Link Digest V1.8
For anyone curious about whether to udate to Mountain Lion, here is a longer-than-you-will-ever-want review from John Siracusa. -via arstechnica
A nice looking history of science and innovation app from IBM -via tabtimes
CanLii is effectively accessible via the iPhone thanks to Wiselii. -via iphoneincanada
The Daily from News Corp has cut staff facing $30 million in losses in its first year (on $4 million in revenues). It’s still a beautiful tablet magazine though. -via Techvibes
Flurry talks about the latest revenue numbers for app developers. Their conclusion is that more and more money is going to the top ranking apps, but overall the lower ranked apps are bringing in more money as well (as long as you are in the top 100)
An innovative way to advertise a high end mansion (includes a custom iPad app and short movie). -via Readwriteweb
Read MoreLink Digest V 1.7
Mark MacLeod from Real Ventures writes about the pitfalls of going the White Labeling route for startups. Unless you are bootstrapped with no immediate plan to sell your business then beware.
Tips for presentations from your iPad from the Globe and Mail.
Wired expands on its coverage of A/B testing by going back to early work at Google, using A/B testing in political campaigns, profiling more consumer friendly products from Optimizely, and talking about false minima and the danger of only looking at incremental optimizations. There is also an amusing anecdote where Obama surprises Googlers with his knowledge of the bubble sort.
Ryan Holmes has a commentary post on Fortune Magazine talking about the Yammer acquisition by Microsoft, highlighting how workers are fed up with clunky and dated enterprise software and are clamouring for mobile solutions on their favourite devices.
Fred Wilson opines on the growth of mobile and what it might mean to more desktop web-entrenched products.
Getting press is critically important to getting traction for your product. Here is a list of tech reporters who can make a huge difference to the success of your product, especially if you are competing against a number of similar products launching around the same time. via – Business Insider
Read MoreLink Digest V 1.6
Here is a good illustration of how overwhelming digital marketing can be (and it’s not even exhaustive as shown by the lack of Pinterest)! – from Business Insider
Some technical tips about tweeting and some handy twitter tools.
For those of you out there looking to try out some augmented reality experiences, now you can do it with Canadian stamps featuring Calgary Stampede themes and Franklin the Turtle. Also in the AR realm, Nova Scotia Tourism has commission an app to visualize the Cabot Trail. – from iPhone in Canada and Techvibes
Here is a “second generation” cross platform solution called Kirin from Vexed. There is also a brief description of some of the challenges of developing cross-platform using solutions such as PhoneGap and Sencha touch.
Ayars Animation, which brought one of the best iPad book apps during the first days of the iPad being available with Jack and the Beanstalk, demos their upcoming swipe and say technology. I’m really looking forward to seeing this in action!
Personally I use the Navigon app for in-car navigation, but for those out there looking for a free solution, Waze looks like a promising option. – via the Globe and Mail
Have you ever wondered how many downloads it takes to get into the top 25 in the US. A research report from Distimo has the answer; for the games category it is about 25,000 for a free game and 2,300 for a paid game. – via Techvibes
An example of using the 5 Whys to fight feature creep.
Here is a nice infographic showing mobile tools for travelling.
Must have features in an enterprise app store. – via Cio.com
How does design differ between iOS and Android? Here are some examples.
Read MoreLink Digest V1.5
Brick & Mobile summarizes key points from Google’s mobile playbook. In short, people use their smartphone to do local searches a lot, and if they are given a good mobile experience they will show up at your door often.
Social media is serious business. Hootsuite’s founder Ryan Holmes writes about the need for social media teams and methods for avoiding embarrassing social media accidents (using Hootsuite for instance). Included is a quote from the director of new media from the LA Kings: ”It’s (social media) a customer service tool, it’s a PR tool, it’s a sales tool. Even the guy who does the music during games uses Twitter to get song requests and feedback.” – from The Huffington Post
Macworld shows us some nifty iPad keyboard tricks.
I always try to reduce the amount of paper in my life albeit not entirely successfully yet. Macstories writes a short review of The MacSparky Paperless Field Guide available on the iBookstore.
Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) is becoming more and more common in the corporate environment. Absolute Software from Vancouver announces Absolute Manage 6.1 including Mobile Application Management tools for IT control of silent application installation and deletion. – from Techvibes
For those of you out there with kids, Smart Apps for Kids has a nice list of free apps.
Google Chrome may have finally surpassed IE as the most used browser in the world. via The Next Web
Read MoreLink Digest V1.4
Excellent guides to digital marketing from Kissmetrics.
Great post from Brick&Mobile about how poorly the restaurant industry has taken to mobile. Ten years ago lots of independent restaurants got burned paying for fancy but not particularly useful flash websites with no tools to measure their ROI. Now the with digital marketing metrics becoming mature and a number of affordable tools to create mobile sites (Mobify, Dudamobile, Brick&Mobile) there is no real excuse for not having a mobile presence; however a study from Restaurant Sciences indicated that 95% of the independent restaurants in their wide ranging survey in the US did not have a mobile optimized website, nor did 1/8 of franchised restaurants. With potential diners checking out ratings from Yelp, Urbanspoon, Google and others on their mobile phones to make their eating out decisions, can they afford to not have a good mobile site to help sell to their potential customers?
Building an app Apprentice style (BBC version). I think we can all relate to this.
An in-detail look at the cross-platform solutions offered by Titanium and PhoneGap from a contributor to Titanium.
Facebook is going to be launching an App Center to curate and promote applications for the web, iOS and Android with Facebook integration in the coming weeks. (BGR)
Foursquare has done a great job building out a location services product, but now they are trying to figure out how to monetize their service. One way will now be offering sponsored personalized offerings to their users. (GigaOM)
Wired shows us an insider view of A/B testing using the IGN website as the guinea pig. (Wired)
Techcrunch set off a firestorm of controversy when they posted an image of a pile of Android handsets and tables that Animoca uses for QC (apparently they test against 400 devices). Animoca wrote a follow up post with their take in which they say that for them this amount of testing is worth it. Opensignalmaps published data on the 600,00+ Android devices which have downloaded their app and present some interesting graphics about the variety of devices and screen resolutions. The Samsung Galaxy SII was the most popular, making up about 10% of their total downloads so make sure your Android application works on that phone at least!
Be careful when parting with your Android devices. Your data might still be there even if you think it’s been wiped clean. (Techvibes)
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