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Tag: app

  • Clear Destination Launches New Apple Watch-Compatible Web App, Lets Customers Track Home Deliveries

    Clear Destination Launches New Apple Watch-Compatible Web App, Lets Customers Track Home Deliveries

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    Clear Destination has announced the launch of a new web app that customers can use to track the delivery of large household items, like furniture and appliances. The web portal is available on all web browsers, iPhone, Android, Windows phone, Blackberry (through a software development kit), and on the new Samsung and Apple watches.

    Clear claims it is the first home delivery tracking web app to provide such complete details on each step of the delivery, “from the moment customers make the purchase and schedule the shipment, to real-time updates on the item’s location until it’s been delivered.”

    To use the app, a customer first signs in via their computer or smartphone, and can instantly locate their item in real-time on a map. Customers can also arrange to receive notifications by texts or emails.

    The site has a comprehensive set of tracking features: on top of seeing their purchase, address, and scheduled delivery date, customers will also see pictures of the delivery team assigned to their items, a map with a truck icon displaying the real-time location of the delivery team, the number of deliveries the team has to make before arriving at the customer’s home, an estimated time of arrival (ETA), a customer service chat window, and the ability to cancel or reschedule a delivery at any time.

    Plus, if the delivery team arrives at the customer’s home when no one is available, they’ll take a picture of the house or building and upload it to the tracker to demonstrate that they attempted a delivery.

  • Survey: Website or App for e-Commerce? Depends on Your Nationality

    Survey: Website or App for e-Commerce? Depends on Your Nationality

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    Different nationalities have different preferences in their method of online shopping – website/mobile site vs. mobile application, according to a survey conducted by OHT-Mobile.

    The survey, conducted in February 2015, was jointly carried out with Google Consumer Surveys based on a representative sample of 800 respondents – 100 each from the US, the UK, Australia, Canada, Italy, Germany, the Netherlands and Japan.

    58% of all respondents worldwide answered that they prefer shopping using a website. In Canada 67% still prefer to shop using a website or mobile site but in the UK, only 49% express the same preference.

    In Germany, more than half (51%) responded that they prefer either an app or have no preference – meaning that those who prefer to shop on websites (44%) are in the minority.

    The full results are as follows:

    • USA (65% prefer web or mobile site; 21% app; 10% no preference)
    • Canada (67%; 15%; 13%)
    • UK (49%; 23%; 23%)
    • Australia (58%, 11%, 29%)
    • Germany (44%; 22%; 29%)
    • Italy (61%; 16%; 21%)
    • Netherlands (62%; 14%; 22%)
    • Japan (56%; 16%; 23%)

    “The preference for shopping on websites is still strong, but there is a growing trend for app shopping. What’s more is that we are seeing variation between nationalities,” said Ofer Shoshan, CEO of One Hour Translation. “Online retailers should be aware of the different preferences of the audience in each region and be sure to localize their mobile sites and applications to suit accordingly.”

    The survey results follow similar results of a One Hour Translation survey completed in Q4 of 2014 with 2,000 participants from Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Japan and Canada. According to that survey, 83% of Italians prefer to buy goods and services online in their native language, compared with 80% of Germans, 65% of the Dutch, 74% of the Canadians, and no less than 90% of Japanese people.

    Image: Jason Howie

  • Tracklander: the Must-Have App for Adventure Seekers

    App developers seem to have already made apps for all kinds of people. Some of these apps become an instant hit and rock the entire industry for months while others create a short-lived stir and then fade into oblivion. Tracklander is the app that's tailor-made for iPhone users with a bit of wanderlust, and it appears to be holding its own in a marketplace brimming with all sorts of apps for active travelers and adventurers.

    If you were to get a couple of days off work to relax, trekking or a road trip would be a perfect choice of recreational activity. However, a week is hardly enough time to properly plan a track. With Tracklander on your phone your entire trip planning will be taken care of and without blowing your budget. You are spared the hassle of using GPS, looking for tracks, and the like when preparing for the trip, as well as the prohibitive expenses of hiring a local guide.

    Tracklander has re-invented travel apps by offering a digital platform based on a new concept of "independent but guided" adventurers. It comes packed with a full range of unique tracks that are customizable depending on the user's preferred terrain difficulty and time at hand. Therefore, your iPhone becomes your easy yet absolutely safe guide.

