The Online Magazine Focused on App Design, Branding & Marketing

The App: Summly

The Device: iPhone 4

The Price: Free

The Basics: New reader apps are a dime a dozen in the Apple app store. Virtually ever major news network worth listening to and newspaper worth reading have a mobile app available for your downloading pleasure and that’s before you dive into the great wide world or third party apps. If you want an app that collects news stories from various sources and compiles them in one place for you to enjoy, there are literally too many options to choose from. Outside of Angry Birds rip-offs, there may not be a larger subgenre of app. So what makes Summly so different? What will make it stand out in a crowded market? Is it anything special?

The Review: What’s most surprising about Summly is that it doesn’t offer anything I haven’t seen in a news reader app before…but it’s easily the best looking, most streamlined and most fun to use news reader app I’ve ever encountered.

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The Game: Dungelot
The Device: iPhone 5
The Price: $0.99 on iTunes and Google Play
The Basics: The roguelike isn’t a genre that’s well represented in mobile games. Perhaps best known from Blizzard’s Diablo series, rougelikes typically have you delving into a bottomless dungeon for no other good reason than the acquisition of loot. It’s not a type of game whose appeal makes a lot of sense if you explain it, but play and you’ll soon become a believer, and possibly an insomniac. They’re just impossibly addictive.

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Although the iPhone continues the be the public face of the mobile community (so much so that you’re grandparents probably call your Android an “iPhone” in the same way that they call your PlayStation a “Nintendo”), it would be foolish to say that they dominate the smartphone market. Because they don’t. In fact, it’s not even close. In terms of sheer numbers, Android is the easy king of mobile devices.

Since Apple VS Android debates generally break down into the technological equivalent of “Mine is bigger than yours!”, let’s do everyone a favor and break it down into numbers.

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I think we can all agree on one thing: technology is amazing. I’m writing this article on a portable computing machine, wearing only my underwear. You may be reading this on your portable telephonic device, which allows you to communicate with people all over the world with the tap of a button or two. And thanks to the Facebook app Bang With Friends (that link is NSFW, depending on your workplace), you can use your Facebook profile to organize sexual encounters with both friends and strangers alike. Because, you know, that’s exactly what the early pioneers of computer engineering thought when they were busy punching holes in cards and sliding them into machines the size of small houses. They cleaned their glasses, scratched their neckbeards and declared “Yes! Someday, this going to get all of us laid!”

And of course they did. They’re only human.

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As someone who has tried (and frequently failed) to eat healthier and exercise, I consider the Girl Scouts of America to be Public Enemy Number One…at least for a couple months out of the year. After all, I can walk into my neighborhood grocery store and completely ignore the aisles filled with cookies and deserts, chalking up any of my desire for those products to corporate marketing and not me liking delicious things. But how can I ignore the Girl Scouts who lurk on the sidewalk outside of the grocery store? How can I say no to ambitious young girls who represent a socially progressive, confidence boosting organization who want to sell me a seriously delicious box of cookies for an agreeable price? There is no bigger threat to my wallet and my gut than Girl Scout Cookies.

And mobile apps have now allowed them to strengthen their grip on the American public.

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There was a time when the thought of a computer that could fit on your desk with hardcore science fiction. After that, the thought of a computer tablet that you could carry around from place to place was literally something out of Star Trek. In recent years, movies and video games have depicted the distant future as having transparent devices, computers and phones that are ultra thin and completely clear. Well, it looks like we need to find another new way to depict the future: the first prototype for a transparent smartphone has arrived.

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What is LTE Advanced? It’s a new word you’re going to start hearing about in advertisements from the carrier of your choice and you’re bound to hear about it the next time you visit your local Sprint or T-Mobile. It sure sounds fancy, doesn’t it? It’s not just LTE, it’s LTE Advanced. You know, new and improved, super-futuristic LTE that’s going to change everything.

Except that it’s not. It’s bogus. It’s an empty buzzword that doesn’t mean anything at all.

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SXSW is just three weeks away and soon filmmakers, techies and music fans will fill the city for 10 days. To coincide with the fast-approaching festival, we’ve released this colorful infographic share with you it’s impact on Austin. You may remember we released this infographic last year outlining the Evolution of SXSW to emphasize the importance of SXSW interactive as the new playground for the tech industry. This year we’ve taken the focus on a more local level.

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I will not not hide my enthusiasm for the iPad Mini. I love it. Love it, love it, love it. In fact, I dig its easily portable and accessible size so much that I tend to roll my eyes whenever people complain about the screen. Does it look as good as a traditional iPad with a sexy retina display? Of course not! But can you easily toss your big iPad in your messenger bag or use it with one hand while walking down the sidewalk? Unless you are a giant with giant hands a giant messenger bag, the answer is no. So I’m not the kind of guy who thinks the next iPad Mini needs a retina display (I like it for the size, after all), but it seems that everyone else in the world does.

And it’s going to cost Apple (and certainly us) a lot more money to make that happen.

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Mobile apps have sparked a generation of apprepreneurs eager to make a buck developing the next must-have mobile app. However, as the mobile market matures, a number of journalists have hinted at a coming problem of having too many apps, and warn of consumers’ overall loss of appetite. Indeed, App Overload was Forbes’ #9 prediction for 2012, and more recently a writer for the NY Times Blog asked if we are suffering from mobile app burnout? I tend to agree, though I see what could be a problem as more of an opportunity for creative app developers up for the challenge.

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