The simple, easy-to-use interface of Position Logic’s Android app.

We are constantly improving our platform and releasing new products to better serve our clients’ needs, and the mobile apps do that by providing uncommonly good software for common devices, bettering the bottom line for both their customers and themselves

Naples, Florida (PRWEB) May 18, 2012

Whether the person to be tracked is a lone worker, a VIP, or someone else altogether, Position Logic is pleased to announce that they’ve got users covered with a newly-released GPS tracking app for both Android and Blackberry devices.

The applications – which share features across both the Android and Blackberry platforms – are provided to Position Logic’s clients, who then can provide the application to their own clients and license it for use on individual phones. If desired, the application can even be fully branded with the client’s identity. Once installed, the software has numerous settings, allowing the user to control how often the device reports to the GPS tracking platform, the location accuracy required in order for a report to be considered valid, and many other features. The application provides at-a-glance information such as current location and last report time, and also features a “panic button” so that users of the software can easily generate an alert to the platform should the need ever arise.

It’s important to note that the software was not intended to be used in any kind of a covert scenario; instead, it is installed on a phone that is then provided to a lone worker or VIP with their complete knowledge of the intended uses of the device. To this end, the phone itself becomes a GPS tracking device analogous to devices installed in fleet vehicles and other equipment, and enables LBS service providers to implement cost-effective tracking of individuals who are on the move but not necessarily tied to an installed tracking device.

For Position Logic President and CEO Felix Lluberes, the release of the mobile application is another way of empowering his clients. “We want all of our clients to constantly know that they are in business for themselves, but never by themselves,” stressed Lluberes. “We are constantly improving our platform and releasing new products to better serve our clients’ needs, and the mobile apps do that by providing uncommonly good software for common devices, bettering the bottom line for both their customers and themselves.”

About Position Logic

Position Logic, LLC, is a leading business-to-business, location-based services provider committed to supporting businesses worldwide with integrated and applied business intelligence, precision technology, and customized services and solutions. Position Logic has offices in Naples and Orlando, Florida and the Dominican Republic as well as clients in over 40 countries spread over the continents of North America, South America, Europe, and Africa and in the Middle East region. Position Logic provides GPS tracking software and hardware solutions, service and support to several key industries, including fleet management, Automatic Vehicle Location (AVL), logistics, and security monitoring and crisis management. For more information about Position Logic, including their GPS tracking platform and location-based services and support, please contact their Sales Team by phone at 866-676-2372 (Toll-Free) or 239-465-0587 (US/International), 801.665.0587 (fax) or email at sales(at)positionlogic(dot)com. You can also visit the Position Logic website at http://www.positionlogic.com.

PDF


Print

Article source: http://www.prweb.com/releases/GPS-Tracking-Software/Mobile-Apps/prweb9522742.htm

Technorati Tags: mobile apps

Facebook has just acquired mobile commerce startup Karma, which makes apps for gifting friends and family. The terms of the deal are undisclosed but 16 employees of the startup will be joining Facebook. The purchase will help Facebook build up monetization prowess on mobile platforms — an area that it had said it’s admittedly weak in. The price was not disclosed.

With the deal, Facebook gets two extremely experienced leaders in building and monetizing mobile apps. Karma’s chief executive Lee Linden and its co-founder Ben Lewis were behind Tapjoy, a company that became a huge force in distributing and making money from mobile games. Both he and Lewis were product managers at Google and Microsoft. Linden and Lewis have known each other since they were kids and have been building companies together for a couple years.

Note: This was a real product acquisition, not a lower-priced, talent-based one. Karma had done one venture round with Sequoia Capital, Kleiner Perkins Caulfield Byers, Felicis Ventures and the CrunchFund. The sense that we’re hearing from social product industry sources is that Karma will get Facebook’s 901 million users at its feet and more power behind building partnerships with other brands.  It’s not clear whether Karma will be left alone to run autonomously like Instagram or whether it will become a Facebook-branded product. Last year, Facebook acquired an early group messaging app called Beluga and turned it into Facebook Messenger.

