Apps - AppNewser

Interactive Shakespeare Apps Coming From Simon & Schuster

Dianna Dilworth — Thu, 23 May 2013 12:43:57 +0000

Simon & Schuster and Folger Shakespeare Library have teamed up with Luminary Digital Media to create interactive app adaptations of Shakespeare texts for use in schools. Coming this November, the joint effort will release app versions of Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth, Romeo & Juliet, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. They will continue to release plays thereafter until the entire collection is available.

The app versions will include audio recordings, videos and photos, which are designed to help teach the texts. This includes audio performances produced at the Folger Theatre, as well as expert commentary from Shakespeare scholars. The apps will also have social networking reading tools on a private network so that teachers and students can take digital notes and share them with each other within the networked text. continued…

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Social Networking Tool for Neighbors Next Door Launches iPhone App

Dianna Dilworth — Thu, 23 May 2013 10:37:35 +0000

Nextdoor, a private the private social network for neighborhoods, has launched an iPhone app.

The idea behind the network is to help neighbors communicate as neighbors do, only in the digital age. Want to borrow a cup of sugar, find a babysitter or organize a neighborhood watch meeting, that’s what Nextdoor does. The app is designed to make it easier to do this from the palm of your hand. The app lets users send an urgent alert about suspicious activity, share photos of a lost dog, report lost keys found on the sidewalk and so forth.

The app release is a gradual next step for the network, as 30 percent of all visits to the site come from mobile browsers and customers have been asking for an app version. The network is currently in use in more than 12,600 neighborhoods in the U.S.

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MessageMe Chat App Records 5 Million Downloads in 75 Days

Dianna Dilworth — Wed, 22 May 2013 13:45:33 +0000

MessageMe, a new app that rethinks the idea of an SMS by letting users send music, videos, photos, drawings and even location information, is taking off pretty quickly.

The company revealed this week that in its first 10 days, the app had been downloaded 1 million time. In the first 75 days, the app was downloaded 5 million times. The success is gaining the company some funding. They have just raised $10 million in venture capital funding.

Here is more about the company’s vision from a blog post written by the co-founders:

While communication means something different to everyone, whether it be our users in North America, Europe or Asia, or 15-20 year old males or females, what remains the same is the desire for freedom of expression. Pencil and paper revolutionized communication by allowing for more accessible and ubiquitous mediums of expression; we’ve set out to build a service that accentuates this natural style on connected devices.

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Disney’s Story App Lets Parents Share Photos & Write Stories

Dianna Dilworth — Tue, 21 May 2013 14:58:57 +0000

Disney’s has released a new iOS app to help parents share family photos from their smartphone and make a story out of it. It’s called Story.

The app accesses a user’s camera roll and the user can add photos and videos to the app to create a story. Users can write captions and create spreads of their various pictures and content. They can add pages of text, themes and layouts.

These photo stories are designed to be shared. So a user can simply tap to share with friends on Facebook or via email. The photos are not public, and a friend or family member will need an invitation to view a story. Stories can also be embedded onto a website or blog. The app is also synced with iCloud, so that users can back up all of their stories.

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Researchers Believe Placebo App Can Be as Effective as Real Placebo

Phi Tran — Tue, 21 May 2013 14:00:09 +0000

A placebo app may be a hard pill for your brain to swallow, but it’s fairly innocuous and relatively simple. How does a virtual placebo even work? As it turns out, placebos have been shown to be effective despite users being told a placebo was being used. Harnessing this mental illusion is the key to making your smart phone a virtual medicine cabinet, one that could travel with you so long as you have your phone.

If this idea strikes you as palpable, then you might be the right candidate for the Placebo Mobile App campaign on Indiegogo. The project is seeking to raise the necessary funds for Android and iPhone apps. The app allows you to select and personalize your placebo – along with alerts for you to take them at an appointed time. continued…

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ParkMe, Parking Helper, Launches Android App

Dianna Dilworth — Tue, 21 May 2013 12:19:43 +0000

Parking your car just got easier for Android users. ParkMe, the free iOS app that helps you find parking spots based on your location, is now available as an Android app.

