5 reasons html5 is right for you and your next app - App Developer ...

MOBILE APP PRIVACY POLICY

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Volume 1 • Issue 5 - October 2013

5 REASONS HTML5 IS RIGHT FOR YOU AND YOUR NEXT APP

JUST PEACHY WHAT NOT TO NAME YOUR APP?

WHY ASO IS NOT THE ONLY CHOICE FOR APP MARKETING DON’T LET POOR ANALYTICS KILL YOUR GAME LAUNCH MICROSOFT AND NOKIA HOW A COHESIVE DEVELOPER PROGRAM WILL BRING OUT THE REAL VALUE OF THIS DEAL

BRINGING OLD SCHOOL GAMES INTO THE NEW WORLD OF MOBILE APPS IF YOU CAN’T BEAT THEM – JOIN THEM CALIFORNIA ATTORNEY GENERAL LAUNCHES MOBILE APP

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IMAGINE • DEVELOP • LAUNCH CROSS PLATFORM APP DEVELOPMENT

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INTRODUCING App Developer Magazine

Volume 1 • Issue 1 - June 2013

MAKE AN APP WITHOUT A NATIVE ENVIRONMENT THE PAINS OF CONTRACT APP DEVELOPMENT

ALTERNATIVE WAYS OF MONITIZING MOBILE APPS YOUR APP ON THE BIG SCREEN

Successful app development is a lot more than writing code. A whole lot more. Now you have a resource that provides in-depth, relevant, and knowledgeable information on what you really need to know to be successful. • App Developer Magazine provides a snapshot of each months highlights within the industry as well as big picture analysis that you just won’t find anywhere else. • Available in digital and mobile the magazine is a serious publication dealing with serious issues affecting app developers

A TOOL TO MATCH THE JOB – CORONA SDK PROTOTYPING YOUR APP WITH AN APP HOW HARDWARE WILL BE THE ULTIMATE DECIDER FOR DEVELOPERS

APP BLOAT REDUCING THE FILE SIZE OF YOUR APP TEN TIPS FOR BUILDING ENTERPRISE MOBILE APPS WWW.APPDEVELOPERMAGAZINE.COM

• Of course the industry changes every day and AppDeveloperMagazine.com provides the most comprehensive daily roundup of news, blogs, and more. The format is smartly and logically formatted so that you can quickly review the content that you are interested in reading.

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2013 OCTOBER

Volume 1 • Issue 5

53

FEATURES 34 DEVELOPER SHOWCASE Simon Schultz, Partner in Prehype

36 INDUSTRY SHOWCASE - ACKUNA Localize Your App with the Ackuna Translation Community

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38 JUST PEACHY What Not to Name Your App? By Peach Pellen

40 WHY ASO IS NOT THE ONLY CHOICE FOR APP MARKETING A Small App Developer’s Perspective

42 DON’T LET POOR ANALYTICS KILL YOUR GAME LAUNCH The Secret to a Successful Mobile Game Launch is Gathering and Understanding Your Analytics By Rick Evans

60 IF YOU CAN’T BEAT THEM – JOIN THEM California Attorney General Launches Mobile App By Adam Grant, JD

COVER STORY 64 5 REASONS HTML5 IS RIGHT FOR YOU AND YOUR NEXT APP Fits the Needs of a Dynamic Market By Dmitry Sergeev

69 USING FACEBOOK TO BUILD YOUR BRAND 51 MICROSOFT AND NOKIA How A Cohesive Developer Program Will Bring Out the Value of This Deal By Steve Glagow

53 BRINGING OLD SCHOOL GAMES INTO THE NEW WORLD OF MOBILE APPS How We Play Has Changed, But the Essence of a Great Game Remains the Same By Anton Faulconbridge

4 | App Developer Magazine

The Mobile App Version By Darya Trushkina

74 MOBILE APP PRIVACY POLICY Do You Have One? Andrew Bud

78 SCREEN SHOT Super Fan By Richard Harris

Imagine • Develop • Launch

DEPARTMENTS 7

Editor’s Note - Bottle-necks, Pressure, Stress, and Just Plain Agony - October is An Interesting Month - A Look Back

