Google Now Launches On iOS
Google just released Google Now for iOS through an update to the Google Search app for iOS. Google maintains that the service is exactly the same as Google Now on Android, though certain flourishes like swiping upward to launch the application sadly cannot carry over to Apple's closed iOS ecosystem. In other words, Google Now pulls in information from all of Google's services. So even if you're an iPhone user, chances are you have a Gmail account, a Chrome account, a Google calendar account, etc. Google Now for iOS isn't built into the OS the same way Siri is, but because users will already have various Google accounts, the service maintains almost all the same functionality as Google Now for Android.
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Reports Detail Amazon Appstore's Growing Influence, Revenue Potential
Amazon doesn’t share details on how well its Amazon Appstore apps sell, but according to mobile app analytics firm App Annie, the app marketplace is seeing growing traction among developers. The company surveyed over 1,500 developers, and found that 22.5 percent of them were now publishing to the Amazon Appstore, and half of that group (50 percent) cited Amazon as their leading revenue driver. This backs up previous reports which confirm roughly the same thing: Amazon Appstore’s revenue per user tops that of Google Play, or even iOS, in some cases. Last summer, for example, mobile gaming startup TinyCo, was saying that its revenue per user was higher on Amazon than on iTunes or Google Play. However, another report from Flurry said that iTunes was number one, and Amazon was in second place in terms of its revenue generation capabilities. Flurry had found that for every $1 spent on the iOS store, Amazon’s store generated $0.89, and Google Play $0.23. But this was over a year ago; App ...
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Facebook Home Wants To Own The Conversations Of Text-Obsessed Teens
The average teenager now sends a staggering 1,800 texts a month. This scale is why Facebook announced a new chat-centric smartphone application, Home, hoping to snag the lucrative data of a new generation of hyper-connected, text-obsessed teens. Once the social center for yuppie Ivy League 20-somethings, Facebook will launch Home on a super-cheap $99 Android smartphone, expanding the social network to the rest of the youth market of high-schoolers with little more than piggy-bank money to spend on technology. Home’s signature feature, appropriately titled “Chat Heads,” is “a way you can talk to your friends no matter what you’re doing in your phone, no matter what app you’re in,” explained Joey Flynn, a Facebook product designer. When users share an Instagram photo, for instance, a chat thread is conveniently kept live, right underneath the shutter. As our own Jordan Crook reported, “[Mark Zuckerberg] explained that Messaging shouldn’t be treated like any other app, though ...
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Stray Boots Launches On Android With Plans To Phase Out Its SMS Origins Entirely
Stray Boots started out as a basic SMS app, that let users enjoy a gamified city tour experience by answering questions about various nearby establishments sent to their phone via text. For an SMS application, StrayBoots seemed to have something great going, seeing as each game costs $12. Again, for an SMS app. But as time goes on, Stray Boots has switched things up a bit to include full-fledged smartphone applications. iOS has been available for a while, and today the company is announcing a brand new Android application. According to founder and CEO Avi Millman, users are reporting a much better experience using graphics-rich apps as opposed to basic SMS, which may lead the company to phase out SMS altogether. The main concern in building out the apps was maintaining simplicity. City tours don’t necessarily appeal to Gen Y as much as they do older generations, though that’s not to say 21-year olds don’t love exploring NYC’s financial district. To that end, StrayBoots chose SMS ...
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Queueing Theory Lets Any App Offer A Mailbox-Like Reservation System (Even If It's Just For Building Buzz)
Ever since Google announced that access to its then new email application Gmail would be invite-only at first, startup founders have been angling to reproduce that same kind of fervor for their own services. But it wasn’t until the new iOS app Mailbox launched its innovative “reservation system” that we’ve seen anything come close to replicating the same level of demand that Gmail saw back in the day. And now, a new San Francisco-based company known as Queueing Theory wants to bring a Mailbox-like reservation system to any startup – especially those targeting mobile users. Mailbox, which was recently acquired by Dropbox, generated interest in its application by first collecting sign-ups at a dedicated URL. Users were given a reservation number via SMS, which marked their place in line, as well as a Private Code to unlock the app once it became available in the App Store. Though the company claimed that using reservations helped it with the strain on its servers, the system had ...
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