The Good NET Guide

Posts Tagged ‘the-application’

Remember that guy who made the DuckPhone iPhone app ?

Original post: 
Duckshead Revisited: Apple approves DuckPhone after minor changes

Located at the MIT-owned One Broadway Street building in Kendall Square, Cambridge Innovation Center (CIC) houses more than 175 companies in over 100,000 square feet of office space and prices everything per person, so smaller companies can add more space as they grow. There are no long-term leases, either–it’s all month to month. I had a chance to take a tour with Cambridge Innovation Center CEO Tim Rowe

Here is the original:
Tech Tour: Cambridge Innovation Center

In the months following the iPhone App Store’s launch in July 2008, it became clear that the platform was turning into a gold rush.  Success stories of one-man companies earning $250,000 in a few months became common. And even though the odds of striking it rich were clearly much lower than the media portrayed, a huge surge of developers started building iPhone applications. Android Market, where meager sales have been the norm, was left in the dust.

Now Android Market is getting its own glimmers of hope. Edward Kim, who built the application “Car Locator” around five months ago, has just announced that he’s pulling in $13,000 a month from the application, which “started as a little side-project while [he] was vacationing with [his] family”.

Kim writes that the free version of the application has been downloaded around 70,000 times, while the paid application has been downloaded 6,590 times. The price was initially $1.99, but he moved it up to $3.99 (he notes that despite doubling the price, the number of downloads didn’t decrease too much).

So what was Kim’s secret to success? Well, a big part of it seems to have come from the fact that Car Locator is now a featured app on Android Market, which means Google more prominently displays it to users than ‘normal’ applications. Getting featured increased the app’s revenue by over four fold. This probably comes as bittersweet news to developers (you can’t exactly count on being featured by Google), but Kim says that he’s ranked between 100 and 200th place in the Market’s ‘Paid’ category, which means that there are probably at least 100 other applications seeing similar success.  Android Market is still far behind the App Store in many respects (except for openness), but it looks like it’s finally starting to mature.

Kim is very optimistic about the future of the platform, telling me “Android appears to have grown enough that developers can make some money off of it, but there’s not SO many developers that you’ll never get noticed.”

Here are some of Kim’s other observations:

• The application was netting an average of about $80-$100/day, until it became a featured app on the Marketplace. Since then, sales have been phenomenal, netting an average of $435/day, with a one day record of $772 on Valentine’s Day. Too bad I didn’t have a Valentines date this year — we would’ve gone somewhere real special!
• There appears to be clear peaks on the weekends and during holidays. This was always my hunch, but I think I can finally say this with certainty since the signal-to-noise ratio is much better now.
• Some may be quick to point out that a featured Android application is only able to net $400/day, while top iPhone apps make thousands. But the Android market appears to rotate applications in and out of the featured apps list in some psedo-random fashion. Every time I open the Marketplace app, the featured list is different and most of the time, I don’t even see my app on there.
• The price of the application was increased from $1.99 to $3.99. I ran a few price experiments and was surprised to see that though I doubled the price of the app, the number of purchases decreased by much less than half. Android users appear to have a willingness to pay more than a couple dollars for apps.
• Piracy appears to be an increasing problem. A quick search for Car Locator on Twitter reveals links where people can download the .apk file without paying. I tend to have the same attitude on piracy as Balsamiq, so I’m not too worried about it, but I would love to hear some typical statistics on Android piracy.

Last September, while the Apple/Google Voice fiasco was still in full swing, an interesting application called Line2 was allowed into the App Store. The application acts as a mix between Google Voice and Skype, allowing small businesses to add a separate, dedicated business line to their iPhones in addition to the phone’s “regular” number. The service also includes features conference calling, voicemail transcription, advanced call management, and more. And today, Line2 is getting an update that makes the app “dual mode”, allowing it to handle both inbound and outbound calls over cellular networks, 3G or WiFi (mostly) seamlessly. You can download the application here.