This acquisition makes sense for a couple of reasons. Facebook needs all the help it can get in making its mobile platform produce revenue. Linden and Lewis built Tapjoy into what became a $100 million annual runrate business for app distribution and monetization. Now they’ve turned their attention toward mobile commerce. Facebook hasn’t figured out how to make money from mobile apps quite yet. It’s starting to show sponsored stories in the mobile news feed, but it doesn’t have that many opportunities to make payments revenue from third-party mobile developers because it’s blocked from taking a revenue share on iOS. Android offers some possibilities but it’s quite complicated to build a rival app ecosystem like Amazon has done over the past few years with the Kindle.

Facebook has tried its hand at gifting before, although it was the virtual kind. It abandoned its gifts store in favor of working on a more broad-based virtual currency offering called Credits that would power purchases of virtual gifts and goods from other developers. It also has tried direct commerce with its Groupon competitor Deals, but obviously that is a very expensive model to operate and scale if you look at Groupon’s margins.

But the physical good gifting that Karma specialized in could be a perfect fit. Facebook already knows who your friends, when they have birthdays, and their interests. It could suggest gifts to give and who to give them too, let users pay with their credit card or credits, and take a healthy cut.

We had heard a few weeks ago that Lewis was considering taking personal time to travel the world and step down from running Karma with Linden, but apparently we were wrong. He is definitely joining Facebook with the rest of the team.

Facebook said in a statement: “We’ve been really impressed with the Karma team and all they accomplished in such a short time. This acquisition combines Karma’s passion and innovative mobile app with Facebook’s platform to help people connect and share in new and meaningful ways.”

Karma also had a post on its own blog:

We founded Karma with the goal of adding the sentiment and meaning back into gift giving. That’s what Karma is all about. That’s what the Karma team set out to achieve.

Over the last year, we’ve built a new e-commerce platform from the ground up. We’ve been honored to partner with amazing brands to create a curated catalog of products. We made those products instantly giftable in a brand new way. And we harnessed the power of Facebook’s social network to ensure you never miss a chance to show someone you care. The phenomenal response and feedback we’ve heard from customers has more than exceeded our expectations. And we’re just getting started — today we take social gifting to the next level.

We’re thrilled to announce that Karma has been acquired by Facebook. The service that Karma provides will continue to operate in full force. By combining the incredible passion of our community with Facebook’s platform we can delight users in new and meaningful ways. As we say … only good things will follow.

Simply put, together we can celebrate life’s important moments in ways we could not before. A word of heartfelt thanks to our partners, customers, and our incredible team for helping us share Karma with so many people.

Sincerely,
Karma Co-founders Lee Ben

In addition, TechCrunch interviewed Karma co-founder Lee Linden at the South By Southwest conference in Austin, Texas back in March. You can watch a video of that interview, and see him walk us through a demonstration of the Karma app in person, in the clip embedded below:

Article source: http://techcrunch.com/2012/05/18/facebook-acquires-karma/

Technorati Tags: mobile apps

Even in the Internet news age, Seattle’s local TV news remains important to viewers here. The race for audiences continues apace; KING 5, long the local news leader in all day parts, has seen its rating challenged primarily from KIRO 7, which claims it now leads KING 5 in its 11 p.m. news slot, and in the early morning 4:30 a.m.-5 a.m. news slots. (A call to KING 5 to confirm these figures was not returned by publication time.)

The competitive edge for each station is mostly out of their hands: Entertainment programming on their affiliated broadcast networks significantly affects consumers’ viewing habits. But with TV news contributing the lion’s share of any local station’s revenues, any small edge is a further step toward a ratings victory. It would appear that the stepped-up resources of the KING 5 app are additional weapons in that war. (Here’s a link to the station’s mobile apps download page.)