8

iOS News - Catch iOS Users in the Wild With Lookback - iOS Users Can Now Download Previous Versions of Your Apps - Updated Tools for Native iOS Apps from Infragistics

10

Android News - Google Serves a Little Pi - Developers Can Now Access Google Analytics - Cyanogen Creating Android Based OS - Jolla Announces Sailfish OS Compatibility with Android - Lookout/Samsung Alliance

12

Windows News - Microsoft Changes App Developer App Age Rating Process - Embarcadero Technologies Surveys Windows Developers - Install Windows Phone on an HTC Android Device

14

Blackberry News - What Do BlackBerry Changes Mean to App Developers - Free Gamepad Packages - Proxama to Develop Isis Mobile Wallet for BlackBerry 10 OS

16

HTML5 - Mozilla Shumway HTML5 JS Renderer for SWF Files for Firefox - Hyro: A Real-Time Desktop HTML5 Editor - Updates to Dart SDK Brings New HTML Editor and dart2js - Marmalade Dives into Tizen

18

Monetization - Opera’s Latest Offerings - Inneractive SSP Debuts Video in a Box for Mobile Publishers - Placecast Debuts Location Based Mobile DSP

20

Developer Tools - AppScale 1.11.0 Released - Rust 0.8 Released - Extreme Reality Opens SDK; Enables 3D Motion Control for Games/Apps

22

Enterprise - Appurify Launches Public Beta of Mobile Test Automation Platform - Clarizen Introduces Integration with JIRA - Appthority Launches Enterprise Mobile App Risk Management Service - Feedly Opens API to App Developers

24

Mobile Tech - Amazon Introduces Kindle Fire HDX and Fire OS 3.0 "Mojito" - GestureWorks Game Control Software To Reinvigorate PC Games With Touch Virtual Controllers - The Big News at Intel’s High Power Developer Event is Low Power

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EVENTS

AROUND THE WORLD

AUGUST 1 - Intro to Mobile App Development San Francisco USA, Multiple Dates 2 - Battle Hack Seattle Seattle, USA August 10–11 3 - Battle Hack Miami Miami, USA August 24–25 4 - DevDay at the Bridge Conference Washington USA August 1 5 - Defcon 21 Las Vegas, USA August 1–4 6 - Painless iOS Testing London, England August 2

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Marketing - Tapjoy Introduces Rich Media/Video Plus and Partnership with Celtra - Vision Mobile Releases App Developer Atlas - Amobee Acquires Gradient X Mobile App Marketing Platform

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App Showcase

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Upcoming Events

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7 - Advanced Python Workshop Bangalore’ India August 2–4 8 - Summer Meet-Up Hasselt, Belgium August 2 9 - World Master Games Torino 2013 Turin, Italy August 2–11 10 - LAST Conference 2013 Melbourne Australia August 2 11 - Nodecopter Bristol Bristol, England August 2

13 - Kanban Ace Online Conference August 3, 10 14 - Burlington Ruby Conference Burlington USA, August 3–4 15 - Intro to HTML5 San Francisco USA Multiple Dates 16 - Front in BH 2013 Horizonte, Brazil August 3 17 - COSCUP 2013 Taipei City, Taiwan August 3–4 18 - Learn to Make iPhone Apps San Francisco, USA, Multiple Dates 19 - International Conference of the ACL Sofia, Bulgaria August 4th–9th 20 - 360|Stack 2013 Denver, USA August 4-7 21 - Boston 2013 Boston, USA August 5–10

51 - PySprints: Pyramid Summer Sprint Halle, Germany August 15-17

40 - SharePoint and .NET Saturday Bermuda 2013 Hamilton, Bermuda August 10

52 - PyTexas 2013 College Station, USA, August 16-18

28 - XMPP/Realtime UK Meetup London, England August 7

41 - DebConf13 Vaumarcus, Switzerland August 11-18

53 - Code on the Beach 2013 Atlantic Beach, USA August 16-18

29 - Mixwest Indianapolis USA August 7-9

42 - eTail East 2013 Philadelphia, USA August 12-15

54 - Northeast PHP Boston, USA 16th–18th August 16-18

30 - Distill San Francisco USA August 8-9

43 - YAPC::Europe 2013 Perl Conference Kiev, Ukraine August 12-14

55 - eurucamp 2013 Berlin, Germany August 16-18

64 - RedFrog Conf 2013 St. Augustin Germany August 24-25 65- iOS Programming from The Pragmatic Studio Denver USA August 26-29 66 - Social Media Strategies Summit: Dallas 2013 Dallas USA August 27-28 67 - devLink Technical Conference Chattanooga USA August 28-30

