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Tag: Apps

Stats on 60 Seconds of Mobile Use in October 2011

Posted by Alan Buckingham at 4:16 PM on November 3, 2011

Did you ever wonder what everyone around you is doing with their constantly-out smartphones?  Well, Mobclix did some research about what cell phone users are clicking and came up with a snapshot of what goes on in a single minute of usage.  Some of the results may surprise you – like 4,111 ads were clicked on.  Some may not – like that Angry Birds is simply in a category of usage all by itself.  You won’t believe how many people are looking for song lyrics or slicing fruit in Fruit Ninja.

All of this data was put together into one cool infographic.  It’s posted below, so have a look and see what you think.  Does it reflect what you expected?  Do you find anything really surprising?  What would an infographic of your usage reflect?

mobile in 60 seconds

Source: Mobclix

Get OfficeSuite Pro 5 for Android Free Today Only

Posted by Alan Buckingham at 5:31 PM on October 26, 2011

officesuite pro 5 logo

The Amazon Android App Store is a great resource for users of Android phones and tablets.  Yes, it has many of the same apps as the Android Market, but they also get some exclusives and, perhaps more importantly, because they offer a different paid app for free every day.  Today, the free app of the day is OfficeSuite Pro 5.  It’s a complete office suite with “tools for word processing, developing spreadsheets, delivering presentations, and browsing PowerPoint and PDF files. Create, view, and edit Microsoft Word and Excel files.”

In addition to it’s compatibility with Microsoft Office, it also integrates with Google Docs.  Such popular file types as .DOC, .DOCX, .XLS, XLSX, .PPT, .PPTX, .PPS, .PPSX  and PDF are all supported.

While many of Amazon’s free apps of the day are in the $.99 to $1.99 price range, OfficeSuite Pro 5 is regularly priced at $14.99.  With 177 customer reviews it has a strong 4 out of 5 star rating from users, so this isn’t something Amazon or the makers are just trying to push off on unsuspecting customers.  It’s free for today only, so if you want it then you better head over to the Amazon Android App Store now.

GNC-2011-10-17 #714 All the News

Posted by geeknews at 1:38 AM on October 18, 2011

You will love the rack overheat alarm going off in the middle of the show. Adds for some comedy and bewilderment by me as I have never heard that alarm coming out of the rack. Lots of great tech news and the show goes way long tonight. Will get that back in check as I do not have to report on “All the News”

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Links to articles covered in this Podcast on the GNC Show Notes Page [Click Here]

Credits:
Jack Ellis – Executive Producer
Mike Baine – Associate Producer

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Carbyn – An HTML5 OS

Posted by Andrew at 2:19 PM on September 20, 2011

There’s been a great deal of speculation in the blogosphere regarding a new entrant into the apps-that-run-anywhere competition. Called Carbyn, it seems to be an HTML5-based OS and app store. If you are struggling to see how this is a good thing, most modern browsers support HTML5, so you can setup and use Carbyn from almost any computer or tablet that has an Internet connection. No worrying about Windows, OS X, Linux…you just get on and do what you want to do.

The London, Ontario-based company is holding its cards fairly close to its chest and is using social media to spread the word. TechCrunch managed to get a sneak peak and point out that while comparisons with Google’s Chrome app store are inevitable, it’s different in that Carbyn is an OS. Chrome apps run within the browser, Carbyn HTML5 apps run within the Carbyn desktop which runs within the browser.  Facebook is also expected to get in the HTML5 app action with its Project Spartan, so it’s an interesting space to watch.

Carbyn is using social media and word-of-mouth to good advantage. While you can sign up for an invite to join Carbyn on their website, you’ll get your invite faster, if you get your friends to also sign up for an invite. So if you are interested, please use this Carbyn link to boost my standing. I’m shameless and I’ve fallen for their cheap trick…

And yes, Carbyn appears to have Angry Birds….

