Startup Life
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Posts tagged iPhone
Geeks Love Halloween
Oct 29th
The rumors are true. Technology geeks do have a thing for Halloween. Mashable scoured the web and found some great pumpkin carvings well representing the current state of web technology and social media. The Twitter Fail-Whale (below) is great and there’s a fantastic carving of Diggnation hosts Alex Albrecht and Kevin Rose.
See more at: 12 Awesome Social Media Halloween Pumpkin Carvings.
Source: Scott B. on Flickr via Mashable!
The iPhone App Store is also cashing-in on the Halloween frenzy. The App Store is promoting its “Halloween Apps & Games” section where you can carve virtual pumpkins with “iCarve” and play Halloween-themed games.
One notable oddity, a game called Attack Of The Zombie Bikini Babes From Outer Space was launched in the App Store two days ago. Smort (rumored to be Smule’s Evil-Twin by Techcrunch) launched the game. As TechCrunch puts it, Smort looked at common themes popular within App Store games, and generated a list: Bikini Babes, Zombies, Bombs, and Bloodshed. This game is the result of that (innovative? smart? creative?) thinking. What are your thoughts? (see video below)
Personally, I think this is really smart. Now, although this game doesn’t necessarily look that compelling, I think that Smort has the right thesis: Research. Build. Launch. Iterate. Repeat. App Store trends are constantly changing. Therefore, monitoring user behavior and download trends can lead to new learnings about your target audience.
My advice: If you’re a startup/entrepreneur, go research your market (do a quick market survey if you wish), build your app and launch it! Review your analytics/metrics, iterate and launch again quickly. There are some app-hungry consumers out there.
Facebook 3.0 on iPhone Review
Aug 27th
After waiting for the Apple App Store to load … and it took a while … I finally updated my Facebook application for my iPhone. I’m sure Apple was getting slammed by everyone itching for the Facebook 3.0 upgrade.
I am tough on companies when it comes to developing a sexy UI/UX and I am super-impressed with the new Facebook 3.0 application for iPhone. I heard the hype and it was all right. Facebook has gone Twitter-esque, boasting a very easy to use and navigate news feed that drops pictures, videos, links, comments and basically anything else, right into view. Shown below is a screenshot of the first page you see when logged into the application. very easy and intuitive to navigate downward, flip to the main menu (by clicking the top-left icon), update your status or even click the camera button to upload (or take) a picture or VIDEO!
Here is the new MENU screen (below). Simplicity is king and Facebook nailed it. Each feature seems to work well and I didn’t encounter any errors or bugs in my testing thus far.
A while ago Facebook added the functionality of adding your own phone numbers to your contact information. Here you can really see that “phonebook” feature paying off. Facebook leverages this information by allowing you to simply tap a contact and choose a phone number that you’d like to dial. Simple as that. Enjoy your new phonebook, everyone.
I’m really looking forward to push notifications. That’ll really jazz up this rich(er) iPhone app.
iPod Touch Users Love Their Apps
Aug 27th
In AdMob’s July 2009 monthly metrics report, a special section on iPhone, iPod Touch and Android app usage showed the results of a 1,000-person survey to find our more about their interaction and download behavior with apps.
A couple highlights:
- Android and iPhone users download approximately 10 new apps a month, while iPod touch owners download an average of 18 per month
- More than 90 percent of Android and iPhone OS users browse and search for apps directly on their mobile device instead of their computer
- Upgrading from the lite version was the top reason given when users were asked what drives them to purchase a paid app
- iPhone and iPod touch users are twice as likely to purchase paid apps than Android users.
- Users who regularly download paid apps spend approximately $9 on an average of five paid downloads per month
There is a supplemental presentation that includes all of the data from the surveys for those who are interested to dig into the details.
socialDeck Platform Demo
Aug 14th
socialDeck, the creators of Shake & Spell on iPhone, Facebook and BlackBerry, have just launched a new demo on their website that discusses the various components in their technology platform and how it looks and feels across form factors.
The demo shows how the gameplay stays consistent across device types, and features such as their “trash talk wall” (or “chat”), leaderboards and social discovery engine all work.
For convenience sake, I’ve simply embedded the video below (view it at socialdeck):