31 - HTML5 Application Development Class San Francisco USA August 8-9

44 - That Conference Wisconsin Dells, USA August 12–14

56 - Steel City Ruby Conference 2013 Pittsburgh USA August 16-17

69 - CakeFest 2013 San Francisco USA, August 29-September 1

32 - CampJS II Springbrook, Australia August 9-12

45 - FileMaker DevCon 2013 San Diego USA August 2013 12-15

57 - The Geek Gathering Osijek, Croatia 16th–17th August 16-17

70 - CloudDevelop 2013 Columbus USA August 30

33 - PyCon Canada 2013 Toronto, Canada August 9-11

46 - CocoaConf PDX 2013 Portland USA August 14-6

58 - ESEC/FCE 2013 St. Petersburg, Russia August 18-25

71 - ISB Digital Summit 2013 Hyderabad, India August 30-31

34 - 3rd Offtopicarium Warsaw, Poland August 9-12

47 - JRubyConf EU 2013 Berlin, Germany August 14-15

59 - Java Specialists Symposium Crete, Greece August 19-22

72 - PAX 2013 Seattle USA August 30-September 2

35 - Festival of Code Birmingham City, England August 9-11

48 - MelbJS Melbourne, Australia August 14

60 - PhoneCom 2013 Beijing, China August 20

73 - PyCon India 2013 Bangalore, India August 30-September 1

23 - SharePoint Fest - D.C. Bethesda USA August 5-7

36 - Nine Worlds GeekFest London, England August 9-11

49 - Chinacom 2013 Guilin, China 14th–16th August

61 - PuppetConf 2013 San Francisco USA August 22-23

74 - 2nd Annual Mobile Apps 2013 Bangalore, India August 30

24 - WikiSym + OpenSym 2013 Hong Kong, Hong Kong August 5–7

37 - XDA:DevCon 2013 Miami USA August 9-11

50 - MoDevTablet 2013 Seattle, USA August 15-17

62 - BrazilJS Porto Alegre. Brazil August 22-23

25 - Agile 2013 Nashville USA, August 5–9

38 - Fosscon Philadelphia USA August 10


63 - CITCON Boston 2013 Boston USA August 23-24


AP USERBASE

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68 - ALE 2013 Bucharest, Romania August 28-30

22 - The 25th European Summer School - ESSLLI 2013 Dusseldorf. Germany 5th–16th August

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12 - Nodecopter Swansea Swansea, Wales August 3

39 - London GameCraft London, England August 10

27 - Balisage Montreal, Canada August 6–9

26 - Cloudera Developer Training for Apache Noida, India August 5–8

75 - Hackference Birmingham City, England August 30-September 1

$ MONETIZATION

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OUR APPRECIATON TO THE FOLLOWING ADVERTISERS: Airpush • AppEpic • AppGyver • AppClover • Appcooker • AppZapp • CODAME • Distimo • Lanica • Lunar Ads • MAZ • Mobclix • Moonbeam • Monster Mobile • Orasi • RichTalk • SendDroid • Start App • TM Forum www.AppDeveloperMagazine.com

