Facebook’s New App Center: Everything You Need to Know

Facebook’s upcoming App Center may look a lot like the Apple App Store and Google Play, but it’s not exactly their competitor.
Instead of selling apps that integrate with Facebook, the new App Center will refer users to other app stores where they can buy them.
Confused? You’re not the only one. After Facebook announced the new feature on Wednesday, “I don’t get it” was a common response.
We’ve answered below some of the most common questions about how the App Center will work, what apps it will contain and why Facebook built it. Let us know if you have another question we missed.

So Facebook is going to have an app store now?
Yes, but not in the same sense that Google and Apple have app stores. What Facebook has announced is more of an app showcase. In addition to apps built on Facebook, it includes apps that use Facebook Login, regardless of whether they’re iOS, Android or web apps.
Does that mean I can buy iOS and Android apps on Facebook?
No. Though you will find iOS and Android apps in the App Center, you will be directed to Apple’s App Store or Google Play to actually download the apps.
Facebook announced on Wednesday that it will allow developers to charge for “apps built on Facebook” for the first time, but is not clear whether users will purchase apps directly from the App Center.
What are “apps built on Facebook,” and how are they different than iOS and Android apps that integrate with Facebook?
Apps built on Facebook are web apps viewed and used within the Facebook site. They get a special page within Facebook where they load. On the other hand, apps with Facebook integrations such as Draw Something and Pinterest are built on external platforms, but they interface with Facebook for login and other social features.
Couldn’t I spend money on apps built on Facebook before?
Yes. Previously, Facebook has allowed in-app purchases within these apps, but it has not allowed developers to charge for apps themselves.
Social game maker Zynga, for example, has previously been able to charge for items like blueberries or game advantages within Farmville. Now it will have the option to charge for Farmville itself.
How will I access Facebook’s App Center?
Facebook’s App Center will launch on the web as well as within the iOS and Android Facebook apps.
What will the App Center Look Like?
It will look a lot like Google Play or the Apple App Store. Each app will have a detail page, which includes a five-star user-rating system. A screenshot of the prototype that Facebook engineer Aaron Brady included in a blog post about the center includes sections for recommended apps, friends’ apps, top apps, trending apps and top-grossing apps.
“We use a variety of signals, such as user ratings and engagement, to determine if an app is listed in the App Center,” Brady wrote.
Hasn’t Facebook launched something like this before?
Sort of. When Facebook first launched Facebook apps in 2007, there was a dedicated applications area where users could browse apps from third-party developers. Users currently locate Facebook apps through the same search bar they use to find people, groups and events.
Why would Facebook launch something like this?
As Brady put it in his blog post, “The App Center is designed to grow mobile apps that use Facebook — whether they’re on iOS, Android or the mobile web.”
Facebook wants developers to build mobile apps that integrate it. Reaching Facebook’s 900 million users through the App Center is another incentive for them to do so.
The showcase also encourages makes it easier to discover apps built on Facebook, many of which integrate Facebook’s payment system Credits. All games built on Facebook are required to use Facebook Credits to accept payments (except when they’re running on iOS), and Facebook takes a takes a 30% cut of all purchases made with Facebook Credits. That’s why as of February Zynga accounted for 12% of the social network’s revenue.
Facebook will also presumably take a 30% cut of the purchase price for upcoming paid apps built on Facebook.

12:12 by Robert dawne · 1

Following Apple’s and Google’s Lead, Amazon Enables In-App Purchases

After a relatively short test period, Amazon announced Tuesday that developers can now set up in-app purchases within apps offered in the Amazon Appstore.
The move gives the developers an opportunity to earn more money through in-app upgrades, expansions, subscriptions (essential to publishers) and virtual good purchases. It also makes Amazon’s Appstore more competitive with Apple’s and Google’s app stores, both of which have enabled in-app purchasing since spring 2009 and spring 2011, respectively.
Like Apple and Google, Amazon will keep 30% of all revenue generated through in-app purchases.
Developers and publishers including Disney, Gameloft, G5 Entertainment, Conde Nast and Dow Jones were given early access to Amazon’s in-app purchasing API, and will begin offering in-app purchases Tuesday. In a statement, Larissa McCleary, director of marketing at G5 Entertainment, noted that enabling in-app purchases upped conversion rates and revenue in all of the games G5 offers in the Amazon Appstore.
In-app purchases are becoming an increasingly important source of revenue for developers. According to a study conducted by IHS, in-app purchases generated $970 million in revenue in 2011, accounting for 39% of all smartphone app revenue that year. Those figures are only expected to grow, bringing in $5.6 billion — 64% of all smartphone app revenue — in 2015.



Amazon released the above video to introduce developers to its new, in-app purchasing service.

