Anywhere Can Be a Keyboard.
This app turns any surface into an iPhone keyboard. Because a world in which we have one less bulky thing to carry is most definitely the world of tomorrow.
(via fastcompany)
You Know You Want To.
We give you the Romo. Inspired by the Bondi Blue iMac, it’s the ultimate way to make a robot friend out of what is probably already your most intimate companion: your iPhone.
(via fastcompany)
Drive: the driving companion that knows you better than you do
Here’s a not-stupid idea: Drive, a companion app for drivers, cuts out all the extraneous stuff that you’re not gonna need on the road and limits you to four basic things: calls, texts, music and maps. Easy on those texts though, buddy.
One step closer to a more perfect union with our technology.
(via thenextweb)
Shazam to Give TV Networks a Helping Hand in Digital Sales
The Guardian writes that as Shazam hits 250 million mobile app users, it’s expanding US-based social features. All shows can now be tagged, versus just networks or producers that have a marketing deal with it. Soon, Shazam also plans to link its app to Facebook, permitting people to publish tags to their newsfeeds.
“With more than a quarter of a billion people who have used Shazam worldwide, no other app has our scale when it comes to offering the opportunity to engage with the media that interests them the most, whether it’s music or television,” stated chief executive Andrew Fisher.
Some background: people typically use Shazam to identify — and therefore tag — any music track in its database. Now you can do the same thing with ads of partner brands and American TV shows. According to Shazam, over 160 channels have been covered for the latter.
When you tag a show, you’ll receive cast info, soundtrack details, trivia and news, as well as Twitter updates and data from IMDB and Wikipedia.
“With our expansion into television, we’ve seen a surge of activity due to recent Shazam-enabled events such as the NBC Olympic broadcast, where more than one million people tagged the closing ceremony,as well as the US Open tennis grand slam event on CBS earlier this month,” said Fisher.
“We think that broadening our television service and offering more comprehensive social features will continue to drive activity and engagement.”
Expanded features are expected to launch in the UK, France, Germany, Italy and Spain “in the coming months”. Until then, those countries can tag ads from partner brands, including Renault, Reebok, Unilever, Pepsi and Microsoft.
Shazam reports that users produce about 10 million tags daily. It claims to have generated about $300 million in sales of digital goods for the music industry alone (as it enables users to purchase songs they like from iTunes). It hopes to do the same for producers and broadcasters in the TV industry.
Kahnoodle is Pair meets Groupon. Yes, a daily deals app for couples.
Take two trends, mash them together. What do you get? OH THE HORROR!
This may be harsh on Kahnoodle, a new iPhone app that hopes to be “the fun & effortless way for busy couples to keep their relationship fresh and exciting”.
No, not swinging. Shame on you. This is less about group sex, and more about Groupon. Well, daily deals anyway: a feature to “search every daily deal site in one app to find discounts on awesome dates”.
That, and “give each other virtual pats on the back (‘kudos’) for doing sweet things for each other”. But we sense that’s not the likely lucrative business model that’s being aimed at here.
So, Kahnoodle is essentially the trend for daily-deals apps mixed with the newer trend for social-networking-for-couples apps (see: Pair, Cupple, Between). Perhaps it’ll be as big as swinging was in the 1980s. Place some pampas-grass plants on your balcony if you’re using it.
Sky Sports iPad app gets second-screen features
Here’s something to think about if you’re a Zeebox, a GetGlue or any of their (many) social-TV second-screen startup rivals. British satellite broadcaster Sky just gave its Sky Sports for iPad app a second-screen update.
What’s that? Well, until now, the app was mainly a way for Sky subscribers to watch Sky’s sport channels on their tablet – when away from home, for example, or unable to wrestle control of the living-room TV from non-sport-loving family members.
Now it’s also a second-screen aid to watching, say, live Premier League football on that bigger box. Users will get a Football Match Centre section with stats galore on players and teams, as well as a “curated Twitter feed with aggregated football fan commentary”.
Just the sort of thing the social TV startups are looking to do, in other words.
And while there’s still an argument for people using one app to get second-screen and social features for all the shows they watch, the fact that broadcasters like Sky are looking to own this second-screen relationship with viewers is undeniably a challenge to the likes of Zeebox.
Oh, which as you may remember, took investment from BSkyB earlier this year…
Green Day are the first big band to work with Angry Birds maker Rovio on in-game promotion. They’re going to get their own 10-level episode in the Angry Birds Friends game, complete with exclusive music for fans to unlock by playing it.
Grr! WWE gets a second-screen wrestling app
When I was hugely into American wrestling back in the glory days of the WWF, second-screen action was out of the question: if I was distracted from the action, it would only be to try and suplex my little brother into the fireplace, emulating my heroes.
(It’s okay, he’s fine. I wasn’t very good at suplexing. And we didn’t own a fireplace. Actually, this whole intro has rather spiralled out of control…)
Anyway. Rebranded as WWE after a spat with the wildlife folks, the WWE has continued to be one of the biggest sports entertainment brands in the world. And what kids nowadays want to do, seemingly, is second-screen their way through all those televised suplexes. Hence its new iOS app.
You get news and videos – the latter being a mixture of new and archive clips – but the real meat comes with the second-screen features, designed to be used while watching the weekly Monday Night Raw broadcast.
The idea being to foster the community of wrestling fans around the broadcasts, including encouraging them to meet up at official events. And, of course, sell them stuff too, with an in-app shop.
Facedeals: Making Big Brother a Deal-Maker.
Watch out, Foursquare and Square. Facedeals is a facial recognition camera that syncs to your Facebook profile.
The Facedeals camera is in beta in select Nashville, TN stores. Here’s how it works: you approach a resto you like and the camera passively recognises you. Minutes later, your phone tells you that you’ve been automatically checked in at the establishment. It’ll also send you a deal that you can immediately show the waiter to save money right that minute.
Users who want to participate must opt in to Facedeals from their Facebook accounts.
Given that everyone and their mom has Facebook, we can easily imagine Facedeals or a similar service becoming a mainstream commodity. Once that happens, it’s not unreasonable to dream up a Square competitor which will liberate you from wearing a wallet; the app could manage payment remotely by interfacing between the restaurant and Facebook, which probably already has your credit card information anyway.
Brought to you by Red Pepper Lab.
(Source: adverve)
The New Yorker Invades iPhone, Aided & Abetted by Jon Hamm + Lena Dunham
The New Yorker’s produced a snappy new iPhone app that’ll enable users to download all its issues, automatically, every week! (This week it’s free, so snatch that bad-boy up.)
The iPhone app resembles the existing iPad app in terms of functionality, providing complete magazine content and some digital easter eggs. It’ll also be a significantly smaller download (issues on the iPad app were often as big as 100 MB) because the geniuses at Condé Nast and Adobe (who built the app) have finally figured out how to handle “paginated HTML”, meaning text (of which The New Yorker has much) now appears as text, and not as imagery. The same technology will be used to slim down downloads for iPad, thank heavens.
Access is free for print subscribers. Digital-only subscriptions include iPad and iPhone access. You can also buy issues individually.
The choice to avail New Yorker content on iPhone represents a first for Condé Nast, which has historically preferred to confine digital copies of its publications to tablet devices.
Above, a kitschy, rapidly-devolving video promoting the app, featuring Lena Dunham of TV series Girls and Jon Hamm of Mad Men. (TV folks making web videos to promote the mobile version of a print mag! We’ve come full circle, minions.) Try to keep watching until the end, because somebody needs to tell us what Lena was trying to do with that weird handshake.