App Developer Magazine

|5

EDITOR’S NOTE Richard Harris, Editor

Bottle-necks, pressure, stress, and just plain agony! Have you ever completely missed a deadline when programming? Of course you have, we all have! Time and programming seem to be mortal enemies, and magnify that battle by 10X then you have app development. The rush to market for some developers is choking and can slow down the entire flow because of bottlenecks, pressure, stress, and just plain agony of trying to get something released that is riddled with “to-do’s.” Publishing a magazine is demanding too and can at times seem completely overwhelming because there is no “soft date” for delivery. The magazine has to be published on or slightly before the month it’s covering. The month of September was really busy here and with our latest magazine app update, along with a website code sweep, people traveling, and finalizing our news app counter-part soon to be published in the app store, we are late getting the Oct. issue into your hands and for that I’m extremely sorry for the delay. October in itself is an interesting month. It ushers in the start of the fall season, and usually gets us all thinking about the holidays that will soon be here. It’s also an incubation period for many app developers with holiday apps looming for release sometime before November hits, which have no doubt been in development for a few months, (back when it was still warm). While we are still standing at the threshold of the holiday madness that is about to bestow us, it’s interesting to look back at 2012’s season and reflect on a few stories that hit the news last year. So did HTML5 win as reported? I’m not sure what it was supposed to “win” as reported last year, but HTML5 is emerging as a proven language for cross platform development without having to work with native code on each platform. Do App Developers only make about $500 a month on average? Gigaom reported last year that on average most app developers only make $500 per month from their efforts. So far in 2013 that has been reported as well –

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with a recent report coming from Fierce Developer saying only 40% of app developers make any money at all from apps. Is Microsoft gaining ground? Last year there was a big question mark over where Microsoft would be at this point with their mobile efforts. I would say 2013 has been a very positive year for them and most of the chatter last year has been put to rest. Poor BlackBerry Some of you saw it coming, some of you don’t care but BlackBerry going private was talked about even in 2012. I think 2014 is going to be the year we finally see BlackBerry find its place in mobile again. iPhone 5 becomes iPhone 5S The iPhone 5 was under many Christmas trees in 2012 and in 2013 those will be replaced with the 5S or even the capable 5C. It’s hard to predict the future when it comes to Apple products but I think we all saw the 5S coming, 3 become 3G, then 3Gs, 4 back 4S, then 5 became the 5S. Facebook Phone Disappeared It was being rumored about last year then finally unveiled this year only to be met with a huge amount of “poke it with a stick” people. It’s pretty easy to predict Facebook will have to either shelf the Android based OS skinner for now, or reinvent itself in that area. Is the “Gold Rush” over? The short answer I think to this one (as some predicted in 2012) is yes. But there is “still Gold in them there hills”, you just have to have the right tools, and know where too look. There is a huge shortage of good developers with good ideas so don’t be discouraged if someone tries to make you think you can’t make it in mobile development. I find it most curious that much of the same stories in 2012 could still be applied today which means even though the mobile industry is moving at the speed of light there is still an unbridled amount of growth that will occur in the years to come.

Daily News The most complete outlet for news affecting app developers with breaking news updated daily. Mobile Tech Find out emerging trends and new introductions of smart phones, tablets, and other technology utilizing apps. App Markets Coverage of top app development markets including Apple, Android, Windows, Blackberry as well as coverage of HTML5, Amazon and emerging third party markets. Monetization Find tips, tricks and other strategies to maximize the revenue potential for your apps. And Much More! App Developer Magazine is published monthly by App Developer Magazine, LLC. Bulk rate postage paid at Dallas, Texas, and additional mailing offices. ©App Developer Magazine, LLC, all rights reserved. No part of this publication or its Website may be reproduced without written permission of App Developer Magazine, LLC. App Developer Magazine assumes no responsibility for the content of the articles, advertisements, or messages reproduced therein, and makes no representation or warranty whatsoever as to the completeness, accuracy, currency, or adequacy of any facts, views, opinions, statements, and recommendations it reproduces. Reference to any product, process, publication, or service of any third party by trade name, trademark, manufacturer, or otherwise does not constitute or imply the endorsement or recommendation of App Developer Magazine. The publication welcomes and encourages contributions; however is not responsible for the return of manuscripts and photographs. The publication, at the sole discretion of the publisher, reserves the right to accept or reject any advertising or contributions. For more information contact the publisher at App Developer Magazine, 2754 East Division Street, Springfield, Missouri, 65757 or e-mail at [email protected].