    The app features a trackbook with numerous tracks in all sorts of destinations around the world for travelers to choose from; there are asphalt roads, off-road routes, mountain treks, and cities. Among these tracks are those suitable for SUV, 4X4, road car, trekking, cycling, and MTB, as well as trail, enduro, and road motorcycles. Each track has add-ons that Tracklander has included to create unique challenges graded from 1 to 5, shortcuts back to the main track if lost, escapes, days, and treats such as a waterfall, palm grove, vineyards, and beaches. Helpful features of the trackbook include photos of every upcoming junction, navigation help and area map, cultural info, and safety info.

    Thanks to Tracklander's ingenious technology, the app will work offline without the roaming hassles and frustrations of finding 3G deep in forests or atop mountains. It is able to produce its own offline maps by using Tracklander's graphical models, NASA's topographical contours lines, and OpenStreetMap. These maps are downloaded once when the iPhone user is downloading the track. You say bye bye to data connection fees when travelling abroad.

    See Tracklander in action:

    The tracks selected are the best adventure tracks in any given area. At the time Tracklander was hitting the App Store there were 33,973 miles of roads and tracks, 1,335 miles of cycle routes, and 667 miles of treks offered, which are equivalent to going around a quarter of the world, travelling from Copenhagen to Barcelona, and crossing Spain respectively.  The brave at heart can use the tracks for Morocco, Andalusia, Tuscany, and Transpirenaica while the rest can pick city-based track versions in Barcelona, Florence, and Lisbon. Even with this diversity, language is not a problem as the app supports English, Catalan, Spanish, German, French, and Italian.

    The app also has the Trip Planner, a featured functionality that enables social networking and sharing of experiences via blogs. You get to invite other Tracklander travelers and organize the trips.

    The app comes free. A number of both city and countryside tracks are also available for free. The rest of the track features vary in price depending on the area chosen and difficulty level. Generally it will cost you €2.99 for a half or full day's travel; €9.99 from one to two days; and €34.99 from six to ten days.

    Get Tracklander from the App Store. 

  • Twist: an iPhone app that estimates your arrival time

    Twist is here and can become your favourite iPhone app, if you are usually running late.

    Are you among those that are never on time at their meetings with partners and friends? If you lose track of time without even realizing it, there is an iPhone app just for you. Twist is a new iPhone app that was released exactly for this kind of people. By the time you leave home, its algorithms calculate your estimated arrival time, in order to notify your friends. The most interesting part is that the algorithms take into account all the factors that might make you turn up late, such as traffic, transportation, but also your own habits. This means that before calculating your arrival time, it measures all the variables that might affect you, even your tendency to lose track of time.

    And just when you feel like you are running late, you can send a message to a list that you will have previously created, in order to tell the app to notify your friends about you being late, letting them know of your arrival time, too.

    As Bill Lee, the CEO of the Twist app, told to Mashable:
    "At its core, we like to think Twist is the easiest and most accurate way to let people know when you’re going to arrive"

    And he continues:  “We’ve really reduced that to a few keystrokes. It’s better than what Google Maps has today and better than what Apple Maps has today.”

    Even though there are many fans of Google Maps and Apple Maps, Twist is here to stay and we can predict that it would be useful for many of us out there!

  • NPD: 75% of US iPhone and iPod Touch users Download Apps and Games

    The NPD’s "Entertainment Trends in America" update reveals three quarters of iPhone and iPod touch users are connecting to the Web to download entertainment content and apps.

    According to the latest update to the NPD’s tracking survey, 16 percent of Americans age 13 or older are using devices other than their home computers to download software applications, music, video, and other entertainment content from the Web.

    Based on NPD’s entertainment market research, 75 percent of iPhone and iPod Touch users are connecting to the Web to download entertainment content and apps, compared to 19 percent of game console users and 17 percent of Blu-ray Disc set-top product users.

    “It’s not surprising that Apple users are ahead of others when it comes to downloading Web-based content, given the breadth of the company’s app catalog and the head start iTunes had selling music for the iPod,” said Russ Crupnick, entertainment industry analyst for NPD.