The free app uses your location information to identify parking options in your vicinity. The app serves up a map with information on parking lost and garages in your area, as well as the rates that these places charge to help you compare costs. Once you find a lot you’d like to park in, the app will give you directions direct to the lot’s driveway, not just their street address.

Using a meter or a lot with limited time available? The app also has a parking timer to help you avoid getting a ticket or getting towed. In some markets, the tool also has a real time space view tool, so that you can see how many spots are actually available in real time.

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Is The New York Times Coming to Your Bathroom Mirror Soon?

Dianna Dilworth — Tue, 21 May 2013 11:55:39 +0000

While The New York Times is currently focusing on print, online, apps, and even Google Glass experiences today, the company has a lab in which they think about how readers might want to consume its content in the future.

In a talk at the AppNation conference in New York today, Michael Zimbalist, VP of research & development operations at The New York Times Co., revealed that his team is thinking about the next place that consumers will want to read news. He imagines a world in which the news is available on your coffee table or your bathroom mirror, if of course, these items become connected.

“In the lab we envision a world where everything is connected,” said Zimbalist.

The media company is testing a Google Glass app, and Zimbalist says that whether Google Glass is the thing that wins, he does experience that soon we’ll have a connected hub in our pockets beyond just mobile phones. “Instead of looking at maps, your right shoe [will be] buzzing when you have to turn… your wallet ringing when [your] kid away at college has just exceeded their credit card limit,” he said, explaining that five years ago people would have scratched their head, but today it’s easier to imagine. “

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David Kenny of CEO The Weather Company: You Have to Reinvent Content For Mobile

Dianna Dilworth — Tue, 21 May 2013 10:45:48 +0000

Publishers looking to get into the app business should not just adapt their online content for the mobile web, argued David Kenny, chairman/CEO of The Weather Company, said in a keynote interview at the AppNation conference in New York this morning.

“It is a big mistake to think it works like the web, it is a very different experience,” he said. “They are checking the weather six times a day. Our mobile users are making decisions on the fly, you’ve got to flow into that.”

Kenny ought to know. The Weather Channel’s apps have been downloaded 106 million times and the business is growing, and the company’s mobile business is the fastest growing part of its business both in usage and in monetization. The company employs about a hundred mobile engineers to develop and improve mobile products every day. The company feeds their weather forecasts into 15,000 other apps including Facebook. continued…

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Red Cross Apps Help Tornado Victims Find Shelter

Jason Boog — Mon, 20 May 2013 19:01:11 +0000

As Oklahoma City residents reel from a major tornado, the Red Cross has a free app that tracks disaster shelter availability. The Safe and Well site will help you connect with loved ones.

While the shelter app is Apple only, you can download the Red Cross tornado app in Google Play for an Android tool to find shelter. Follow this link to download the iOS app:

Shelter data reflects all Red Cross managed disaster shelters across the United States. Information is updated at least daily, and more often during disasters, including location, capacity, current number of shelter residents, and the date and time of the last update for each activated shelter … The application uses data about open shelters from the American Red Cross National Shelter System (NSS). The NSS contains information about 60,000 potential disaster facilities and is used to track and report on shelter information during disasters. The NSS enables emergency managers and disaster relief workers to identify relevant information for all shelters in use and to develop effective response strategies before disasters strike.

continued…

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Appreciate Helps Android Users Find Worthwhile Apps

Dianna Dilworth — Mon, 20 May 2013 16:10:15 +0000

With more than 700,000 apps available in Google Play’s Android app store, it can be difficult to find new apps that you like to use.

Appreciate aims to address this problem by giving you personalized recommendations on what Android apps you might like based on the apps that you are already using, as well as on what your Facebook friends use and what kinds of apps other app users like you are using.

The free Android app works like a search tool for app discovery. You can create a profile and identify which apps you like and it will match you up with other apps that you might like. The app has a live stream of apps recommended specifically for you, and you can do social searches to see which friends are using apps that you might be considering. You can also look for apps that are similar to apps that you use including alternatives that mega-users like the most.