I tested apps from all four Seattle commercial stations with major local news operations on my own mobile arsenal: the new-generation iPad, a 3Gs iPhone, an Android Droid Bionic, and a Windows Phone Lumia 900.  All the tests were conducted on a fast WiFi network (10+ megabytes per second). 

In features, the KING 5 app looms large over its competitors. Its real-time live news feature is unique among them. Weather reports on the iPad and iPhone can be localized to your area. While both KING and KIRO provide WSDOT camera views of our traffic grid, the KING 5 iPad view offers a slick map, which places the cameras on the grid itself. Want to see what the traffic looks like at I-5 and NE 42nd Street? There’s a pic for that (see photo). 

The iPhone implementation is different: It offers selected WSDOT camera locales, but not the iPad map. It does have the real-time traffic conditions WSDOT map familiar to computer users.

The weather section was fairly standard, with radar views, seven-day forecasts, and satellite maps of the greater Puget Sound area. It would have been better to see these views time-stamped; perhaps that will come in a later version. The iPad version is the only app with a “Conditions” tab that provides weather reporting for your specific location, although both the iPhone and Android apps give you a location specific temperature reading.

All the apps come with video links to various KING 5 shows and personalities such as “Get Jesse,” “Health Link” and “Evening Magazine.”

There were some glitches. The live video would run smoothly, then lapse into a few seconds of badly fragmented video, then return to normal. I also had trouble getting the Windows Phone version to function at all. Its look was different, following Microsoft’s new-design “tile” look, but I could get nothing to work with that version.

The app apparently has been designed by Belo Corp., which owns 20 stations, including our local KING 5. According to a press release, the apps will offer area-specific weather radar, notifications about breaking news, and a scrolling ticker for up-to-the-minute updates. It also promises to stream over 300 hours of “high-quality on demand video programming each month to any video-capable mobile device.”  Calls to KING 5 to get details on some of those plans were not answered immediately.

While KING 5 was busy making its live news programs available to mobile users, Comcast still remained dysfunctional in its rollout of mobile and/or off-cable services to its subscribers. 

Comcast is among the cable companies behind the “TV Everywhere” concept, which enables their subscribers to watch programming from HBO, ESPN, and others on iPads, iPhones, Android smartphones, and tablets. Cable customers need to sign with their cable companies and be authorized to view these shows.

HBO Go is available for viewing by Comcast subscribers on iPads, iPhones, and Android devices, and on Google TV, but is banned from being watched on the Xbox and Roku set top boxes. MaxGo, a service from HBO sister network Cinemax, is still not authorized by Comcast on any mobile device although other cable companies feature it. Watch ESPN, the live viewing of multiple channels of ESPN sports programming,  was just allowed for Apple iOS — but not for Android Gingerbread systems.

Meanwhile arch-Comcast competitor Time Warner Cable announced this week, as noticed by TechCrunch, that its subscribers can watch HBO Go on the Xbox, Roku boxes and Samsung Internet-connected TV sets. Repeated requests to Comcast by this writer and others for an explanation of why this rollout seems hopelessly arbitrary have gone unanswered.

Comcast also made good/bad news this week by announcing it would initiate tests in some markets to charge those Internet customers who rack up what the cable company see as excessive use of its network. According to a Bloomberg/Business Week story, the company said it would impose additional costs for those exceeding 300 gigabytes (gb) of usage per month: perhaps $10 for 50 additional gigabytes. An average TV viewer uses 8 to 10 gb a month, the article noted. The viewers that Comcast will be watching consume roughly the equivalent of 100 high definition movies per month, the article noted. 

A Comcast spokesperson had no information whether these tests would be conducted in the Seattle area.

Article source: http://crosscut.com/2012/05/19/technology/108682/weekend-tech-scan-king5-gets-spiffy-new-mobile-new/

Technorati Tags: mobile apps

Is this the right thing to do? I am all for regulation of industries to ensure safety and make sure no one dies because a product was used. But this is a whole new era. Is an app a device? Is it a life-saving tool or is it the new shiny toy on your smartphone about which you know nothing about the reliability or specificity of how it works? This debate has been roiling the device/app/regulated industry market for a long time already, but is really heating up this week due to pending legislation currently being “worked up” in the U.S. House of Representatives.

