Pinterest is rolling out a big update to its mobile apps today that brings a number of highly requested features to Android devices. Some of the more notable updates include notifications and push notifications for comments and mentions, the ability to @mention friends from within the app, and improved search that provides suggestions as you type.
-Send a pin to someone
-Get push notifications to know when someone comments, likes or repins your stuff
-Search…and you shall receive suggestions
-Mention your friends in comments
Although BlackBerry has been rumored to bring its BBM messaging platform to iOS and other devices before, today the company has made things official announcing at its event that support for both iOS and Android will be arriving in the coming months. The service, which BlackBerry says currently has about 60 million monthly active users, will come to devices running iOS 6 and Android 4.0 or above when it’s launched as a free app sometime this summer in the App Store and Google Play.
The company said that it would be bringing messaging and groups functionality to new platforms first but also has plans to introduce voice features, screen sharing, and its just announced “social engagement platform” dubbed ‘Channels’ in future releases. BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins said the company is “committed to making the BBM experience on other platforms as fully featured” as possible: Expand Expanding Close
Almost 60,000 apps have been removed from Google Play, reports TechCrunch, in a move believed to be in response to the number of apps falling foul of the store’s anti-spam policies. Expand Expanding Close
The two most popular non-game apps downloaded from Apple’s iOS App Store so far this year were both Google ones: YouTube and Google Maps, according to data from App Annie (via The Next Web).
Google Maps was originally installed as standard on iPhones and iPads until Apple struck out on its own with the rather ill-fated Apple Maps. Though Apple has since fixed many of the embarrassing errors in the launch version, demand for Google’s version has seemingly increased rather than decreased.
In an ironic turnabout, Google lost the top slot on its own Google Play store to Facebook.
Google updated its YouTube app for iOS, bringing the Send to TV feature that it originally introduced on Android devices in November 2012. The app will allow users to send YouTube videos from their iOS devices to a Google TV, PS3, or Xbox, and Google confirmed in January that the feature would come to even more smart TVs this year.
Have an iPhone or iPad and a Google TV? You can now play and control videos from your YouTube app for iOS on your TV, like a remote control for YouTube. Anyone on the same WiFi can join in to control the video or add videos to a playlist (Harlem Shake marathon anyone?). This automatic pairing feature is also available on the YouTube app for Android, and it’s coming to more TVs this year from LG, Sony, Panasonic and others.
With so much mobile competition, companies are always trying to get you to buy their phone, today, Motorola has decided to join in on the fun. In an announcement made online, Motorola is offering a $50 dollar Google Play gift card to use on anything available in the app store. You’ll only get the gift card though if you purchase one of the eligible phones Motorola is promoting such as the Droid Razr Maxx or HD. The sale ends on March 4th, so if you want in on the deal you’ll have to act fast. The full list of phones is available below.
Flurry today released its stats for worldwide app downloads during the 2012 holiday season. It recently released some stats for Christmas Day, including a huge 332 percent increase over previous years to 17.4 million new iOS and Android activations and 328 million app downloads. Today it shared some stats for the entire week starting on Christmas and ending New Year’s Day, noting it recorded the highest number of activations and app downloads for any week in history. As highlighted in the images, Flurry estimated 50 million devices activations and an increase of 65 percent to 1.76 billion app downloads:
The final week of the year, between Christmas and New Year’s Day, grew by 65% over the early-December baseline, historically breaking through the largest single week record previously set during the same week of 2011. While several weeks since late November delivered billion+ week download levels, the holiday week delivered a record-shattering 1.7 billion downloads… Looking forward to 2013, Flurry expects the trend of one-billion-download weeks to become the norm, and that the industry will surpass the two-billion download week during Q4.