16:27 by Robert dawne · 0

Foursquare Shuts Down Location API for “Girls Around Me” App

A recent application that allowed users to spot the girls that were within their vicinity has had some of its rights revoked by Foursquare.  The app, called “Girls Around Me”, was scanning public Foursquare and Facebook to determine whether there were any females in your location.  If a girl had checked in to a location near you or had listed personal location information on Facebook, GAM would find this and show their position overlaid on a map.  Obviously, when this came to light people were a bit unnerved by the whole thing.
The app was first discovered by John Brownlee over at Cult of Mac and has since gone viral.  John tells the interesting story of showing this app to friends to set their “skin crawling”, and explains how the most worrying thing about the app is how it uses public information — nothing the app is doing is technically forbidden.  It raises a few questions for platform creators — questions that other services Tumblr have been facing recently: Do you draw moral and ethical boundaries on the content on your site?
It seems like the answer is yes for extreme cases like these.  There’s no reason to let this application continue to provide potentially dangerous information to people, and Foursquare took the opportunity to emphasize this by shutting down GAM’s access to the Foursquare location API.  This was followed by Apple taking the application down from the App Store.

19:38 by Robert dawne · 0

Forget Photos and Video. SpinCam App Captures 360-Degree ‘Spins’

A new iOS app called SpinCam attempts to blur the line between video and panoramic photos, claiming to create a new type of photographic media entirely –- Spins.
Unlike traditional photos, Spins capture a 360-degree image of a moment that can be experienced interactively. Spins are created by holding your phone up and “spinning” around in a circle to create a panoramic-style photo, or spinning around a person or thing to create an image much like this one from outside our San Francisco office.
While you might use the app in place of taking a panoramic photo or shooting a short video, the folks at SpinCam are quick to point out that the app creates its own medium.
“Spins really fall into a new category of interactive media that is ideal for concisely sharing an experience,” SpinCam CEO Josh Aller told Mashable. “Though it takes just seconds to capture, viewers typically explore the spin for over 30 seconds. That inversion of capture time to viewing time is unique to this form of visual media. We see people using SpinCam to capture panoramas simply because it’s faster and easier than with panoramic capture apps like Photosynth. We don’t see Spins as a replacement for panoramic images but it’s so much easier to capture a Spin that many folks are using SpinCam for that purpose.”
“We also think it’s great that it’s mostly people that are being Spun, not places or things,” Aller added. “It’s a great way to share personality and group photos…we are seeing users do things with it that we could never have imagined. For example, a new meme has emerged that we are calling the “Matrix” spin in which time appears to stop and that meme has been copied many times.”
Spins created using SpinCam are saved within the app on your phone for sharing with others and can also be uploaded to Facebook. The app already has 200,000 downloads, and from that group of early adopters more than 6,000 are already sharing images. While shares are currently Facebook-specific, SpinCam plans to integrate email, Twitter, and SMS sharing in the near future. Spins you share are currently uploaded to a webpage, so while you’ll have to upload a spin to Facebook to get that URL, you can copy/paste that URL and send it to a friend elsewhere.
Long-term, SpinCam sees itself evolving into its own popular social network much like Instagram. Like Instagram, the app currently has Featured and Liked sections where you can browse through popular Spins shared by other users. As the community grows, those sections will ultimately be populated with more and more interesting spins. Plans are also in the works for an Android version.
“We see this as only the beginning of a new media form,” Aller said. “We see our purpose as serving our users in their creative pursuits. They are leading and we are along for the ride. We don’t know where this will go but we will evolve the product rapidly to meet their changing needs.”

17:23 by Robert dawne · 0

Eyeing An IPO, Kayak 2011 Revenue Up 32 Percent To $225M; Net Income Up 21 Percent

Travel search giant Kayak just posted new revenue numbers for the fourth quarter and full year 2011 in a new S-1 filing with the SEC. As we heard last September, Kayak put its IPO plans on hold until market conditions improve. Now that the markets are more stabilized, it should be interesting to see when Kayak makes the push to become a public company. For the year, Kayak generated $224.5 million of revenues, up 32 percent from 2010.
Net income for the year was $9.7 million, up 21 percent from 2010′s net income of $8 million For the fourth quarter, Kayak saw a 27 percent increase in quarterly revenue, posting $53.9 million in Q4 2011 sales. In contrast, revenue grew 28 percent in the third quarter.
But the company says that typically its highest revenue quarters are the second and third quarters.
Kayak says it finished 2011 with 899 million user queries processes for travel information, representing growth of 42 percent from 2010. For 2011, Kayak had 7 million downloads, up over 70 percent from 2010.
Despite the IPO being on hold, Kayak has been consistently trying to improve its core product and add additional functionality. The company has been heads down on product development and improving customer experience over the past few months, as the company battles with Google in the travel search space.
In December, Kayak redesigned its iPad app and consolidated the app with its iPhone cousin. The company’s website most recently got a big UI upgrade, creating a more universal and comprehensive consumer experience across all Kayak platforms: web, mobile web and apps. And the search engine just debuted direct booking for flights.

