developers can grab the new SDK for iOS from here.

Discuss

Go to Source

What can you use the application for?


Dropbox is a file storage and sharing application that allows users to keep track of all of their files in one place. Rather than manually updating folders across multiple computers, Dropbox gives users a single file storage area that can be accessed by all of their computers. The user can access the Dropbox from their desktop and make changes that are automatically updated on all computers using the same Dropbox. Users can also share some of their folders with others so everyone has the most updated version of documents and images. Users can add any kind of file, from PDFs to image files, audio clips and videos. Users can also create a file for photos that they share with family and friends as they travel. Dropbox currently offers mobile apps for iPhones, iPads, Blackberry devices and Android phones.

What is the history and popularity of the application?


Dropbox was founded in June of 2007 by Drew Houston and Arash Ferdowsi. The application is intended to help users share and store files easily and securely. The company is based in San Francisco, California and currently employs over 60 individuals, including CEO Houston, CTO Ferdowsi, Vice President of Business Development Sujay Jaswa, Software Engineer Aston Motes, Head of Server Engineering Rajiv Eranki, Director of Product Jeff Bartelma, Advisor Ali Partovi and Investor Sameer Gandhi.

What are the differences to other apps?


Dropbox makes it far easier for users to keep a single file on multiple computers. The application is appealing because it automatically updates when the user makes changes to a folder in their Dropbox. The user never has to make an edit, move or delete more than once to update the same folders on all of their computers.

How does the application look and feel to use?


Dropbox offers users a simple, familiar design that works very well for the application’s intended purpose. After installing Dropbox on a computer, the user will see a blue open box icon. Clicking the icon will give the user access to their folders, which open up in a traditional Windows folder box. The user can sort their files however they like (just like a new Windows file).

How does the registration process work?


A new user can start using Dropbox by clicking the blue and white “Download Dropbox” button on the application’s homepage. After allowing the application to download, the user can set up their Dropbox by following the steps that appear after installation. To create a new account, the user can click the blue “Log In” button in the upper, right hand corner of the site. A small blue link at the bottom of the registration form invites the user to create an account. Clicking the link takes the user to the registration form. The form asks for a first and last name, email address and password. The user must also check the white box at the bottom of the form to agree to the Dropbox terms of service.

What does it cost to use the application?


Dropbox allows users to set up an account for free. Free users are given a total of 2 GBs of storage space in their Dropbox. Users can upgrade to a Pro 50 account which costs around $10 per month and upgrades to 50 GBs of storage space. The Pro 100 account costs around $20 per month and includes up to 100 GBs of storage space. A Teams option is also available that includes 350 GBs or more of storage space. Users interested in a team account should contact Dropbox for a custom quote.

Who would you recommend the application to?


Dropbox is a great tool for anyone who shares files as well as those who work on multiple computers. Anyone with a desktop and laptop can use Dropbox to keep their files up to date across multiple computers.

Go to Source

Every week, Mashable puts together a calendar of upcoming social media and web events, parties and conferences.

Here are some tips on how to network, share your information and promote your event using social media:

• The Future of Event Planning and Social Media
• HOW TO: Plan and Promote Events with Social Media
• 35+ Ways to Find and Plan Events Online
• 8 Ways to Create Paperless Business Cards
• 5 Useful iPhone Apps for Business Networking

Mashable’s Weekly Social Media and Marketing Event Guide is proudly supported by Eventbrite, the Web’s Event Marketplace.

July 27-29, 2011, San Francisco, CA: Join us at the premiere of ePharma Summit West, the sister event to The ePharma Summit, the largest, longest running and most respected digital marketing event for the Life Sciences Industry. Network and join the conversation with hundreds of fellow thought leaders from top Pharma, Biotech, Device and Health Science companies. Register as a Mashable reader with the promo code XP1656MASH and save 10%.

August 1-3, 2011, San Antonio, TX: The eduWeb Conference is the event for you to meet, share, explore, and learn from your higher education peers on topics including mobile apps, branding, web site analytics, social media strategic planning, and web development. eduWeb offers four tracks: marketing communications; design and development; social media; and information architecture. Register with the promo code 11Mash and save $50!

September 6-8, 2011, Cleveland, OH: At Content Marketing World, you’ll learn how to transform your marketing department into a storytelling factory, engaging your prospects and customers in all the right channels with the right messages– including social, mobile, email, online and even print and in-person strategies. Through 24+ breakout sessions and amazing keynotes led by worldwide experts, you’ll get the tools you need to be a successful content marketer. Plus, you’ll experience the best of what Cleveland has to offer, starting with our opening night reception at the infamous Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Register and use the promo code mash to receive $100 off the current price of a ticket.

September 11-14, 2011, Denver, CO: Come join the best and brightest of the iOS development community at 360|iDev, the first iOS developer event to be held by the developer community! Speakers include many leading community members, and app store success stories. With over 40 sessions, including hands-on training the sunday before the conference, 360|iDev offers more content than any other iOS developer event in the world. Register and use the promo code iosmash to save 20% of the ticket price.

September 12-13, 2011, Renaissance Glendale, Phoenix, AZ: The third Social Media Optimization Summit event, presented by Multifamilypro, brings together small to mid-sized business owners with an interest in putting social media to work successfully within their organizations in ways that are proven to generate results. The event offers two full days of intensive, hands-on workshops from the intermediate to advanced level, led by top social media experts. The unique “See it. Hear it. Do it.” approach allows attendees to learn by doing, and begin immediately applying newly-acquired skills and knowledge while the event is underway. See what others are saying about the event and register now at optimizationsummits.com and use discount code Mashable to save $100!

September 20, 2011, Chicago, IL: Federated Media presents Signal Chicago: The Marketing in Real Time Conversation. We will be focusing on the theme of “Marketing in Real Time.” From “real time bidding” on new demand-side and exchange platforms to “real time messaging” of location-based services, marketing has time-shifted into the present tense. A new suite of tools and services have evolved which enable the marketer to have conversations with customers in real time, creating both challenges and opportunities.Please join us!  More information and registration details at http://www.federatedmedia.net/events – Register with promo code SIGMash to save 15%

Sept 21-22, 2011, London, UK: ad:tech London is the UK’s essential free to attend event for professionals seeking to stay ahead of the latest interactive media, advertising and marketing trends. The event unites advertisers, media owners and agencies to harness the power of digital and deliver real marketing ROI. Alongside the exhibition, there is also a conference featuring 100+ international speakers for serious digital innovators and marketers. Mashable readers can take 20% off their conference ticket price. Register online now with the promo code MASH11 at www.ad-techlondon.co.uk.

September 26-29, 2011, Kaua’i, HI: Search and Social Hawaii is an elite conference unlike any other that will provide you with the strategies and complete know how to thrive in this ever changing environment. Each day begins with morning sessions around the hottest topics. With Keynote Bruce Clay of Bruce Clay, Inc. and speakers from corporations such as Real Networks, Network Solutions, AT&T, Microsoft Bing and Logitech. Afternoons are spent in a relaxed environment including planned activities in which individual attendees can get to know speakers and each other on a more personal level continuing the discussion and building long lasting relationships. Register and use the promo code SSWootMash to save 10%.

September 29-October 1, 2011, Atlanta, GA: As pet owners, bloggers, consumer brands and those connected to the industry – including veterinarians – continue to build upon social media & marketing, pet social media education & networking is an extremely important aspect to mobilizing efforts and to address the challenges faced by pet owners. Whether you use YouTube, Twitter, Dog/Catbook or online forums to gather & share information about pets, it’s increasingly important for this community to have a face-to-face forum. Established in 2009, the BarkWorld Conference & Expo is the only pet social media conference covering ALL facets of social media & pet education. Our 2011 annual conference will focus on many topics, including: how to take great photos your pet & use it online, how to build/design a blog & monetize, mobile applications, metrics/SEO, pet food demonstrations, promoting your pet/business via social media and using online forums. Join us for this 2 ½ day conference. You’ll be amazed with the information you’ll walk away with and the new connections you’ll make; your well-trained, leashed, pet is welcome. Register with the promo code MASH2011 to receive a 25% discount.

October 1-6, Boston, MA: At DMA2011, you – and 10,000 marketing peers from around the world – will find everything you need to develop and execute the real-time integrated marketing campaigns that drive measurable bottomline results for your brand. Listen to 300+ marketing experts and gurus talk about social, mobile, mail, search, data, attribution, and more. Plus, you’ll find hundreds of technologies in the Exhibit Hall, the only one of its kind in the world! Register now with the promo code AN504 and SAVE $250!

October 5-6, 2011, Seattle, WA: The first annual Seattle Interactive Conference is a two-day event celebrating the convergence of online technology, creativity, and emerging trends in one of the world’s most innovative cities. SIC brings together entrepreneurs, developers and online business professionals from throughout the U.S. and beyond for a powerful combination of in-depth presentations, networking opportunities, and uniquely Seattle social events. Attendees have the rare opportunity to explore disruptive technologies and business models with visionary thinkers and peers in areas ranging from online commerce and social media to gaming, interactive advertising, entertainment, and much more.

October 9-11, 2011, Scottsdale, AZ: Join 200 of your advertising and PR agency friends at BOLO 2011. This event champions the marketing stalwarts, showing you how to leverage today’s digital marketing trends and technologies for economic advantage. Hear from industry thought leaders such as Scott Stratton, President of UnMarketing, and Jay Baer, author of The Now Revolution. From analytics and targeting to social media and agency management, the topics are cutting-edge and chosen to help your agency stay ahead of the curve in digital. Register now with the promo code MASHABLE for 10% off.

October 17-18, 2011, New York, NY: Pivot is the only conference focused purely on how major brands, agencies, marketers and content creators can succeed by understanding, accessing and influencing the emerging Social Consumer. Hosted by Brian Solis, a noted social marketing consultant to major brands worldwide and author of Engage, the self-help handbook for winning the new marketing game, Pivot delivers two full days of unique content and experiences that illuminate the altered marketing landscape, delivered by transformational thinkers, technologists, entrepreneurs and entertainers. Register with the promo code MASH20 and save 20%!

