IOS | Cheryl Waller

iOS 7 and Facebook Hashtags Debut and Other Top Comments

June 15, 2013 by Marissa Cetin Leave a Comment

This week's major news can be summed up with a clean "#iOS7."

Facebook (finally) rolled out hashtag support, and Apple debuted the next "biggest thing to happen to the iPhone since the iPhone" since the last "biggest thing to happen to the iPhone since the iPhone": the bright new iOS 7. And of course our readers had much to say about it.

Announced at WWDC, iOS 7 drew a lot of criticism for its lighter color scheme, even inspiring a Tumblr account, "Jony Ive Redesigns Things," which mostly paints Apple's vice president of industrial design to be a Lisa Frank for 2013

Some commenters said iOS 7's shiny design — which moves away from much of the skeuomorphic look that Steve Jobs prided himself on for setting Apple apart from other mobile operating systems — is an insult to Jobs' vision and suggested that since Jobs' passing, Apple's been losing its lead in innovation against Microsoft, Android and other companies. (New features and designs in iOS 7 noticeably similar to existing apps and mobile systems.) Read more...

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There Are Two Races In The Mobile Market, Claims Flurry, And Both iOS And Android Can Win

June 6, 2013 by Darrell Etherington Leave a Comment

iOS and Android aren’t necessarily competing for one mobile crown anymore, according to the latest Flurry mobile report, which shows that in the two-horse race the smartphone and mobile OS market has become, both Apple and Google’s offerings in fact have room to earn their own separate crown.

Android can rule in the North, in other words, while iOS reigns over the rest of the kingdom from its iron throne. And what that means is that while Android leads in device market share, with Flurry data suggesting that Android devices on its network doubled during the past year to reach a whopping 564 million in April 2013, Apple’s iOS manages to lead in terms of total time spent in apps. And though Android once neared Apple’s numbers in this regard, new device launches like the 3rd generation iPad have ensured that Apple has since made gains on its mobile rival in engagement.

Apple leads Android in time spent in apps as both a total, cumulative figure on Flurry’s network, and on a per device basis, broken down by various device types. It’s a little difficult to wrap your head around; why would the mobile OS with the largest overall share not also take the win for most time spent in apps? Flurry argues that iPhone shoppers and Android buyers were considerably different, at least at the outset of the smartphone wars, with those on iOS actively seeking out a device that could operate as a pocket computer, and Android users merely being pulled in with the tide when they go to upgrade their feature phone, thanks to price discounts and a range of available models, some as cheap as the dumb phones they’re replacing.

They also suggest that Android’s fragmentation problem is causing an impediment to app development, resulting in a level of quality that isn’t up to par with software on iOS, and distribution issues, and that Apple’s larger and deeper ecosystem of quality titles starts a self-improving cycle, with devs seeing good usage on the platform, devoting more resources to encouraging growth, and receiving still higher usage as a result.

Flurry’s perspective on the mobile race, and how it might actually be multiple races with winners in different contexts, is likely a more realistic and mature view than the oppositional one that’s been popular before. Android and iOS are no doubt still vying for customer attention, but ecosystem dominance and a smaller market share overall likely fit with Apple’s overall goals as a company, and vice versa for Google. The problem for competitors is making a dent in either lead, and that’s something we haven’t seen much indication will be all that possible as of yet.

Filed Under: Google, Search Engine Marketing Tagged With: android, apple, apps, Blogging, Facebook, Google, iOS, mobile, search engine optimization, SEO, Social Networking, TC

Google+ App For iOS Updated With New Automatic Photo Features, Hashtags And In-Stream Google Offer Posts

May 28, 2013 by Darrell Etherington Leave a Comment

Google unleashed a slew of updates to its Google+ social networking service at I/O earlier this month, and now a bunch of those new features are making it to the iOS app for Google+. The update follows the Android version, which arrived last week, and brings tons of new things to the version on Apple mobile devices, including Auto Backup, Highlight, Enhance and Awesome features for photos, hashtags that curate related content on posts in your stream, and new interactive Google Offers that will pop up in the mobile stream and that can be instantly redeemed.

The new photo features will probably be especially useful to mobile photographers, as they really do greatly improve the process of sharing online photos by automatically selecting your best pics using surprisingly accurate automated algorithms, and then applying various techniques to really make those photos pop. That could involve adding a slight vignette, enhancing contrast or correcting exposure, but it’s all done automatically using Google’s massive cloud computational power. In my experience with the desktop version at least, it does a job that’s remarkably similar to what the average enthusiast photographer might accomplish manually in something like Lightroom or Photoshop.

The other new stuff should help with content discovery, thanks to the introduction of Google’s smart hashtags, which are automatically assigned to posts based on both term recognition from the words used, and using image recognition to identify landmarks and other items in pictures. With that feature, Google seems to want Google+ to be more of an interconnected web than a place where friends share discretely with their circles and don’t venture much further afield.