Are You Ready For Some Fantasy Football? Yahoo and Android Are

Posted by Alan Buckingham at 1:59 PM on September 12, 2011

If you play fantasy football, and many people do, then there is a fairly good chance that you use Yahoo to manage your league.  Yahoo Sports has been a great resource for news for a number of years, and their fantasy league software has been the best for quite some time, topping even NFL.com.

A lot of people may not know, though, that Yahoo also has an incredibly good mobile app for fantasy football.  It’s available for free in the Android Market.  Just use your Yahoo log-in to set it up and you are off and running.  Logging in will only have to be done once at set-up.  After that the app opens to your homescreen automatically.

Once you are up and running, you can check your current score under “matchup”, which also shows individual players and how they are performing.

You can check all of the scores from around your league.

Click on a player to get more in-depth information.

You can even check the current standings in your league.

There’s a lot you can do with this app.  It’s a must for any armchair coach to check their team’s progress and manage, or micro-manage, their roster.  You can get Yahoo Fantasy football ’11 free from the Android Market.  Good luck this season!

HP TouchPad Answers Critics

Posted by Andrew at 12:00 PM on August 14, 2011

The HP TouchPad came on to the market with two main criticisms, first the lack of apps, and second, pricing was on a par with the iPad 2. Even with these two points, most reviews gave the TouchPad the number 2 tablet slot for WebOS’s ease-of-use.

A month on from the TouchPad’s launch, much of the original criticism can be deflected. HP has reduced the price of the TouchPad by $100 in the US and by similar amounts in most other territories, making the 16GB version $400 and the 32 GB $500. Early purchasers have been taken care of with a $50 credit to buy apps from the App Catalog.

As for the apps, a bundle of new apps get added to the App Catalog every day and there’s usually one or two key apps each week that round out the TouchPad’s portfolio. This week saw UPnP AV Player and a Google Reader client, TouchFeeds, released amongst others and while there are other similar apps in the App Catalog, these are the first that don’t deserve a beta version moniker. There are plenty of really good apps in the Catalog and there are more coming through as developers get to grips with the platform. Twitter app – check; Facebook app – check; Flickr app – check; ToodleDo app – check; digital music store app – check; ebay app – check; WordPress app – check. It’s definitely getting there.

There’s also some evidence that it’s beginning to pay off for developers who have invested in the platform. PreCentral reports that OneCrayon, developer of TapNote, has seen sales jump significantly since the TouchPad went on sale. Regrettably the graph that accompanies the article doesn’t have any units on the y-axis but it certainly looks impressive.

HP’s done something a little different as well. Each month it produces a digital magazine called Pivot, which showcases apps in a glossy setting. It’s even customised for the particular country, so the UK version is a little different from the US one. Overall, it’s a nice touch.

It’s looking up for the TouchPad and at $100 less that the iPad 2 with apps coming every day, it’s a bargain.

 

Amazon Appstore and Developers

Posted by Andrew at 12:33 AM on August 4, 2011

At times, Apple has taken plenty of criticism over the way it does business with iOS app developers, particularly when it comes to altering terms and conditions after the fact. However, it would appear that Apple is not alone in this behaviour and Amazon seems to be getting in on the act with its Appstore for Android and the Free App of the Day.

According to Amazon’s T&Cs, “Amazon pays developers 70% of the sale price of the app or 20% of the list price, whichever is greater” (from the FAQ) but it now appears that if Amazon features a premium app as the Free App of the Day, the developer gets nothing.

Shifty Jelly were recently offered the opportunity for one of their apps to become the Free App of the Day. On a good day it appears that they would sell around 20 copies of their software but on other days it could be as low as 2. As the Free App of the Day, they “sold” over 100,000 copies and if Amazon adhered to the T&Cs, Shifty Jelly would receive over $50,000. They received nothing.

To be clear, Shifty Jelly did know that they would receive nothing before they became App of the Day, but there seems to be a big difference between what Amazon is saying publicly in the T&Cs and what’s happening behind the scenes in emails.

You can read the whole story on Shifty Jelly’s blog.