October 26-27, 2011, Sofia, Bulgaria: The only digital industry event for Central and Eastern Europe and one of industry’s premier events in Europe. At the Webit Expo & Conference, more than 6000 people from the CE Europe’ digital ecosystem gather together. Amazing line up of world renowned international and local speakers in the conference programme and some of the top service and technology providers among the exhibitors. Webit Conference programme includes The Main Stage (inspiring keynotes from the leading digital companies in the world), Webit Dev Camp (where platform owners meet the developers of CEE), eGov Summit (regional government officials and world CEOs in discussion on e-gov, e-health, etc), The Creative Lounge (the world’s creative minds gathered together). Register with the promo code WEBMASH and save 10%!

November 3-5, 2011, Los Angeles, CA: BlogWorld & New Media is the first and only industry-wide conference, tradeshow and media event dedicated to blogging, podcasting, social media, social networking, online video, music, Internet TV and radio. BlogWorld conference attendees enjoy more than 120 cutting-edge educational sessions presented by industry leaders, while New Media Expo provides the only industry-wide new media marketplace for networking, online business and marketing resources. Social Media Business Summit, exclusive to BlogWorld, is the world’s largest social media business conference where business owners, marketing executives and global brands learn strategies, tools and technologies to grow their businesses with social media. Register at blogworldexpo.com with the promo code MASH20 to save 20% off the ticket price!

November 16-18, 2011, Las Vegas, NV: The WOMMA Summit is the only word of mouth marketing conference where research and measurement integrate with online social media and offline conversations. The Summit is a year-end review of BEST and NEXT practices in word or mouth and social media marketing in addition to future trends. WOMMA Summit showcases through leadership from some of the innovative and forward thinking. Go to www.womma.org to learn more about the event and use code WOMMASummitMASH when registering for the event.

The Mashable Weekly Social Media and Marketing Event Guide is proudly supported by Eventbrite, the Web’s Event Marketplace.

Eventbrite is an online events marketplace where tens of thousands of individuals, businesses and organizations of all sizes manage, promote and sell tickets to their events. Make your event a success on Eventbrite.

More About: Social Media Events Guide

For more Social Media coverage:

• Follow Mashable Social Media on Twitter
• Become a Fan on Facebook
• Subscribe to the Social Media channel
• Download our free apps for Android, Mac, iPhone and iPad

Go to Source

Since then, the startup has rebranded as Socialize, grown to a team of sixteen, and has been using the infusion of capital to build a new product to expand the use case and value proposition of AppMakr. Today, the startup is announcing the public launch of a software development kit (SDK) that will allow mobile app developers to add an in-app social networking layer to both new and existing mobile apps. The do-it-yourself SDK is open source and can be implemented in a number of different ways, according to the needs of the developer.

For app users, this means that all Socialize-layered apps will enable social discovery and connection, and all in-app content can be easily shared via Facebook, Twitter, and email — connecting the in-app experience to a user’s social graph.

On the flip side, Socialize’s SDK offers developers turnkey mobile social networking features that allow app developers to track a user’s “likes”, shares, and comments and authenticate over Facebook and Twitter. But the real selling point is Socialize’s “activity pane”, which prioritizes user-generated content, listing what other users of the app have shared, liked, and commented on.

The SDK also allows users to create profiles, a space intended to let an app’s user share personal information and make them feel more connected with the experience of the app and its other users.

Socialize is currently using AppMakr as its sandbox to test the functionality within apps that have already been buit on the platform. So far, 1 million active users are using the 7,811 apps that have been created on iOS, Android, and Windows Phones using AppMakr, 1,461 of which are already running Socialize’s features.

And, in case it hasn’t come across yet, while Socialize is offering a lot of low-hanging social features to app developers and users, the real goal here is to tackle the much-talked about “Interest Graph” — on mobile. While the average iPhone user has 40 apps on their phone and the average Android user has 25, the biggest obstacle for app developers today is engagement. An app may see 1,000 downloads in the first day it’s live, but often those downloads only produce a small number of active users.

It’s a problem of engagement, so Socialize intends to give developers the tools to bring users back to the app by “unleashing the community of users that have been hiding in the app”, says Socialize Co-founder and CEO Daniel R. Odio. Sure, it’s great to have social functionality, and when you download an app, 90 percent of those who download the app may be on Facebook, but how many of them are your friends? Everyone is connecting via social graph, but the process is still largely anonymous — it’s all about connecting users with shared passions and similar interests. Hence, the appeal of the interest graph.

“If a million people download your mobile app, they will never all be friends on Facebook”, Odio said via a recent blog post. “But they all care about your brand, because they downloaded the app. How do they talk to each other today?” The CEO said that, in most cases, they can’t, and this is a huge missed opportunity for brands.

That’s why Socialize built a cloud-based API service — to connect users with shared interests. When a user is in a mobile app, they should be able to share their opinions about the content of that app with everyone else who has also downloaded the app. This can happen through comments, sharing and likes, with every other user who has that app getting the ability to read and respond to that comment, “regardless of their Facebook status”, he said.

The long term goal? If the startup can get enough users running Socialize-powered apps on their phones, it can form a robust profile of a user’s interests, what co-founder and president Sean Shadmand equates to a person’s “mobile DNA”. Obviously, with this level of personal information at hand, Socialize has to provide a thorough security and opt-in functionality, which the team says that it’s made a top priority.

It’s a valuable concept, and it will be interesting to see where Socialize goes from here in terms of in-app engagement — discoverability and recommendations are next up no doubt.

To download Socialize SDK for iOS, check ‘em out at Github here and for Android click here. And for more on how Socialize works, check out the video below:

Go to Source

Since then, the startup has rebranded as Socialize, grown to a team of sixteen, and has been using the infusion of capital to build a new product to expand the use case and value proposition of AppMakr. Today, the startup is announcing the public launch of a software development kit (SDK) that will allow mobile app developers to add an in-app social networking layer to both new and existing mobile apps. The do-it-yourself SDK is open source and can be implemented in a number of different ways, according to the needs of the developer.

For app users, this means that all Socialize-layered apps will enable social discovery and connection, and all in-app content can be easily shared via Facebook, Twitter, and email — connecting the in-app experience to a user’s social graph.

On the flip side, Socialize’s SDK offers developers turnkey mobile social networking features that allow app developers to track a user’s “likes”, shares, and comments and authenticate over Facebook and Twitter. But the real selling point is Socialize’s “activity pane”, which prioritizes user-generated content, listing what other users of the app have shared, liked, and commented on.

The SDK also allows users to create profiles, a space intended to let an app’s user share personal information and make them feel more connected with the experience of the app and its other users.

Socialize is currently using AppMakr as its sandbox to test the functionality within apps that have already been buit on the platform. So far, 1 million active users are using the 7,811 apps that have been created on iOS, Android, and Windows Phones using AppMakr, 1,461 of which are already running Socialize’s features.

And, in case it hasn’t come across yet, while Socialize is offering a lot of low-hanging social features to app developers and users, the real goal here is to tackle the much-talked about “Interest Graph” — on mobile. While the average iPhone user has 40 apps on their phone and the average Android user has 25, the biggest obstacle for app developers today is engagement. An app may see 1,000 downloads in the first day it’s live, but often those downloads only produce a small number of active users.

It’s a problem of engagement, so Socialize intends to give developers the tools to bring users back to the app by “unleashing the community of users that have been hiding in the app”, says Socialize Co-founder and CEO Daniel R. Odio. Sure, it’s great to have social functionality, and when you download an app, 90 percent of those who download the app may be on Facebook, but how many of them are your friends? Everyone is connecting via social graph, but the process is still largely anonymous — it’s all about connecting users with shared passions and similar interests. Hence, the appeal of the interest graph.

“If a million people download your mobile app, they will never all be friends on Facebook”, Odio said via a recent blog post. “But they all care about your brand, because they downloaded the app. How do they talk to each other today?” The CEO said that, in most cases, they can’t, and this is a huge missed opportunity for brands.

That’s why Socialize built a cloud-based API service — to connect users with shared interests. When a user is in a mobile app, they should be able to share their opinions about the content of that app with everyone else who has also downloaded the app. This can happen through comments, sharing and likes, with every other user who has that app getting the ability to read and respond to that comment, “regardless of their Facebook status”, he said.

The long term goal? If the startup can get enough users running Socialize-powered apps on their phones, it can form a robust profile of a user’s interests, what co-founder and president Sean Shadmand equates to a person’s “mobile DNA”. Obviously, with this level of personal information at hand, Socialize has to provide a thorough security and opt-in functionality, which the team says that it’s made a top priority.

It’s a valuable concept, and it will be interesting to see where Socialize goes from here in terms of in-app engagement — discoverability and recommendations are next up no doubt.

To download Socialize SDK for iOS, check ‘em out at Github here and for Android click here. And for more on how Socialize works, check out the video below:

Go to Source

Experian Hitwise takes a stab at estimating the early growth of Google+. For the week that ended July 16, the Google+ domain (plus.google.com) was still tiny with 1.8 million total estimated visits. However, that number was up 283 percent from the previous week, and up 821 percent from the week before. On a daily basis, estimated visits peaked last Thursday on July 14 with 317,000 estimated daily visits. That number settled down to 226,000 by July 18th, the last day of the data set.

Before you jump to any conclusions about Google+ slowing down, note that this data ends the day before Google introduced the new Google+ iPhone app, which is currently the top downloaded free app in iTunes. I know that at least for me the mobile app drove me to use Google+ much more than before, even on the Web. (Hitwise’s data doesn’t take into account mobile apps or the mobile Web anyway). Also, a lot of the usage comes from Google’s top nav bar across its sites, AKA the Sandbar, which Hitwise doesn’t count.

Still, what can we learn from the Hitwise numbers? They suggest that despite the millions of registered users, only a small percentage are actually using the site. The 1.8 million is visits, not unique visitors, so you’d have to divide it t get to an estimate of actual users, which Hitwise does not provide. But it’s pretty safe to assume that it is less than 1 million. A few hundred thousand active users in a few weeks still isn’t bad, but it’s nowhere near the 10 million to 20 million registered user number. Anyone can register for a service. It doesn’t mean they will come back to use it.

