Articles about Mobile App

Sixty-fifth in a series. Growth has been almost negative this week. Not because of a lack of new applications published to Windows Store, but because of Microsoft's continuing clean-up operations.

About 500 apps were removed from the Tools category alone, and slower than usual growth in other categories is an indicator that Microsoft removed apps from other categories as well in this week.

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Fourth in a series. Unsurprisingly, after last week’s post-holiday rush of big and important new releases and updates, things have quietened down a little in the App Store.

There’s the usual collection of interesting apps and games, of course, but nothing massively groundbreaking this time around. That said, as ever, I’ve found plenty of apps to take up space on both my iPad and iPhone 5s.

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New research by Gartner predicts that over the next few years mobile apps will become the most popular computing tools across the globe.

It says that by 2017 mobile apps will be downloaded more than 268 billion times, generating a revenue of over $77 billion. As a result it predicts that mobile users will provide personalized data streams to more than 100 apps and services every day.

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VideoLAN’s popular media player VLC for iOS has been upgraded to 2.2 with a revamped iOS 7-style interface, along with new multi-touch gestures for easier navigation.

Google Drive integration and Dropbox streaming should make it much easier to access your media. And if that’s not enough, the new build also adds support for HTTP Live Streaming, m3u streams and https playback.

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IObit has updated its excellent free all-in-one Android security and performance optimization app, making it safer and faster, and introducing some welcome additional features.

Advanced Mobile Care (AMC) 4.0 gains a streamlined interface and a set of useful new Android tools including a Call/SMS Blocker and Anti-Surveillance.

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Now that CES 2014 is completely out of the way (although there was still time for me to pick my favorite tech from the show), it's back to business as usual. For many a company, business as usual means security issues, and Microsoft suffered at the hands of The Syrian Electronic Army. Again. The earlier security issues at Target were found to be far worse than first thought, affecting an estimated 100 million customers, and a potential security flaw was identified in Starbucks' mobile apps. For the antivirus side of protection, Kaspersky's Internet Security was named product of the year by AV-Comparatives.

Hoping against hope that new tech isn’t embraced for the sake of embracing new tech, I pondered the need for curved screens. In the mobile world, KitKat started to roll out to the Samsung Galaxy Note 3 and also announced the company somewhat deceptively named Galaxy Tab3 Lite, which is in fact no lighter than the non Lite version, other than in terms of hardware specs.

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Sixty-fourth in a series. A total of 1,107 new apps were released to the US Windows Store this week, which is more than double last week's abysmal performance of 476 apps.

The growth is even higher than that -- without options to find out exactly how high -- as Microsoft removed apps from the Food & Dining, and Travel category this week.

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For a long time, dedicated websites and apps have been able to separate the audio content in YouTube videos, in order for users to download it for offline playback. Even the full-blown YouTube app that was developed by Microsoft for Windows Phone offered a similar feature, which allowed users to grab the whole video instead and store it on their smartphone.

Ripping the audio from YouTube videos can come in handy for those who want to enjoy their favorite tracks, but may find themselves in areas without good-enough cellular coverage for YouTube streaming. I have experienced this scenario first-hand while traveling. For Windows Phone users, there are a couple of apps that can get this job done, with MusicTube being one of the most appealing choices.

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Some coffee aficionados might dislike my taste in coffee. I consume trendy drinks like Skinny Vanilla Lattes from Starbucks when on the go and Keurig coffee pods at home -- hardly a French press. While the Starbucks drinks are expensive, this is my only vice -- I do not drink alcohol or smoke, so I justify the cost that way.

Whenever I am at the famous coffee chain, I see a lot of people using Apple devices. One of the coolest things about this, is that Starbucks offers an iPhone app which makes it possible to make purchases using the smartphone. Sadly though, it has come to light that there is a vulnerability in the software. While security weaknesses in the Java programming language are nothing new, one regarding java the drink is.

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Of all the services I use, Facebook knows me best. It knows where I live, who my "friends" are, what movies I like, what my favorite bands are, where I like to go out for a drink, what sort of content I want to see when I scroll through my feed and which sources I like for news stories.

Facebook also knows that when it comes to reading news on my tablet I prefer Flipboard. Why? Well, the apps are nicely designed, pleasant to use and, because of the newspaper-like layout, provide a certain sense of occasion. The content that I get, after having carefully selected the sources and added my social network accounts, mostly suits my preferences. There is still stuff that I have to filter out but, generally speaking, Flipboard does a good job at tailoring the news content to my liking. Facebook, though, could do an even better job, if it decided to offer a rival service.

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Mobile devices have completely transformed the way we connect with others. We can chat from anywhere these days, assuming there is an Internet connection available. What was once primarily aimed at browsers and traditional PCs has since fully embraced mobile computing, or vanished. There are also new, mobile-friendly apps and services that leverage features offered by smart devices to offer more personal and private ways to reach friends, family, coworkers and other folks.

For social butterflies Windows Phone has quite a lot to offer. The tiled smartphone operating system neatly integrates with popular services like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, allowing users to easily post updates from within their Me tile, see what others are doing and respond to their activity on said social networks in the People hub. But there are also dedicated apps available in Store that offer more, and we are going to take a look at the best of them in this article.

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If you're looking to the earnings from your innovative mobile app to keep you in your retirement, you may need to think again.

A new report by Gartner predicts that through 2018 fewer than one percent of consumer mobile apps will be considered a financial success.

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Businesses are usually keen to adopt mobile technology but often struggle when it comes to finding a developer to translate their vision into reality.

Mobile strategy and solutions company Mokriya is trying to help by launching MobileInsights, a series of free guides aimed at streamlining the way businesses recruit mobile development firms.

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Sixty-third in a series. The week by week app growth in Microsoft's Windows Store has taken a turn for the worse in the past couple of weeks.

Apps stayed steadily over the 2,000 apps per week mark after the release of Windows 8.1, but have fallen below that in the past three weeks.

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With the rise in popularity of Windows Phone, the Store has reached an important milestone as more than 200,000 apps are now available. That is good news and certainly impressive for the third-most popular smartphone platform, considering its track record. However, such numbers are actually meaningless as users do not install, or need, every available title. It is the quality, and not the quantity, that matters.

And, of all available Windows Phone apps, only a small part can be considered essential, or the best for most people. Those are the titles that can enrich the user experience, and add great value atop of what the tiled smartphone operating system offers. So without further ado, here are the must-have apps for your Windows Phone.

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