Google made some announcements today regarding its work with the Quickoffice team since acquiring the company in June. On top of noting work to take advantage of Quickoffice conversion technology in Google Docs, Google launched a free version of the QuickOffice iPad app exclusively for Google Apps for Business customers today. There are also free iPhone and Android versions of the app for creating and editing Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files coming to Apps customers in the near future:
Converting old files to Google Docs, Sheets and Slides is the easiest way to share and work together, but perhaps not everyone you work with has gone Google yet. To complement what you can do with Google documents, we’re also making it easier for you to make quick edits to Microsoft Word, Excel and Powerpoint files without conversion. Starting today, the Quickoffice iPad app is available for free to all Apps for Business customers, and iPhone and Android versions are on the way.
Vice President of Google Enterprise Amit Singh welcomed the announcement on his Twitter account: “Customers can now get Quickoffice for free. No need to license microsoft for your ipad.”
[tweet https://twitter.com/aksingh77/status/281531037249581056] Expand Expanding Close
The Wall Street Journal reported today that the US Federal Trade Commission has announced its decision to update its more than 10 year old law governing the privacy of children online. The changes will mean app developers and websites will be required to obtain parental consent when collecting photos, videos, geolocation information, or tracking behaviour of children 13 and under. However, as noted in the report, the updated rules have been altered since originally proposed in August and would not require third-party plug-ins, like Facebook Like buttons, or app platforms such as the App Store and Google Play to enforce the law:
in a departure from rule changes the government proposed in August, third-party “plug-ins” on websites—things like Facebook Inc.’s “Like” button and ads placed by advertising networks—will only have to meet child online privacy regulations if they have “actual knowledge” that they’re collecting information through a website or app that targets kids…
Apple made that point in five meetings with FTC officials in the fall. The FTC responded by explicitly exempting the Apple App Store and Google Play, the app store for mobile devices running Google’s Android software, from having to make sure that the apps they provided complied with Coppa.
Verizon and Redbox confirmed on the official Redbox Instant Twitter account that the new unlimited streaming service is rolling out gradually starting today. The $8-per-month Netflix competitor will provide unlimited streaming and four physical DVD or Blu-ray rentals ($9 a month for Blu-ray) and will be available through the browser as well as mobile apps. A Redbox Instant by Verizon Android app is already available on Google Play. There is also a free one-month trial included.
Facebook just announced an update to Facebook for Android and iOS that helps users discover new places their friends like.
The latest version of the popular app features a refreshed Nearby tab, which, according to a post on the Facebook Newsroom website, now shows recommendations from friends:
From the app menu, open the tab to find local spots your friends have recommended, checked into, or liked. If you’re looking for a place to eat, choose a category like Restaurants to see what’s nearby. When you find a place that looks interesting, tap to see info like friends who’ve been there and business hours.
The new Facebook for Android and iOS further allows users to share their own opinions by rating or recommending places. Facebook warned the update is an early release, however, and “there’s lots more to do.” So, results will improve the more people use Nearby.
“We also plan to add places info from third party services in the near future,” Facebook explained.
Adobe just announced on its Photoshop blog that it is making the Photoshop Touch app available to Kindle Fire devices starting today for $9.99 in the Amazon Appstore. Adobe previously had version of the app available for other Android devices on Google Play, as well as an iOS version of the scaled down Photoshop app for Apple’s devices. The new app for Kindle Fire will be available on the 8.9-inch Kindle Fire HD, and the 7-inch Kindle Fire, and Kindle Fire HD models. The app is only compatible with devices running Android 4.0 and up, so it’s not available to first-gen Kindle Fire users.
We have worked closely with Amazon to enable Adobe Photoshop Touch on this device, and are proud to announce that it is available for purchase in the Amazon Appstore immediately for US$9.99… In addition, we are announcing support for the updated 7-inch Kindle Fire and Kindle Fire HD devices. This means that Photoshop Touch is optimized for both 8.9-inch and 7-inch screens, giving users a great experience on all recent Kindle Fire devices.