Hitwise says Google+ is the No. 42 social networking site in the U.S., and No. 638 overall. The week before it was ranked No. 2,404 among all sites in the U.S., so it is moving up quickly.

The majority of traffic to Google+ (56 percent) is coming from other Google properties, with Google search accounting for a full third (34 percent). Another 21 percent comes from email (those email notifications seem to be working).

Hitwise also sheds some light on the gender breakdown of Google+ users, with 57 percent of them being male for the four weeks ended July 16th. Users are also getting older, with 38 percent being between 25 and 34 years old for the last week, edging out the 18 to 24 year olds who made up the largest user group the week before. The top cities for Google+ users are, in order, LA (MySpace refugees?), New York, and San Francisco.

Go to Source

Sponsor

The company says it has now streamlined the process of those integrations with changes based on developer feedback.

Now, there is no server-side code needed in the application setup process. The new registration process at manage.dev.live.com is extremely lightweight, says Microsoft. The only information needed to create an application is the name and language of the app:

After clicking “I accept,” developers will receive a client ID and client secret. Providing the URL that users are redirected to is now optional, Microsoft adds.

Also new are mobile optimized sign-in and user consent experiences – that is, sign-in and acceptance screens built specifically for mobile devices. A code sample, which shows how to access a user’s SkyDrive photo albums from Windows Phone, is now available.

More code samples showing how to integrate user access to Hotmail, Messenger and SkyDrive data are on their way, too.

You can read more about these changes here on the Windows Live blog.

Discuss

Go to Source

Food trucks have won the hearts of city dwellers by serving gourmet meals from specialty cuisines.

Born of a tanking economy and fueled by the rise of social media, the mobile food industry continues to build an enthusiastic and engaged community. Trucks have translated their virtual followings into physical ones by updating fans on their whereabouts via Twitter and mobile apps.

Now Mashable wants to know: What’s your favorite food truck and why? Do they make to-die-for potstickers? Is it their Twitter updates that make you laugh? Or how they always remember to hold the mayo? Tell us what makes this food truck so amazing, and send us photos and links if you have them.

We’ll feature the most inspired submissions in a follow-up post on Mashable as part of our Social-Savvy Food Truck Series.

How To Enter the Contest:

• Tell us your favorite food truck and why it’s so fabulous in the comments below, including photos of the truck and links to its website.
• Submit your answer by Thursday, July 21, noon ET.
• Please use your real identity in the submission so that we may credit you in the follow-up post.
• Look out for a post with the winning submissions on Thursday, shortly after the contest closes, to see if you’ve won!

In the meantime, here are a few examples from tech entrepreneurs to help spark your imagination. Enjoy!

1. Naveen Selvadurai, Foursquare — New York

“Calexico: Delicious, delicious Mexican food in SoHo for when I’m working at home (rare) or have meetings down there. It’s been a staple in the neighborhood for a while.”

2. Mike Krieger & Kevin Systrom, Instagram — San Francisco

“3-Sum Eats — the BEST deviled eggs in the world, and an out-of-this-world BLT with truffled mayo. I’m only allowed to go once a week (doctor’s orders).” – Kevin

“Chairman Bao has amazing timing — either they’re nearby for lunch (Pork Belly Baked Bun is one of the most delicious things I’ve ever had) or at the Bloodhound bar, so you can wash your Bao buns with Recoils or bourbon. They’re really Twitter-savvy, so you can always figure out where they are. Also, they have a special place in my heart because we went there for lunch right after we launched and told them we were from Instagram, and the lady at the window said, “Oh, the photo app?” When the food trucks know about you is when you’ve made it in SF…” – Mike

3. Soraya Darabi, Foodspotting — New York

“Kelvin Slush is located in the Flatiron district, all too conveniently close to the Foodspotting NYC HQ. The ginger and mint slush is so cooling in the summer time –- particularly the peach variation, which has a lot of zest. It’s an ideal mid-afternoon pick me up.“

4. Tony Haile, ChartBeat — New York

“Wafels and Dinges are the best. I was introduced by @ninakix one late summer night and dream about their waffles. You gotta keep it pure — the liege wafel with some butter and sugar is all it takes.”

5. Dan Leahy, Savored — New York

“Tough question, but I’d have to say Mexicue takes the cake. Big fan of Mexican food and love barbecue, so it’s hard to beat a combination of the two. Plus they’re outside our office in Flatiron a lot and there’s a cool vibe with the truck and the people who work there. I typically mix and match, but my go-to’s are the short rib and the BBQ chick tacos, as well as the pulled pork sliders.”

6. Katia Beauchamp, Birchbox — New York

“Going to have to give a shout-out to the Rickshaw Truck! My favorite food in the world are dumplings — who doesn’t love an efficient and flavor-packed pocket of food and sauce! I mean, it is a wrapper of happiness. Our first “office” for Birchbox was in DUMBO, with the generous and wonderful drop.io team. There was limited access to multiple lunch options, and on one desperate day, we tweeted at the Rickshaw truck, and they came to DUMBO! They recognized a dumpling emergency — our hero!”

7. Seth Priebatsch, SCVNGR — Boston

“Clover [Food Lab] is awesome. They basically create unbelievable fresh food, served up quickly and, bonus points, they use Square. So I can pay with a card and feel kinda like an ‘in-the-know’ hipster here in Boston … even if only for a moment.”

Image courtesy of Donald Rockhead

8. Josh Williams, Gowalla — Austin

“LuLu B’s in Austin. The Lemongrass Pork is pretty much to die for.”

9. Adrian Salamunovic, DNA11 — Ottawa and Los Angeles

“The best food truck ever without question is: Kogi BBQ out of LA. It’s an amazing fusion of Korean and Mexican, and half the fun is using Twitter to find out where they will be so it ties in some social media fun. Kogi is not exactly a secret — it’s super popular — but it’s amazing.”

10. Andrew Cohen, Bitly — New York

“My pick is the Van Leeuwen ice cream truck … try the earl grey ice cream!”

More About: community, Food, Food truck, Social-Savvy Food Truck Series

For more Social Media coverage:

• Follow Mashable Social Media on Twitter
• Become a Fan on Facebook
• Subscribe to the Social Media channel
• Download our free apps for Android, Mac, iPhone and iPad

Go to Source

Location tracking is likely to become a part of all kinds of mobile apps and there’s a world of potential in the technology – from lifelong education to augmented commerce.

Sponsor

After Geoloqi launched, it didn’t seem to move ahead very fast. The iPhone app’s battery management was too costly for me to use it, new layers were very slow to become available and the team behind it was nowhere to be found – as far as I could tell. Today I found out where they had been – they were touring around Silicon Valley trying to raise funding. The group of first-time entrepreneurs announced today that they have succeeded in raising the funds needed to grow the company – but not from Silicon Valley.

Geoloqi has received a $350,000 investment from multiple backers but lead by the Oregon branch of funding organization TIE.

I’ve been cheering for this platform to succeed for some time, because I want to be able to get push notifications on my phone every time I pass near an off-line place that has a Wikipedia entry written about it. Or near a heritage tree that’s been registered by the state. Or near the studio of a ceramicist that belongs to the Oregon Potters Association. Or the production facility of local, organic, slow foods providers. Or near a significant location in my city’s history of art, culture or economics. You get the idea – there’s geolocated data out there about the places I find myself and I want to see it!

Next Steps

Geoloqi co-founder Amber Case told me today that the team, now funded and consisting of five people, is back at work developing the service. She says they plan to announce an Android app, a totally revamped battery management solution, new layers of data and a Graphic User Interface for building new subscribe-able layers a la Google MyMaps, all within the next four months.

Case says the team is also building a means of integration with location based social networks like Foursquare that goes beyond what they offer today. Right now you can set Geoloqi to automatically check you in on Foursquare whenever you enter a particular pre-determined area. The next step will be for Geoloqi to notice that you’ve stopped moving around town and then send a notification prompting you to check in at one of the venues it guesses you’re at.

“At some point, innovation comes from reducing the amount of clicks to get to some exciting goal,” Case says. “With Foursquare you still have to load, wait, sometimes the overhead of clicking in is not worth it. The future of what we’re in is a ubiquitous computing state where we get to focus on being human. The best interface is invisible. The manual-ness of Foursquare really needs to be automated and then it needs to do intelligent things like auto checking in.”

The new Geoloqi API, just launched today, will allow third party developers to white label or integrate into their own apps any of the components of the service, including persistent tracking, location sharing, geofencing and geonotes.

Asked whether Geoloqi considers itself more of a B2C or a B2B company, Case said that time would tell which market showed the most uptake of the app and the API platform.

I’ve got my fingers crossed because I sure would like an API-centric, private, persistent location tracking platform to bloom into an ecosystem and make all my location dreams come true.

Discuss

Go to Source

Location tracking is likely to become a part of all kinds of mobile apps and there’s a world of potential in the technology – from lifelong education to augmented commerce.

Sponsor

After Geoloqi launched, it didn’t seem to move ahead very fast. The iPhone app’s battery management was too costly for me to use it, new layers were very slow to become available and the team behind it was nowhere to be found – as far as I could tell. Today I found out where they had been – they were touring around Silicon Valley trying to raise funding. The group of first-time entrepreneurs announced today that they have succeeded in raising the funds needed to grow the company – but not from Silicon Valley.

Geoloqi has received a $350,000 investment from multiple backers but lead by the Oregon branch of funding organization TIE.

I’ve been cheering for this platform to succeed for some time, because I want to be able to get push notifications on my phone every time I pass near an off-line place that has a Wikipedia entry written about it. Or near a heritage tree that’s been registered by the state. Or near the studio of a ceramicist that belongs to the Oregon Potters Association. Or the production facility of local, organic, slow foods providers. Or near a significant location in my city’s history of art, culture or economics. You get the idea – there’s geolocated data out there about the places I find myself and I want to see it!

Next Steps

Geoloqi co-founder Amber Case told me today that the team, now funded and consisting of five people, is back at work developing the service. She says they plan to announce an Android app, a totally revamped battery management solution, new layers of data and a Graphic User Interface for building new subscribe-able layers a la Google MyMaps, all within the next four months.

