We Are Organized Chaos » iTunes

ARWire: Zugara’s iPhone App for Augmented Reality News

Zugara — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 18:42:04 +0000

Like us, many of you are passionate about Augmented Reality. And since news waits for no man/woman, we decided to create an iPhone app so you can always get real-time access to the latest AR related news and conversations.

Currently, ARWire has 4 main sections:

BLOGS: Access to all of the top blogs that focus their coverage on AR.
FACEBOOK AR: Access to all the items posted to the wall of Facebook’s largest AR group.
AR PEEPS: Tracks the tweets of people and companies involved in AR (via @ChrisGrayson).
AR TWEETS: Searches Twitter for “Augmented Reality” to show you what people are talking about right now.

Additionally, you can share the content above via whichever channel is right for you. Email, Twitter and Facebook are all integrated into ARWire and only one touch away.

Check it out (we’d love to hear your thoughts below), and please spread the word. Currently, there’s a free version up in the iTunes store, but a premium version (with ads removed) should be going live soon.

UPDATE: ARWire Premium is live, and can be found here.

What’s New In Interactive – 4/10/2009

Zugara — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 20:16:45 +0000

What’s New In Interactive is our weekly round-up of links we pass around to each other.

Here’s the latest list of links that caught our eye…

PS3 to Facebook integration “coming quicker than some may think”.

Now you can mow your lawn using your Wii’s remote. We wonder if you get a power-up if you create that cool checkered pattern…

Mashable’s look at the social media players in Los Angeles. Not surprisingly, it focuses on the entertainment industry…

Apple is about to hit 1 Billion app downloads (we wonder how many Fart apps and the like have been uninstalled though). Here’s a page documenting the countdown to 1,000,000,000.

Nearly half (45%) of business decision makers in the US believe wireless apps are “important” or “essential” to viability. Prepare for your smartphones to get significantly more cluttered.

30,000 iPhone Apps?!!?

matt — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 17:03:06 +0000

30,000 iPhone Apps?!!?

The iPhone app store is now projected to have over 30,000 apps by the end of March. 30,000! That number is sure to double by the end of this year due to the iPhone quickly taking on the role of the Golden Child for the entire Mobile Marketing industry. So, in effect, we could be looking at over 60,000 apps by the end of 2009. If anything, the iPhone App Store is quickly reaching a saturation point and in danger of promoting quantity over quality (if it hasn’t reached that point already which I think it has…)

Unfortunately, stories written about developers making over $500,000 because of one iPhone app, are helping to fuel this virtual Gold Rush to get something on the iPhone at any cost. Apple also seems to be taking a role in this by lowering standards for apps to be on their platform. Do we really need 48 versions of a Fart App? However, from a marketing standpoint, it’s much easier for Apple to promote an iPhone app store with 30,000 apps versus an Android or Blackberry app store with 5,000. Regardless if 29,950 of those 30,000 apps are crap, which message do you think is going to resonate with the consumer more when deciding on a new smartphone?

So far, this pissing contest would clearly belong to Apple. What about the consumer though? Unless you’re 14 and bored in Scandinavian History class, I don’t think you’re going to have time to go through and try out all the apps available in the app store. Thankfully, there’s quite a few iPhone App review sites you can visit here, here and here.

Another option is to check the Top 50 apps on your iPhone or through iTunes. This is a good indicator of what apps are currently ‘hot’ and, for the most part, usually are worth the download. Carpe Diem though. What’s good for the goose might not be good for the gander. Though an app might be ‘hot’ it might not be your cup of tea (see Fart app mention above.) Apple also recently enforced a new Ratings rule which only allows consumers who have downloaded and tried the app to review it. This has helped prevent developers from artificially inflating the ratings on their app.

Finally, you can always fall back on asking your friends / co-workers about any interesting apps they might have recently downloaded. I know there’s at least 5 apps that are mainstays on my iPhone deck due to personal recommendations.

Over the course of the next few weeks, I’ll be writing a few more columns detailing our own experiences with creating and promoting our own app as well as one we’re building for a major brand client. This should help provide some great insight into the iPhone app process…

The iPhone App versus the iPhone Optimized Site Debate – Which one to choose?

matt — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 01:07:39 +0000

Lately, mobile marketing has become an increasingly important channel for integrated campaigns. And though WAP sites and SMS/MMS messaging tend to be just fine for content / information related marketing, the iPhone allows for the more sexier side of mobile marketing to shine. So the “Branded iPhone Application” stampede is upon us and though it can’t be stopped, it can be questioned – especially when it comes to determining if an iPhone app is really that necessary or even justified. (We’ll review some of the more popular Branded iPhone applications in another column.)

So you have decided that you definitely must be on the iPhone. The upsell will always be “Do the App!” – it’s sexier for you and it’s much sexier for the agency / developer – but is that necessarily the best economical (or even functional) option? When discussing iPhone development with clients, we often look at whether it makes more sense to do an iPhone Optimized Site versus an iPhone App itself. Below are just a few pros and cons for both options:

iPhone Optimized Site

Pros

Cheaper and Faster to develop
Easier to modify existing content for Safari optimized viewing
No barrier to deploy to market (i.e. iTunes approval)
Site icons can be displayed on ‘deck’ similar to iPhone apps
Can still take advantage of photo and video viewing specific to the iPhone

Cons

Limited by HTML/CSS (i.e. no 3D game here)
Can’t notify user automatically of updates to the site
Can’t leverage iPhone features such as GPS
Need to have EDGE / WiFi to function
Safari browser will not display Flash*

*Though Flash continues to be rumored for the iPhone, this will most likely never happen due to continued concerns of Flash being a ‘resource hog’

iPhone App

Pros

Allows much more flexibility in terms of 3D, animation, etc.
New information can be pushed to the consumer via application updates
Promotion of App through store and on iPhone App related sites
Can generally be viewed / played at any time
Community will tell you right away if they think your App is great through user reviews

Cons

Objective C development (i.e. more expensive)
Longer time to market due to submission / wait times for iTunes review and approval
Can only be accessed and downloaded via the iTunes App Store
Apple ultimately determines if your app is ‘worthy’ enough to reside on their platform (i.e. loss of control)
Community will tell you right away if they think your App sucks through user reviews

Your ultimate decision for using an iPhone App or iPhone Optimized Site should always be determined by what it’s being created for. Would you want to create the latest and greatest version of iFart as an iPhone Optimized Site? Probably not. But if your basic need is to optimize photos and videos for mobile then it probably makes more sense to develop an iPhone Optimized Site. And I use ‘develop’ loosely here as many content driven sites can be tweaked for mobile viewing and might not even require a full development overhaul.

A great example of content you might initially think is an iPhone App but in reality is an iPhone Optimized Site is iHalo Stats. For non-gamers out there, this lets you check on all your stats from the game and is still one of the best examples of an iPhone Optimized Site.

For some shameless self-promotion, you can even view the web optimized iPhone site Zugara created for Playboy at http://iphone.playboy.com. To get all the highlights, view the site in the Safari browser on your desktop or through the iPhone itself! Note – The site only has PG-13 content on it and nothing worse than you would see on Maxim.com.

I’ll have more thoughts iPhone specific development as well as Mobile Marketing in general in future blog entries, but if you have any questions you can always get a hold of me at Matt (at) Zugara dot com or @KobraKai on Twitter…