Posts in Linked

Stuart Hall’s App Store Experiment→

This is an excellent series by Stuart Hall: he developed a 7 minute workout app, and he’s been posting details, numbers, and comments on what it’s like to enter the App Store market today.

Particularly interesting is the switch to a free model with In-App Purchase, detailed in part two:

How does In App Purchase (IAP) stack up against a paid download? For this app it’s been an increase of over 3x from around $22 per day to around $65 per day. The IAP converts at approximate 2-3% of the downloads per day.

[…]

IAP increases revenues - For better or worse for the ecosystem as a whole, it’s been proven over and over again it makes more money.

While Stuart’s story won’t apply to every kind of app category and pricing scheme, there are several data points and charts worth considering. Make sure to check out part one and part two – I hope there will be a part three as well.

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Shared Accounts In Google’s iOS Apps

Alex Chitu, reporting on a feature that I also noticed after YouTube’s 2.0 update:

If you enter the credentials of a Google account in the YouTube app and then open the AdSense app, you’ll find the new account and you can sign in without entering the password. If you remove an account, it will be removed from the other Google apps that support this feature. I assume that most Google apps for iOS will be updated to use this brilliant feature.

Once I logged into YouTube with my account (on an iOS 7 device), I then fired up the AdSense app (that I had just downloaded from the App Store) and my account was already listed in the screen with available accounts. It does seem like the YouTube and AdSense apps are capable of sharing accounts so users won’t have to log into their account every time in each Google app. AdSense didn’t bring up an authorization screen in YouTube – it just recognized the account that I had set up in YouTube.

Google’s documentation for YouTube confirms this, but doesn’t specify which iOS apps support shared accounts:

If you’ve signed in with another Google app on your iOS device, you may see this account listed.

Google’s explanation isn’t clear; the shared account option isn’t mentioned in the documentation for Gmail and Chrome. Upon signing out from the YouTube app, an alert dialog reads:

To sign in again, just select one of your Google accounts saved on this device. You will not be required to enter your password. To remove a saved account, tap “Sign In” > “Manage” > “Remove”.

It’ll be interesting to see if and when shared accounts will be integrated with Google’s other iOS apps. In the past few months, Google enhanced the inter-app communication capabilities of Gmail, Maps, Drive, and Chrome with the ability to open links in other apps, completely foregoing the need to launch Apple apps like Safari, Maps, or Mail.

Furthermore, Google is also providing an SDK for developers to add this functionality to their apps (for web links), showcasing examples of third-party apps that support Chrome. While Google apps won’t have the same kind of system integration that they have on Android, the combination of URL callbacks and shared accounts could help the creation of a “Google app ecosystem” on iOS.

The Problems Facing App.net→

Mat Honan of Wired writes about App.net and the problems it faces in getting both people and developers interested in its service. The article is great since it puts in laymen’s terms exactly what it is and what it provides, something that’s needed after being confused as an alternative to Twitter for so long.

In simple terms, App.net is a tool that affords you control of your data and network. It lets developers write apps and tap into users’ existing social graphs and stored files. Its first app was a Twitter-esque status updating service. But over the past year, it’s been quietly transforming itself, and with its free tiers and passport service, it may finally be ready to change the world — but first it has a lot to overcome, not the least of which are the many misconceptions about what the hell it is exactly.

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Google Maps Gets Traffic Data From Waze, Waze Gets POIs From Google Search→

Today on the Google Maps blog, Google detailed some of their upcoming changes to Google Maps and their recent acquisition, Waze. For the Google Maps app on iOS and Android, you’ll start seeing crowdsourced traffic data from Waze users.

This means when Wazers report accidents, construction, road closures and more on Waze, the updates will also appear on the Google Maps app for Android and iOS in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, France, Germany, Mexico, Panama, Peru, Switzerland, UK and the US.

On the flip side, Waze is also integrating Google Search into their apps for more accurate search results. Online, the Waze Map Editor is now integrated with Google Street View and satellite imagery, making it easier to compare, correct, and update local street data.

You can download Google Maps and Waze for free from the App Store.

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App Stores and Discovery→

Benedict Evans:

After the web directory the next stage was the ‘portal’ - a page with someone’s ideas of what might be useful. This is what Yahoo became, and it’s also what the front page of the iOS or Android app stores look like now. The purpose of these screens is not to allow people to discover your app or service - they cannot hope to be comprehensive in that way. The front pages of an app store do not exist to help developers - they can’t. Rather, they exist to help the users - to ease them into the idea of apps. But they can only scratch the surface of ‘discovery’.

Curation by the App Store’s editorial team can’t be enough if it’s not backed by robust search and discovery algorithms that can provide better search results and personalized recommendations. These are topics that I explored in July for the fifth anniversary of the App Store – and, to an extent, they can be applied to other content sold by Apple, like books and video.

Some may argue that Apple’s recent acquisition of Matcha.tv may signal an increased interest in content recommendation algorithms. While I have no doubt that Apple is working on this, it’s important to remember that the same was said for Chomp last year, and that didn’t result in an improved App Store search or recommendation experience on iOS 6. Maybe Matcha’s algorithm is truly different though, and Apple will find a way to use it to improve discovery on iTunes/App Store – but I wouldn’t expect improvements to become apparent any time soon.

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Macworld’s Review of “Jobs”→

Philip Michaels reviews “Jobs” (opening in US theaters today):

But the script abandons these elements almost as soon as they appear, and the movie makers’ focus returns to marking off spaces on the Steve Jobs biography bingo card. Jobs sitting enraptured during a class about fonts? Check. Jobs tricking Woz out of his share of a bonus for developing Atari’s Breakout? Check. Jobs showing off the “1984” Macintosh commercial in its entirety? Check and mate. “This is like a video Wikipedia entry,” my colleague Armando Rodriguez told me after we finished screening the movie. That’s a harsh but not entirely inaccurate critique.

This is a common critique I’ve read in other reviews of Jobs as well. It would have been great to have something more than a documentary of Steve’s life and mannerisms starring Kutcher. I’ll still watch the movie, but I’m hoping Sorkin’s take will be something different and deeper.

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You Can Finally Create Magazines of Cat GIFs in Flipboard→

Straight from the Inside Flipboard blog:

Who doesn’t love GIFs? Flipboard readers have already incorporated them into lively magazines like “Just GIF It,” “GIF Pop” and “GIF Me a Break.” Already on Android, GIF support comes to Flipboard for iPad and iPhone—so now anyone can collect and share their favorites in a magazine. (To celebrate, we’ve got some GIF-centric magazines we love featured today in By Our Readers. Tap on the red ribbon to find them in the Content Guide.)

In Flipboard 2.0.5 (App Store link), you’ll also get access to the latest Top Stories in Tech, News, Business, and Sports. Flipboard is also emphasizing the social aspects of their app by making it easier to find curators and prompting you to share your magazine with others once you’ve saved ten articles.

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