Apps Used to Report Community Issues in Arizona
More Valley cities are using mobile technology to enable residents to report neighborhood issues like overgrown weeds or barking dogs, but critics say the smartphone applications could foster distrust and suspicion as ordinary citizens become the eyes and ears of local government.
The increasingly popular “citizen reporter” apps make it easier for officials to resolve public-property issues, such as graffiti and potholes, but many communities have expanded the technology to include more personal violations, including unsanctioned yard sales or even expired vehicle tags.
Nick Dranias, constitutional policy director for the Goldwater Institute, a Phoenix-based conservative watchdog group, said the apps encourage people to “surreptitiously report on their neighbors.”
Technology Patents: Useful and Ridiculous
Google is under fire for alleged patent infringement in its Android mobile operating system. Intellectual property is a vexed issue in technology, with empire built on some innovations, and some laughable attempts to restrict rivals from implementing trivial features.
Japanese Firms, DOCOMO, KDDI and SOFTBANK Establish Consortium to Promote NFC Services Compatible with Multiple International Standards
Mobile payments are nothing new to the people of Japan, who’ve used NTT DoCoMo’s Osaifu-Keitai as the de facto standard for years. Based on Sony’s FeliCa smart card, the system is incompatible with the NFC Type A and B technologies that are spreading across the globe. Hence, there’s a growing concern for interoperability in the Land of the Rising Sun, prompting NTT DoCoMo, KDDI and Softbank to establish the Japan Mobile NFC Consortium in an effort to keep pace. Moving forward, the three carriers will work with suppliers and manufacturers to guarantee a smooth transition to the Type A and B standards, ensuring that future handsets will speak the proper NFC lingo throughout the world…Read the press release
Standardization is important when seeking wide spread adoption in the technology space. Sony is still wondering where they went wrong with Betamax -DD
Two Things Every Great Mobile App Must Have
What makes a great app? To be more specific – what makes a really great mobile app? As I have written in some of my previous posts there are unique challenges with mobility in terms of form factor (which is just a fancy way of saying device size) and what it means to be productive. These challenges are not always accounted for. Many mobile app designs suffer from poor layouts, confusing functionality, or focus more on presentation and looking good over everything else. However, if an app design misses the mark from a productivity standpoint you have nothing more than a pink bow on the fence of a feedlot.
Enterprises are quickly moving away from desktop-based apps as their sole operational interface and towards an always-connected on-the-go experience. For many application developers it will be challenging, at first, to make this transition into the mobile arena. Desktop, and to the same extent web, applications designed for large screen resolutions have been the dominant paradigm and have so much momentum that it is taking time and a lot of track to stop that train. A product’s mobile UI is often an after-thought; an ‘oh yeah - now let’s make this work for mobile’ conversation. Because of inexpensive monitors application developers have become accustomed to vast expanses of screen real-estate as their playfield for form, function, and beauty.
Large screens are ubiquitous and as a result we have become as sloppy in our layout. Just as we went from really tight memory management to bloatware we have become footloose and fancy-free with taking up UI space. Great mobile apps will take this into consideration -but how?
Source: remotelymobile
How Instagram can gain users, make money and keep its users happy
Instagram; You can start making serious money today without upsetting your users and at the same time massively increase your user base. Here’s how:
Instagram is an iOS only, superb photo sharing app. It’s easy, quick and fun to snap a picture and share it. The filters and the forced square photo format makes photos more interesting and appealing than they really deserve to. I love it. On top of this, it’s free, there are no ads and no extra premium features are available as in app purchases. It’s great and it’s free. But this can’t go on forever of course. Look at Spotify and even more recently, Instapaper that went premium only. Companies need to make money in order to exist. Instagram just raised $7 million in funding and the investors will of course eventually want to see some return.
Source: digithoughts
Yes, Even iPhones Can Spy on You, Too
By ADAM CLARK ESTES for the Atlantic Wire
An Apple hacker has discovered that Carrier IQ, the shady smartphone software recently found to be logging keystrokes on Android and BlackBerry devices, is also installed on the iPhone. Don’t worry, fanboys. It’s off by default — probably. After
As on other smartphones, the presence of Carrier IQ in Apple’s iOS firmware is difficult to detect. Prominent iPhone jailbreaker “chpwn” discovered traces of the code on Thursday, after Android security researcher Trevor Eckhart dug into the code of his Google-made operating system to discover that Carrier IQ was recording tons of user data, even the contents of text messages. Hacker blogs are referring to Carrier IQ as a “rootkit,” a type of virtually undetectable software that provides privileged access to your data. In 2007, CNET reported that rootkits were “tops on the criminal hackers’ To Do lists,” though Carrier IQ markets its services to mobile carriers like AT&T and Sprint, as the name suggests. It’s also not a new service, as chpwn explains in a blog post (emphasis his):