13:17 by Robert dawne · 0

From Zynga To Flipboard: Why All Eyes Are On China For The Next Mobile Boom

Editor’s note: Chris Shen is vice president at Chinese gaming company The9. Prior to joining The9, he served as group account director and account director for several advertising agencies in Shanghai and Taipei.
If you spend any time speaking with Western mobile companies, one topic that’s likely to pop up is their “China strategy.” Due to a mix of mobile penetration, sheer population, and popularity of the mobile web, Western mobile companies recognize there’s a lot of money to be made overseas.
The idea is not without merit: China is the world’s largest mobile market with almost one billion users, 69 percent of which access the Internet through their phones on a regular basis. As such, plenty of big-name Western mobile companies have already begun entering China. However, the mobile market is still immature with issues like fragmentation and piracy, making distribution exceedingly difficult for developers. China isn’t quite yet a home away from home for Western developers, but it’s poised to be the next big mobile market.
China’s lucrative potential is especially relevant for mobile developers. Mobile apps and games were popular in China well before the United States caught on, and the market is only going to get bigger. Smartphone adoption is picking up and opening a window for Western developers to introduce new titles, while in-app purchases are on the rise in China and app downloads have almost tripled in the last year (more on that in a second).
Rise of the Smartphones
China has over 980 million mobile users. While this number is staggering, the majority of users own feature phones. As such, many local developers create apps that cater to feature phones. However, in the past few years, smartphone adoption — both iOS and Android devices — has increased significantly. According to research firm Strategy Analytics, almost 24 million smartphones were shipped to China in 2011, surpassing the number of devices in the U.S. This trend is still gaining steam and creating a profitable window for Western iOS and Android app and game developers. The9 and GREE recognized this trend early and established the $100 million Fund9 to help developers port their games to Android and distribute them in China.
Loads of Downloads
In addition to a massive user base, China’s mobile activity is also skyrocketing. More people are downloading more apps and games. According to mobile analytics site App Annie China’s mobile download numbers have grown by almost 300 percent in the last year. Additionally, research firm Distimo reported that over 30 percent of Apple’s App Store downloads were coming from China by the end of 2011, as opposed to only 18 percent at the beginning of that year.
In-App Purchases and Virtual Goods
China’s massive mobile potential is more than just a numbers game. It’s true that there are more mobile users in China than anywhere else, but they’re also starting to spend more. A lot more. According to App Annie, mobile revenue in China has nearly tripled in the last year, increasing by 187 percent. This is partially due to Apple’s recent announcement that they’re going to start accepting App Store payments in Chinese yuan. Now Western game developers can seamlessly offer virtual goods to China’s huge audience.
Western mobile companies can’t afford to ignore the Chinese market. A good example of this is Flipboard. Before launching in China, Flipboard was plagued by multiple clone apps that grew in popularity in the app’s absence. Since launching in China’s App Store, the company has been successful partnering with big-name companies like Sina and Renren. Hit mobile game maker, Rovio, saw a similar problem with loads of unlicensed Angry Birds (even a theme park) being sold in China. Their solution: open an entire Angry Birds store in China.
There’s more incentive to enter China than just to protect a brand. Companies like CrowdStar, GREE, and Zynga have all announced China ambitions.
As China’s mobile market continues to mature, it’s safe to assume that issues like piracy and fragmentation will become less problematic. For mobile game developers looking to cash in on China today, there are still some ways they can bring their apps over successfully. Finding a local partner to help with distribution, security, and catering to a Chinese audience will ensure a more successful launch.
Companies like The9 recognize both China’s complexity and its opportunity, and are eager to work with Western app developers. By leveraging carrier partnerships and working with multiple distribution channels, local partners can eliminate the headache of entering China.
Developers also need to localize their apps if they want them to succeed in China. This means not only translating apps into Chinese, but also customizing design aspects to meet cultural preferences and various channel requirements.
China is a beast already and it’s only going to get bigger. As Apple and Google continue to penetrate the market and cater to Chinese audiences, there will be a great window of opportunity for Western developers to rake in the yuan.
[image via flickr/bfishadow]

09:19 by Robert dawne · 0

Google Updates Trio of Apps: Wallet, Authenticator, Google+

Google is celebrating Leap Day with a few minor updates to some of its Android apps, delivering new versions of Wallet, Google+, and Authenticator to the Android Market today.

