Monthly Archive: August 2015

It happens to us all where we would give anything to see an important live television news bulletin or the dying moments at the end of a match during a major sporting event but we are nowhere near a television. The Sling TV app available on all smart phone platforms provide an easy answer to this conundrum, where life and business forces us to miss events that we waited a year or even years to see.

The great news this app and the service provided by it is inexpensive offers excellent picture quality at whatever speed and frame rate your handset can deliver. It also offers a quite useful 3-Day replay, along with a very useful Start Over feature available on several television channels, it offers few downsides other than a slightly limited selection of available channels and no DVR function and the fact that it’s only in available inside the US.

The inexpensive TV app works on just about any smart device at whatever resolution you prefer, limited only by your device and available bandwidth at your location.
The most often heard request from television cable subscribers have always been a choose and pay per viewing facility, whereby the user or subscriber within choose the channels they wish to subscribe to and either pay less or more according to personal choice. Since the advent of Netflix and its alternative streaming video service providers their subscribers have asked a similar question why can they not receive live television by the same streaming video service provider.

Sling TV and parent Dish Network are now attempting to provide the answer to such a service, and the answer is a resoundingly successful – YES THEY CAN!! Their Sling TV app is available from $20 a month with additional add-on packs providing more channels available at an added $5 per channel!

This brilliant app developed for the health-conscious represents one of the best running and cycling apps available for android or iOS. It is fully featured presenting users with an excellent interface the app supports Bluetooth connectivity as well as ANT+ ancillary devices for instance heart rate monitors or GPS devices.

Having built up a reputation for accuracy in its mapping and GPS functions as well as heart rate monitor recordings, being a freemium offering all functions are not available on the free version, for full functionality a subscription is required. The app has just a few downsides, the first being limited in app privacy controls and the second is that goal tracking is restricted only to premium/subscribed members. Any cyclist or runner that thrives on the competitive spirit would love would love Strava, premium members are able to compete with other users on their database. The site the site software provides the app with data from other subscribers including females and males so that they can compare and compete against top athletes and or friends at both amateur as well as professional levels.

The app having recently undergone a major overall and re-release that improved it even further, the company is fully involved globally in a multitude of different types of sports at top international levels. Their involvement enables them to improve and further develop on it continuously progressive level to maintain the app’s position at the forefront of technological advancement at all times. Generally it’s main focus is on runners and cyclists, but can be used for any form of bipedal activity like walking, hiking or other forms of activity such as swimming, skiing, ice skating or in-line, surfing, crossfit, boating, stand up paddling, rock climbing, and a multitude of gym activities such as stair-stepper, yoga, elliptical, weight training, and cardio workouts.

It’s absolute versatility in all forms of physical activities, accuracy of its data, together with its continual development makes it a perfect companion to improve your lifestyle! Consider this app if cycling is part of your exercise regime.

WhatsApp Messenger is a global success story with over 700 million active monthly users it is the most used instant messaging app worldwide irrespective of mobile platform. The prominent mobile messenger enjoys a particularly strong reach in in the United States and is even more popular in markets other than the US.

Facebook acquired this app for US$19 billion during February 2014. The app can ascribe its popularity to several factors that include options like its easy signup, its VoIP voice call capability, an option to backup all app information to cloud, it eliminates any requirement for an additional texting plan, easy and simple device migration, and fully customisable chat windows. No app is perfect however the app lacks desktop functionality, a relatively inelegant design, no video chat facility, and it is linked to a single phone number and device at a time this last feature however is also a positive as it lends itself towards additional security. In addition, any new subscribers will find their complete contact list with persons already on WhatsApp fully loaded within seconds after the completion of signing up. Any newby to WhatsApp will find they already have a multitude of the friends subscribe to the brilliant app, which to a great extent would negate any further needs for additional mobile texting plans.

The app however faces stiff competition since mobile messaging exploded in recent years, with all kinds of apps available for every kind of messaging imaginable from sultry, to public, to secret, to subversive. Due to the explosion in IMs mobile industry leaders like Facebook and Twitter jumped on improving their offering, with the owners of WhatsApp Facebook’s Messenger currently featured in second place behind their own Whatsapp in the popularity stakes globally.

