As Mobile App Developer

I’ve been learning and developing mobile apps for a while and there are few interesting aspect changed which I could compare myself before few years and now. App creating and seeing it live in our hand is amazing. Spending lot of wee hours for learning and developing apps is worth it. Here are something which changes the way I approach the things now in real world!

Look at things differently: Now a days when I look and do anything the approach is much different. Earlier just get the things done and move on. Now, if same thing can be done differently or better way. Is there any easier way to do this thing or can it be all together removed? There may not be magic bullet for each and everything to be simple but certainly there are better ways!
While using any app: I’m quite sure if any App developer or designer sees the app, they notice what kind of framework app is using, how screens are being transitioned, how data is being loaded, is it on server or stored locally, what are colors used, how it can be improved and lot of other little things only app developers can think of. Is there any easier way or how few taps could be avoided are questions comes into the mind. Sometime few apps impress end to end!
What’s new?: Ever wondered what’s new in the updates for the app? Apart from some large brands like Facebook, Google, most of the developers write what’s new section in details. Earlier I use to just update the app either automatically or just update all. Now reading what’s new is major part of any updates.

Parse is shutting down!

Parse, a Fecebook company, platform for hosting database popular for mobile apps today announced it’s winding up. It will continue to run for another year and that’s the due time for developers to migrate their database. Full announcement from Parse – Moving on

Considering Parse being one of integral part of developers tool for mobile app development, it’s sad Facebook is closing down Parse. It’s understandable as there are multiple cloud based software platforms in recent time but Parse was one of the leader and FB should have continued with it. They had one of the best free tier plan, they should have tried few other price plan to make money.

Anyways, still they are making sure it’s smooth transition with multiple migration tools and making their API’s open source. That brings good opportunity for developers to host their own database using Parse tools and continue to use same easy to go tools.

Also, there are other tools to use, but hosting could be one of the reliable option for long run.

Mainframe to Smartphone: Creators to Consumers

Mobile Devices – Smartphones

Mainframes

There are wonderful applications, devices at our fingertip with latest new features of smartphones and mobile devices. Computing has evolved long way over the time from large mainframes in 1970’s to Smartphones of 2010’s. It’s rare to see mainframe in use in recent time, possibly in few countable large enterprises. Then with dominance of Microsoft and Apple, the era of personal computing or so-called “PC” came in 1980’s & 1990’s and up to some extent stayed relevent till 2010. Starting 2000’s portability became center of computing and laptops started becoming mainstream replacing PC’s from most of the places. In mid 2000’s two different industries started merging and evolution of new era started. To start with it was just few additional features in a phone and it use to be “Cool” gadget. With iOS, Android and few others those phones or today’s Smartphones started doing almost everything what common user can do on laptops.

Desktop – “Personal Computer (PC)

With this trend, more and more devices became consumer centric and with latest mobile devices it’s 90% for consumerism and 10% for creators. Still we need a laptop to program and create something that is for tomorrow. There are few things which are being accommodated into mobile devices but still laptops will stay relevent in coming days at least with geeks and programmers. Also due wide reach of mobility, it became much easier to connect the world than ever before be it for personal connectivity or businesses.

Laptop

New New Distractions

Apple CEO, Tim Cook took dig at Google user saying “You’re Not the Customer. You’re the Product”. With the new consumer services and social phenomenon, it’s quite obvious with many of services we use every day for majority of the time in the day.

How many times it happens as you open your laptop or smartphones to do something like reading an article and you end up from one link to another to some other news or video on YouTube to some update from Facebook friend and at the end spending couple of hours on it? It’s like going to Grocery store for buying Gallon of milk and end up spending $100 and cart full of goods.

Some apps we see as productivity tool and that end up with another distraction from main course. Whether its Facebook feeds , twitters updates, notification on iPhone/Smartphone with one or other update may be for new message on WhatsApp or some new update for software, all are taking one step away from focused time.

Certainly, we can’t bluntly say, get the crap out and focus on something. These new way to connect people or get notified are required but with controlled access. We can do many things starting from turning off wi-fi to deleting few apps or blocking some sites but most important thing is “Self Control” and focus to get the task done and forget everything else.

One way, to get away from distracting thoughts is, give them a way by spelling it out. I mean write them down so they are out of your mind. That means even if you require, any of that, you have them written down.

Uber vs Lyft or Uber + Lyft

Over last couple of years, peer-to-peer service/economy has been taken by storm. Specially in travel and accommodation industry. For most of the tech savvy folks Airbnb and Uber or Lyft has been way of travel. Also there is upcoming startup Flytenow for peer-to-peer flights between different locations. There are ideally two types of industries.