Google Wallet finds itself getting the most significant updates of the trio, but we're still mainly in bugfix territory here. A couple changes have been introduced to how the app handles address input, letting you using a longer address or a PO Box when setting up a prepaid card. Reward cards linked to the app should now see improvements with keeping their data synced-up. Most of us struggle to find one smartphone on which we can run Wallet, but for those of you with multiple NFC-capable phones, this release will better handle sharing your account on more than one handset.

Google Authenticator, letting your use your phone to securely log in to your Google account on public terminals, gets some unspecified bug fixes, but seeing as the whole point of this app is security, we'd treat this release with a little more seriousness than your standard bugfix update. To that end, Google+ also gets some minor, unspecified bug fixes, along with improvements to app stability.

All three Google apps are currently available in the Android Market.

06:14 by Robert dawne · 0

Apple, Google, And Others Agree To Mobile App Privacy Policy Guidelines

Though Apple, Google, Microsoft, RIM, Amazon, and HP don’t always see eye-to-eye, the six of them have entered into an agreement brokered by California Attorney General Kamala Harris to take a tougher stance on the issue of mobile privacy.
Going forward, the six companies involved must provide users with a privacy policy if the app in question collects personal information. Though the move will affect the app submission and downloading process for users the world over, it was designed to bring those six companies into compliance with California state law.
“The majority of mobile apps sold today do not contain a privacy policy,” Harris said. “By ensuring that mobile apps have privacy policies, we create more transparency and give mobile users more informed control over who accesses their personal information and how it is used.”
It isn’t just enough for these companies to provide app-specific privacy policies to their users; they must also do it before the user downloads it, creating a much-needed means for them to opt-in. Apple and company also need to be consistent in how they display that information, as the agreement Harris brokered called for “a consistent location for an app’s privacy policy on the application-download screen.”
On top of that, users will also be given tools to help police their respective app stores. The terms of the agreement note that the platforms in question will allow users to report non-compliant apps, which could bring about some welcome change in some respects — while the Android Market already allows users to flag questionable apps, the iOS App Store and the Windows Marketplace don’t give users that power.
The past few weeks have made the mobile privacy issue a hot-button topic outside of the tech sphere, and the attention doesn’t just end with California’s AG — two congressmen sent a letter to Apple CEO Tim Cook posing questions about user data privacy, and the White House will be holding an online meeting tomorrow to accompany the release of a white paper on online privacy. Regardless of how this privacy discussion began, don’t expect for the talk to subside any time soon.

17:52 by Robert dawne · 0

WordPress Now Available For the BlackBerry PlayBook

February 21 was a busy day for RIM and PlayBook owners alike.
Shortly after the release of the BlackBerry PlayBook OS 2.0, bloggers will be glad to find out that the official WordPress App for PlayBook is also available for download on BlackBerry AppWorld.
This app allows you to write posts, edit pages, and manage comments on the go. Both WordPress.com and self-hosted WordPress (2.9.2 or higher) sites are supported.
The application features similar capabilities with those you can find in the WordPress for BlackBerry smartphones, but with a much better resolution, to take advantage of the 1024 x 600 screen on the BlackBerry tablet.
Source: BlackBerry
Via: BerryReview

