Common Paradox Tech Blog

There are rumors that Apple’s iPad launch has already run into some rough patches that are uncharacteristic for the company, but how much substance is actually behind them? One frequently mentioned challenge is having a sufficiently impressive array of available content that’s compatible with the device.

Back in October we wrote about Appboy, a social network for mobile app developers and users. Since launching, Appboy has continued to evolve into a community for both developers and users to find and rate apps, as well as submit ideas for new mobile applications. Appboy has just rolled out a big update to its site which improves the design, adds stronger integration with Facebook and Twitter, and makes it easy to keep up with what your favorite app developers are doing. The site has also launched a new companion iPhone application and started a new partnership with Best Buy Mobile.

New Look and Feel

The Appboy Profile pages have been given a total facelift. Now, in addition to displaying your user activity and favorite apps, users can link their Twitter accounts with Appboy and auto-publish any #appboy tweets directly to their Appboy page.

For users, this feature might not get a ton of play, but for app developers it becomes a pretty handy way of keeping your Appboy profile up-to-date with little fuss.

Users can also now login with either Twitter or Facebook Connect. We really like that Appboy has embraced other social networks instead of trying to force users to keep everything in the Appboy garden.

You can also now follow other users, which is especially helpful when you want to keep up with what’s happening with your favorite app or app idea.

The App Pages have also received a new coat of paint, with an easy way to vote “Love It” or “Hate It” on an app’s page. Comments and reviews can now be viewed separately, which is nice when you just want to distill one group or the other. Plus, users can now add related links, videos and reviews to an app page which can help provide better context.

User reviews are also now ratable — Digg style — which allows the most helpful reviews to appear higher on the list.

iPhone App

In addition to a new website design, Appboy now has its own iPhone app. The free app gives users all the functionality of the website right on the iPhone. That’s really nice, especially when you are looking for a new app or want to leave a review for something you just purchased. Sure, the App Store works for that too, but what is nice about Appboy is that it is a community.

Check out these screenshots to see the app in action. As you can see, the interface matches the website and it’s very easy to get around and rate or learn about apps and app ideas.

Best Buy Mobile Partnership

One of the most unique features of Appboy is that it isn’t focused on just one platform; it’s focused on mobile apps in general. So whether you have an Android device, an iPhone, a BlackBerry or a Palm Pre, you can find, rate and suggest ideas for new apps.

Best Buy just launched a new mobile site, Best Buy Mobile, and Appboy powers the Apps section for iPhone, Android and BlackBerry. The top 10 apps from each platform are fed into Best Buy’s site and those apps come directly from the Appboy community.

This is a pretty big step, considering the relative age of the site, and we think it’s because Appboy has shown itself as being committed to the mobile community as a whole.

Looking Good

Appboy continues to be a great resource for developers and users wanting to connect and share what’s cool and what sucks in the mobile app space. The new iPhone app is a really nice addition to the site and we hope that the Best Buy partnership will bring even more users into the community.

How do you find out about new mobile applications? Let us know!

Tags: android, appboy, apple, apps, iphone, iphone apps, mobile apps

Among the media redwoods that will be displaying their wares on Apple’s iPad when the tablet arrives on the shelves next month will be a sapling from a small college in West Texas. Abilene Christian University will be among the first colleges to offer editions of its student newspaper, The Optimist, designed specifically for the new hardware platform.

Opera on Wednesday announced that it will preview a version of Opera Mini 5 for the iPhone at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, next week. Perhaps Opera, which already makes a popular line of mobile browsers for several other phone platforms, wants to increase its reach by leveraging the iPhone’s rapid growth.

AT&T said Thursday it will now allow Sling Media’s television-viewing program for the iPhone to operate over its “3G” high-speed mobile network. The reversal comes as the FCC is drafting rules to keep broadband providers — including wireless companies — from favoring or discriminating against Internet traffic flowing over their networks.

Google’s Android platform has been making use of QR codes since its inception. A QR code is a useful way to encapsulate information that can be read by cell phone cameras. In the case of Android, many app developers use them to direct people to their applications. Such is the case with The Weather Channel, which just threw up a QR code for their Android app during the national forecast. The code takes Android users straight to the Weather Channel app in the Android Market.

This is one of the most mainstream uses of QR codes we’ve seen thus far. Some countries have been in on the QR code game for years now, but Android is the first major mobile platform to popularize them in the US. There’s definitely something to be said for QR codes. They are very efficient ways to disseminate information. In fact, the admittedly fuzzy screen cap below still contains a working code.

Here’s the full video, complete with helpful countdown:

As text increases in importance on handheld devices like smartphones, hardware makers continue to grapple with solutions to bring keyboard functionality to a form factor ill-suited to the task. Pint-sized keyboards and virtual claviers are transitional alternatives at best. One technology that offers some promise, however, is speech recognition.

A recent study from eMarketer (analyzing data from both comScore and Compete) sheds light on the data usage patterns of both iPhone and Android users, with perhaps one surprising finding. Despite the tight integration of Android devices with Gmail, only 63 percent of Android users report accessing e-mail on their phones in the last three months, as compared to 87 percent of iPhone owners. Android users even fell behind the general smartphone average, whose users reported 70 percent e-mail penetration overall.

In most other examined metrics, however, iPhone and Android users are quite similar in their data usage patterns. Both platforms rank higher than average in terms of overall mobile media usage, at 94 percent and 92 percent respectively compared to 80 percent among other smartphone owners. Non-smartphone mobile media usage fell to a mere 26 percent.

Both iPhone and Android platforms reported a high rate of mobile news gathering (80 percent for both) and application usage (83 percent and 82 percent, respectively). Social networking was the next most popular activity (58 percent and 52 percent), with instant messaging being used by 43 percent of iPhone users and 46 percent of Android users.

Looking specifically at app usage, perhaps unsurprisingly iPhone and Android users report greater overall time spent with applications versus time spent in the web browser. As compared to Palm, BlackBerry and Windows Mobile users, 55 percent of iPhone users and 44 percent of Android users spend the majority of their time in apps. Only 22 percent of the combined other three platforms said the same, which makes sense given the strength of both the Apple App Store and the Android Market as compared to the comparatively meager mobile storefront offerings from Palm, RIM and Microsoft.

Depending on your platform, how do you stack up compared to the averages? Can any Android users who don’t often use e-mail explain why not?

Reviews: Android, Android Market

Tags: android, Android Market, apple, apple app store, apps, blackberry, data usage, Google, iphone, Mobile 2.0, mobile apps, palm, windows mobile

With its popular “Tap Tap Revenge” series of games, Tapulous has long been a star of the Apple App Store gaming world. Lately, though, the buzz is all about the money: reportedly the private little company with 20 or so employees is now pulling down nearly $1 million a month in App Store sales. If you’re like me, you’re already doing the math.

Before there was Gowalla or Foursquare, there was location-based social network Loopt. Launched in 2006, Loopt was one of the pioneers of the location-based mobile social network. And Loopt has gained a huge number of users of its mobile apps; the social network currently has 3 million mobile users, 1 million of which are on the iPhone. Compared to Foursquare and Gowalla, which have 150,000 and 50,000 users respectively, Loopt has a pretty significant user base. More recently, Loopt upgraded its mobile offerings to offer a check-in where you can also review a place and help recommend things for your friends to do, called Pulse. The mobile feature aggregates data on all of these “check-in spots,” which include, bars, restaurants, and more. It’s kind of like a local search engine. And it appears that this data is expanding Loopt’s business.

Now Loopt is venturing into Yelp’s territory (even as rumors swirl about Yelp) by making these local reviews available on the web.