There are a number of other features, such as the ability to edit comments and copy a post’s permalink to your device’s clipboard. But the Google Offer in-stream delivery is probably the most noteworthy in terms of how the average user’s experience will change. This essentially amounts to in-stream advertising, albeit of a kind that’s intended to give users instant access to offers relevant to their interests. The experience overall should be better, but it will still be interesting to see how people react to the arrival of Offers on the mobile browsing experience.

Filed Under: Google, Search Engine Marketing Tagged With: apps, Blogging, Facebook, Google, iOS, iphone, mobile, search engine optimization, SEO, social, Social Networking, TC

Facebook’s Earnings and Other News You Need to Know

May 2, 2013 by Stan Schroeder Leave a Comment

Welcome to this morning's edition of "First To Know," a series in which we keep you in the know on what's happening in the digital world.

Today, we're looking at three particularly interesting storiesFacebook reported its quarterly earnings Wednesday. The company cleared $1.45 billion in revenue, 30% of which came from mobile advertisingiOS 7 will be on time, according to sources who say Apple is scrambling engineers from other divisions to get the mobile OS ready. And the Pentagon could soon start using more iPhones and Samsung devices.

Check out the video above for more on these stories.

Thumbnail image via iStockphoto, hocus-focus Read more...

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Facebook Expands Developer Tools With Open Graph for Mobile

April 18, 2013 by Christina Warren Leave a Comment

Facebook announced what it calls "the next evolution of Facebook Platform for mobile" at the company's Mobile Dev Con in New York City Thursday.

Just as Facebook transitioned from HTML5 to more native strategies with its iOS and Android apps, the company is making a similar transition with the Facebook Platform for Mobile

Facebook already has a massive reach on mobile. The company says more than 81% of the top 100 grossing iOS apps and more than 70% of the top 100 grossing Android apps integrate with Facebook. But the company wants to do more and push even better apps to hundreds of millions of mobile users. Read more...

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Facebook Chat Heads: Now Rolling Out on iPhone

April 16, 2013 by Chris Taylor Leave a Comment

Facebook is updating its iOS apps to include the chat heads feature this week, with the necessary update hitting the app store Tuesday, the company has announced

iPhone users who download the update will start to see chat heads pop up over the next couple of weeks, Facebook says.

Chat heads was unveiled as part of the Facebook Home announcement two weeks ago. Messages received on Facebook appear as bubbles with your friends' heads in them. You can drag the bubbles around the sides of your screen. Clicking on them reveals the message; dragging them to the bottom dismisses the chats altogether. Read more...

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Google Updates Search iOS App With Minor Bug Fixes, Still No Sign Of Google Now

April 9, 2013 by Jordan Crook Leave a Comment

Google has quietly rolled out an update to its Google Search app for iOS, and before you get your hopes up, I’ll go ahead and tell you that there’s no “Google Now” anywhere to be seen.

The update does, however, bring with it some minor bug fixes. Other than that, the update isn’t all that exciting. In fact, it’s downright disappointing.

Rumors had been swirling for a while that Google has plans to bring Google Now over to iOS. A video even leaked in mid-March showing an alleged promotion for Google Now on iOS, saying it was built right into Google Search for iOS.

There was some back and forth after that, with Google Chairman Eric Schmidt saying the ball is in Apple’s court with regard to when we might actually see Google Now on Apple’s platform. He played a similar game with Google Maps months ago, when we were all ready and waiting for Google to swoop in after Apple’s Maps product on iOS 6 was a flop.

Apple then responded saying that Google had not submitted any Google Now application to the App Store. Of course, that didn’t exclude the possibility that Google would push out Google Now through an update to Google Search.

Alas, Google Search has been updated and there’s no Google Now to show for it.

Of course, Google could still push out Google Now through the Search app, and probably will if this video (which looks pretty legit) is to be believed. Unfortunately, today just isn’t the day.

Filed Under: Google, Search Engine Marketing Tagged With: apps, Blogging, Facebook, Google, google search, iOS, mobile, search engine optimization, SEO, Social Networking, TC

Sorry, A Facebook Phone Doesn’t Make Sense

March 29, 2013 by Christina Warren Leave a Comment

Facebook is holding an Android-related press event next week and already the Internet is in a tizzy. Could this be the rumored, mythical, magical Facebook phone?

The truth is, I don't know. For nearly 18 months, rumors of a Facebook phone — developed by HTC and running a customized version of Android — have continued to persist. And for nearly 18 months, Facebook has publicly denied its interest in building its own phone.

Last September at TechCrunch Disrupt, Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg went on at length about why a Facebook phone wasn't right for the company.

He said:

"Let’s say we build a phone. We’re not, but if we did, we could maybe get 10 to 20 million people to use it … It doesn’t move the needle for us."