CEO Peter Sisson says that this is the first iPhone application that lets you use one phone number for both inbound and outbound calls over both WiFi and cellular networks on AT&T. So what does that mean? If you’re one of the millions of iPhone users who has to deal with AT&T’s shoddy network, Line2 can now intelligently receive a call over WiFi when it’s available (you don’t have to manually instruct the app to use WiFi — it will do it automatically). And if you leave your WFi network during the call, the phone can automatically switch to 3G.

Unfortunately, the new feature comes with a caveat: in order to receive an inbound call over WiFi, you’ll have to have the Line2 application open at the time the call comes in. Sisson says that the company is developing a workaround that uses push notifications (you’ll get an alert when someone tries calling you, hit OK, and the app will launch and receive the call over WiFi) but for now I suspect most people will still be getting inbound calls over the cellular network. Still, if you’re using your iPhone for business calls and are sick of dealing with dropped calls, this seems like a great solution.

Line2 offers a 30 day free trial, and costs $15 a month after that.

First Dual Mode WiFi VOiP Cell Phone App – Line2 from Toren Ajk on Vimeo.

In 2008, productivity suite empire Zoho launched a simple invoicing tool, unsurprisingly called Zoho Invoice. Today, the startup is releasing a new version of its Invoice, dubbed Invoice 2.0, that has a fresh user interface and provides a more open application.

The fact is that over the past two years, there have been a plethora of online invoicing startups that have popped up and Zoho is catching up to its competitors with version two of its offering. With this update, Zoho has redesigned its UI making it easier to navigate and customize to fit the look and feel of a business’ design. Zoho Invoice will also allow users to record separate expenses they incur while serving particular clients (like travel, material etc).

The version also has full organization, multi-user support so that several employees can access and collaborate on invoices for a particular account. And Zoho has opened up the API for Invoices to that developers can integrate the application into their own applications. Additionally, Zoho features useful bells and whistles such as multi-currency support and email history which tracks your email exchanges with your clients and other users.

The plus of using Zoho’s invoicing application is that it ties into its other productivity applications seamlessly. And its affordable, with a free version and the most expensive version coming in at $35 per month. Last year, we wrote that Zoho has continued to implement an intelligent strategy to launch new products and add-ons to its existing offerings, partly to keep users from flocking to Google Apps and Microsoft’s Web-based version of Microsoft 2010. It looks like Zoho is continuing this strategy in 2010.

Last year, startup unveiled a new version of Zoho Reports; launched a deeper integration with Google Docs; rolled out Zoho Discussions, a online forum tool for businesses; and debuted Zoho Recruit.

And over the past two years, Zoho has added support for Sharepoint, mobile, Google and Yahoo IDs and group sharing. According to out latest states, Zoho has definitely reached over 2 million users is even catching the attention of its competition. Hopefully, 2010 will be as fruitful as 2009.

Last year, there was no shortage of developers who were complaining about Apple’s App Store. The situation got so heated that no less than Apple senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing, Phil Schiller, got personally involved with a number of developers having issues. Since then, the complaints seem to have died down quite a bit, but Apple is still on the case.

The company has started sending out a survey to iPhone developers asking about their experience with the program. While the long survey covers a range of things, the majority of the questions are about the application review process, and developers’ overall happiness with the program.

Examples of questions asked include:

Please rate your level of satisfaction with each of the following aspects of the Application submission process (using iTunes Connect).

Please rate your level of satisfaction with each of the following aspects of the application review process (using iTunes Connect).

Please rate your level of satisfaction with the length of time it takes to get updates available on the App Store.

Apple asks you to answer with: “Very dissatisfied,” “Somewhat dissatisfied,” “Neither satisfied nor dissatisfied,” “Somewhat satisfied,” “Very satisfied,” or “Don’t know.”

They also ask, “What one thing could Apple do to make the iPhone Developer Program better?” and give you a text box to write anything you want. A few months ago they certainly would have gotten some interesting responses there.

Sometime around the first of the year, Apple made some changes to the App Store approval process that drastically sped things up for many developers. In fact, a number of developers noted that approval process wait time went from two weeks (or worse) to just a couple of days in some situations. There have also been reports of improved communication from the app review team.