Case says the team is also building a means of integration with location based social networks like Foursquare that goes beyond what they offer today. Right now you can set Geoloqi to automatically check you in on Foursquare whenever you enter a particular pre-determined area. The next step will be for Geoloqi to notice that you’ve stopped moving around town and then send a notification prompting you to check in at one of the venues it guesses you’re at.

“At some point, innovation comes from reducing the amount of clicks to get to some exciting goal,” Case says. “With Foursquare you still have to load, wait, sometimes the overhead of clicking in is not worth it. The future of what we’re in is a ubiquitous computing state where we get to focus on being human. The best interface is invisible. The manual-ness of Foursquare really needs to be automated and then it needs to do intelligent things like auto checking in.”

The new Geoloqi API, just launched today, will allow third party developers to white label or integrate into their own apps any of the components of the service, including persistent tracking, location sharing, geofencing and geonotes.

Asked whether Geoloqi considers itself more of a B2C or a B2B company, Case said that time would tell which market showed the most uptake of the app and the API platform.

I’ve got my fingers crossed because I sure would like an API-centric, private, persistent location tracking platform to bloom into an ecosystem and make all my location dreams come true.

Discuss

Go to Source

Location tracking is likely to become a part of all kinds of mobile apps and there’s a world of potential in the technology – from lifelong education to augmented commerce.

Sponsor

After Geoloqi launched, it didn’t seem to move ahead very fast. The iPhone app’s battery management was too costly for me to use it, new layers were very slow to become available and the team behind it was nowhere to be found – as far as I could tell. Today I found out where they had been – they were touring around Silicon Valley trying to raise funding. The group of first-time entrepreneurs announced today that they have succeeded in raising the funds needed to grow the company – but not from Silicon Valley.

Geoloqi has received a $350,000 investment from multiple backers but lead by the Oregon branch of funding organization TIE.

I’ve been cheering for this platform to succeed for some time, because I want to be able to get push notifications on my phone every time I pass near an off-line place that has a Wikipedia entry written about it. Or near a heritage tree that’s been registered by the state. Or near the studio of a ceramicist that belongs to the Oregon Potters Association. Or the production facility of local, organic, slow foods providers. Or near a significant location in my city’s history of art, culture or economics. You get the idea – there’s geolocated data out there about the places I find myself and I want to see it!

Next Steps

Geoloqi co-founder Amber Case told me today that the team, now funded and consisting of five people, is back at work developing the service. She says they plan to announce an Android app, a totally revamped battery management solution, new layers of data and a Graphic User Interface for building new subscribe-able layers a la Google MyMaps, all within the next four months.

Case says the team is also building a means of integration with location based social networks like Foursquare that goes beyond what they offer today. Right now you can set Geoloqi to automatically check you in on Foursquare whenever you enter a particular pre-determined area. The next step will be for Geoloqi to notice that you’ve stopped moving around town and then send a notification prompting you to check in at one of the venues it guesses you’re at.

“At some point, innovation comes from reducing the amount of clicks to get to some exciting goal,” Case says. “With Foursquare you still have to load, wait, sometimes the overhead of clicking in is not worth it. The future of what we’re in is a ubiquitous computing state where we get to focus on being human. The best interface is invisible. The manual-ness of Foursquare really needs to be automated and then it needs to do intelligent things like auto checking in.”

The new Geoloqi API, just launched today, will allow third party developers to white label or integrate into their own apps any of the components of the service, including persistent tracking, location sharing, geofencing and geonotes.

Asked whether Geoloqi considers itself more of a B2C or a B2B company, Case said that time would tell which market showed the most uptake of the app and the API platform.

I’ve got my fingers crossed because I sure would like an API-centric, private, persistent location tracking platform to bloom into an ecosystem and make all my location dreams come true.

Discuss

Go to Source

  

A positive first impression is essential to relationships. People look for trust and integrity, and they expect subsequent encounters to reflect and reinforce their first impression. The same principles apply to brands and their products. Design plays an important role in building lasting relationships with end users and, thus, in supporting the brand’s promise.

Users expect mobile services to be relevant and user-friendly and to perform well. The limitations of the medium, however, impose significant challenges to designing products that meet all of those expectations. While often underestimated, performance is a crucial contributor to a trustworthy mobile user experience. Therefore, it should be considered a key driver in the design process.

In this article, we’ll discuss performance in relation to design and present seven guidelines that can help shape design decisions related to performance while accounting for the needs of end users and businesses. These guidelines are based on the experiences of our teams in designing native mobile apps for a broad product portfolio and on multiple mobile platforms.

Performance For Mobile

People use their mobiles to enhance productivity, comfort and pleasure, everywhere and at anytime: waiting for the bus, walking on the sidewalk, checking which platform their train leaves from. Mobile applications need to focus on a core utility, and they need to be fast and reliable in order to be valuable in those environments.

Paradoxically, we’ve noticed that many mobile design cycles start with requests for great aesthetics first: “It has to look amazing!” Of course, stunning visuals will attract customers by making a great first impression. However, a long-lasting relationship depends on the quality of each encounter, which is also heavily influenced by how the app performs. An application that looks stunning but performs poorly can damage integrity. Users quickly notice software that is slow or likely to break (whether because of downtime, crashes, etc.), and this impairs both usage and brand perception. Users expect an app to be fast and responsive. If it’s not, it will get poor reviews, low ratings and low adoption numbers.

The visuals in the Twitter app are not as rich as Cookmate’s (which are stunning), but reviews for the Twitter app in the App Store are much better.

Performance Supports Brand Differentiation

Every product encounter affects the brand perception. Users are looking for the best tools to enhance their lives. To attract a significant user base in a landscape that is becoming more populated each day, a mobile app has to stand out. It should do something no other app does, or do it better than others do. These benefits reinforce the brand. Because performance is an essential element in the user experience, it directly helps to differentiate the brand. Taking this one step further: making a technically challenging feature perform smoothly will give the product a unique selling point, one that will be difficult to imitate.

A good example is the Flickr iPhone app. Flickr states on its website that it has two main goals: to help people to make their photos available, and to enable new ways to organize photo and video. Guess what? That is exactly what its app does well, thus fulfilling its brand’s promise.

Flickr does a good job of optimizing the key brand encounters.

So, when planning an app, it is worth analyzing the market and trying to answer two questions. (1) What should it do differently from its competitors? (2) What should it do better than its competitors? Then, focus your design and development efforts on the resulting top three goals.

A Key Design Exercise

Crafting products of any kind requires an appreciation of the way they are built. Well-established design and engineering disciplines have recognized this for a long time. A car’s design influences its aerodynamics. A beautiful eye-catching bridge has to cope with wind and with traffic passing over and beneath it. The same applies to interactive mobile services. Design choices affect features, content, interactivity, graphics and, therefore, performance.

We’ve noticed on several product teams that performance is believed to be exclusively the responsibility of developers, and therefore it is considered too late in the design process. But in order to assess feasibility, development needs to be considered during the creative process. Applying the seven guidelines below and considering relevant factors for mobile UI (see the next section) up front will help to incorporate the topic of performance into design discussions. Achieving a high-performance experience is not just a coding exercise. It is a key design exercise.

The Erasmus bridge in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. (Image: Wikipedia)

Relevant Factors In Mobile UI Performance

The perception of performance is based on start-up time, page-loading behavior, smoothness of transitions and animations, errors, and waiting times. The diagram below illustrates these factors: the “app” (with its graphics, interaction, content, features and code) runs on a “mobile” device with certain technical capabilities (CPU, screen size, etc.) and a platform (Android, iOS, etc.). In many cases, the app connects over a “network,” with a set coverage and standard (LTE, 3G, 2G), to a “back end.” The two factors at the top are heavily influenced by the decisions of the design and development team. The bottom two factors are constraints that need to be taken into account.

Factors that influence performance.

Decisions for each factor will affect performance. Any combination, enhancement (such as advanced visuals) or limitation (such as poor network coverage) could increase complexity. For example, content being loaded from the back end in addition to advanced graphics traveling over a slow network are a combination of factors that will reduce performance.

Seven Guidelines

The last years have seen dramatic changes in the mobile platform landscape. New UI paradigms have emerged, screens and processors are becoming as advanced as desktop computers, and input mechanisms have been revolutionized.

Within these shifting constraints, designers should always try to create a look and feel that is cutting-edge, memorable and high-performing. This is not just a matter of reducing image sizes. Decisions made at various levels of the design and the design process will have a significant impact. Let’s look at seven guidelines that have proven to be helpful tools at all design levels to achieve high-performing mobile user experiences.

1. Define UI Brand Signatures

Each user interaction with an app should reflect the story of the brand and should increase recognition, loyalty and satisfaction. Identifying which elements contribute most to the brand’s identity is essential. Examples are features, visuals, wording, fonts and animations. Our design teams work on many different products on different product teams. This could easily lead to several design and implementation variations of similar UI elements. Defining the core building blocks encourages reuse and discourages reinvention and, therefore, optimizes the design and implementation of a set of components.

One approach is to define the UI elements that form the core building blocks of the user interface and, together, to create the interface’s unique character. In the concept phase, identify those elements that do the following:

• Differentiate the app (for example, the photo-viewing feature in the Path app);
• Represent key functions (for example, a check-out feature for a store);
• Set the pattern of the design language (for example, the header in the screenshot below).

Windows Phone 7’s Metro UI is a great example of how fonts, layout and interaction can establish a unique design DNA. (Image: Wikipedia)

The core signature elements need to be the most responsive. They will be seen by users over and over and will be reused in different product features. By focusing the design and implementation on this set of elements, each optimization will pay off multiple times.

2. Focus the Portfolio of Products

Whether a company wants to launch a product quickly, or develop a product portfolio (i.e. multiple products on one platform, the same product on multiple platforms, or both), or if facing limited time and resources, hard choices have to be made. Design and optimization efforts should be targeted at those products in the portfolio that matter most. A design priority matrix helps us understand where design efforts will pay off the most.

Example of a design priority matrix.

Focusing design efforts helps to optimize performance in the most rewarding areas. For example, if most of your anticipated customers are using Android phones, and competitors are also targeting them, dedicating more design effort to creating an elegant and fast Android app would be more valuable than dividing your efforts equally across all platforms.

