Venturebeat – a popular blog about high tech startup companies – published a post about Help Me, a startup which provides affordable support to mobile app developers. The company behind this is Next Generation Innovations, based in Karachi, Pakistan. CEO of Next Generation Innovations, Farzal Dojki is very active and well know in Pakistani ICT circles. Great work Farzal!
Mobile app support is currently non existent, and a niche where we can help provide affordable support, says Farzal Dojki.
Currently Apple doesn’t have a very good after-sale support mechanism for the apps in its AppStore: Users click on a “Report a Problem” button, and are then prompted to go to the developers website, where they can directly contact the developer. Developers working with Help Me would link their contact information (email or phone) to Help Me so that Help Me can then take over the support.
By now you must have heard about Nexus One from Google. This calculated move from Google shows its ambition and aggressiveness. The web and social networks are full of buzz about the phone, its features and how the other services – such as Google Voice – and apps will create an attractive solution which could be come a new standard.
I came across this article from CNET on frequently asked questions about smartphone safety and thought that I’d share it with readers. Never a bad idea to remind ourself about safety of data and apps. Here’s the basic checklist:
Do you have data on your phone backed up in case you lose it?
Is there business or personal information (such as accounts or passwords in messages) which is easily accessible to someone who gets hold of your phone?
Are you aware of the applications installed on your phone: commerce related apps, social networking apps
Be careful about the usual phishing and other social-engineering scams – with so much browsing on the phone, it is more likely these days to follow a bad link and give away your password by mistake
Beware of sending sensitive info over unencrypted WiFi
Interesting presentation which talks about why smart phones are so important for marketers, what are the major areas of growth and how to target this group of early adopters.
Windows Mobile’s share of the global smart-phone operating-system market fell to 7.9% in the third quarter from 11.1% a year earlier, research firm Gartner estimates. Also losing ground was Nokia’s Symbian. In contrast, both Apple and BlackBerry manufacturer Research In Motion boosted their shares, while Android grabbed 3.5% from zero a year earlier. That will likely increase given the popularity of Motorola’s new Droid phone.
Here’s an interesting illustration of how Apple and Google are competing.
Mashable has interesting commentary about the role of iPod touch. In the context of the mobile platform wars, the contest is often framed as “the iPhone” versus Android, BlackBerry and the rest of the smartphone market. However, even if the iPhone is the only phone that Apple sells, there is another device that runs on the iPhone OS: the iPod touch. In fact, according to the mobile analytics firm Flurry, the iPod touch might even be Apple’s secret weapon when it comes to long-term results and platform retention. Flurry makes this argument in its November Industry Pulse report.
As smartphones become more like portable computers, scammers, phishers and other cybcer criminals have stepped up their attacks on smartphones. Here are a few excerpts from an article which provides tips on securing your smartphone.
Security experts have long warned of the vulnerability of smart phones to hackers. And in the past year the threat has been highlighted by an attack on the Symbian operating system, used mainly by Nokia Corp. phones, and a demonstration at a conference of a flaw that was found in the iPhone’s security.
As the software for smart phones becomes more sophisticated and open, they become better breeding grounds for a new generation of spyware and viruses. Hackers can work their way into your phone through text messages, steal your information and use your contact list to find more victims. Scammers can now dupe you into revealing your Social Security number or credit-card account number on your phone, just like they’ve been doing for years on PCs.
The new battle ground for smart phones is Motorola Droid versus iPhone. The Droid is offered by Verizon Wireless in the US and runs on Google’s Android OS. Verizon and Google teamed up against a common rival to come up with the Droid, which is supposed to offer a number of features which iPhone lacks. Droid has been getting good reviews but iPhone remains a tough one to beat. I think the discussions around comparison of these and other smartphones will continue. At the end of the day this is a subjective discussion and the market will determine the winner.
A GSM version of the Droid is also available and its only a matter of time before it hits the market worldwide, including Pakistan.
The first one is a Verizon advertisement which pokes fun at the limitations of iPhone.
For those who are interested in details, read this review by Mossberg or watch this video after the break which compares Droid and iPhone:
With the recent introduction of iPhone to China, there has been plenty of discussion about the high selling price. One must wonder what is the real price of popular smart phones such as iPhone and Blackberry. I extracted this info from an article.