|7

iOS

NEWS, NOTES, AND MORE

Updated Tools for Native iOS Apps from Infragistics Infragistics, a provider of UI components for native iOS, Android, Windows, and cross-device HTML5/ jQuery development, continues to add more power to its NucliOS toolset for native iOS apps. The NucliOS core controls provide developers the ability to create high performance, highly visual, totally native iPad and iPhone apps including an advanced data grid and a versatile set of charts for consumer and enterprise mobile solutions. NucliOS allows developers to render iOS charts with hundreds of thousands of data points that are capable of millisecond updates. NucliOS

does the heavy lifting with iPad data visualization and analysis on large volumes of data with more than 20 different chart types, including scientific and financial series, a new pie chart, and a radial gauge. Support for the motion framework within the data chart control allows devs to build highly engaging visualizations and provides smooth playback of changes in data over time, giving life to data through fluid animations. New capabilities include enhanced filtering, infinite scrolling, and custom theming. One of the most powerful features of the tool is the ability to handle massive volumes of data. The toolset

provides developers with flexibility allowing the use of NucliOS controls in native iOS projects built with Objective C and Xcode as well as C#; with Xamarin.iOS support. NucliOS also includes final MonoTouch bindings for all of its iOS control.

iOS Users Can Now Download Previous Versions of Your Apps In an email sent by Apple to iOS developers, it appears unless you specifically set the flag on each app you have, users who downloaded your app in the past can now get the older versions that will run on older OS and hardware levels (considering you've updated your app to build to iOS7 and aren't supporting the older versions universally in your binary). From Apple: “Users who have already purchased your

app are now able to download previous versions, allowing them to use your app with older devices that may no longer be supported by the current version. If you do not want previous versions of your app to be available, for example due to a usability or legal issue, you can manage their availability in the Rights and Pricing section of the Manage Your Apps module on iTunes Connect.”

App Developers Catch iOS Users in the Wild With Lookback Lookback is a “Testing in the Wild” tool currently in a free public beta. Lookback helps developers view users of their app as they are actually using it, providing a unique sensory-visual feedback of the facial and environmental responses of users as they interact with the app. Developers integrate the Lookback SDK into a testing version of their app that users can download and start testing. Once the user has installed the app, they are given a straightforward interface to decide when to start and stop recording their use of the app. Once they have finished, the recording is automatically uploaded to the Lookback website where developers can analyze it. The service is not available in the Apple App Store and is only available to users with which a developer has a relationship with, who are aware they are participating in testing of the app and are informed their participation video will be monitored by the developer.


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Millennial Media Reports Apple iOS Devices Still Tops When Considering Impression Share In the Millennial Media Q2 2013 Apple led with three of the top four devices with 39% of impressions Appurify Report Says Fix Bugs and Update App = Get Better Ratings Appurify released the results of a 2-month long study concluding developers need to create high performing apps if they want to succeed in the Apple App Store Apple Limits iWork for iCloud Public Beta Due to Demand Apple has begun limiting access to the service


ANDROID


Android Gets Enterprise Security with Lookout/Samsung Alliance Lookout is increasing its footprint in enterprise mobility with a new partnership with Samsung and a soon to be released standalone business product. Lookout has announced it will provide integrated support to the Samsung Knox, an Android-based end-to-end mobile security solution that provides security hardening from the hardware through to the application layer. Lookout’s contribution to the KNOX platform will include real-time, cloudbased scanning to protect against mobile

threats from email attachments, web browsing, and any type of file sharing services. Samsung’s KNOX platform is an isolated and secure environment within mobile devices, featuring its own home screen, launcher, applications, and widgets. Among the abilities of the KNOX platform is its capacity to create a secure zone on Android powered devices for corporate applications and data. The user’s personal apps and data remain outside the secure zone and are thus kept private.

Enterprise app developers benefit from the KNOX platform through the ability to automatically gain enterprise-grade security for data storage and transmission without new development. Samsung KNOX relieves application developers from having to develop enterprise features such as FIPS-compliant VPN, on-device encryption (ODE), and enterprise Single Sign On (SSO).

Developers Can Now Access Google Analytics Understanding your users is now made easier through a new integration between Google Analytics and the Google Play Developer Console. You can link your Google Analytics account with your

Google Play Developer Console to get new insights into your app’s user acquisition and engagement. With access to Google Analytics, you’ll get a new report highlighting which

campaigns are driving the most views, installs, and new users in Google Play. In the Developer Console, you’ll get new app stats that let you easily see your app’s engagement based on Analytics data.