08:26 by Robert dawne · 0

MSN Launches msnNOW Social Trends App on Facebook, Web and Mobile

One of the Web’s oldest portals, MSN, is about to dive headfirst into one of the Internet’s hottest trends: Social Media.
No, Microsoft, which runs MSN, is not launching its own social network. Instead, the 17-year-old content destination is unveiling a new social reader, msnNOW, on Facebook, the Web and in a new web-based mobile interface.
The initiative is actually two components. According to MSN General Manager Bob Visse, a team of 20 editors will use a new Demand Dashboard to measure velocity and volume of trending topics across Facebook, Twitter, the Bing search engine and BreakingNews.com (a joint MSN/NBC venture).
Stories that are trending will appear on msnNOW in a constantly updating “Biggest Movers” box. In addition, a team of editors will select topics and stories from among those social (and search) trends and create 100 word write-ups for posts that will appear in msnNOW’s What’s Trending homepage.
The page, which will look pretty much the same on the web and in the new Facebook app, will feature a large main story and a grid of other popular stories below. Visse described it as a “river of real-time content”. Within each area, reader will find small icons for Twitter, Facebook and BreakingNews.com. The presence of each will indicate on which social networks the stories and topics are trending.
These are not icons for sharing these posts, but Visse promised that sharing options would be obvious on the Web site and in the Facebook app, where there will be opportunities to share and comment.
Along with each MSN-created post, readers will find related Bing search terms, Tweets and other content. Not every topic or story will get an MSN write-up. For those, What’s Trending will link to a Bing result, which will also offer a link directly to the original content source. “We give the best of the web regardless of where that content or hot story originated from,” Visse told us.
Visse explained that MSN is targeting a younger “always socially connected consumer who lives an online lifestyle for information gathering and seeking.” That may mean that some of the trending content will be a little edgier than what you traditionally see on the portal. It’s all designed to start a conversation. Even the design has the younger demo in mind. It’s image-centric, with what Visse calls “short, pithy headlines.”
It’s also one of the first times that MSN has launched a new product across three separate platforms at once and, as Visse noted, it’s the first time MSN “has done anything interesting with the Facebook social reader experience.” msnNOW, however, will not launch with Google+ integration, though Visse said Microsoft is open to tracking volume and acceleration on the still young social network at a future date.
Visse calls the msnNOW project a “transformative experience for MSN.” Even so, the design is still decidedly MSN-centric across all platforms. Visse contends that while msnNOW is not yet a Metro design (the cubist-look Microsoft is painting across virtually all of its interfaces), msnNOW’s “component-like design is not a big leap to get a Metro-like design.”
The intention with the current look is for a really good, super-easy-to-use interface. The mobile interface, in particular, is designed for easy touch and swipe consumption across multiple mobile devices (the mobile web site should work well on the latest iOS, Windows Phone and Android browsers).
Though MSN currently enjoys a reported 125 million monthly visitors, with 75 million visiting the MSN portal homepage each month, msnNOW will not take over that hot destination. Visse told that msnNOW will have a hard and visible link from the MSN homepage and msnNOW content that does make the main homepage will feature msnNOW artwork and insignias.
msnNOW is an interesting bet for Microsoft, the big software company without its own big social network. Can it be the aggregator instead of the creator? And will content and media companies like the 100-word write-ups — or will they think such stories are cannibalizing their content?
Visse, though, has other concerns. “I’m waiting to see how it works out. Did we connect with the younger demo in the way I think we’re going to? Are the edit choices and the way we package them together interesting and exciting for users?” All good questions and Visse acknowledges that he won’t know the answers until they launch the product.

13:27 by Robert dawne · 0

Google+’s David Glazer To App Developers: ‘I Want Someone To Build a Deck of Cards’

Google+ is still virgin territory for  games and other social applications. At the Inside Social Apps 2012 conference this week, Inside Network’s Justin Smith sat down with Google+ director of engineering David Glazer to talk about what developers can expect from the platform.

Glazer said the company is testing Google+ in three phases: “One, create a great user experience,” he said. “Two, use relationships and identity to activate other Google products. Three, then do that for anyone else who wants to take advantage of that.”
Right now Google is testing the waters with publishers who use the +1 button to recommend and share content.  Said Glazer, “That’s one of the areas that has been getting traction for us.”
There are also a handful of celebrities and news organizations that are previewing Google Hangouts. ”I think the Hangouts API is going to allow people to build a whole new category of applications,” Glazer said.
When asked about these other categories, Glazer mentioned location-based apps and something more basic: “I want someone to build a deck of cards,” he said. “If you and I are sitting here and we had a deck of cards and 10 minutes to kill, that’s it, you don’t need anything else. [As a developer] assume you have a couple people hanging out around an object. People are pretty good at entertaining themselves.”
For the moment, game APIs are still are invite-only. “We didn’t want to get developers on board and then change the rules on them when we have a new policy or a new mechanism,” said Glazer.
Google is also taking the user’s preference into consideration.  ”Before we launched the first few games, we saw equal amounts of anticipation from the community – ‘gee, I hope they allow games’ and ‘I hope they never allow games,’” said Glazer. “We listened to both sides because they’re both legitimate feedback.” Basically, the activity streams will be separated in a way that game activity is hidden for those who aren’t interested and visible for those who are.
This sounds like the opposite of Facebook’s plans for games. In a panel discussion on Wednesday, Carl Sjogreen, Facebook’s director of product management said, “We want to move to a model where, fundamentally, the integration point in the app is to take the action and add it to Facebook in a structured way.”
At the same time, access to a player’s identity and social connections will play a large part in distributing Google+ throughout the network. Said Glazer, “The obvious insight is that people care about other people, so that should be baked into what you do while you’re online.”
A similar philosophy applies to developing apps for mobile devices like the Android and the Kindle Fire. “Mobile is obviously growing faster than the rest of the web,” said Glazer. “Therefore I think Google+ will see a lot of traction on mobile devices.”
But the devices are just means to an end. “We think about any new feature in the product and think about the mobile web, desktop, native application,” Glazer said. “We’re aiming for capabilities across all of them.”
Platform monetization was built for both comfort and speed. “The only time people notice it is when something goes wrong,” said Glazer. The games will be available both in Google+ and on the Chrome Web Store, and the Google wallet makes paying for the products more like using PayPal.
Brand pages aren’t a priority right now, but in terms of advertising, “Google is perfectly happy to help people use ad money to reach their audience,” said Glazer. “We’re pretty good at that.”