It seems likely that Apple staffed up its app review team and also provided them with better training and instructions over the past few months. Still, if the App Store continues to grow at its blistering pace, it’s hard to imagine that things won’t get bogged down again. So during this time of relative peace, it’s smart for Apple to survey its developers to fine tune the system.

Stealth startup Makara is launching publicly tonight with its cloud-based application deployment and management platform. Formerly known as WebappVM, Makara has raised angel funding from Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz. The startup also raised $6 million last year from Shasta Ventures and Sierra Ventures.

Rather than offer a system management software designed for traditional application environments to the cloud, Makara’s cloud-based platform leverages the virtual layer to allow developers to rapidly deploy, scale and monitor applications in cloud environments. The product, which is self-service and self-managing, is available for free on its site.

The startup’s platform allows developers to deploy new or existing web applications to a public or private cloud with no code changes. Once the application is deployed, developers can control the application runtime and have cluster-wide visibility into end user response times end-to-end through the entire stack. Makara’s offering supports Java, Flex, PHP, JBoss and Tomcat applications and runs on Amazon EC2, Rackspace Cloud, Terremark vCloud Express, VMware ESX, VMware Workstation, VirtualBox and Xen. Makara faces competition from rPath.

Late last week, I wrote a post about how netbooks running Chrome OS and the iPad were on a collision course. Some people took exception to that, noting the iPad was only a touchscreen device while Chrome OS was created to be used with more traditional computing form factors, like netbooks and laptops. But there’s a new concept video that has surfaced on a Chromium Project page that very much shows how the two could and should compete head-on in the touch tablet space.

Again, this is just a concept video at this point, but it clearly shows what the people building Chrome OS are thinking about for future products. Oh, and in case you’re worried that since Chromium OS is an open source project, this is just some random person making these videos that Google is unlikely to use for Chrome OS, they were made by Glen Murphy, a Googler working on Chrome (with a sense of humor).

Clearly, the tablet in this video is bigger than the iPad, but don’t rule out Apple making a larger tablet as well. It’s worth noting that Google’s tablet concept video was uploaded January 25, two days before the iPad unveiling.

For more of a taste of what Google has in mind with these tablets, check out the concept pictures as well. Watch the video below.

Last week, the world saw Apple’s long anticipated tablet device, the iPad, for the first time. In the aftermath since that announcement, a few things have become clear: it will be great for some people, but its apparent lack of flexibility (at least in its first iteration) may leave something to be desired. It’s increasingly looking like the best alternative will be Google’s Chrome OS, which is clearly on a collision course with the iPad. And tonight, we’ve come across some very impressive mockups of what Chrome OS may look like on a tablet form factor.

The photos have been posted to the official Chromium site (Chromium is the open source project behind Chrome and ChromeOS). And while Chromium is not actually part of Google, it appears that these mockups were put together by Glen Murphy, Google Chrome’s designer. In other words, there’s a good chance that the final version of Chrome OS will resemble this.

Update: Be sure to watch this video to see a mockup of the tablet in action.

It’s worth pointing out that there almost certainly will be multiple “Google Tablets”, given that Chrome OS won’t be tied to a single device. That said, Google is working with select hardware partners to ensure that it runs on devices that are up to its specifications, and there may be one tablet device that is designated as the “Google Tablet”, much like the Nexus One is the “Google Phone”.

Via TheChromeSource.

FbFund-backed NutshellMail provides an innovative web-based service that lets users send and receive your messages from social networks, such as Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace and Twitter, in your email inbox. Today, the application has added a nifty feature that lets any Facebook page administrator create an automated email newsletter campaign.

The NutshellMail Facebook application allows users to easily add an “Email Newsletter” tab to your page, letting fans opt-in to receiving emails that highlight recent content from your page.

The application is fairly simple; NutshellMail collects recent activity from your page, organizes it into an email and delivers it to each subscriber on Facebook as per their own delivery preferences. Subscribers can also comment, like, share or post comments back to your page directly through email. And administrators can determine how often an email update is sent out to fans.

Founded in 2007, NutshellMail was one of twenty startups incubated within the 2009 class of fbFund REV, Facebook’s joint program with Accel Partners and Founders Fund aimed to help foster quality applications on Facebook Platform.