    “Like other groups of early adopters, consumers downloading entertainment content are mostly younger and male; however, as app stores expand beyond Apple, as connected devices become more commonplace, and as connectivity is simplified we expect to see more activity on other devices and platforms,” he added.

    According to the report, among iPhone and iPod Touch users who downloaded content, free apps were the most popular download category, followed by video-game apps, and music downloads.

    Among consumers who connected via game consoles, game add-ons were far and away the most popular category, followed by purchased downloads of entire games, and movie rentals.

    In addition, one-third of Blu-ray Disc consumers who actually connected via their BD reported downloading a movie rental.

    “Music now competes with games and other apps for share of device, share of wallet, and share of time,” Crupnick said.

    He says that entertainment companies need to start to thinking of apps in broader terms, not only as a way of garnering direct sales from downloads, but also as a pathway to paying for additional entertainment content.

    “For example, an app that reviews movies could also be a direct channel for purchasing DVDs, BDs, or digital forms of video,” Crupnic concluded.

  • Smartphone.Biz-News.com Goes iPhone

    We are happy to announce that our own iPhone /iPod touch application is now available in the Apple App Store.

    Biz News app delivers a constant stream of news from our website giving you quick access to the latest news on the smartphone industry.

    Categories like Events, Market Data, Hardware, People and Jobs, to mention a few, make the app easy to navigate and search for the specific content.

    It also integrates a mini web browser for reading the news without leaving the app.

    Biz News iPhone/iPod touch app is free and you can easily download it from your device or from the iTunes.

    Download Biz News app from the App Store
     

  • VOXOFON Launches Mobile VoIP for Palm Pre


    VOXOFON has expanded the availability of its low-cost international calling services by offering a mobile VoIP application for the Palm WebOS platform.

    The application is aimed at the Palm Pre smartphone. VOXOFON plans to make the new application available on the Palm App Catalog later this year.

    After installation the callers can simply click on the VOXOFON icon on the phone screen to place a low-cost international call.

    The application works anywhere the phone has coverage and does not require a Wi-Fi connection. In addition, there are no monthly fees or contracts.

    Beginning at 1.3 cents per minute, with no additional fees, VOXOFON international calling services allow customers to call using their smart phone, computer, land line, or a cell phone.

    VOXOFON has been a leader in providing convenient mobile applications for its VoIP service, beginning with a web application for iPhone that was introduced in the summer of last year.

    In September 2008, VOXOFON was the first to announce an application for the Android platform – one that offered transparent cost optimization for international calls.

    The company followed with an identical application for BlackBerry smartphones in January of this year.

  • iPhone Wine App Points to Potential of Location-based Data

    INTERVIEW: Rick Breslin, Principal of Hello Vino, tells smartphone.biz-news how the food pairing and wine suggestion tool came about – and the team’s plans for both monetising it and capitalising on location-based data.

    Rick Breslin, Principal of Hello Vino, makes no bones that his company’s wine pairing and suggestion tool is aimed firmly at consumers that know nothing about wine.

    Stuffy it ain’t. It offers to help users do everything from selecting a good vintage to give as a gift, to picking a suitable bottle of wine in a restauarant or to go with a dish while browsing the supermarket aisles.

    "The general idea was to help consumers get over the pain points when they go into a store and are faced with hundreds of bottles of wine," Breslin told smartphone.biz-news.

    "Our target market is beginner wine consumers who typically are overwhelmed by the wine buying process."

    Hello Vino launched an iPhone app in June but it offers a multi-platform delivery – mobile web, Web and SMS.

    The tool helps users find a wine in one of four areas:

    • wine with a meal/food
    • wine for an occasion
    • wine by country/region
    • wine by taste/style

    Breslin said data on labels and brands is provided through a partnership with snooth.com, the social database of world wines, which has access to over one million wines brands worldwide.

    He said that by tapping into this massive resource, Hello Vino provides users with a different way to find a wine – with the potential to make over 2000 wine pairings.

    So even if someone is looking for a wine to go with a dish as simple as pizza, they are asked whether they’re having cheese, pepperoni, chicken, veggies, white sauce and so on, and a recommendation for wine is then made.

    Technology no Barrier

    If wine knowledge and culinary taste are no barrier to using Hello Vino, neither are technological limitations.

    Anyone can access the site on their home PC and use the Hello Vino widget to find an appropriate wine.