In the course of the past year Google’s Play store more than doubled the number of available apps on offer from the leading android app provider, the proliferation of new apps can cater for its worldwide audience’s every need. Whilst Google has done an incredible job of advertising and keeping the best as well as new products on the storefront where it easy for players to access and brought to the attention without intensive searching, there are still just to greater variety to keep each and every great one where it deserves to be.

With 1.6 million apps currently listed in their store it is very difficult for players to ascertain the best apps available despite entertaining their product offerings in categories that differentiate new apps, top apps, free apps, editor’s picks, and a multitude of other categories to try and ease a potential downloader’s plight of finding the correct app for his purposes. For the past nine years this choice has been easy insofar as best media app for android users, that title has for nine years belong to Spotify. Spotify comes offered in two versions a free version as well as a premium version that requires a subscription. It’s free version is a stripped down playlist/radio combination that require good music without having to resort to paying hefty prices for it. Spotify offers a swanky UI that outdoes nearly every other media app on the market, to the extent that it’s functionality has more in common with desktop media and mobiles.

In its premium offering all annoying adverts dropped, the audio quality is improved, joined by additional offerings like off-line play, if you’re a music lover it definitely is worth shelling out on a subscription to the premium version. The app has gained itself an incredible awareness amongst music lovers and android users in general, the app virtually demands players to create and build their playlists while sharing your own creations with others immaterial of whether the original music belongs to Windows or iTunes.
All users I tried it out fell in love with it virtually instantaneously.

Apple has finally after a number of years in silent development revealed that they will soon have an Apple counter for Google Now, will feature a deep iOS 9 search engine, a Siri API, as well as Augmented Reality Maps.

The iPhone company has finally made it known they are nearly ready with an advanced new iOS initiative going under the codename Proactive, the new software would be able to leverage Passbook, Siri, Contacts, Calendar and most third-party apps thereby creating a viable and worthy competitor Google Now service available on android smart devices. Proactive aims to deliver timely information in a fully automated fashion based purely on any user’s device and data usage while respecting each user’s device privacy settings.

Proactive is born as an iOS, Spotlight search feature, evolution finally becoming a reality after visionary long-term solution involving acquisitions of several developers specializing in small apps as well as a skilful integration of iOS’s core apps. Once again based on user preference and data usage it will be able to manipulate Apple maps, displaying points relevant to the user in his day-to-day activities, or while travelling points of interest nearby as he travels, done by utilising the augmented reality interface and full integration with Breadcrumbs as Siri third party API.

Proactive’s initial groundwork laid in 2013, started with an Apple acquisition of a third-party app called Cue, a personal assistant app to ease the relevant and very necessary broadening of Safari and Spotlight search results. IPhone aficionados first felt the first taste of Apple’s Proactive initiative when iOS 8 displayed the ability to offer Wikipedia search results from a Spotlight search. Proactive was in part a result of Apple’s drive to become less reliant on Google with sources reporting iOS usage stats indicating that Google requirements have dropped since iOS 8 launched last fall.

Apple wishes to elevate Proactive advancement a further level and hopefully shall do so with the introduction of iOS 9 at the World Developers Conference on 8 June 2015.

Apple’s revelation at this year’s Worldwide Developers Conference made all mobile advertising publishers sit up and take notice, their undivided attention was demanded by Apple’s announcement of powerful ad blocking browser extensions introduced as part of their native Safari browser that comes loaded with the company’s new iOS 9. The potential future calamity for ad publishers first surfaced a week ago when developers uncovered the Apple provision in their technical documentation released after the introduction of iOS 9 at WDC 2015.

IPhone users have never been offered the option to completely block any and all digital advertising in its native browser before, the functionality was only available to them via browsers other than Safari. The news caused serious concern within the publishing industry since about 55% of Apple users continue using the native Safari browser to access all their web content. Josh Brenton, Nieman Journalism Lab Director at Harvard University, expressed his concern stating that it was worrisome since publishers already earned tiny dollars from mobile, since most of their readers moved to its digital news format in massive numbers. Considering that over 50% of the New York Times on-line subscribers would access this publication using one form or another of mobile device. However, current quantities and forms of mobile digital advertising only generate 10% of the news agency’s revenue from digital advertising.