Google Serves a Little Pi to Aspiring App Developers

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Google has launched Coder, a free, open source project that turns a Raspberry Pi into a little, bitty server for the web with the ability to build basic apps in HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, all from a Chrome web browser. The software was designed in part as an educational tool to introduce app development to students, educators or just those that want to dip their toes in the app development water. The open source code library is available on GitHub for those developers interested in helping fix bugs, build new features, etc. The Coder website provides details on how to participate. You’ll need a Raspberry Pi Model B ($35USD) plus a 5V 1A Power Supply ($6USD), 4GB (or larger) SD Card ($8USD), and an optional Miniature WiFi (802.11b/g/n) Module for Pi ($12USD). Links are provided on the Coder website on where to buy the parts.

App Developers Can Now Become Amazon Associates With In-App Purchasing of Products Amazon has introduced its new Mobile Associates API for Android devices, enabling app developers to sell associated Amazon merchant products in-app. Developers can take a cut of up to 6% of items sold through Amazon’s 1-Click purchase program.

Cyanogen Creating Android Based OS Cyanogen is only a 4 year old company but is ready to take over the 3rd spot in mobile (over Windows Phone) by creating a new Android based OS which is more focused on productivity than commerce, and they now have the capital to back it up after securing $7 million dollars which will allow them to hire more developers for the task. “The mobile devices out there, they’re just not meant for anybody to use,” says Founder Steve Kondik. “They are essentially mobile cash registers. We want to help you get stuff done, and use these things to their fullest potential.” Cyanogen will also place a significant emphasis on security and privacy, Kondik says, taking pains to help users protect their data.

App Developers Can Now Sign Up for Samsung Developers Conference Registration for the upcoming Samsung Developers Conference has now been opened on the conference website. The cost of the event is $299 which will be held in San Francisco on October 27-29 at the Westin St.




WINDOWS


Microsoft Changes App Age Rating Process

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App Developers whose apps target children or may be used by children have faced a whirlwind year full of COPPA compliance, Apple revisions and more. Today, Microsoft has changed/updated its age rating process for kids. The main changes include how develop-

Increased Microsoft Advertising Opportunities and Improved Carrier Payout Microsoft Advertising has recently partnered with several third-party networks to bring additional ads to the Windows Phone platform. Apps that use the latest version of the Microsoft Advertising SDK, included in Visual Studio 2012 or are downloaded directly don’t need to be modified or updated to take advantage of the new revenue opportunity. Also announced, developer carrier billing transactions are now eligible for payout after 30 days.


Nokia’s “Create” App Developer’s Contest Kicks Off A global competition to develop apps for Nokia Lumia and Windows Phone 8

ers provide age rating information and how incorporating rating board information will be handled in the future. The new policy changes serve to underscore the increasing complexity and resulting challenges app developers face with compliance serving multiple jurisdictions.

HTML5/JavaScript App Model With Windows 1.8 SDK for Kinect Windows developers can access the interactivity of Kinect for Windows with the new HTML5/JavaScript app model. Updates include adding color to Kinect, creating a new API for background removal, and other improvements. Some of the new features of the Kinect for Windows SDK 1.8 include a new green screening background removal API, which removes the background behind the user so that it can be replaced with an artificial background. The new Kinect Fusion API scans the color of the scene along with the depth information so that it can capture the color of the object along with its three-dimensional (3D) model. The API also produces a texture map for the mesh created from the scan. Also updated is the Human Interface Guidelines (HIG) with guidance to complement the new Adaptive UI sample.

Embarcadero Technologies Surveys Windows Developers Embarcadero Technologies has commissioned a global survey of 1,337 Windows developers who were asked a series of questions about the demands they face for mobile applications, their experience with delivering apps, and the challenges they face with mobile. Highlights of the study include: 85 percent have a strategic imperative to deliver apps on mobile devices; 95 percent believe common source code for desktop and mobile is highly desirable; 85 percent believe that native apps provide the best mobile user experience; 83% of the requests for mobile app have Android support as a requirement; 99% say existing apps must continue to be supported.