"The strategy we have is different from every other tech company [like Apple] that’s building their own hardware system — we’re going in the opposite direction.." Read more...

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Filed Under: Facebook, search engine optimization, Social Networking Tagged With: android, Apps and Software, Blogging, Facebook, iOS, mobile, Opinion, search engine optimization, SEO, smartphone, Social Networking, tech, Uncategorized

Alleged Promo Video Heralds Google Now’s Eventual Debut On iOS Devices

March 12, 2013 by Chris Velazco Leave a Comment

It’s not an uncommon sight to see pundits and fanboys pit iOS’s Siri against Google’s mobile combination of Voice Search and Google Now, but persistent reports maintain that Google has been working to bring its contextually aware Google Now service to iOS devices.

Thanks to a supposed promo video obtained by Engadget, though, those reports may have just become a lot more solid. The promo video — which was reportedly live on YouTube before being unceremoniously yanked — gave iOS users a quick recap of the Now service before touting integration with the iOS Google Search application.

It’s worth noting, by the way, that Google’s iOS search app got a major facelift last October that brought a highly visual taste of the company’s Knowledge Graph to Apple’s devices. According to the video, users will be able to get their Now on by signing into their Google accounts from within the app and simply swiping up — just like Android.

As always, it’s best to look at these sorts of leaks while firmly clutching a grain of salt, but the video certainly looks like the real deal. Among other things, it seems to share a voice actress and some of the same animations as seen in the original Google Now promo video — not necessarily a waterproof case, but enough to give the video some extra credence. And of course it’s not as though Google is immune to the occasional video leak. While many of us eagerly argued about its dubious origins, a leaked promotional video of the Chromebook Pixel wound up being an honest-to-goodness product (much to the tech community’s surprise).

It comes as little surprise that Google is aiming to expand Google Now’s reach when it comes to mobile devices (though startups like Grokr may wind up feeling the pinch due to a similar vision for mobile search), but the Mountain View company’s ambitions don’t end there. Earlier today, developer and Android enthusiast Francois Simond discovered evidence that Google plans to bring Google Now to desktops by way of its Chrome browser and Chrome OS — we can just add that to the pile of existing clues that Now could soon be an even bigger part of the Google experience across multiple platforms.

Filed Under: Google, Search Engine Marketing Tagged With: Blogging, Facebook, Google, google now, iOS, mobile, search engine optimization, SEO, Social Networking, TC

Google Updates Chrome For Android, iPhone And iPad With Focus On Speed, Search And Sharing

March 4, 2013 by Drew Olanoff Leave a Comment

Ever since Google launched its Chrome browser on multiple mobile devices, more people have been getting used to syncing their desktop browsing experiences for on-the-go usage. Being able to have one browsing experience wherever you go is handy, but when a browser doesn’t move as fast as, say, Safari on the iPhone, it’s hard to dedicate yourself to making the switch.

Google knows that and has pushed updates to its Chrome browser for Android, iPhone and iPad with the focus on bringing the speed of the experience up to snuff. On the Android side of the house, the company says that the browsing experience is now 25 percent faster thanks to expanded support for HTML5 and utilization of the latest V8 JavaScript engine. If pages load fast and scrolling is like butter, you’re going to use it more. Period. Those same changes will start being made on other platforms soon, Google says.

Here’s what Grace Kloba and Rohit Rao had to say about the changes:

We’re continuing to add plenty of under-the-hood stability, security improvements and bug fixes to Chrome for both Android and iOS. We look forward to your feedback on the latest versions of Chrome, now available on Google Play and in the App Store.

On the iOS side of the house, Google has added better search and sharing options, which are key components of a speedy experience on an iPhone or iPad. Clearly, Android has the advantage of having stronger sharing options baked into the OS, so Google has to be more creative with how things are done within its apps.

Instead of seeing a long URL in the “Omnibox” at the top of the browser, you’ll see your search phrase so you can keep refining it instead of dealing with that ugly URL. After using a Chromebook for a while now, I’m longing for the day that I’ll never have to see an ugly URL again, especially when all you’re using is a browser on a screen.

Here’s what the experience looks like; the changes might not be available to you for a few weeks:

On iOS, sharing and history surfing got simplified as well. You can now hold the back button to see all of the pages you’ve previously visited and tap Share under Menu to share whatever page you’re on. You’ll also see more options than before. The big thing here is that you can share any web page directly to iOS messages, a feature that has been sorely missing.

Is mobile Chrome there completely on these devices? No. But being the No. 1 desktop browser does give Google a leg up on adoption. By the time that most people have at least given the browser a chance on their mobile devices, hopefully Google will keep up its quick iteration process and lock those folks in. Apple definitely needs to take another look at Safari moving forward before it gets completely taken over by Mountain View.