Apps News & Articles

 The very jumpy Seesmic outfit dumps its enterprise focus and goes hunting in the social space with more work to come on cross-service messaging platform, Seesmic Ping.

The looming post-apocalyptic future for Apps and AppStores aside, there were still a cornucopia of app launches at SXSW this year. Alan Cooper nailed it when he said that one of the biggest trends he has seen as technology has changed is how the differences in deployment models and computing devices have shifted the strategy and goals of people designing and creating software.

I remember a CMS implementation I was involved in ten years ago for a major hardware manufacturer. At the time, mobile was just starting to become a "thing" and multi-platform delivery was the new buzzword. People knew that mobile was going to be big, but perhaps they didn’t know how big.

If you're planning to hold off on spending US$ 0.99 for a mobile app to get the free version instead, you might want to think twice. Research from Purdue University and Microsoft has determined that free mobile applications that use third-party services to serve and display ads are likely to drain batteries faster than their paid counterparts.

One of the more interesting talks I saw at SXSW this year was "HTML5 APIs Will Change the Web: And Your Designs," by Jen Simmons. While she covered many interesting aspects of upcoming browser technology, there was an inescapable conclusion that was not talked about. Apps and the app stores that distribute them have an existential threat on the viewable horizon: The growing capabilities of browsers.

Mobile devices have infiltrated the workplace, giving executives and employees worldwide the chance to capitalize on the ability to consume and relay business intelligence without being handcuffed to their desktops. But with the new freedoms and possibilities going mobile provides also come new challenges.

There is definitely not a shortage of tools and apps designed to help us manage social media, the messages we send, the communities that gather and its influence on building brand loyalty. Of course, the right tools are easy to use and add value to how customer experience is managed and measured.

2012 will see further pushes in the way stores try to get us to buy stuff, but don't just be a passive consumer this year, expect appeals for you to fund or work on apps and games to become increasingly common.

Rumors and conjecture have circulated about a possible SharePoint App store since the release of SharePoint 2010. A number of independent attempts currently exist, though they amount to little more than website catalogs. An official app store was thought to be part of Microsoft's launch plans for SharePoint 2010, but it is believed that logistical and technical issues prevented it from becoming a reality. With the success of the iOS version and official plans for a Windows 8 store, it's almost certain we will see something soon for SharePoint.

Consumers these days can’t seem to get enough mobile apps, games, videos and other content. Mobile web usage has exploded and mobile search has quadrupled in the past year. Many people search on their smartphone when viewing a TV or print ad, looking for products via a search engine or through a clever speech recognition application such as Siri. And they expect to find the answer at their fingertips. Actionable content, right there, in seconds flat. Mobile has created a monster -- and it’s you and me.

Microsoft is continuing to earn its open source stripes. The company’s latest Windows Azure updates added support for several open source tools. The open source love isn’t stopping with Azure though: Microsoft is also allowing open source applications in the Windows Store, which is being launched for Windows 8.

Android users have millions of apps to enjoy, but there's still some envy for iOS's best-in-class products. Another of those pins will fall down soon, with the upcoming release of mega-popular photo app Instagram while a faster updated Facebook app is out now.

Google has reason to celebrate, with Android Market breaching the 10 billion app download mark. To celebrate, Android developers are offering 10-cent downloads for select premium applications on a limited time basis.

"If you build it, they will come" appears to be Microsoft's approach as it shows off the Windows Store for a product that won't be available until mid-2012.

Word on the street is the humble app, which turned the cell phone into an all-purpose Super Smart Phone device, is getting close to the 1 million milestone. That includes everything from mobile games like Angry Bird and Civilization to retail banking links like Chase and Bank of America, to full-blown enterprise apps.  Mobile analytics firm Mobilewala said Apple, Android, BlackBerry and Windows Mobile 7 combined have collectively hit almost 992,000 and are due to hit the 1 million mark sometime next week. And the growth is just getting started -- the group said that number more than doubled this year with only 484,000 apps developed by the end of 2010.