3. Identify the Core User Stories

Our teams have faced several project kick-offs in which the initial list of requested features was lengthy, unfocused and impossible to build within the requested timeline. When dreaming up what a product should do, companies often lose sight of the fact that customers look for solutions that help them with very particular needs.

For example, one main shopping goal (besides socializing, inspiration, etc.) is to find and purchase a product. Whether in a small city, on Oxford Street in London or on the Internet, it’s about finding and buying what you’re looking for. The experience could be enriched to make shopping more fun, but the core goal — finding and purchasing — should never be lost. The same applies to the design of a shopping app (whether for games, music, vouchers). The user needs to be able to find and purchase quickly, regardless of whatever other functions that enrich the overall experience.

The illustrations below show two designs for a product detail page in a store. The left screen has advanced shopping features, such as gifting, related products and detailed reviews. The right screen is more focused on purchasing. Implementing the right screen will optimize the company’s story, and the team won’t get distracted by designing and implementing side features. Only when the basic core functionality is optimized can enrichment features be added, as long as they do not hinder the core user stories.

Two kinds of purchasing screens.

During the product definition process, the core user stories should be identified in order to focus the design and development efforts.

4. Optimize UI Flows and Elements

Users don’t like to wait. (Google puts “Every millisecond counts” as the second principle of its user experience.) Optimizing individual screens, flows and UI elements will reduce waiting times and keep users from thinking that they’re wasting their time.

A. Speed up perceived performance
The designer cannot control performance all of the time. The network might be slow; the device might be running other tasks in the background; certain operations might require a lot of calculation. If the user at least perceives that they are not losing time, then the app will make a solid impression. Design can help communicate this, even during unexpected delays.

The first step is to identify flows that will likely have delays (fetching back-end data, performing a lot of calculations, etc.). The second step is to guide users through these delays by introducing additional steps that they would perceive as being necessary (showing loading animations, displaying useful tips, etc.).

The following set of images shows possible steps in a content search:

The user here experiences four steps:

1. Hits the search button.
2. Sees a loading animation.
3. Sees the first part of the list, with textual content and placeholder images (which could be stored in the app itself).
4. Sees the actual thumbnail images appear.

The user experiences short steps, rather than jumping directly from step one to four, and so perceives progress rather than delay.

Another example is when an app starts loading up. By first displaying a picture that matches the application’s layout, the user gets the impression that the app is loading more quickly. The screenshot below illustrates this; however, the perceived performance could be sped up even more by adding a simple progress notification in the blank space of the first screen. This would avoid the impression that something is waiting to be loaded.

The Facebook app for the iPhone loading up.

B. Optimize individual UI elements
Every UI element affects performance. And because every optimization contributes to overall performance, all UI elements should be considered. Key aspects to look at are:

• Elements on screen
  The number and type of UI elements on the screen will affect the performance of that screen. For example, media items (audio, video, maps) will affect performance more than simple elements (static images, etc.).
• Element characteristics
  The characteristics of an element, such as its resolution or image depth, affects drawing time. For example, on Android, each drawable resource (JPG, PNG) is decoded to bitmap format, so each optimized image will result in fewer kilobytes. Could you reduce the color depth? Or decrease the resolution?
• Drawing technique
  The way a UI element is drawn by the app affects screen-loading time. For instance, is the entire background of a screen being drawn, even when a big opaque image is laid on top of it? Could a background be broken down into small tiles in order to reduce the size that needs to be uploaded?

5. Define UI Scaling Rules

Building the most appealing design is like navigating a terrain with many hurdles. It is a continual balancing act between functionality, aesthetics, usability and performance. Some platforms demand more UI compromises than others. No matter what the platform’s constraints, the brand’s key signatures should remain.

A UI scaling toolkit could help by communicating the relative importance of UI elements. Some elements are critical and contribute strongly to the brand’s identity, while removing others will have less of an impact. Our team has established the following categories:

• Essentials
  Essentials are the brand’s core UI signatures (guideline 1). For example, the application’s header.
• Alternatives
  Alternatives are less optimal, but good for high-end solutions that put a low burden on performance. An example is replacing transparent elements with opaque ones.
• Options
  These are elements that enhance the experience but could be removed to maintain performance. For example, reducing a list of search results on a page from 25 items to 10.

1. Essentials (the header).
2. Alternatives (opaque instead of transparent).
3. Options (reducing list length).

6. Use a Performance Dashboard

Clear communication among the team is critical to delivering a great product. We’ve encountered several situations where expectations of how a product should perform differed between marketers, designers and developers. Because performance is affected by the requirements and constraints of all of these disciplines, performance expectations need to be agreed on. As a solution, we introduced performance dashboards. These help to measure, monitor and set goals for the product’s current state. Dashboards effectively communicate the product’s state and the team’s expectations and areas of focus. The dashboard we’ve used accounts for the following elements:

• Core user stories
  Ensures that the dashboard communicates what the user experiences.
• Benchmark
  Compares the app to a key competitor’s.
• Current measurement
  Shows the performance of the product’s current implementation.
• Goal
  Sets the performance goal for the app.
• Status
  Indicates the current status of the app against the goal.

Example of a performance dashboard. (Numbers in seconds. For a good 3G connection.)

Several tools can help you measure performance. You can do it subjectively, by manually recording the time for certain tasks, or objectively, with tools such as TraceView for the Android SDK (if you’re developing a native app).

7. Champion Dedicated UI Engineering Skills

Design has always gone hand in hand with technology. Being able to code high-performance user experiences is a specialist’s skill. It requires strong knowledge of front-end coding and a profound understanding of the design’s purpose.

The implementation of layout, graphics, animation and so on will have performance implications. Of the many things that need to be considered, here are two:

• Smart loading
  Smart-loading mechanisms, such as lazy loading, first load visible content and then move on to content below the fold. This technique reduces the user’s waiting time and thus makes for a smoother experience.
• Background loading
  This is another well-known example. Performance depends on whether the background is one large image, an amalgamation of small tiles (say, to create a texture) or a pure algorithm. The best solution depends on the situation.

In situations where responsibilities are split between the marketing, design and development teams, we’ve noticed that UI performance tends to fall between the cracks. Each team has its own goals, and so certain shared responsibilities, such as UI performance, lose attention. We’ve addressed this by including front-end coding specialists on the design team. This encourages focus on optimal UI implementation and performance, and it achieves a more advanced user experience.

Conclusion

We’ve gone over seven guidelines that address performance relative to different aspects of mobile app design. Design choices affect performance, and so performance should be considered a key factor in the design process. Unfortunately, it tends to be looked at too late in the process, which ends up impairing the user experience significantly.

We have successfully introduced these guidelines into several product streams, which has in turn improved the performance of those products and fostered awareness of the issue among the teams. This has helped to shift the initial request from “It has to look amazing” to “It has to look, feel and work amazing!”

Credits

A big thank you goes to my colleagues Daniela Aramu, Mark Howell and Mirja Leinss, who provided invaluable feedback on this article!

(al)

© Ivo Weevers for Smashing Magazine, 2011.

Go to Source

This week we take a look at how the Veterans Administration is planning to roll out iPads, the Khan Academy’s open source iPad app and more.

Sponsor

Veterans Administration Set to Approve Use of iPads

We’ve seen a few instances of federal agencies – notably the NSA – using iPads. And health care has always been cited as a good vertical for iPads. So we’re not surprised to read that the the Veterans Administration is set to approve the use of iPads. The VA will extend its device policy to include iPhones and Android devices as well.

Most Important Elements of a Mobile Enterprise Strategy

This week we took a look at a Forrester report on enterprise mobility strategies. Forrester laid out the eight most important types of enterprise collaboration software, and suggested that the future is in native mobile apps that connect to cloud services.

Box Contest

Box announced an enterprise mobile development contest called Box Mobile Dev Challenge. The prizes include up to $25,000 in cash and the chance to pitch your idea to the venture capital firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson. I will be one of the judges.

Khan Academy iPad App Open-Sourced

Though it’s not really a business app, I thought this was worth noting here: the Khan Academy has open-sourced its iPad app. The app isn’t available from the iTunes store yet, but the organization has made its jQuery-based source code available on GitHub. The Khan Academy offers free video lectures on a variety of academic topics.

Discuss

Go to Source

If mobile apps are all the rage, then mobile in-app ads are causing rage.

In one recent example, the popular franchise Angry Birds saw in-app ads added to its HD version, and fans and players were in an uproar over the change.

But like them or not, mobile marketers are turning more attention toward in-app advertising. Right now, in-app ads account for around 5% of mobile ad spending, and that number is only expected to rise over the next few years.

One of the reasons in-app ads are taking off is their effectiveness. In spite of the fact that the majority of 18-34-year-olds actively dislike mobile in-app ads, the majority will also be able to recall those ads at a higher rate than the ads they see while browsing the mobile web.

SEE ALSO: 5 Tips for Better Advertising in Mobile Apps

And for app makers, the ads are a good bet, too. After all, Angry Birds publisher Rovio says that by the end of 2011, it’ll be making $1 million each month from in-app ads on the Android platform alone.

While we’re hoping to see better in-app ads as the ecosystem becomes more sophisticated, it’s interesting to monitor in-app ads in today’s relatively nascent state.

Click to see larger image.

Top image courtesy of iStockphoto, DougSchneiderPhoto

More About: advertising, MARKETING, Mobile 2.0

For more Mobile coverage:

• Follow Mashable Mobile on Twitter
• Become a Fan on Facebook
• Subscribe to the Mobile channel
• Download our free apps for Android, Mac, iPhone and iPad

Go to Source

If mobile apps are all the rage, then mobile in-app ads are causing rage.

In one recent example, the popular franchise Angry Birds saw in-app ads added to its HD version, and fans and players were in an uproar over the change.

But like them or not, mobile marketers are turning more attention toward in-app advertising. Right now, in-app ads account for around 5% of mobile ad spending, and that number is only expected to rise over the next few years.

One of the reasons in-app ads are taking off is their effectiveness. In spite of the fact that the majority of 18-34-year-olds actively dislike mobile in-app ads, the majority will also be able to recall those ads at a higher rate than the ads they see while browsing the mobile web.