The Guardian published a new report today that cited unnamed sources and throws around phrases like “not optimistic” and “unlikely event” in regards to Apple ever allowing a Google Maps iOS app.
The story claimed Google’s app is ready to ship by the end of 2012, but Google is torn about the likelihood of Apple ever giving an official go-ahead:
While one source indicated increased hopes that the dedicated Google Maps iOS app will eventually be approved now that Apple’s maps leader, Scott Forstall, has departed the company, another was less than enthusiastic about any increased prospects, citing industry politics and Apple’s need to save face as much as possible and “keep moving forward in an effort to make its obviously inferior product better”. Apple unveiled the section, which on Monday listed ten free and paid-for apps, to spotlight alternative mapping apps for iOS in an effort to placate users over response to criticisms of its own Maps app.
The Guardian specifically noted Apple’s reluctance to give Google Maps any attention in iOS. The company apparently went as far as to neglect apps in the “Find maps for your iPhone” section of the App Store that use Google Maps APIs:
Further, a source at Google told me the feeling is that those apps were purposely left out of the new section because they promote Google and its “superior product” – at a time when there is so much bad blood between the companies over the continuing smartphone patent litigation (following allegations from the late Steve Jobs that Google’s Android OS ripped off iOS). In other words, no matter how bad Apple’s Maps are, the company still wants its users to move on from Google – and forget about them. This doesn’t bode well for the approval of an official Google Maps app, the source says.
Despite the pessimistic outlook of the anonymous Google sources, the Guardian said Apple and the folks in Mountain View are in constant talks. So, the tide could potentially change without any notice. With that said, they firmly believe Apple will never again make Google Maps a default mapping solution in iOS.
Google announced today on its Inside AdWords blog that it will now allow AdWords users to track iOS downloads from in-app display ads, a feature that was previously only available for Android app downloads. Google said iOS conversion tracking allows advertisers to “better understand which campaigns are most effective at driving app downloads.”
The feature allows marketers to track downloads that originate from “in-app” display ads, meaning the iOS conversion tracking feature at this point doesn’t include app downloads driven by Google Search or Google Display Network ads. For iOS app downloads, Google explained marketers will have to go through a couple extra steps, requiring them install an SDK, grab a code snippet from their AdWords account, and then install it into their app. The same feature is currently available to Android as a codeless solution requiring users to simply create a new conversion in their account.
Tracking downloads of an iOS app requires integrating a small SDK into your app and pasting a small snippet of code in your app’s didFinishLaunchingWithOptions method to call the SDK.
Full instructions from Google on setting up iOS conversion tracking are below: Expand Expanding Close
A Microsoft executive just revealed native Android and iOS versions of Office 2013 would launch next year.
Microsoft Product Manager Peter Bobek spoke at a media event in the Czech Republic this morning and subsequently confirmed with local website IHNED that a consumer version of the native apps will release around March 2013.
The Verge later read a press release from Microsoft’s Czech Republic office, although it did not provide a copy for publishing, and verified the news. The release allegedly further noted a business variation would go public in December 2013, as well.
Microsoft has widely been rumored to launch an iPad app for its Office suite for quite some time, especially after The Dailypublished a supposed image of the app running on an iPad earlier this year. Office 2013 for Android will presumably allow users to read and edit Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents on both tablets and smartphones.
UPDATE 1: IHNED contacted 9to5Google to provide a correction of its original report: “The timeline for Office for iOS and Android is not [a] March release, but release sometime after March.”
UPDATE 2: According to Microsoft Corporate Vice President of Corporate Communications Frank X. Shaw:
In May, Google opened up the ability for developers to include subscriptions in their apps. It is a feature that has been available on Apple’s App Store for quite sometime.