There are many legitimate questions at stake. Capitalism and how it relates to government regulated industries in a rapidly changing world for one. Health and safety of any “tool” — whether device, software, hardware, application or just a bandaid — when it comes to being used on humans? Should the government stifle innovation efforts by regulating apps for your smartphone exactly as a medical device? Are small companies — who are the primary developers of most apps still — being shut out of a marketplace controlled by only the largest and most set in place corporations and being assisted through legislative and regulatory ruling? What happens when one of these apps is used in a “cloak operation” and is actually something like a private information/financial information thief?

Wait, what did I just say? The harsh reality is the FDA even admits that the “device approval” is one of the hardest processes they put any company through, outside of actual drug approval. Just ask any device manufacturer about their recent run-ins with the PMA (premarket approval). You will get an earful.

But translate this to medical smartphone apps and the FDA. Who builds apps? As stated above, mostly small companies with small numbers of employees (obviously there are clear exceptions.) If the apps are to be regulated exactly as devices, then it subjects these companies to lengthy, even multi-year engagements just to get approval prior to selling anything. This flips the market dynamics of most app companies; that are used to making their money off short development/lead time cycles, and short sales cycles. How can most small companies survive this? They can’t, and it’s back to the question of stifling innovation in small businesses through the FDA on behalf of the few companies with the bucks to last out this process.

I would suggest the FDA look at how software and hardware is approved under FIPS for example. (FIPS are requirements issued by the National Institute of Standards and Technology that apply to federal government computer systems.) Additionally I would suggest the FDA create a tiered regulatory system, one for devices, one for aps. Clearly this debate is not going away without a fight.

Follow Alan W. Silberberg on Twitter:

www.twitter.com/Ideagov

Article source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alan-w-silberberg/mobile-app-for-lifesaving_b_1525497.html

Technorati Tags: mobile apps

After the Facebook IPO, or initial public offering, Facebook is valued at over 104 billion dollars, but the Facebook apps for the iPhone, iPad and Android are as awful as ever.

Over half of Facebook’s monthly active users use Facebook mobile apps and the mobile web.

Read: Facebook IPO By The Numbers

That’s 500 million mobile monthly active users as of April 20th. No matter how you look at it, mobile is a big part of the Facebook experience. According to some reports, 12% of Facebook users only use the mobile apps and mobile website. On average, Facebook mobile visitors spend 441 minutes per month on Facebook mobile, which is more than the 391 minutes spent on the traditional website.

Despite this large, and growing set of mobile users, Facebook mobile apps crash, load slow and come with more bugs than a roach motel.

Why are the apps so bad when Facebook is so loaded?

Simple, Facebook makes money on advertising and they haven’t figured out how to make money on mobile yet. It wasn’t until March that Facebook started to make money on mobile, and even then, it’s not a lot. I’m pretty sure the “How Much Am I Worth to Facebook?” tool would cut my $71 value in half if it knew 90% of my interaction is on the iPhone and iPad.

Read: Is Facebook for iPhone Unusable for You?

Even as the Facebook ($FB) stock creeps up over $41 a share, there’s no announcement of a new Facebook app, even though the quiet period is over.

Example of sponsored posts in Facebook app.

Why can’t Facebook make money on mobile apps?

For starters, the screens are smaller and there is no place to put all the ads you normally see on the right hand side of the Facebook app. This isn’t likely to change. Even Facebook can’t stick ads on the right side of the huge Galaxy Note display and get away with it.

If Facebook can’t make money from the apps, they have little incentive to make the apps awesome. Instead, we are left with apps that are good enough. This leaves room for third-party Facebook apps like Friendcaster and MyPad.

Facebook hasn’t given up on apps. The company is looking at ways to monetize the mobile apps, starting with sponsored posts like you can see to the right.