13:00 by Robert dawne · 0

Path Apologizes, Deletes All Address Book Data

Dave Morin, the CEO of beleaguered social network Path, posted an apology today addressing the recent controversy over how the app accesses information on a user’s phone. Saying the the company made a mistake, Morin promises Path has purged all address-book data from its servers.
In the blog post, titled simply “We are sorry,” Morin says Path values its users’ trust more than anything, which is why the company opted to delete the “entire collection” of user-uploaded contact information. (The full text is below.)
“We made a mistake,” Morin writes. “Through the feedback we’ve received from all of you, we now understand that the way we had designed our ‘Add Friends’ feature was wrong. We are deeply sorry if you were uncomfortable with how our application used your phone contacts.”
In the apology, Morin reiterated that Path takes the storage and transmission of personal information “very, very seriously” and said the data was used only as a friend-suggestion tool and to notify users when contacts joined the network. Morin says the information was always encrypted during transmission and stored on Path’s servers using “industry standard firewall technology.”


In an update to the iOS app, which is now available on the App Store, Path version 2.0.6 will prompt users to opt in or out of sharing their phones’ contacts with the app. As before, if users change their minds, they can email Path’s customer service department and the company promises to delete the information from its servers.
After downloading the update, the app will prompt you to let it access your address-book data with the following screen:

The whole controversy mirrors similar privacy issues that arose around Facebook, specifically the gathering of user information and how the social network shares that data with third parties such as advertisers. Those issues eventually led to an FTC investigation of Facebook, which ended with a settlement last year in which the company submitted itself to regular privacy audits.
Has Path done enough to put this controversy to rest? Let us know what you think of the company’s apology and remedy in the comments.
Here’s the full text of Path’s apology:

We are sorry.

We made a mistake. Over the last couple of days users brought to light an issue concerning how we handle your personal information on Path, specifically the transmission and storage of your phone contacts.
As our mission is to build the world’s first personal network, a trusted place for you to journal and share life with close friends and family, we take the storage and transmission of your personal information very, very seriously.
Through the feedback we’ve received from all of you, we now understand that the way we had designed our ‘Add Friends’ feature was wrong. We are deeply sorry if you were uncomfortable with how our application used your phone contacts.
In the interest of complete transparency we want to clarify that the use of this information is limited to improving the quality of friend suggestions when you use the ‘Add Friends’ feature and to notify you when one of your contacts joins Path––nothing else. We always transmit this and any other information you share on Path to our servers over an encrypted connection. It is also stored securely on our servers using industry standard firewall technology.
We believe you should have control when it comes to sharing your personal information. We also believe that actions speak louder than words. So, as a clear signal of our commitment to your privacy, we’ve deleted the entire collection of user uploaded contact information from our servers. Your trust matters to us and we want you to feel completely in control of your information on Path.
In Path 2.0.6, released to the App Store today, you are prompted to opt in or out of sharing your phone’s contacts with our servers in order to find your friends and family on Path. If you accept and later decide you would like to revoke this access, please send an email to service@path.com and we will promptly see to it that your contact information is removed.
We care deeply about your privacy and about creating a trusted place for you to share life with your close friends and family. As we continue to expand and grow we will make some mistakes along the way. We commit to you that we will continue to be transparent and always serve you, our users, first.
We hope this update clears up any confusion. You can find Path 2.0.6 in the App Store here.
Sincerely,
Dave Morin
Co-Founder and CEO

14:53 by Robert dawne · 0

Top 10 Free Google Chrome Plugins for Small Businesses, to Increase Productivity

Since Google launched its Chrome Web store in December,
extensions have sprung up to speed up to simplify the messy
world of Internet browsing. If you're a member of the club that
spends more time looking at screens than people, some simple
browser add-ons can streamline many of your daily processes
on the job.
We brought you a list of great Google Chrome apps for small businesses shortly after the store's opening. Here are 10 new
ones that are sure to increase your web productivity while at work.