According to a new posting on the Android Developers’ website, a new feature is landing today for the in-app subscription service Google offers. The team in Mountain View has rolled out the ability for developers to set a free trial period, allowing users to try a subscription before buying. A user will be required to give payment information when signing up for the free trial, but it will not be charged. Like most free trial services, a user will be charged after the trial period is over. As for the changes that developers need to make…. Expand Expanding Close
Android Police pulled some nice quotes from a recent Reddit thread on the future of the Facebook App on Android…
FB: Facebook is committed to both Android and iOS, and you’ve now seen what we can do. Stay tuned. (There are things in the Android app that aren’t in the iOS one today, like mentions in posts and comments, photo multi-upload, event creation. Since version 1.9 the Android app has tested faster than the iOS one, but FB-iOS 5.0 obviously changes the game.)
Android presents some unique challenges for developers, especially those with a large user base, but we do and will power through them. A lot of time is spent dealing with device-specific issues and limits, and you really have to fight with the toolkit to get iPhone-smooth interactions. Some vendors have a different HTTP stack (!), none implement the Camera APIs consistently, and reliability of hardware acceleration is…imperfect, GC pauses are terrible, lots of the toolkit insists on doing real work on the UI thread and allocating recreationally. On iOS you can test on 5 devices and basically have the market covered. We have to test on many dozens to get to the top 1/3 of our users, and then the tail starts to getreally long.
Q: Do you know when we could expect a native app too? I realise you probably can’t give away too much but are we talking weeks? Months?
A: Nobody is more excited about the state of our current development version than we are, and we will get it to users as soon as we can. One of our awesome PR people is standing next to me (10,000 miles away) with a gun (frowny face), so I can’t say more. Also, I have been doing software 20 years too long to make estimates in public. Experience and quality determine the time. I am utterly confident that you’ll find it worth the wait, and I wish I could give it to you today.
Q: Pretty much everyone I know has problems with the app even loading anything at all, and that’s before complaints about performance issues. This has gone on for ages, how come something as important as this has been unresolved for so long?
A: There are lots of reasons that people can experience problems, and we work through (and fix) different ones all the time. We have pretty detailed metrics on different aspects of performance, stability, load-time, load-error, etc. We can see them getting better in meaningful chunks, but that spreads out across 130M users in a way that isn’t to anyone’s satisfaction. (This is one area in which neither the inherent characteristics of the Android webview nor the OEM-specific tweaks that occur are our friends. Really, they aren’t even cordial.) We’ve been on fixed-date release cycles since 1.9, and we’re now down to every 4 weeks (where we’ll stay); this was a shit-ton of work for a large number of people, but it means we can get improvements out to users faster even while investing in longer-term features or architecture changes.
Q: What’s the best way for us, as users, to make it known that something isn’t working right with the app and make a difference? As of right now I could make quite a list of things that don’t work with the app, however it would feel a bit like a drop in the ocean for all the feedback you probably receive and feels like it would go unnoticed…We want to help :)
A: There’s a bug reporting mechanism either via the website or the app that someone on my team reads and rolls up for the developers weekly. My internal build has another mechanism for it, so I embarrassingly can’t tell you in more detail right now. :-/
Q: Is it true that Facebookers have been forced to use the android app to get a feel for how bad it is?
A: Neither the assertion nor the implication are true to my knowledge, and I am virtually certain that my knowledge on this issue is complete.
Pinterest updated its entire mobile app lineup today with a completely refreshed design, and it released all-new tablet and Android apps. Previously only available on the iPhone (and now iPad), the developer released Android versions today that work on both phones and tablets. Pinterest walked through some of the new features in a blog post announcing the updated apps. The app is available as a free download on Google Play now.
Android owners have been very vocal with their requests for an app – every product announcement we’ve recently made has resulted in the question “What about an Android app?” We were listening, and our custom-designed Android app makes it simple and fast to pin, so that the time you spend on Pinterest is as productive as possible. We also made sure the app works well on Android phones and tablets, regardless of your device’s cost, speed or screen size.
NBC just unveiled two Adobe-powered mobile apps for its 2012 London Olympics coverage.