Everyone has their market share and competitiveness among similar business model
Winner takes all

When it comes to social networking, back in 2002 – 2006 many startups with similar model and more or less similar growth trajectory. In early 2010 Facebook took a leap forward and emerged as clear winner, leaving other social networks much behind. Its reached a place where its difficult for anyone to step in now.

Same applies to Google search, even Google started much after Altavista but it didn’t took much time for them to surpass their rivals due to their founders vision and excellent technology. Microsoft Bing and Yahoo search are distant runner-up in search in race. Google take away more than 80% search market by storm.

In peer-to-peer economy, airbnb has taken leap ahead in accommodation and taking on traditional hotel business and regulators. When it comes to most promising industry for peer-to-peer – taxi /cab service, there are two clear frontrunners – Uber and Lyft. Both started almost same time, similar business model, similar service and even some drivers drives for both Uber and Lyft.

With ongoing tussle to tap more market, Uber as well as Lyft are trying to woo riders (customers) with one or other offers all the times. It’s good for common public. In days to comes, it would be interesting to see whether both companies will continue to operate independently as they are now or become formidable company by merger/acquisition?

elance and odesk has merged recently to provide better work platform for freelancers and businesses. My take, merger of uber and Lyft in next couple of years!

Unique Payment system to get best return on spending

Peter, Just like all of us has four credit cards, one debit card and paypal account. Along with this he have two store credit cards like Banana Republic, Amazon etc. Each of those credit cards and store card has their reward systems, cash back offer but not same for all type of purchase. One card may be good for travel and other for gas purchase and another for some other service. So there is always confusion which card to use for which transaction to get better return. Yes, return on spending!

Peter could manage to get some good cash back on one card and earn spectacular reward points on another card after using his payment choise wisely every time. But there is no guarantee he is using best payment choise (card) which gives more return. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if there is some system which takes care of all the math and tell you or automatically uses the best payment option every time Peter does the transaction? In short getting the best possible return on spending.

Consider, this Peter guy is me and tell me, do you know of any such product or service in market?

Search… wait… SmartAds, and Smartbuy!

Wondered anytime when you searched for something say “Hotels in Key West” and moved to something else on internet. How you get the ads for hotels in Key West be it Google, Facebook, or any other site like news or any site which supports ads. Most of the ad programs (Adword, Adsense, Facebook ads, email ads, email offers) run on internet captures your internet activities and depending on what you are doing it prompts you with ads related to it. Up to some extend it enters into your privacy but that’s up to you to decide what kinds of cookies you should enable and disable. For Google, just like Google search, Chrome browser is another rich source of raw data to come up with ads for targeted audience. Google allows third party portal to make money by hosting ads on the webpages and those ads comes intelligent data they store from our activities.

It’s just not Google, when you search something on Google and go on to Facebook, most likely you are going to get some page related to what you searched as sponsored page. You search for something to buy on Amazon, overnight you get email from Amazon with all possible offer either from Amazon or it’s affiliates.

As consumer, It’s possibly best to plan, search, wait and act depending on what you see. Say you want to buy Smart TV, search on Google, Facebook pages, Amazon for Smart TV and start looking for offers on linked ads, offers from Amazon in email or their site. Pick the best possible deal and make a purchase. Also we need to be aware about possible incorrect offer and frauds in the process.

One annoying thing is, even after you make purchase, you continue to get those ads for some time, as those ad program don’t know yet whether you made purchase or still yet to make it.

Once clean, now filled with ads!

Online ads are not new and unknown to anyone today. It’s well known fact that almost all major internet giant’s majority of revenue comes from online ads in one or other format. Online ads has evolved over the time from Spams, pop-up ads, flashy banners to inline text. Also over the time internet user response to the ads has gone down, for sure one of the reason is users know they are ads and not what they are looking for.

: Sample Google search for “Ads on the Internet”

There was time when innovative brands like Google, YouTube, Facebook and so on use to be “The” portals who had their user ahead of anything else. It’s not like they didn’t have ads but the amount of ads and preference for user content. Over the years trend is changing and up to some extend it’s hurting the users interactiveness. When we look today for search result on Google, more than 75% of first page is filled with ads. When we start the video on YouTube sometime advertisement at the starting is longer than actual video. When you login to Facebook, you see one or other sponsored content at the starting of the page, your friends posts are long lost in the process. User is not spending such much time as they use to spend on Facebook.

WhatsApp founders said so rightly, people don’t go to sleep or wakeup with excitement of what ad they will see tomorrow. In the process of more and more revenue user content is lost. Is there any alternative? May be yes or may be No. But it’s high time to come up with alternative for ads and have the clean experience on the internet. They brand which comes up with alternative is ahead of the pile…

http://blog.whatsapp.com/245/Why-we-dont-sell-ads

Leap Forward

Tag Archives: Facebook

As Mobile App Developer

Mainframe to Smartphone: Creators to Consumers

New New Distractions

Unique Payment system to get best return on spending