1. StayFocusd

We understand it's a bit much to ask you to go completely cold turkey from Angry Birds. Fortunately for the Internet-browsing addicts out there, StayFocusd puts a cap on a list of sites you choose to limit. Whether you're wasting time on social networks, blogs, shopping or gaming, you can customize your list of restricted sites. Then, set your limit to the amount of time you will allow yourself to waste.
2. Large Document


Say goodbye to e-mail bounce-back notifications for documents over 10 megabytes. The Large Document app lets you transfer what e-mail won't, and it's simpler than an external sharing site like YouSendIt or Dropbox. The Chrome extension converts your file into a URL you can share. An added bonus? No log-in information is required.
3. Docs PDF/PowerPoint Viewer

Docs PDF/PowerPoint Viewer ends the frustrating restriction of needing to download Doc and PowerPoint files to view them. Rather than wait to read several pages sent in e-mail, open Docs, PowerPoints and PDFs directly in your Chrome browser.
4. Yast

Whether you're timing your hours billed to clients or how long your lunch meeting lasted, Yast makes timing your work easy. The app generates time sheets you can comment on and color codes so you can organize all your time-related needs.
5. TabCloud

Sure, tabbed browsing makes everyone's life easier. That is, until your tabbing gets to be a disorganized mess. TabCloud lets you save browsing sessions for a later date. If you're researching a project, just save the set of tabs and return to the bunch at a later time. And, because they're stored in the cloud, you can access your tabs from any computer.
6. Screen Capture

Using Screen Capture, you can easily grab stills from your browser. More transferable than copy and paste and faster than taking notes, screen shots will speed up your work online.
Fun fact: This is the very app that took the photos for this gallery!
7. Popchrom

Expedite your typing by turning your commonly used phrases into abbreviated shortcuts. Let's say you add "lmk" as a shortcut for "let me know if you have any questions." Once you have the shortcut saved, all you need to do is place your mouse over the abbreviated shortcut—in our case, "lmk"—and press ctrl+space. The expanded text will replace your abbreviation.
8. HootSuite

HootSuite puts all your social networks in one simple dashboard, updated in real time. Track traffic to your site, monitor conversations and schedule messages using this handy app.
9. Read Later Fast

If you often find yourself distracted while reading every interesting story you stumble across during the work day, Read Later Fast can help you kick the habit. Rather than forgetting about all those interesting links, this app will store your stories in an easy to use inbox for reading at a later time.
10. Google Calendar Checker

Rather than navigating between your work and your schedule, this easy app counts down until your next engagement in the corner of your browser. Google Calendar Checker's simplicity keeps you focused on meeting your deadlines and preparing for engagements.
Let us know in the comments if you are using any of these apps. Which work for you? What did we miss?

11:42 by Robert dawne · 2

The Daily Hits 1st Birthday, Reaches 100,000 Paid Subscribers on iPad. What’s Next?

The Daily, the News Corp publication that launched exclusively on the iPad one year ago Thursday, is setting its sites beyond tablets in 2012.
The publication has amassed more than 100,000 paid subscribers on the iPad, making it the third top-grossing iPad app in the iTunes Store last year. Of those 100,000, about half pay The Daily‘s $0.99 per week subscription fee, and the other half are annual ($39.99 per year) subscribers, according to publisher Greg Clayman.
Earlier this month, The Daily launched its first Android edition for Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablets. Now the digital newspaper is gearing up to release versions for iPhone and Android smartphones “in the next month or two,” says Clayman, thereby making its content available to the millions of consumers who own smartphones but not tablets. It will also allow existing subscribers to more easily access The Daily‘s updates throughout the day.
We spoke to Clayman about The Daily‘s first year and what lies ahead for 2012. An edited transcript of our phone interview can be found below.

Q&A With Greg Clayman, Publisher of The Daily

Greg Clayman addresses attendees at Mashable‘s 2011 Connect conference in Orlando.

 n some senses, The Daily‘s exclusive launch on the iPad was a progressive embrace of new technology — one that many thought was ahead of its time. Then again, most publications have been laboring to bring their content to as many devices, screens and platforms as possible, whereas The Daily limited itself by being available only on one.

