The Online Magazine Focused on App Design, Branding & Marketing

Crowdfunding is a relatively new phenomenon whereby individuals can post a project on a number of sites such as Kickstarter, Crowdtilt, or RocketHub (there are a lot to choose from). Basically, you come up with an idea, post it to one of these crowdfunding platforms, and hope the crowd comes to your project’s rescue in the form of donations or pre-orders.

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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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A while back, I caught wind of a new app that was being developed to change the way we manage email. The first article I read about this new app was on TechCrunch, and I scoured the web thereafter to learn more about how this (or any) app could get my inbox down to zero, and keep it there. The magic bullet of an app is called Mailbox, and it is developed by a company called Orchestra, Inc. Follow this link to read more about Mailbox: Putting Email In Its Place.

Mailbox has been in development for a while now. Orchestra has always aimed to help solve the problem of inefficient emailing, and its first app called Orchestra To-Do tried to solve exactly that. The problem they had, as many to-do list apps seem to have, is that people don’t stick with it. Instead of permanently migrating to-do listing activities away from email and into a more robust program, people seem to revert back to emailing themselves to-do items. I’m guilty of that. Orchestra experienced this same phenomenon with the decline in usage of its to-do app, and iterated—Mailbox was born.

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Apple is the favorite pet for many news journalists. Go to Google News (or you can bingiton for a side by side comparison), search for “Apple,” and you’ll see what I’m talking about: Apple stock price, Apple supply constraints, Apple law suits, Apple Televisions, Apple Cars, Apple activist shareholders—here an Apple, there an Apple, everywhere an Apple, Apple.

The latest news confirms rumors, which I seemed to have missed, that Apple is developing its very own iWatch (or whatever it’ll be called). Some pundits speculate that this is Apple’s early attempt to start developing mass-market, wearable computers; a pipe dream that futurists have heralded for some time now. While an Apple Watch could be very cool, I think this is a desperate attempt for Apple to continue to boldly innovate where no innovator has gone before (even if they have). How about we stop playing version games and come out with a Retina iPad Mini already? See, Has Apple Finished Disrupting Markets?

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Chatter about mobile wallets used to be pretty abundant in and around the blogosphere, though the discussion seems to have taken a seat on the backburner as of late. I first started chronicling my musings on The War of the Wallets back in December 2011 and wrote an Update from the Trenches back in August 2012. For better or worse, we haven’t seen much activity since then and I’m wondering why. It seems that mobile wallets have temporarily become zombies: something in between living and dead.

There are a number of various combatants in the war of the wallets, some bigger than others. As the lines are drawn on the battlefield today, I see three major contestants who have the ability to bring the mobile wallet into fruition: Google, Apple, and possibly PayPal. Square is vying for a spot at the table, and there are a handful of other companies that struggle to make a mark. Dunkin Donuts even started its own mobile payment system, but the company seems to lack the steam needed to push its payment platform into ubiquity.

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I recently traded in some old home automation equipment for a new LCD television. Though it looks a bit small for the wall, it’s 60 inches of crisp, clean, awesomeness. I couldn’t be happier. Even though HD TVs themselves aren’t anything new (and the concept of HD has been around in the computer world for even longer, albeit without all the sexy marketing), smart HDTVs TVs are something new to talk about—at leas to me.

While I was trying to settle on a specific set, after I knew I wanted a huge TV with built-in WiFi connectivity and apps, I relied on online reviews to guide me to the Promised Land. Most online reviews evaluate smart TVs on the same two criteria: overall performance, e.g., do the apps load quickly, and is the platform stable; and, the overall user experience. While some reviews said that the TV I went with was a bit lackluster in the UX department, the price was right and I pulled the trigger. A few short days later, Amazon’s White Glove Delivery had the TV sitting on my living room floor. That was easy!

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This has been a busy week for mobile app/internet companies. Earnings came out from two internet giants: Amazon and Facebook; Netflix takes a more aggressive stance on developing its own shows; Blackberry repositions itself in the smartphone world; and Elon Musk comments on something he is intimately familiar with: batteries. Since I think it would be a disservice to my readers to neglect any of the above stories, I’m going to briefly hit on the highlights of each.

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Social media seems to be popping up on the feds’ radar for all sorts of issues lately. Last week it was free speech at the workplace, and this week it’s consumer law. It shouldn’t be too shocking, though, given that social media has been around less than ten years, which is apparently the amount of time regulators need to realize its time to rewrite their laws governing third parties’ use of social media.

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Eric Schmidt, executive chairman of Google, recently returned from a trip to North Korea where he was accompanied by his daughter and several other high profile persons, including  former New Mexico Governor and UN Ambassador Bill Richardson. The trip was publicized as a “private humanitarian mission,” and we have learned that its purpose was to discuss the benefits of Internet freedom. Some regard Schmidt’s trip as more self-serving than altruistic, since Google would stand to benefit if it were able to have access to the untapped North Korean market, but why can’t it be a bit of both?

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The New York Times published an interesting article today about freedom of speech at work, reminding employers that free speech is free speech whether it takes place at the water cooler, on Facebook, Twitter, or elsewhere. It’s understandable that employers would want to limit the publicity they get via employee’s online; however, doing so may be infringing on one of the fundamental rights guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States of America: Freedom of Speech.

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