Here’s an iPhone app for those moments when you’re wondering, “Okay, I’ve got some free time right now — what should I do?” Weotta Go is actually the latest product from Weotta, a startup that launched at TechCrunch Disrupt last year. At the time, the company had built a website that helped people make plans, such as figuring out where to eat dinner tonight. The iPhone app, on the other hand, is more focused on spontaneity — say you’re at work and want to find somewhere nearby to grab a sandwich, or you’ve just met up with some friends and don’t know where to head next. So when you open up Weotta Go, the results are tailored to the time and location. For example, when Grant Wernick came by the TechCrunch office on Tuesday afternoon, the app showed us lots of nearby lunch spots. Then he changed the clock on his iPhone to later in the day, and we started to see happy hour recommendations. When I opened the app this morning, it listed coffee shops near my apartment in Noe Valley. You can also filter the results based on how far you’re willing to go (the narrowest filter is “2 blocks”), the price, the category (activities, attractions, coffees and sweets, food, and sporting events), and the context (is this just for guys, girls, kids, or a couple on a date?). Even better, the app changes the results on-the-fly. Its recommendations are delivered as a stack of photos, which you can tap on for more information, drag down to save in a list, or swipe across to say that you’re not interested. As you do that, the list will change to show you more items in the categories that you’re interested in and less of everything else. After you’ve created a Read More
Chris Velazco is a mobile enthusiast and writer who studied English and Marketing at Rutgers University. Once upon a time, he was the news intern for MobileCrunch, and in between posts, he worked in wireless sales at Best Buy. After graduating, he returned to the new TechCrunch to as a full-time mobile writer. He counts advertising, running, musical theater,... → Learn More Carefully cultivating your Facebook presence can be tough enough when you only have your personal profile to deal with, but it’s a completely different story when you’ve got a full-blown Page (or three) to manage on top of it. To help those particular users stay on top of things, Facebook has begun to roll out a new app (called, imaginatively enough, Pages Manager) in a small handful of markets, though we in the U.S. can’t play with it just yet. As far as the design goes, the Pages Manager app should be familiar territory for anyone who’s ever used the standard iOS app, though a few thoughtful additions make the prospect of keeping tabs on multiple Pages a little less hairy. All of the Pages a user has admin rights to can be accessed from the app’s left pane for quick access, and those admins will get notifications whenever a user interacts with a Page under their purview. Thankfully, notifications can be handled on a Page-by-Page basis, so it’s easy to enough tune out trolls if need be. Perhaps most importantly, the app allows provides on-the-go access to Page Insights — the metrics that track Page performance and user engagement through likes — so admins will always have an idea of where they stand. For now, it seems as though only users in Australia and New Zealand can access the new Pages Manager app in the App Store, though Read More
In an effort to streamline its digital offerings, The Weather Channel has today announced that its popular iPhone app has undergone a major redesign. It started with the launch of the iPad app, and just a few weeks ago The Weather Channel followed suit on the web. But the iPhone marks a major portal between TWC and its consumers, in that mobile and weather undoubtedly go hand in hand. The redesign reminds me a bit of HTC’s Sense 3, with the home screen offering up a weather-themed background based on the weather outside. The user interface seems much more navigable, but the features themselves are getting a bump as well. The revamp streamlines the TWC app in a big way, in that you can have as much or as little weather as you’d like when you hop in the app. You’ll obviously get automatic weather updates, but the ability to save more locations or expand more detailed information within the app makes it a much more friendly user experience. It’s clear that The Weather Channel is trying to unify its digital products. The company added social sharing features to the web site, which will also be available on the iPhone app. This includes the ability to upload a photo of your local weather and publish it to iWitness, Facebook, or Twitter. We spoke with EVP of digital products at The Weather Channel Cameron Clayton about the direction in which these products are headed. While this release represents possibly the biggest improvement in The Weather Channel App for iPhone to date, it’s just the start of what we’re setting out to accomplish. Yes, we’ve staked a claim with the accuracy of our weather forecasting with our TruPoint technology, but soon we’ll take that to the next level and tell users when rain Read More