    Breslin said the wine search service also works on any smartphone.

    Users entering the mobile website are redirected depending on the type of handset they are using to ensure as smooth a user experience as possible.

    This includes a stripped-down WAP version.

    For those that don’t have access to the mobile internet, there is an SMS service in which people can send a text message to get advice on choosing a wine.

    The iPhone app, however, comes with some additional features, including a search function so that users can enter a particular wine and get its details, a label shot and rating information.

    In the future, there are plans for native apps for Blackberry, Palm’s Pre, Samsung and Nokia handsets.

    "We want to give smartphone users the best experience and we will use native apps to deliver that experience," he said.

    Location-Based Potential

    Looking further ahead, Breslin said they are planning to take advantage of GPS and inventory data to provide consumers with location specific information.

    "If you were in, say, Joe’s Wine Shop, your GPS would show your location and pull up the store’s inventory for you to choose from," he said.

    Hello Vino was set up by Breslin and two fellow web developers working in the wine industry.

    They saw a lot of traffic being driven by demand for information about pairing food and wine and decided there was potential for a mobile application.

    "We were working on a little widget where someone could do a simple Q&A to find what wine they might like to try based on a dish or for an occasion," said Breslin.

    "Then we thought: mobile is emerging. There is a huge opportunity to package this resource onto a smartphone-formatted website."

    Hello Vino launched earlier this year at the Boston Wine Expo. The apps’ users are currently around 90 per cent US-based, with the remainder mostly in the UK, France and Italy.

    Breslin said this is because their marketing efforts have been initially in the US but it is hoped that the overseas market will continue to build.

    Revenue Possibilities

    While the Hello Vino app is free, he said they have started the monetisation process through several different avenues.

    "There are more than 2000 different pairings on the app – that’s valuable," he said.

    "There is an e-commerce website selling wine that wants to use the Hello Vino widget on their site and import their inventory onto it."

    Another revenue earner is the sponsored placement of wine brands, where a particular brand can appear as one of the suggested wines in a user search.

    Breslin said this offered the largest potential, but the team is waiting until adoption levels are higher before approaching brands.

  • Skype For iPhone App Offers 3G Calls


    A new app is offering iPhone users a way of making Skype calls using 3G by turning outgoing calls into incoming ones.

    Appropriately called Incoming, it connects to any landline or mobile phone over Edge, 3G, and WiFi – whereas the official Skype for iPhone app is limited to WiFi.

    Calls made on the iPhone using the Incoming app are routed through a user’s home PC’s Skype software and turned into an incoming call.

    This means users don’t eat into wireless dialplan minutes if they have unlimited inbound minutes.

    There’s obviously a cost if SkypeOut credits are required but that can be limited by signing up for one of Skype’s unlimited call plans.

    How it works:
    1. Open the Incoming app and enter a phone number and press CALL.
    2. Receive an incoming call, once answered, the dialled number is called
    3. Wait to be connected

    The app costs USD $4.99 on the iTunes store.

    Other features include:

    • Make a visual favorites list for fast dialing.
    • Access contacts from your address book.
    • Conference Calling supporting up to nine callers.
    • International Calling

  • Paid Apps Imminent For Android Market


    Google’s Android Market is expected to begin accepting paid applications this week for the first time.

    The move could provide a much-needed boost to the platform, which currently has around 800 applications.

    This is far below what Apple’s App Store had achieved in its early months. Incidentally, the App Store has just passed the 20,000 mark for apps, with over 500 million downloads.

    While Android Market’s position can partly be attributed to the G1 not being as popular as the iPhone, that’s not the whole story.

    Another key element could be the fact developers haven’t been getting paid to come up with shiny new apps for Android.

    With the incentive of remuneration thrown in, the desite to create software for the G1 and soon-to-be launched handset additions to the Android platform is likely to be much stronger.

    Interestingly, Google is deviating from Apple’s revenue model in that it receives nothing from the downloading of paid apps.

    Both app stores will give developers 70 per cent of the revenue, but whereas Apple pockets the other 30 per cent Google is passing it on to the carriers and to pay settlement fees.

    Anything that gets the Andoid Market rolling has to be welcome, expecially as others – including RIM, Microsoft and Palm – are expected to launch their own app stores very soon.