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Food Ordering Apps Seamless & GrubHub Merge

Dianna Dilworth — Mon, 20 May 2013 15:50:21 +0000

Online and app food ordering companies Seamless and GrubHub have agreed to merge their services. Combined, the organization will offer users access to more than 20,000 local restaurants in more than 500 cities across the U.S. In 2012, the two companies delivered about $875 million in gross food sales to local takeout restaurants, earning a combined revenue of more than $100 million.

“We have always shared the same goal – to bring more business to restaurants – and by working together, we will be able to bring even more innovation to customers across the U.S and U.K.,” wrote Jonathan Zabusky, CEO of Seamless on the Seamless blog. continued…

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Hospitals Using Smartphone Tracker to Monitor Patients

Phi Tran — Mon, 20 May 2013 15:00:18 +0000

Doctors and nurses are continually turning to smart phones to help patients. This, time it’s the data that is alerting nurses to changes to patients’ daily habits through Gingeri.o’s behavioral health analytics.

Ginger.io taps into the continuous sensor data from your mobile phone and other devices to predict individual behavior changes and identify aggregate trends. Our research from MIT Media Lab demonstrated that location and communication sensors can be used to model individual symptoms and long term health outcomes.

continued…

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Bang With Friends Removed from Apple App Store

Phi Tran — Mon, 20 May 2013 14:00:57 +0000

Controversial Facebook based app, Bang with Friends, got the boot from Apple’s app store. Since January, the app has garnered plenty of negative attention and one knock-off called Bang with Nobody (actually a Google Plus stab). Apple did not comment on why the app was removed, but it’s safely assumed that the app violated Apple’s sense of decency with the pornographic nature of the app. Perhaps Apple is not “down to bang.”

Bang with Friends’ graphic logo was recently switched to its benign acronyms on Facebook as a means to appease Facebook’s policy so similar tactics might work for Apple, though it seems that the company’s “puritanical porn policy” may keep it out indefinitely.

What do you think? Should customers be concerned with Apple’s authority in removing apps that millions of users may want?

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Yahoo to Buy Tumblr for $1.1 Billion, Promises ‘Not to Screw it Up”

Dianna Dilworth — Mon, 20 May 2013 12:36:03 +0000

Yahoo has agreed to buy Tumblr for $1.1 billion. Yahoo said in a press release that they “promise not to screw it up,” explaining that Tumblr will be operated as an independent business and that David Karp, the company’s founder will remain CEO.

Still, the two companies will work together in some ways. Here are some details about how from the press release:

Tumblr can deploy Yahoo!’s personalization technology and search infrastructure to help its users discover creators, bloggers, and content they’ll love. In turn, Tumblr brings 50 billion blog posts (and 75 million more arriving each day) to Yahoo!’s media network and search experiences. The two companies will also work together to create advertising opportunities that are seamless and enhance the user experience.

As part of the news release, Yahoo revealed that Tumblr has more than 300 million monthly unique visitors and signup about 120,000 people every day. In addition, Tumblr gets about 900 posts per second, users spend 24 billion minutes on the site per month and more than half of Tumblr’s users use the site’s mobile app.

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Gilt Updates Android App, Giving Mobile Users First Glance at Deals

Dianna Dilworth — Mon, 20 May 2013 09:00:36 +0000

Gilt Groupe, an online destination for flash sales on luxury items, has updated its Android app with a new design to make it easier to shop the site from an Android phone. Making shopping easier is important for Gilt, who generates more than 30% of its overall revenue and half of its daily traffic from apps and the mobile web.

The app has been totally redesigned with a new look and feel. The new version’s images are 5x what they used to be and the navigation has been optimized for faster and easier shopping. The app also loads faster thanks to a new Backbone JS / HTML 5 framework. The check out tool is also easier to use.

To help promote version 3.0 of the app, Gilt is running a series Android-exclusive mobile sales on the new app. From May 28^th to June 1^st, Gilt members that shop the Android app will get access to exclusive offers before they go live on the site. In addition, Gilt is offering free shipping on all orders placed through the Android app from May 28^th at 12pm EST to June 1^st at 11:59pm EST.

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