“Social magazine” Flipboard may have to think up a new tagline for itself, as tonight the company is rolling out an update which greatly expands its focus beyond text-based content to also include audio. The rollout features integrations from NPR, PRI (Public Radio International) and social sound platform, SoundCloud. Also of note, Flipboard is launching its third localized edition with the debut of a Flipboard app for Japan, following its previous launches in China and France. And there’s an update which will matter a lot to a smaller number of users: integration of Apple’s VoiceOver controls to provide better access for the visually impaired. Unless you’re based in Japan, the biggest news today is the introduction of the audio content to what’s primarily been a text-focused, magazine-like platform for reading news, blogs and updates from your social networks. But when you think about it, the addition makes sense – news is often delivered through multiple formats, not just text. And Flipboard already has a video section, we should point out. The audio integrations will be highlighted in a newly added category, simply called “audio,” which will appear after the Flipboard app update (version 1.9) gets pushed out tonight. The section will showcase the curated selections from NPR and PRI including content like NPR’s “Fresh Air” and PRI’s “The World,” for example, as well as content from SoundCloud. However, a search option will also be available so users can find any audio content that Flipboard might now host. SoundCloud users will be able to listen to their sets, favorites, and people or artists they follow, but you won’t need to have a SoundCloud account to take advantage of the new offering. Audio is background-enabled, too, allowing you to exit the app while continuing to listen, or while continuing to browse through Flipboard. In speaking Read More
Over the past six months, the folks at OpenSignalMaps have been keeping tabs on the devices that have been downloading their network monitoring app, and so far they’ve recorded downloads onto 681,900 separate Android devices in 195 countries. Now they’ve taken all that data and splayed it out for all to see, and it highlights rather nicely how big a headache fragmentation can be for developers. For the most part, the results are as you’d expect — runaway hits like Samsung’s Galaxy S II was the most represented device among the 3,997 distinct models they spotted, and Samsung Android devices were far and away the most widely used. What really gets me is how many other devices and brands fill up the rest of that list. Seriously, if you haven’t yet, go look at it. Mouse-over some of the smaller blocks, see if there are any brands or devices that ring a bell. It’s pretty crazy to see just how many players are in the field, and nothing against OpenSignalMaps — their app is actually pretty damned useful — but it’s not an immediate must-download for every user. That there are gobs of Android devices floating around out there isn’t exactly a shocker, but data like this really drives home the issue. With so many devices running so many versions of Android with who knows many carrier- and manufacturer-mandated tweaks onboard, how is a developer supposed to make sure that all of their users gets a consistent experience? They can’t, unless they’re willing to test like crazy. Google chairman Eric Schmidt famously downplayed the term “fragmentation” at this year’s CES, suggesting instead that people call it “differentiation.” It’s hard not to agree with sentiment on some level — after all, one of Android’s key strengths is how easily it fits into Read More
They say if you want to understand the future, you have to look at children. And if my 10-year-old cousin’s chat history is any indication, we will soon be communicating in emoji, Egyptian hieroglyphics or some other kind of pictographic language that renders the 2,000-year-old Roman alphabet obsolete. Sometimes she sends me full e-mails like this (except it goes on forever): . It either means ‘My cat ate my homework,’ or it’s the Five Stages of Grief in a single word. I’m not really sure. Anyway, there is a mobile app for that. It’s called Zlango and it’s backed by Benchmark Capital, Accel Partners and DAG Ventures. Zlango is a mobile chat app that is on emoticon crack cocaine. Instead of pure text-based chats, it supports emoticons married to words. There are standard packs of pictures in the app, but users can upgrade and pay for new packs of themed emoticons using virtual currency. There are Walking Dead-themed packs, Terminator-themed images and ones that draw their inspiration from anime. When you type words in Zlango, it will auto-suggest different emoticons from its library of more than 1,000 free images. Mock it as you may, but the app has a few hundred thousand active users every day, which is good for a mobile app that is not a game and is only on one smartphone platform, Android. It came out last October and has delivered 10 billion icons so far. Plus, it had been growing at a 20 to 25 percent month-over-month rate in April. Zlango is unusual in that it takes a business model from the gaming world and applies it to texting. There are plenty of chat apps out there, but many are very advertising-dependent like Pinger or are paid apps like WhatsApp. By using virtual currency, Zlango can make consumers Read More
Mozilla was late to the mobile revolution and is still playing catch-up with Firefox for mobile. It’s starting to look as if Firefox for Android is slowly becoming a competitive player on Google’s platform, though. Today, Mozilla is launching its most radical redesign of its browser for Android in beta. This new version features a redesigned interface that, according to Mozilla, “blends in with the Android user interface.” The beta now also features support for Adobe’s Flash plugin, as well as the usual performance improvements and bug fixes. Firefox for Android Beta is now available in Google Play and unlike Google’s own impressive Chrome for Android, it will work on any phone running Android 2.2 and above (including, of course, Ice Cream Sandwich). For now, it’s only available in English, though. The highlight of this release is, without doubt, the new native user interface. This new update, however, also features an improved version of what Mozilla calls the “Awesome Screen,” its smart mobile homepage for Firefox. In addition, the Firefox team has worked on improving startup and response times for the browser, as well as the browser’s overall graphic performance. Thanks to hardware acceleration, web apps and games on the browser should now also run significantly more smoothly on Firefox for Android. Redoing the user interface, of course, should also give the browser a bit of a speed bump. Mozilla also promises better text readability in this version by using font size inflation. The fact that this beta now supports Flash will likely raise some eyebrows. It’s worth noting, though, that by default, plugins are only loaded on touch. Born from Netscape’s 1998 open sourcing of the code base behind its Netscape Communicator internet suite, Mozilla Firefox currently holds approximately 22.48% of the world market for internet browsers as of April Read More