The company needs to make sure that the number of ads don’t turn off users, a tricky number to discern. It’s possible that we’ll see new types of Facebook mobile ads in the future.

Perhaps users will see ads on the white background when Facebook is re-loading. This would keep ads out-of-the-way when I’m using Facebook, but guarantee a lot of ad views since Facebook needs manually refreshed often.

If that doesn’t generate enough revenue, they could always put ads in the Notification drop down. The number of notifications is rarely right anyway, and it also needs manually refreshed.

–

What do you hate most about the Facebook apps and mobile experience?

About the Author (Author Profile)

Josh Smith is Editor of GottaBeMobile and Notebooks.com. He’s always looking for ways to help you get the most of your mobile gear and loves to talk about tech on numerous radio programs. Josh uses an iPhone 4S, Galaxy Nexus and iPad 2 on a daily basis.

You can follow Josh on Twitter @Josh_Smith or find Josh Smith on Google+. Email: Josh@Notebooks.com

Comments (0)

Trackback URL | Comments RSS Feed

There are no comments yet. Why not be the first to speak your mind.

Article source: http://www.gottabemobile.com/2012/05/18/why-facebook-doesnt-love-the-facebook-apps/

Technorati Tags: mobile apps

But any company hoping to win over an international audience can make that job significantly easier by planning ahead for the translation process, said Matt Hauser, vice president of technology sales for TransPerfect, which develops linguistics and translation technologies.

“When you are dealing with a mobile app, you don’t have to worry just about the different operating systems, but you also have to deal with the variations in the different handsets,” Hauser said.

TransPerfect is taking on an increasing number of mobile application development projects across 32 different languages, he said. The company’s services included testing across Apple iOS, Android, BlackBerry and Windows, as well as verification and workflow testing.

One example is a relationship that TransPerfect recently forged with AccuWeather. The weather information service is planning a series of localized mobile applications and it believes translation is a necessity for making these apps more accessible.

“Regardless of where our users are or what type of mobile device they use, we want to be their first choice for accurate weather information,” said Pascal Racheneur, vice president of Interactive Media for AccuWeather, in a statement. “TransPerfect is helping us achieve that goal by translating our metereological information into local languages, which makes it more accessible to a far broader user base than would be possible in only one language.”

Companies can make the process of created localized mobile apps simpler if they consider the following ahead of time, Hauser said.

1. Think carefully about words used to describe menus. In other languages, these words might have unique cultural meanings or they may take up too much space.
2. Keep word counts to a minimum. Some languages, including Spanish, Italian or French can take up to 20 percent or 30 percent more space when translated from English. So a design that works for the English version of the mobile app might look crowded when localized.
3. Get a native-language linguist to test your application. When you test a translated mobile application, you need to pay attention to both the logical workflow as well as whether the application flows well from a linguistic point of view. Find a translator who also has subject-matter expertise related to the application’s target audience.
4. Avoid colloquialisms. Stay away from slang and phrases difficult to translate into another language.
5. Consider navigation. When translating into Arabic or Hebrew, for example, your application will need to read from right to left instead of left to right. Make sure the design template doesn’t get in the way.

(Thumbnail image courtesy of Dog Madic; post imaged courtesy of Sanja Gjenero; Stock.xchng)

Related stories:

• Software makes sure documents are not lost in translation

Article source: http://www.smartplanet.com/blog/business-brains/developing-a-mobile-app-plan-ahead-for-translation/24050

Technorati Tags: mobile apps

A new mobile app offers a second venue for access to Siouxland Libraries for users to check their account, renew items, search the catalog and place holds, learn about library events and even see directions to one of the associated libraries.

“They’re going to be able to access the library wherever they are, whatever time of day, if they want to do something at night, while they are on vacation,” said Vicki Biggerstaff, Technical Service Librarian.

