Lovato’s memo: It gets better
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05Mar
Crosswal.lk, The App Discovery Service That’s Better Than iTunes Genius, Is Now An App
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Mobile application discovery service Crosswa.lk has just debuted its much anticipated native counterpart, in the form of a new iPhone application. The app soft-launched over the weekend, allowing users to see what apps their friends are using as well as those that are popular on the wider Crosswa.lk network. It also allows users to quickly rate apps and receive recommendations of apps they might like to try.
As a self-described app addict, I’ve enjoyed using Crosswa.lk’s online service since its November launch. The user interface for the website is well-designed, easy to use, and feels more like a social network than an app search engine or app ratings and review site.
On Crosswa.lk, users can find and follow their friends, including those from Gmail and Facebook, and peruse site’s popular and recommended users in order to fill out their network of personal app recommenders. To use the service, you sync your iPhone with Crosswa.lk, which allows it to build an online profile of your app collection. There’s even an iPhone emulator which shows how your apps would look, if installed on a phone. (Unfortunately, it doesn’t duplicate your personal organizational structure and folders.)
And, of course, there are the app ratings and recommendations – the key piece to the Crosswa.lk experience. You can “like” apps, give them stars, write reviews, share the app to Facebook or Twitter, and see how many of your friends have the app installed, too. It’s really the social recommendation component that’s most important here – when you discover a lot of your friends are using an app, you’re likely to try it, too.
Explains Crosswa.lk co-founder Thomas McLeod, the concept for the Crosswa.lk service came to the team after they faced their own app discovery challenges as developers. (The team’s other apps include Pagelime, Spypic, Spyvid, ControlShift, Cooties and Frametastic).
“As we got deeper and deeper into app development, we kept hearing from other developers that they had no idea how people found their apps, and honestly we were facing the same problem ourselves,” McLeod says. “We sat down and kicked around a bunch of ideas, and came to the conclusion that the number one way we were guaranteed to download an app was if a friend recommended it.”
And so, Crosswa.lk was born.
But as much fun as it is to use the online service, Crosswa.lk desperately needed its own mobile app. After all, if you’re building a service to help improve app discovery…well, you kind of need an app for that.
The new mobile version of Crosswa.lk brings real-time feeds of apps trending among your friends plus all those using Crosswa.lk. You can then filter this list by a large set of criteria, such as price, category, community (e.g. photographers, gamers, bloggers, etc.), ratings, most “liked,” and more. You can also use the app to access the various Crosswa.lk communities, or see which apps are on sale and what searches are popular now, find friends, rate apps, and, of course, get your own Genius-like recommendations.
Actually, scratch that last bit – Crosswa.lk’s recommendations are far, far better than iTunes’ Genius.
Oh, and one more thing – just in time for SXSW, Crosswa.lk’s app features a section called “Who’s Winning Austin” which will keep track of the trending apps at SXSW in real time. You’ll find this at the bottom of the Trending Apps section.
Crosswa.lk comes from the team at Imaginary Feet, whose other two co-founders are Emil Anticevic and Patrick Jackson. The company has a small amount of seed funding from a new firm called XOL Ventures, which happens to be four ex-AOL guys. (Disclosure(?): TechCrunch is owned by AOL).
You can grab the new Crosswa.lk app here on iTunes.
View full post on TechCrunch » Mobile
29Feb
Forget The Holiday Rush: Mobile App Downloads Did Better In January Than December
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Mobile app marketing firm Fiksu has new data today on the effect the post-holiday rush on mobile devices had on the number of apps downloaded throughout the month of January. In short, downloads skyrocketed last month, even beating December’s numbers. iOS downloads reached an all-time high last month, the firm says, up 12% from its previous high in December, when the devices were originally unwrapped by their new owners. This trend seems to indicate that the fervor to load up a new phone or tablet with apps doesn’t just result in a temporary spike – the increased activity is sustained over weeks (and perhaps months) into the future.
The measurement known as the Fiksu App Store Competitive Index tracks the average aggregate daily download volume of the top 200 free U.S. iPhone apps. It peaked at 6.79 million daily downloads in January, up from December’s 6.04 million (or, as noted above, 12%).
To be clear, this firm tracks trends here in the U.S., so its findings are not globally relevant. Still, they seem to highlight how the traditional mindset around marketing has inched its way into the mobile app space.
Case in point: in January, the cost to market mobile apps dropped significantly, falling 59% from December’s record high of $1.81 to just $1.14 last month. This is the more interesting data point for app marketers, because it shows a misconception about how marketing spend needs to work over the holidays. Apps are not Christmas presents, which have to be bought, wrapped and ready by a particular date – people continue to buy apps throughout January too, and beyond.
Although the advertisers rushed to drive up their app store rankings over the holidays, it turned out that January was actually a better month to acquire users than December was. Who knew?
Micah Adler, Fiksu CEO, advises app marketers to reconsider their marketing programs. Many app brands invest heavily in Q4 and then reduce spending in January as they evaluate their programs for the New Year and focus on version upgrades, he says. But January, note Adler, is “an excellent time for both growth and value – and budget-savvy marketers should take full advantage.”
Now they know for next year. Oh well.
View full post on TechCrunch » Mobile
15Feb
Hemingway Here I Come!: Vodka Makes You Better With Words
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Vodka AND getting pulled over.
According to a recent study conducted by the University of Illinois, Chicago, boozing up to around the legal limit (~0.08 BAC) make you gooder with words. Pfft, I could have told you that — look at me. “You’re doing a f***ing terrible job.” I don’t start drinking till 10!
In the study, half the participants were fed vodka until just below the current 0.08 per cent blood alcohol cutoff for legal intoxication in the United States, and half drank nothing. They were all then shown a series of three-word puzzles, and asked to find a word that linked the three words on each occasion. On average, intoxicated participants responded in 11.5 seconds, while the sober ones took 15.4 seconds.
It lends weight to the idea that artists and musicians are more creative when they’ve indulged. In fact, Jennifer Wiley, one of the researchers, agrees: “A composer or artist fixated on previous work may indeed find creative benefits from intoxication.”
Truthfully, I’ve tried writing after some beers before, and let me tell you — it’s hard. Well it’s not hard, it’s really easy, you just wind up thinking you’re a lot cleverer than you actually are. And if there’s one thing I’m not after I’ve been drinking, it’s clever. Way more attractive and charming, sure, but not clever. Now weed on the other hand, that actually does make me better at stuff like, SPOILER: cookies. I have mastered them.
Drinking Vodka Makes You Talk More Better [gizmodo]
Thanks to philip, who’s convinced booze makes you better at video games. Better, or screamier? View full post on Geekologie – Gadgets, Gizmos, and Awesome