We were very specific about designing a native daily news experience for a tablet. As we start to look at smartphones, we’re having to rethink what a daily news consumption experience should be like on that device. We’re known for very visual graphics, stunning photography and ease of use, which is difficult to translate to iPhone.
Will you ever have a website?
We’ve spent a lot of time looking at The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal and their paywalls, as well as sites without paywalls like The Huffington Post, to determine the best business model. On the iPad, we know what the model is. Apple has a great subscription service and an awesome thing called Newsstand, and that’s how we monetize. One click and you pay for it, very straightforward. On the web there’s a series of different models, and there’s issues about what kinds of paywalls work, and what content you put in front and behind a paywall, and whether it’s metered or usage-based. These are all questions that people are still debating across the industry. We’re keeping an eye on all of those.
So is it fair to say that you’re having discussions about building a website, but that nothing is in production?
That’s about right. I’d say we’re focused on the mobile space and mobile users.
Earlier this month you launched your first edition for Android tablets. What have been the challenges of formatting for a new operating system?
There are two challenges. One is the sort of format layout, look, feel. The second is the coding. On the layout side, what we do on the iPad and what we do on the Android tablet looks almost exactly the same. There is some difficulty with Android in terms of navigation — it has a built-in back button and contextual menu, for instance — which you can design for but don’t need to. What is very different is underlying code. The beauty of iOS is that if you build one tablet app, one iPhone app, and it works across all the devices instantly. Challenge we all face with Android is that there are different iterations of the operating systems — Gingerbread, Ice Cream Sandwich, etc. — and we need to develop slightly different iterations for each handsets. That’s why, when you develop for Android, people talking about how it’s a longer process.
How did you have to adjust the workflow for publishing on two tablet OSes instead of one?
On the backend, we had to build into our CMS the ability to publish simultaneously on multiple different platform types. Now, when we create a story or article in CMS, it automatically publishes to both the Android and the iOS tablet. On the front end, we had to add a level of QA. If you’re reviewing a song, for instance, you have to make sure it links to the iTunes Store on the iPad and the Google store on an Android. Before we hit publish every night and throughout the day, editors are actually looking at [stories] across the various tablets we publish to, and tweaking if necessary on the fly.
Are you thinking about an app for Windows Phone 7?
It’s something we do talk about. I really like the OS; it’s really, really cool. We want to be wherever our readers are. There are more people using Android and iPhones than Windows phones, but as the Windows Phone platform gains more traction in the market, I expect we’ll end up there too.
Why keep building apps? Why not just build for the mobile web?
One of the challenges of mobile app development and mobile publishing overall is that every time there is a new upgrade to an operating system — every time Android comes out with a new OS, or Apple releases an update to iOS 5, essentially — you need to make sure your code is optimized for the OS that it’s running. It’s hard enough when you’re an app. When you’re an app and a publishing platform, you have to make sure your app is optimized and that your backend publishing system continues to be upgraded so that everything keeps moving. That’s the app world. On the web, you design a website, make sure you’re compatible with browsers, and you’re good. For the most part that’s a simpler process. When will we need apps anymore? When will HTML5 power every game and every media type, and be heart of every app? I am very excited about that. It’s just not here yet. There’s so much more you can do with native code in terms of functionality and fluidity right now, although HTML5 is getting better every day.
You spoke about your strengths earlier — about having great design and stunning photography. Yet few think of The Daily as a breaking news publication, as a source for scoops. I think of you as a highly visual morning news aggregator. Is that what you want your journalism to be known for?
From a journalistic standpoint, we did a good job in our first year. Paula Deen, the woman who does all the high fat cooking and is one of the bestselling chef personalities, well it turns out she’d given herself diabetes, and we broke that. That became a national story. When Alec Baldwin wanted to run for mayor of New York, we broke that. We released an exclusive video of Miley Cyrus that got onto Entertainment Tonight. We have a team of journalists who continue to break stories and write original content. You can’t overestimate the importance of that. I use Pulse and other aggregators — Flipboard, Zite, News.me, etc. — all the time. That game is about who can make the best experience for aggregating original content. But we’re in the category of creating original content.
What have you learned about tablet advertising?
Sometimes the really simple ads are the ones that get a lot of great response. That being said, the tablet affords advertisers a tremendous amount of creativity, and we’ve seen some really great ads. We’re helping advertisers understand how people are interacting with the ads. Are readers holding the tablets vertically or horizontally? Where do they click on the page? What kinds of interactivity are tablets driving? We share every single piece of data we can.
How do you get demographic information when Apple doesn’t share that with you?
A couple of different ways. One is that we do surveys, which people love to respond to. The second is when you subscribe to The Daily Apple provides the opportunity to share your data with the publisher. Once someone has opted in to that, you hand over your zip code and email address. We then use Nielsen’s geography data to determine their demographics.
Is profitability in sight?
Sure. Over the next couple of years. From what I’ve seen, the average time it takes for a new magazine publication to get profitable is five to seven years. We’re on track to be ahead of that, which is great. When you calculate magazine profitability, you have to take into account the rising costs of paper and ink. We don’t have any of those costs. We’re in a very good place.
How else would you characterize your evolution over the last year?
A year ago we didn’t have readers yet, we were’t in the market and we didn’t have firsthand experience on the platform yet. It’s very different when 20 people are playing in a lab, versus thousands of people who are using [your product] constantly and giving you feedback. A year ago it was about launching, about getting it into the market quickly, and now it’s about listening and understanding how people use it, what do they want more or less of, where they are going and where the are platforms going. We now have a fully baked, fully functional app CMS, and a large, engaged readership. A year ago we were asking how to build the boat. Now it’s about understanding the best way to steer the boat.
 Mashable

07:43 by Robert dawne · 0