Biggerstaff said there are a lot of other libraries using the same program and even designing their own mobile apps. She said Siouxland Libraries created an app because they noticed how many people were using smartphones.

“We’re seeing a huge increase in the number of people using smartphones, so this just makes it much more convenient for people to use the library,” Biggerstaff said.

The mobile app is not causing any major changes to the library or its catalog. The only difference is that features found on the Siouxland Libraries website can be accessed in your hand.

Biggerstaff said the app also features downloadable eBooks and audiobooks and mobile versions of Mango Languages, World Book Encyclopedia, and other research services. The app is compatible with phones and tablets including Android, iPhone, iPad, Blackberry and Windows Mobile.

“We’re excited to offer our customers this option for accessing the varied library resources,” Library Director Mary Johns said in a news release. “We know smart phone usage is on the rise and want to provide customers convenient and efficient ways to connect with us.”   

Search for “Siouxland Libraries” at your services preferred app store, or visit www.siouxlandlib.org to download the app. 

Article source: http://www.ksfy.com/story/18493709/siouxland-libraries-offers-new-app

Technorati Tags: mobile apps

In this all-day virtual event, experts will offer detailed insight in how to collect security intelligence in the enterprise, and how to analyze and study it in order to efficiently identify new threats as well as low-and-slow attacks such as advanced persistent threats. Register today!

Platinum Sponsors: ArcSight, NetIQ, Proofpoint, Thawte
Gold Sponsor: Q1 Labs

October 6: InformationWeek 500 Virtual Event: The Need for Speed

At the 2011 InformationWeek 500 Virtual Conference, C-level executives from leading global companies will gather to discuss how their organizations are turbo-charging business execution and growth.

Platinum Sponsor: ArcSight, Workday
Gold Sponsor: IBM

Aug 25: InformationWeek Dark Reading present: How Security Breaches Happen and What Your Organization Can Do About Them

Attendees will get insights on how to prevent breaches from happening, how to research and identify the source of a breach, and how to remediate a compromise as quickly and efficiently as possible.

Platinum Sponsor: ArcSight, NetIQ, Thawte
Gold Sponsors: Lumension, NetGear, GFI
Silver Sponsor: Motorola

July 28: InformationWeek Symantec present: Infrastructure at Risk — Taking Decisive Action to Secure Your Critical Data Assets

Join the editors of InformationWeek and leading security experts from Symantec for an in-depth look at the current threats faced by large and small organizations, and the implications for your business, your customers, and even your country. You’ll hear how today’s threat landscape is changing drastically, and learn the latest countermeasures and best practices to keep your company’s precious data assets out of the hands of determined cybercriminals.

July 27: Electronic Health Records — Moving from Concept to Reality

At this InformationWeek Healthcare Virtual Event, we will talk with healthcare practitioners, IT professionals and other industry experts about issues surrounding EHR selection, deployment and use.

Platinum Sponsor: HP, Intel, GBS, Geotrust, NextGen
Silver Sponsor: Proofpoint

On-Demand: InformationWeek Interop present: Business Mobility Unleashed

In this virtual event, the leaders behind InformationWeek Business Technology Network and Interop zero in on the top mobile technologies and techniques you’ll need to understand and master to ensure your organization thrives in the wireless world.

Platinum Sponsors: Alcatel-Lucent, APC
Gold Sponsor: HP
Silver Sponsor: Emerson Network Power
Bronze Sponsor: Skybot

On-Demand: Cybersecurity Best Practices

In this half-day virtual event, experts assess the state of cybersecurity in government and present the latest strategies for creating a more secure, attack-proof IT infrastructure. This event will help CISOs and other information assurance professionals in federal, state, and local government stay on top of the latest developments in the field.

Platinum Sponsor: GeoTrust
Gold Sponsor: Bit9

On-Demand: Data Center Transformation

Data centers are undergoing incredible transformations that create
both opportunities and challenges for IT professionals. Server virtualization enables rapid provisioning,
more efficient use of resources, and improved disaster recovery. That trend will continue with storage and network virtualization,
allowing IT pros to further abstract — and optimize — data center resources.In this virtual event, you will learn how prepare your organization for a data center transformation.