SEE ALSO: 5 Tips for Better Advertising in Mobile Apps

And for app makers, the ads are a good bet, too. After all, Angry Birds publisher Rovio says that by the end of 2011, it’ll be making $1 million each month from in-app ads on the Android platform alone.

While we’re hoping to see better in-app ads as the ecosystem becomes more sophisticated, it’s interesting to monitor in-app ads in today’s relatively nascent state.

Click to see larger image.

Top image courtesy of iStockphoto, DougSchneiderPhoto

More About: advertising, MARKETING, Mobile 2.0

For more Mobile coverage:

• Follow Mashable Mobile on Twitter
• Become a Fan on Facebook
• Subscribe to the Mobile channel
• Download our free apps for Android, Mac, iPhone and iPad

Go to Source

Read more

Learn more about StorageRoomApp.com in Dataopedia.com

Find out how much StorageRoomApp.com is worth with Stimator.com

Have a business question? Ask Startups.com

Go to Source

(more…)

Connect with the TFTS Team? New TFTS Facebook Page now Active – Stop by, Get Involved

TFTS – Bringing you the very lastest technology and gadget news 24/7

Original Post: Spotify Is Officially Available In The US [The Long Wait Is Over, Spotify Comes Available For US Users Complete With Web Streaming, iOS & Android Mobile Apps]

View lastest in: Audio,Visual, Mobile/Cell Phones, Net Resources | No comments so far | Add to del.icio.us

© 2011 TFTS – Technology, Gadgets & Curiosities – Unauthorised duplication and/or distribution of this content is strictly forbidden.

Go to Source

(more…)

Connect with the TFTS Team? New TFTS Facebook Page now Active – Stop by, Get Involved

TFTS – Bringing you the very lastest technology and gadget news 24/7

Original Post: Spotify Is Officially Available In The US [The Long Wait Is Over, Spotify Comes Available For US Users Complete With Web Streaming, iOS & Android Mobile Apps]

View lastest in: Audio,Visual, Mobile/Cell Phones, Net Resources | No comments so far | Add to del.icio.us

© 2011 TFTS – Technology, Gadgets & Curiosities – Unauthorised duplication and/or distribution of this content is strictly forbidden.

Go to Source

Read more

Learn more about App.net in Dataopedia.com

Find out how much App.net is worth with Stimator.com

Have a business question? Ask Startups.com

Go to Source

And now, with albeit significantly less fanfare, Apica, the load-testing and performance-monitoring solution for cloud and mobile apps, announced that it has closed a $2 million series B round. Less glamorous than rock music, but fundmental to web and mobile operating procedures, to be sure.

The round was led by Swedish venture firm Industrifonden, with participation from ALMI Invest and existing investor, KTH Chalmers Capital. The startup raised $1.3 million back in August of 2010, and has raised approximately $4.4 million to date.

Each of the participating investors are Swedish firms that are duly excited about Apica’s expansion into the U.S. market, as the startup will use the round to finish its move into its new U.S. headquarters in Palo Alto. That being said, Apica will have some competition from Silicon Valley-based SOASTA, which has raised $20.7 million for its cloud-based testing solutions, as well as from Keynote Systems, a veteran of the mobile and web apps performance monitoring space.

But, the Swedish company has had some success in Europe, already having attracted 250 customers including eBay Sweden, Thomas Cook EU, and PricewaterhouseCoopers. Apica is also, according to its team, in the midst of closing a deal with Newsday and recently forged strategic partnerships with Rackspace and RightScale.

The startup also hopes that its newly unveiled product, Apica Watch, a cloud service that uses Selenium (a portable software testing framework for web apps), to enable users to easily measure and analyze web pages, including stylesheet, images, videos and third party calls, will make it appealing to businesses looking to optimize and test their cloud apps pre-deployment.

While businesses understand the importance of web and cloud performance testing, it can be difficult for small businesses to navigate through the specifics of cloud functionality, avoiding redundancy and ensuring performance scalability, and to verify that your web app is taking full advantage of the nuances of load balancing, server caching, and all that good stuff.

Apica brings the ability to load test a company’s system to mimic high traffic and system overloading from anywhere in the world, without having to run these tests in their own infrastructure. According to Apica CEO Sven Hammar, Apica’s cloud performance testing solutions have run some of the largest load tests conducted on cloud infrastructure, which the startup makes easily available to every size business and enterprise.

For more, visit Apica at home.

Go to Source

Sponsor

The gateway gets the job done by converting Facebook’s social graph from a file-based system into a relational database structure. This allows CRM and other types of enterprise applications to work with Facebook data, according to Mark LaRow, Senior Vice President, Products, at Microstrategy.

Enterprise applications can also send information back out to Facebook. For example, a phone company could offer a mobile app that synchronizes with Facebook data to keep the contact information for all a user’s Facebook friends up-to-date.

Of course, the Gateway doesn’t have carte blanche access to all of Facebook: It can be used only to access Facebook data for those existing customers who are using your app and who allow you to view their page.

Other features revolve around optimizing performance and ensuring availability. For example, algorithms combine overlapping queries to minimize the impact on the Facebook network. Social data is cached to ensure that it’s available even if Facebook is not. And a self-monitoring feature helps prevent the gateway from exceeding Facebook’s query limits and restricts queries if it nears the limit.

Microstrategy also plans to be “tapping into Google fairly shortly”–presumably via another gateway, according to LaRow. Amazon, too, is likely to be on Microstrategy’s radar.

Microstrategy also announced three other products at its user conference in Monte Carlo this week:
• The MicroStrategy Cloud, a service for running business intelligence (BI), mobile and social applications that can be deployed faster than on-premises BI approaches–within 48 hours according to the company’s press release
• Transaction Services, for building mobile apps that connect to back end transactional systems and databases.
• Alerts for iPhone, a free app that organizes your Facebook newsfeeds by category and which will, according to Microstrategy, evolve into a tool for personalized marketing campaigns.

Pricing for these products was not available, despite repeated inquiries.

However, one attendee at the conference said that their pricing is typically based on which of three user tiers you fall into combined with a fixed price per month for each user. He also advised customers to “haggle with them and try to get the price down 50%.” Maybe customers can use Facebook to share negotiating tips, or perhaps the company can do better at publishing its prices in the future.

Discuss

Go to Source

Twitter for Android just got an important update: It now features push notifications and, better still, support for multiple accounts.

So if you use more than one Twitter handle, now you can toggle between accounts on your Android app without having to log out and log in again.

This is a feature the Twitter iPhone app has had since before it was acquired by Twitter, back when it was still just Tweetie. But support for multiple accounts is a feature that had yet to appear on the Twitter.com web app — much to the chagrin of power users and Twitter marketers — and much to the relief of third-party clients that have based their businesses on multi-account support features.

Push notifications, on the other hand, might seem redundant given the fact that Twitter notifications also appear in the Android notifications bar. (For iPhone users, push notifications have been around since last fall.) Still, if you’re the kind of Twitter fanatic who wants — nay, needs to be interrupted every time to get a new @reply, you’ll appreciate the new feature.

You can download the new Twitter for Android app now from the Android Market. As always, it’s free of charge.

More About: android, mobile apps, twitter

For more Mobile coverage:

• Follow Mashable Mobile on Twitter
• Become a Fan on Facebook
• Subscribe to the Mobile channel
• Download our free apps for Android, Mac, iPhone and iPad

Go to Source

Pinger has managed to build a huge userbase in the United States by offering free text messaging without any major catches: users are given their own, real phone numbers, and they can send and receive text messages with any phone. And, most important — the app works on the iPod touch, which doesn’t otherwise have SMS functionality built-in. Pinger also launched a free voice calling service in December but lets users make free phone calls and earn minutes by completing basic offers. Pinger makes money off of these offers and by running ads in its mobile apps— to the tune of billions of impressions a month.

But the SMS situation in Europe makes international expansion a difficult affair. Cofounder Greg Woock explains that in the US, when a text message is exchanged both the sender and recipient ‘burn’ one of their texts — in other words, they’re both paying for it. Things are different in Europe, where only the sender pays for the text. The recipient pays nothing, but the carrier of the recipient does pay the sender’s carrier a few Euro cents. Yes, it’s a little confusing.

Woock says that this model doesn’t normally lend itself well to a free texting model, because Pinger could wind up owing carriers boatloads of cash if its users are receiving more texts than they’re sending. We’re talking many many millions of dollars owed if it could build a userbase as sizable as the one they have in the US.

But Pinger came up with as solution: it’s going to use game mechanics to ensure that users are sending and receiving the same number of text messages. That way Pinger will be paying European carriers the same amount the carriers are paying Pinger. The net result: Pinger can run a texting service that’s free of charge, and it can place ads on top of it through its mobile applications, the same way it has in the US. In theory Pinger could actually use the game mechanics to ensure users are sending more texts then they’re receiving, which would wind up with Pinger actually making money from the carriers.

The game mechanics themselves sound pretty straightforward: users are presented with a meter that’s at 100% when you’ve sent and received an equal number of text messages. If you send a message, that percentage drops a bit. Receive one, and it goes up. Pretty easy.

But what happens when you’ve dropped to 40% and are worried about being able to send more texts? The trick, Woock explains, is to tap into your social graph (he says the company consulted with Zygna for advice on this front). Textfree will prompt users to post updates to their Facebook News Feed inviting their friends to send them text messages, which in turn will boost their meter. I’d imagine this would be a little weird to see initially (“hey guys, please send me text messages!”) but no more so than a Zynga game that prompts you to ask your friend for helping watering some virtual plants.

I asked Woock how the European carriers felt about the model. He says that all of the carriers they’ve spoken too have been very supportive and see an opportunity for incremental revenue. And he adds that Pinger has applied for patents on the meter system that drives the equal flow of texting.

Pinger’s mobile app will be launching in a small test in Germany in the coming weeks (they want to make sure the model works). Assuming that goes well, it will be expanding throughout Europe in the near future.