The NBC Olympics Live Companion app will act as a second display for stats and other details so users have a full bevy of data to compliment their television-watching experience. Meanwhile, the NBC Olympics Live Extra app will pipe live-streaming video to on-the-go users. It can handle multiple camera angles, social features, and the ability to seamlessly switch between both Olympics apps.
The free apps will launch today on both Apple’s App Store for iOS devices and the Google Play Store for Android smartphone and tablets. They will also support “TV Everywhere” authentication with cable providers for unlimited access to all the premium content. Users simply need to login to their pay-TV subscription to tap into 3,500 hours of Olympic events.
“To make it as easy as possible, you only need to go through the sign-in once and won’t have to “re-authenticate” every time you want to watch a live event,” explained Adobe on its Digital Media Blog. “For the first time in Olympics history, mobile apps will give you the opportunity to view live broadcasts of all Olympic events in the palm of your hand.”
NBC Olympics is also using Adobe technologies to serve ads, measure and monetize content, and provide digital analytics in both apps.
“You can now share all of your favorite Chrome Web Store items with people in your Google+ circles by finding them in the Chrome Web Store and clicking the +1 button located in their store detail page,” wrote Software Engineer Hui Guo on the official Google Chrome blog.
Users can also review app, extension, and theme recommendations from friends in their Google+ circles by hitting up the ‘From your circles’ link under the left category menu on the Chrome Web store. If apps have been +1’d by people in a user’s circles, the indication will appear respectively on the Chrome Web Store to help folks pick an app. Those new to Google+ will notice suggestions from the Chrome team instead.
The mobile browser went live for iPhone and iPad owners yesterday, and now it holds the top spot for both device categories. The app notably allows users to view open tabs, bookmarks, and other browser particulars running on other computers and devices. Users can even send pages from Chrome on a computer to their iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad with “one click and read them on the go, even if you’re offline.”
Chrome for iOS already touts 4.5-stars based on over 3,500 reviews as of press time. Despite the glowing accolades, some folks are noticing its lack of Apple-given attention:
Google just announced at Day 2 of Google I/O that Chrome for iPhone & iPad will come to the App Store later today for devices running iOS 4.3 or later. The app will feature many of the features present in other versions of the browser, including: Chrome sync, incognito mode, and its unique tab UI. Google also announced during the keynote that it would bring its recently launched Google Drive cloud service to iOS devices.
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Japan-based DeNA announced that its “Rage of Bahamut” app became the No. 1 grossing game on both Android and iOS yesterday, while earning roughly the same revenue per day from each mobile platform.
The game’s success pokes holes in recent findings from Flurry, which claimed revenue generated per active user is four times greater on iOS than Android. The analytics firm noted that for every $1 earned on iOS, a developer could expect to earn about 24-cents on Android.
“Contrary to what we read, we’ve been very happy with Android monetization. There is not a big discrepancy between the two now,” said DeNa Director Neil Young to TechCrunch.
Rage of Bahamut is a free trading card game that lets users battle either through a live single or multiplayer action mode against a “database of battle hungry foes.” It is on the Google Play Store and boasts a 4-star rating on nearly 11,000 reviews as of press time.
TechCrunch further elaborated:
The game had the top slot on both platforms yesterday, but Kabam’s Kingdoms of Camelot took back the #1 iOS slot in the U.S. this morning. […]Young says Rage of Bahamut is seeing some impressive revenue numbers per day per user. In casual games, you usually see an average revenue per daily active user of a couple cents to 10 cents per day on mobile. The better games can get to 15 to 25 cents per day per daily active user. But Young says Rage of Bahamut has been able to do 4 or 5 times that. He didn’t say how much revenue overall the title is earning, but we’ve seen dual platform hits like Draw Something earn anywhere between $5 and 10 million per month through in-app purchases and advertising.
Those numbers are welcomed news for developers with growing concerns about mobile platforms lacking solid business models that encourage monetization.
Google 