Platinum Sponsors: AMD, APC, Cisco, Eaton, SunGard
Gold Sponsor: Emerson Network Power

On-Demand: Cloud Computing Roadmap: Controlling the Cloud – Managing, Optimizing and Integrating Cloud Services with Your Existing IT Infrastructure

In this virtual event, you’ll learn how to craft your own strategy for successfully embracing and integrating new cloud computing capabilities without derailing or destroying your current IT roadmap.

Platinum Sponsors: ArcSight, GoToAssist, SunGard, thawte
Gold Sponsor: Symform
Silver Sponsor: Skybot

On-Demand: Plugging the Leaks — Finding and Fixing the IT Security Holes in your Enterprise

In this virtual event presented by Dark Reading and InformationWeek, you’ll find out how criminals target the flaws in your IT environment, and you’ll get some insight on the best methods for finding and fixing your vulnerabilities — before you’re hit by malware or unauthorized access.

Platinum Sponsors: NetIQ, Novell, thawte, Webroot
Gold Sponsors: ArcSight, Bit9, OpenText
Silver Sponsor: Application Security, Core Security, Lumension

Article source: http://www.informationweek.com/news/byte/personal-tech/mobile-apps/240000450

Technorati Tags: mobile apps

Dan Kurani (Thumb) shows how he uses the Surfline, a surfing app, on his iPhone (credit: Lauren Keyson)

By Lauren Keyson

At last night’s New York Technology Council mobile event, the four panelists talked about their smartphone experiences. Each armed with an iPhone, they discussed the way mobile media was solving problems and changing desktop behavior.  Dan Kurani, the co-founder CEO of Thumb, a social network where people give and get opinions in real-time, created the company so that people can get instant feedback on anything and connect with other people who are like them.  “A typical user expresses their opinion 800 times over a lifetime on our service,”  he said. “Their usage is a little over four hours a month.

“Mobile takes a tremendous amount of mind share.  People in the real world are shopping and looking for opinions, so that’s where Thumb comes in.  If you are stuck out in the rain or waiting under a canopy hoping to hail a cab, you can pull up Uber.  Recently I used Hotel Tonight where literally the night of your stay you can get the best rates for a boutique hotel.  I use Fandango to buy tickets on the spot and Surfline, an app that lets me see the conditions of a 15 mile line to where I’m going.”

Devindra Hardawar of VentureBeat concurred, saying that mobile media is maturing.  “It’s not just silly apps on your phone or Facebook or a newsfeed, it’s now become something that’s really useful – it can actually replace your nightly news.  There are so many apps now that you can usually find something for the way you read news. So if you are a heavy-duty reader you can get something that taps into RSS feeds and gives you all your news for the day. Or there are apps like Pulse, a news reading magazine where you can subscribe to categories of news.   All these things can now be synchronized between your desktop life and your phone.  There are apps like Instapaper that encapsulate long web articles that you can take with you and read anywhere.”

The co-founder and CEO of Mixel, a social collage app that lets people be creative, said that mobile, like social, is a tidal wave that’s going to change everything.  “The big trend is disruption for every industry that is going on now,” said Khoi Vinh.   “For instance, a friend of mine is a new father and he found an app that gets together new parents that each pay $10 to have a musician entertain their kids for one hour. Normally they would end up paying $40 each for the same thing.”

“Engage with your smartphones, engage with your tablets, especially when you’re on the go,” advised Erica Berger of Storyful,  a site that specializes in curated content for publishers. “You might be surprised at what type of content people are sharing and the communities that are being built around that content and how big brands, publishers and companies are using your voices are heard on mobile to improve their products and improve engagement with you.”

Article source: http://nyconvergence.com/2012/05/nytech-mobile-apps-solve-problems-and-change-behavior.html

Technorati Tags: mobile apps