Go to Source

Pinger has managed to build a huge userbase in the United States by offering free text messaging without any major catches: users are given their own, real phone numbers, and they can send and receive text messages with any phone. And, most important — the app works on the iPod touch, which doesn’t otherwise have SMS functionality built-in. Pinger also launched a free voice calling service in December but lets users make free phone calls and earn minutes by completing basic offers. Pinger makes money off of these offers and by running ads in its mobile apps— to the tune of billions of impressions a month.

But the SMS situation in Europe makes international expansion a difficult affair. Cofounder Greg Woock explains that in the US, when a text message is exchanged both the sender and recipient ‘burn’ one of their texts — in other words, they’re both paying for it. Things are different in Europe, where only the sender pays for the text. The recipient pays nothing, but the carrier of the recipient does pay the sender’s carrier a few Euro cents. Yes, it’s a little confusing.

Woock says that this model doesn’t normally lend itself well to a free texting model, because Pinger could wind up owing carriers boatloads of cash if its users are receiving more texts than they’re sending. We’re talking many many millions of dollars owed if it could build a userbase as sizable as the one they have in the US.

But Pinger came up with as solution: it’s going to use game mechanics to ensure that users are sending and receiving the same number of text messages. That way Pinger will be paying European carriers the same amount the carriers are paying Pinger. The net result: Pinger can run a texting service that’s free of charge, and it can place ads on top of it through its mobile applications, the same way it has in the US. In theory Pinger could actually use the game mechanics to ensure users are sending more texts then they’re receiving, which would wind up with Pinger actually making money from the carriers.

The game mechanics themselves sound pretty straightforward: users are presented with a meter that’s at 100% when you’ve sent and received an equal number of text messages. If you send a message, that percentage drops a bit. Receive one, and it goes up. Pretty easy.

But what happens when you’ve dropped to 40% and are worried about being able to send more texts? The trick, Woock explains, is to tap into your social graph (he says the company consulted with Zygna for advice on this front). Textfree will prompt users to post updates to their Facebook News Feed inviting their friends to send them text messages, which in turn will boost their meter. I’d imagine this would be a little weird to see initially (“hey guys, please send me text messages!”) but no more so than a Zynga game that prompts you to ask your friend for helping watering some virtual plants.

I asked Woock how the European carriers felt about the model. He says that all of the carriers they’ve spoken too have been very supportive and see an opportunity for incremental revenue. And he adds that Pinger has applied for patents on the meter system that drives the equal flow of texting.

Pinger’s mobile app will be launching in a small test in Germany in the coming weeks (they want to make sure the model works). Assuming that goes well, it will be expanding throughout Europe in the near future.

Go to Source

Sponsor

According to Kessin, some of the core skills for building HTML5 applications are:

• Functional programming
• Understanding of asynchronous operations

He notes that although you can get by without knowing a lot about JavaScript, he recommends really getting to know the language and using JSHint to clean-up your code. There’s also JSLint, a more liberal alternative to JSHint (see our coverage). Kessin also suggests using JQuery instead of directly accessing the DOM.

If you want to get started right away, we covered resources for learning HTML5 here, for learning JavaScript here and for learning JQuery here.

Of these resources, pay particular attention to Eloquent JavaScript, which covers functional programming.

Discuss

Go to Source

Sponsor

According to Kessin, some of the core skills for building HTML5 applications are:

• Functional programming
• Understanding of asynchronous operations

He notes that although you can get by without knowing a lot about JavaScript, he recommends really getting to know the language and using JSHint to clean-up your code. There’s also JSLint, a more liberal alternative to JSHint (see our coverage). Kessin also suggests using JQuery instead of directly accessing the DOM.

If you want to get started right away, we covered resources for learning HTML5 here, for learning JavaScript here and for learning JQuery here.

Of these resources, pay particular attention to Eloquent JavaScript, which covers functional programming.

Discuss

Go to Source

The past two years, New York City has hosted contests for mobile apps that use city data. Now New York State’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) is launching a similar contest of its own.

A number of cities, including Washington, D.C., and San Francisco, have made their data publicly available. It makes sense: Apps that improve parking situations or make public transportation easier to navigate benefit the city without sucking its resources.

But New York City, and now New York State, are some of the first governments to add a contest to the process in order to incentivize developers to make such apps.

To be eligible for “MTA App Quest” and its $15,000 in cash prizes, the biggest requirement is that apps need to use at least one of the MTA’s data sets.

The MTA first posted databases online for developer use in January 2010, and 40 or so apps have been created using the data. But many of these, like NYC Way [iTunes link], were entries in New York City’s BigApps contest, which borrowed several MTA databases.

For its own contest, the MTA has released six new or updated data sets, including one that shows where platforms, elevators, turnstiles and station agent booths are located inside subway stations.

Beyond that, the two contests are pretty similar, despite one being run by the city and the other by the state. The MTA has partnered with the same contest platform that NYC did, ChallengePost.

In this case, ChallengePost is putting up the prize money for the contest. Usually, it collects money to run crowdsourcing contests for clients like the World Bank and Michelle Obama. ChallengePost CEO Brandon Kessler says that NYC was the first city to use a contest on his platform for an open data app contest.

Now that New York State has also caught on to the publicity method, we wouldn’t be surprised if it’s not the last.

More About: BigApps, MTA, new york, public transportation

For more Mobile coverage:

• Follow Mashable Mobile on Twitter
• Become a Fan on Facebook
• Subscribe to the Mobile channel
• Download our free apps for Android, Mac, iPhone and iPad

Go to Source

As we’ve written in the past, Kontagent’s real-time platform gives Facebook app developers, game studios and publishers detailed data of demographics based on geographic location, age groups, gender, user engagement times, social event interaction and other variables. The new version allows developers to track and optimize advertising efforts, user virality, in-app mechanics, virtual goods, currency monetization, and more.

Called kSuite, Kontagent’s data analysis platform can now identify usage patterns on social and mobile apps in real time. The platform measures data by event and custom inputs, and examines how virality of an application or website.

Kontagent has been able to scale its analytics platform on Facebook, so it should be interesting to see how the startup performs outside of the social network. Kontagent tracks over 100 million monthly active users and over 15 billion messages per month on Facebook. Its monthly active user base has increased by over 300% in the past 12 months and counts a number of well known game developers as clients, including EA, Sony, Ubisoft, Take2, THQ, Konami, Perfect World, Gaia and Tencent.

Go to Source

As we’ve written in the past, Kontagent’s real-time platform gives Facebook app developers, game studios and publishers detailed data of demographics based on geographic location, age groups, gender, user engagement times, social event interaction and other variables. The new version allows developers to track and optimize advertising efforts, user virality, in-app mechanics, virtual goods, currency monetization, and more.

Called kSuite, Kontagent’s data analysis platform can now identify usage patterns on social and mobile apps in real time. The platform measures data by event and custom inputs, and examines how virality of an application or website.

Kontagent has been able to scale its analytics platform on Facebook, so it should be interesting to see how the startup performs outside of the social network. Kontagent tracks over 100 million monthly active users and over 15 billion messages per month on Facebook. Its monthly active user base has increased by over 300% in the past 12 months and counts a number of well known game developers as clients, including EA, Sony, Ubisoft, Take2, THQ, Konami, Perfect World, Gaia and Tencent.

Go to Source

Web discovery tool StumbleUpon launched a revamped iPad app on Tuesday features the service’s first “social bar.”

The new bar creates a section on each “Stumbled” page that highlights a user who also liked the page. If someone who you follow on StumbleUpon liked the page, his or her avatar might show up there. If not, now might be the point when StumbleUpon introduces you to someone new who you’d like to follow. You can click through to his or her StumbleUpon profile to see whether this is the case.

“We do a good job of connecting people algorithmically who might never meet in the real world,” says StumbleUpon VP of Business Development Marc Leibowitz. But, he says, the company has received a lot of feedback from users who also want to see what their friends are liking. The new feature is a response to that feedback, and one that could expand to include more than one featured “liker” or extend to other StumbleUpon platforms.

Though the only new functionality, the social bar is just one small tweak in a completely revamped user interface for the app. Photo thumbnails for your interests and the people who you are following have replaced a “recommended for you” list. Quick links to photos, videos and news have replaced a long sidebar of categories. And you can now swipe to stumble instead of hitting the button, which is not an easy feat considering the data involved in the personal recommendation process.

It makes sense that StumbleUpon is investing in its mobile apps — like most web companies, mobile is its fastest growing area.

The company launched its first iPad App, which was also its first mobile product, back in April 2010. Shortly later, it launched iPhone and Android apps.

Today stumbles on the three platforms combined are growing about 35% month over month and account for about 10% of the stumbles that StumbleUpon’s more than 15 million users make every month.

Leibowitz hints that the company might also be looking for mobile stumblers on new platforms in the future.

“It’s not inconceivable that we would do this with other tablet devices,” he says.

Graphic courtesy StumbleUpon

More About: App, ipad, social bar, stumbleupon

For more Social Media coverage:

• Follow Mashable Social Media on Twitter
• Become a Fan on Facebook
• Subscribe to the Social Media channel
• Download our free apps for Android, Mac, iPhone and iPad

Go to Source

Web discovery tool StumbleUpon launched a revamped iPad app on Tuesday features the service’s first “social bar.”

The new bar creates a section on each “Stumbled” page that highlights a user who also liked the page. If someone who you follow on StumbleUpon liked the page, his or her avatar might show up there. If not, now might be the point when StumbleUpon introduces you to someone new who you’d like to follow. You can click through to his or her StumbleUpon profile to see whether this is the case.

“We do a good job of connecting people algorithmically who might never meet in the real world,” says StumbleUpon VP of Business Development Marc Leibowitz. But, he says, the company has received a lot of feedback from users who also want to see what their friends are liking. The new feature is a response to that feedback, and one that could expand to include more than one featured “liker” or extend to other StumbleUpon platforms.

Though the only new functionality, the social bar is just one small tweak in a completely revamped user interface for the app. Photo thumbnails for your interests and the people who you are following have replaced a “recommended for you” list. Quick links to photos, videos and news have replaced a long sidebar of categories. And you can now swipe to stumble instead of hitting the button, which is not an easy feat considering the data involved in the personal recommendation process.

It makes sense that StumbleUpon is investing in its mobile apps — like most web companies, mobile is its fastest growing area.