According to Shaw Wu, an analyst at Kaufman Bros, The iPhone’s average selling price is $611, and the carrier pays a subsidy that brings the price down to $99 or $199. He estimates that the iPhone’s gross profit margin is about two-thirds, so the device costs about $200 to produce.
BlackBerry phones in the most recent quarter had an average selling price to the carrier of $345—and cost about $150 to make, Mr. Wu estimates.
The new Palm Pre costs roughly the same as the iPhone to produce but sells on average at $455 to the carrier, Mr. Wu estimates. The customer pays $149.99.
I have been looking for a good product for creating mockups for a long time. I tried a few expensive and cumbersome tools but gave up. Then someone sent me a link to Balsamiq’s Mockups product. It is based on Adobe AIR and provides an easy, intuitive way to create wireframes on your desktop. The installation was smooth and in a few minutes I was up and running.
Whether you are an entrepreneur or you work for a large corporation, if you work with new applications, products or websites then a tool like Mockups is essential. I prefer visual tools to communicate with my team and especially with those who are not easily reached by phone. Think about communication with clients during the early phases of any project and the mockup approach is a life-saver. Since I started using Mockups last week, I have already created a few rich wireframes and used it to get great feedback. The thing that I like is that most of the commonly needed components are included – all you have to do is to drag and drop. There are some iPhone user interface components as well. Mokcups has good image editing tools built in so you can import an image file and work on them within the application. I will write another review after a month or so. Here’s a video to get you introduced to this awesome product!
Disclosure: I received a copy of the software gratis in exchange of writing a review.
A recent article talks about the rise in demand of business applications for doctors and health-care professionals. These apps provide reference guides, lab results and at times the vital signs of patients. With reminders, alerts and other ways to get quick snippets of information, these can be very handy for doctors.
Pagers have long reigned in hospitals, where they are prized for their dependability. But with doctors treating more patients and hospitals facing pressure to be more efficient, companies like Apple Inc. and Research In Motion Ltd. see an opportunity to peddle their devices.
Last month, Stanford Hospital & Clinics, in Palo Alto, Calif., started a trial with Apple and Epic Systems Corp., a provider of health-care information systems, to test software that will let medical staff access patient charts on Apple’s iPhone.
Stanford is studying ways to use the devices to reduce the risk of error as patient care is increasingly handed off from one doctor to another, says Pravene Nath, chief medical information officer.
One of the early complaints about iPhone have been the missing multimedia messaging (MMS) feature. It took about 2 years to roll MMS out and one of the reason is said that AT&T was not ready to support that level of network traffic. Apple had to provide the software to support MMS as well. Well, now that MMS has been officially released worldwide, what does it tell the usage of MMS and the traffic tell us?
One of the interesting thing is that MMS as a general feature has been slow to take off. We discussed it here. Now that iPhone has support for MMS, there is additional info about the reasons and the problems associated with MMS. Cost and interoperability are two major factors. With AT&T, the price for messaging is included in the SMS messaging plans so its not a big deal. Interoperability and reliability of sending/receiving messages remains a concern.
Personally, I have been facing issues with sending messages on AT&T network after the MMS roll out. Even plain SMS messages have been failing and that almost never happened before. Here’s a quote from Computer World.
In 2008, MMS made up just 2.5 percent of all messages sent from phones worldwide, meaning about 97.5 percent were SMS text messages, according to ABI Research. ABI expects the MMS share to grow to just 4.5 percent by 2014.
Given the amount of data that iPhone fans are already using on AT&T’s network for Web browsing, video, e-mail and social networking, it would take quite a popularity breakthrough for MMS to drag down the infrastructure through sheer traffic, analysts said. However, the carrier’s fears in one respect may have been justified, said ABI analyst Dan Shey.
Several factors have dampened the popularity of MMS, according to analysts and industry observers. A big one is that the messages still don’t always get through.
Well, among all the recent upgrade to iPhone software, my favorite remains cut and paste its nice to get multi media messaging – let’s see when it actually works!
Venturebeat – a popular blog about high tech startup companies – published a post about Help Me, a startup which provides affordable support to mobile app developers. The company behind this is Next Generation Innovations, based in Karachi, Pakistan. CEO of Next Generation Innovations, Farzal Dojki is very active and well know in Pakistani ICT circles. Great work Farzal!
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