The new-found iPhone user control over digital advertising could purportedly be debilitating to digital publishers. With the common response from within the digital advertising community being that the Safari ad blocker support comes as terrible news not just for advertisers, but also includes media and publishing organisations according to John Carroll, Prof of mass media communications at Boston University. Apple’s support whereby they allow their own developers to extend user control to its current extent allows Apple to tap into very popular current trends, but Apple’s motives might just involve its drive to become less dependent on Google.

For the first time in January 2015, a published report stated that Google Play had definitively overtaken the Apple Store in the sheer number of available downloadable applications; the report certainly pointed to Google having managed a massive turnaround in volume of applications.

The App Store launched in 2008 boasted a moderate 500 apps, it was not the biggest when launched, it was also not the first operating systems specific app store of its kind. In contrast, Microsoft’s Windows Mobile store already stocked over 18,000 apps and Palm claimed upwards of 30,000 active app developers at the time. Apple quickly rectified this, speedily outpacing all rivals to achieve 10 million downloads over its first weekend after launch, not resting on its laurels it hastened on to over a hundred million downloads within the first three months and within the first year achieved 1.5 billion downloads from 65,000 available apps. Steve Jobs, Apple CEO, remarked at the time that it would be very difficult for their competitors to catch up.

In June 2015 Apple achieved 75 billion app downloads from the Apple store, in January 2015 they were hosting 1.4 million apps, available to users in 155 countries.
Google had a relaunch, remake, and renaming of the old Android Market, launched in 2008, into Google Play re-launched in 2012. At the time, the Apple Store generated nearly 4 times the income of Google Play. Google certainly seems to have turned the tables around to some degree since the early days and fought through the hard yards of deficiencies, shortcomings, and general user unfriendliness. During 2014 Google Play very close to doubled its available number of apps and slowly but surely decreased the number of substandard apps that it was accused of fielding, to below 13% in total volume and continually culls additional deadwood on a quarterly basis.

The battle between these two giants of the mobile world is still a long way from settled, by the end of 2014 Apple shipped 700 million iOS devices in total through its doors from the first iPhone until January 2015, several reports state approximately 200 million iOS devices are no longer active, leaving 500 million devices active in the market. Android will see 1 billion devices activated in 2014 alone; this will be in addition to the 1.9 billion devices currently active globally. Google Play as of July 2015 fields 1.6 million available apps, Apple’s App Store fields 1.5 million apps, Amazon App Store fields 400,000, Windows phone store around 340,000, with Blackberry World languishing at 130,000 available apps.

By January 2015 according to Apple their app developers earned in excess of US$25 billion from apps offered in its App Store, compared to $10 billion in 2014 with $500 million spent by iOS users on apps and in app purchases during January 2015 alone. Apple purportedly still earns 60% more than Google from its App Store proceeds, but Google enjoys upwards of 60% more downloads than Apple. Google approaches its clientele and business with a very different focus, while fielding billions more devices every year than Apple, and with Steve Jobs sadly now out of the picture, what does the future hold for both operating systems and its users.

Samsung recently made it known that it launched an innovative new mobile app at the 2015 E3, allowing players to record their gaming sessions on their smartphones. Currently a range of mobile apps claims to offer similar functionality, however Game Recorder+ offers the added advantage that accompanies the trusted Simpson name. The app also boasts with additional features such as being able to capture your commentary and a picture of yourself recorded along with your gameplay.

As with most international athletic sports stars in the current arena that record the practice as well as competitive events to improve performance, this Samsung backed app claims a similar functionality wearing it would improve your performance during your gameplay session with a game boost option that optimizes system memory offering players better hardware performance during gameplay. The app is capable of capturing live footage in full HD and offer players the option of trimming or editing the recorded gameplay at its completion, as all gamers would agree very handy feature to edit out that embarrassing boss fights this at the completion of the stage.

The new app received mixed reviews on the Play store with complaints about game leg, were frame rates, and strangely incompatibility with Samsung’s own Galaxy S6 active. Strangely, the app is restricted by couple of crucial points that could severely hamper its future success, the above-mentioned early client complaints together with the fact that Samsung restricted its functionality to its own smartphones. With only a handful of its own smart phones namely the Galaxy S6 & S6 Edge, S5 & 4, Note 4, 3, & 2 able to power the app.
Sadly, to further add insult to injury the app will currently be unavailable to anyone residing in Samsung’s homeland of South Korea or Europe.