The company launched its first iPad App, which was also its first mobile product, back in April 2010. Shortly later, it launched iPhone and Android apps.

Today stumbles on the three platforms combined are growing about 35% month over month and account for about 10% of the stumbles that StumbleUpon’s more than 15 million users make every month.

Leibowitz hints that the company might also be looking for mobile stumblers on new platforms in the future.

“It’s not inconceivable that we would do this with other tablet devices,” he says.

Graphic courtesy StumbleUpon

More About: App, ipad, social bar, stumbleupon

For more Social Media coverage:

• Follow Mashable Social Media on Twitter
• Become a Fan on Facebook
• Subscribe to the Social Media channel
• Download our free apps for Android, Mac, iPhone and iPad

Go to Source

Location-based service Foursquare is adding a new marketing component to its popular mobile apps.

Soon, the startup will be incorporating daily deals from partners such as Groupon, LivingSocial, Gilt Groupe and others into its product.

In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Foursquare co-founder and CEO Dennis Crowley stated the company would be passing on daily coupons from these marketing partners to the service’s users — and taking a cut of the revenue along the way.

“We are trying to see if our targeting works and how users will react,” Crowley told the Journal.

Currently, Foursquare partners directly with around half a million merchants, many of them small and medium-sized businesses, who use the service as a marketing medium. Through these accounts, merchants are able to deliver specials, including discounts and freebies, to users who check in at their locations.

However, merchants don’t pay for the privilege, and Foursquare makes no money from these merchant-initiated specials.

Foursquare recently passed the 10 million user milestone. The startup also raised a $50 million Series C just last month.

More About: daily deals, foursquare, groupon

For more Business & Marketing coverage:

• Follow Mashable Business & Marketing on Twitter
• Become a Fan on Facebook
• Subscribe to the Business & Marketing channel
• Download our free apps for Android, Mac, iPhone and iPad

Go to Source

Location-based service Foursquare is adding a new marketing component to its popular mobile apps.

Soon, the startup will be incorporating daily deals from partners such as Groupon, LivingSocial, Gilt Groupe and others into its product.

In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Foursquare co-founder and CEO Dennis Crowley stated the company would be passing on daily coupons from these marketing partners to the service’s users — and taking a cut of the revenue along the way.

“We are trying to see if our targeting works and how users will react,” Crowley told the Journal.

Currently, Foursquare partners directly with around half a million merchants, many of them small and medium-sized businesses, who use the service as a marketing medium. Through these accounts, merchants are able to deliver specials, including discounts and freebies, to users who check in at their locations.

However, merchants don’t pay for the privilege, and Foursquare makes no money from these merchant-initiated specials.

Foursquare recently passed the 10 million user milestone. The startup also raised a $50 million Series C just last month.

More About: daily deals, foursquare, groupon

For more Business & Marketing coverage:

• Follow Mashable Business & Marketing on Twitter
• Become a Fan on Facebook
• Subscribe to the Business & Marketing channel
• Download our free apps for Android, Mac, iPhone and iPad

Go to Source

StumbleUpon has just launched an entirely redesigned and rebuilt iPad app to finally bring the experience iPad users deserve. “I feel like stumbling is perfect for the iPad — for sitting on the couch. It never took off like we wanted,” founder Garrett Camp says, talking about the first iteration of their app for the iPad (which was built by a contractor). “We decided we were going to re-do it from the ground up. We re-did the interface. It’s much better than before. It’s almost like a black version of Flipboard,” he says.

And that’s a good comparison. Flipboard is often looked at as the pinnacle of media consumption design for the iPad sor far. But it’s mainly concerned with text. StumbleUpon’s app takes on both web pages and things like pictures, and videos, which have become vital parts of the stumbling experience — particularly on mobile devices.

Camp notes that mobile usage of StumbleUpon is soaring. On the iPhone and Android devices, the service is growing 35 percent month to month, he says (compared with 20 percent overall). Since the mobile apps launched last August, a full 10 percent of stumblers now visit that way, he notes. With this new iPad experience, Camp believes they can take tablet usage which is now hovering around 1 percent and at least triple it. Again, it’s a form factor that just seems natural for the service.

The iPad experience now has things like swipe-to-stumble, the ability to flick through content. And the app pre-loads content, meaning they look to see what you’re next stumble will be and they pre-load it so you can flick and see the new content instantly.

But the coolest addition in Camp’s view is the Social Bar. It’s a new gray bar that resides at the top of the app that shows the user who submitted the page you’re on and links to their profile. “Right now, you can’t easily access who liked the page. You might not know who it came from,” Camp says of the mobile apps. They’ve updated the iPad, iPhone, and Android apps to now all have this. “It’s a much more social kind of experience,” he says, noting that in the future, they’ll extend it to including friends’ comments and tweets, etc.

“I think we’ll now fit into other slots of people’s free time,” Camp says of the new iPad experience. “It’s just like the iPhone experience that people love, but it’s so much better on the big screen,” he says.

You can find the new StumbleUpon app for iPad in the App Store here.

Go to Source

Sponsor

You enter your Sharepoint server URL or Dropbox authentication details, and you can browse your directories and view your documents right on your iPhone. You can also view your contacts and calendars, although Moprise has mimicked the iPhone UI so closely that you might be confused that you are looking at your phone’s own contacts and calendar listings.

Getting started with Coaxion is a bit perplexing, as you are initially presented with a conversation dialog box. You have to start a conversation with someone to start sharing something, before you are allowed access to any of your content. Once you start a conversation, you can add photos from your phone, documents from your Sharepoint or Dropbox repositories, and include text messages. All of this content is preserved in a threaded context so you can keep track of things easily. And, when you are done sharing a conversation with someone, all the data is deleted from the phone’s memory. That is a nice touch. If you have an AT&T version of the iPhone, you can be talking and sharing information concurrently, which is a great way to work when you are on the go.

Moprise has a separate free app just for browsing your Sharepoint content that has been available for some time. Coaxion isn’t the first iOS Sharepoint app: there are at least a dozen, and several free ones on the iTunes AppStore, including iShare and OData. And Coaxion won’t be free for long, expect a $10 per month subscription fee when they launch a new version that will be iPad native at the end of the summer.

There is more info on how to use Coaxion on WikiHow here.

Discuss

Go to Source

Sponsor

You enter your Sharepoint server URL or Dropbox authentication details, and you can browse your directories and view your documents right on your iPhone. You can also view your contacts and calendars, although Moprise has mimicked the iPhone UI so closely that you might be confused that you are looking at your phone’s own contacts and calendar listings.

Getting started with Coaxion is a bit perplexing, as you are initially presented with a conversation dialog box. You have to start a conversation with someone to start sharing something, before you are allowed access to any of your content. Once you start a conversation, you can add photos from your phone, documents from your Sharepoint or Dropbox repositories, and include text messages. All of this content is preserved in a threaded context so you can keep track of things easily. And, when you are done sharing a conversation with someone, all the data is deleted from the phone’s memory. That is a nice touch. If you have an AT&T version of the iPhone, you can be talking and sharing information concurrently, which is a great way to work when you are on the go.

Moprise has a separate free app just for browsing your Sharepoint content that has been available for some time. Coaxion isn’t the first iOS Sharepoint app: there are at least a dozen, and several free ones on the iTunes AppStore, including iShare and OData. And Coaxion won’t be free for long, expect a $10 per month subscription fee when they launch a new version that will be iPad native at the end of the summer.

There is more info on how to use Coaxion on WikiHow here.

Discuss

Go to Source

Sponsor

You enter your Sharepoint server URL or Dropbox authentication details, and you can browse your directories and view your documents right on your iPhone. You can also view your contacts and calendars, although Moprise has mimicked the iPhone UI so closely that you might be confused that you are looking at your phone’s own contacts and calendar listings.

Getting started with Coaxion is a bit perplexing, as you are initially presented with a conversation dialog box. You have to start a conversation with someone to start sharing something, before you are allowed access to any of your content. Once you start a conversation, you can add photos from your phone, documents from your Sharepoint or Dropbox repositories, and include text messages. All of this content is preserved in a threaded context so you can keep track of things easily. And, when you are done sharing a conversation with someone, all the data is deleted from the phone’s memory. That is a nice touch. If you have an AT&T version of the iPhone, you can be talking and sharing information concurrently, which is a great way to work when you are on the go.

Moprise has a separate free app just for browsing your Sharepoint content that has been available for some time. Coaxion isn’t the first iOS Sharepoint app: there are at least a dozen, and several free ones on the iTunes AppStore, including iShare and OData. And Coaxion won’t be free for long, expect a $10 per month subscription fee when they launch a new version that will be iPad native at the end of the summer.

There is more info on how to use Coaxion on WikiHow here.

Discuss

Go to Source

Kickanotch, formerly known as PRONTO! Mobile, launched its mobile application and mobile marketing platform services back in May to offer TV broadcasters, radio stations, publishers and corporations a way to increase brand exposure and better utilize mobile revenue channels and consumer engagement opportunities. The startup works with media companies and small-to-medium-sized businesses to design a custom mobile strategy, assisting businesses in the design and implementation of mobile apps and features that enable them to make customized (and engaging) advertising campaigns and mobile apps.

More specifically, Kickanotch allows its corporate customers to optimize and manage banner advertisements, as well as enhance their mobile presence and user experience with daily deal alerts, social media integration, QR codes, SMS and email marketing, analytics, and lead generation.

As mobile advertising is growing like wildfire and is expected to hit $20 billion in revenue by 2015, Kickanotch aims to not only help businesses design a great mobile app, but to also give them the tools to monetize and create an addictive mobile experience for their customers. Essentially, the startup wants to offer businesses a turn-key mobile monetization solution as well as a mobile marketing manager. Its “Platform Mobile Manager” is designed to do just that. The cloud-based software allows startups and corporations to manage ads, SMS and email advertising, and coupons — all from a single dashboard.

Of course, the startup has plenty of competition in the mobile advertising space, but its solution has already drawn more than 50 broadcast, publishing and corporate brands into the fold in only a few months, so there’s plenty of room for optimism. It’s great to see Kansas supporting and growing local technology companies. That’s just good policy.

For more, check out the site here and meet the Kickanotch team here.

Go to Source