My first-ever Disrupt was a year ago, almost exactly. I had just started working for TechCrunch and Disrupt NYC 2011 was my initiation, of sorts. I had heard of Disrupt before — but witnessing the Battlefield first-hand, from the front row no less, is a totally different beast. Every uncertain moment or slip-up during a presentation left me worried, and each triumphant joke or wondrous moment made me clap as loud as the folks in the back. Looking back on that time, a handful of startups are still locked safely away in my memory, the most prominent of all being Sonar. That’s because the second I heard the concept, I knew it would be a big deal. Considering a host of new apps on the market that do similar things, like Highlight and Crowded Room, I was right. But as Disrupt NYC 2012 (tickets here) draws nigh, I couldn’t help but wonder what life has been like for Brett Martin and his social proximity company since launching on the main stage just a year ago. I set out on a mission to find out the answer, and Brett Martin was kind enough to oblige. Here’s the interview in its entirety: TechCrunch: So tell me what it was like to launch at Disrupt last year. Sonar: Well, first of all, Disrupt is an amazing, unbelievable, could-not-have-imagined-a-better platform for launching a company. Like all the startups involved, we hadn’t told anyone what we were doing until the moment Sonar launched. We didn’t know what to expect, or if the reaction would be good. But the response was amazing. We had all of these people talking to us about how excited they were about what we were doing. Whether it was advertising or recruiting or PR, people picked up on the fact that Sonar Read More
Chris Velazco is a mobile enthusiast and writer who studied English and Marketing at Rutgers University. Once upon a time, he was the news intern for MobileCrunch, and in between posts, he worked in wireless sales at Best Buy. After graduating, he returned to the new TechCrunch to as a full-time mobile writer. He counts advertising, running, musical theater,... → Learn More Smule has been churning out scores of popular music-making iOS apps for years now, but they’ve been notoriously gun-shy about bringing those apps to other platforms. As of today though, that streak has finally come to an end — the company has just released their auto-tuning Songify app into the Google Play Store. Originally developed by Khush (whom Smule acquired toward the end of last year), Songify turns user-recorded speech into surprisingly listenable songs by tuning those voice inputs to go along with preset background music. The iOS version peaked at #1 on Apple’s Top Free Apps chart shortly after its launch in July 2011, and Smule now hopes for similar success as it expands into new territory. For a while though, it seemed like this day would never come. Late last year, Smule co-founder and CTO Ge Wang told InsideMobileApps that Android app development was under consideration by the company, but issues of audio latency in certain devices meant that not every user would have a consistently solid musical experience. Though company representatives are quick to note that latency is becoming less of an issue over time, Songify sort of side-steps that issue because it doesn’t rely on instantaneous audio feedback like some of Smule’s other apps (say, Ocarina for example). Still, that didn’t stop the company from testing the waters ahead of today’s official launch. A preview version of Songify was recently published in the Google Play Read More
Remember Jitterbug, the big-buttoned phones for seniors that made using those confusing, new-fangled cellphone thingies so much easier to handle? Well it looks like someone has gone out and built the equivalent for the iPad. Which literally made me laugh out loud when I read the news, because the iPad is the first computer I’ve ever seen seniors adopt in droves. But hello anyway, Family Ribbon. Everything about this app is funny. From the touted “health benefits” (apparently, a May 2012 Mayo Clinic study confirmed that a combination of exercising and using a computer may protect seniors against mild cognitive impairment!!!) to the stock photos of granny on iPad in the “how it works” section of the website. I’ll spare you the gory details. Here’s the pitch in a nutshell: the app, which is “officially” launching on May 30th but is live now in the iTunes App Store, is “an easy-to-use app for the iPad which features an easy-to-use interface that helps seniors and kids stay connected to their families online.” In case you missed that, it’s “easy to use.” Because really, the iPad is so hard. And this UI is clearly better: I’m sure the iPad’s complexity is why my 2-year has completely stolen mine, knows how to slide to unlock, flip through screens, launch and close apps, navigate within apps, and I’m pretty sure she’s already better than me at Angry Birds. Let’s get real here, kids are not the issue with adopting new technology. Seniors, however, often struggle. And while I do understand the need to offer them assistance, I’m not sure that, of all things, it’s the iPad that’s so confusing. Computers, yes. Windows, yes. Mac OS X, yes. But iPad? No. Sure, grandma and gramps might need a demo at the Apple Store or from you before they get it. Read More
Flipboard Expands: Adds Audio From NPR, Public Radio & SoundCloud; Introduces Japanese Version - MobileCrunch
From Disrupt Battlefield Runner-Up To Veterans Of Proximity-Based Social, Sonar Tells All - MobileCrunch