Windows Dev Center App Updated The Dev Center APP now offers several new features that developers have been requesting, including the ability to view app submission status, filter reviews, and more

Install Windows Phone on an HTC Android Device ROM cookers have attempted to put different OS's and "cooked" versions of operating systems on their favorite devices for years, but now Microsoft has taken this to a whole new level with the report they have reached out to HTC to ask about putting the Windows Phone OS on their devices that are made for Android as a second option. It's not real clear how the OS would 'fit' onto the devices, if it would dual boot, or even perhaps run as a virtual machine, which wouldn't be too far different from how BlackBerry devices would run Android apps (emulated) already. But the rumor is that the Windows OS would be a second option on the device for the user entirely and run under its own protected space.


BLACKBERRY NEWS, NOTES, AND MORE

Breaking News for BlackBerry App Developers

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Ok, maybe its not the real big honking BlackBerry breaking news that the company is being purchased by its largest stockholder to go private, however it seems that the BlackBerry 10 dev team is still business as usual including announcements for gaming apps. First, the company is offering two free Gamepad Packages, consisting of a MOGA Pro controller and a SteelSeries controller, to developers who enable gamepad support to their game. When the game is submitted and approved, it will be added to the gamepad-enabled feature in BlackBerry World. This program runs through December 24, 2013. In order to receive the free Gamepad Package, you need to be one of the first 250 to submit your draft game to BlackBerry World.

BlackBerry Training Updated The BlackBerry Dev Center has made a number of updates and enhancements to the webbased training. Along with some aesthetic improvements to the training app itself, they’ve also updated the content of the training to reflect some of the newer features and APIs including: Demos and walkthroughs that feature changes to the QNX Momentics IDE for BlackBerry: Support for the BlackBerry Q10 and BlackBerry Q5


What Do BlackBerry Changes Mean to App Developers The recent announcement of BlackBerry laying off 40% of it's people, and selling to a private stockholder for $4.7B might have come as a shock to some people, but if you were watching it at all over the past few months, you knew this was coming. While Apple basks in high volume sales of it's new iPhone, Android continues to be embedded in more devices than you can shake a stick at, and Microsoft piggybacks Nokia's devices for rides into mobile stardom, BlackBerry peaked when enterprises all over the world realized the stability, and robust nature of the platform, but that was superseded in the past

few years by the pure speed of the mobile industry, something that enterprise doesn't usually have on it's side. But what does all of this mean to developers with BB apps? Does BlackBerry going private mean developers with apps in the BB store are going to suffer from the change? We don't think so, in fact we think app developers should now be watching more intently to see what BB is going to do next in terms of re-inventing itself to an over-crowded smartphone market and perhaps how developers can benefit. We think there is a lot of room for recognition if BB slows down a bit, steps back from the pic-

ture, and realizes it's place in the industry - which could equate to a fresh market for App Developers when the dust settles from the switch. BlackBerry realizes how important it is to have a great inventory of apps in it's app stores and with the company's financial status not in the public eye, I think they will have the breathing room and focus to stabilize its popularity, and carve out a new niche in the mobile industry which could spell out big wins for developers. In short, BackBerry isn't going anywhere, they'll be right back after a brief intermission so they can work on their image a bit..

Proxama to Develop Isis Mobile Wallet for BlackBerry 10 OS Proxama, a provider of NFC (near-field communication) mobile wallet and NFC mobile engagement technology, has announced that the company will work with Isis, the mobile commerce joint venture created by AT&T Mobility, T-Mobile USA and Verizon Wireless, to develop the Isis Mobile Wallet application for NFC-enabled devices using the BlackBerry


10 operating system platform. Proxama’s technology platform was developed to support consumer engagement, loyalty and secure contactless payments through NFC. Proxama has worked with leading brands such as EAT, KFC, EE, and Barclaycard on NFC initiatives to support consumer engagement and mobile wallets.


HTML 5


Mozilla Shumway HTML5 JS Renderer for SWF Files for Firefox Shumway is an HTML5 technology experiment that explores building a faithful and efficient renderer for the SWF file format without native code assistance. Many have found it to be an effective path away from Flash into HTML5. It's community-driven and supported by Mozilla. The goal is to create a general-purpose, web standards-based platform for parsing and rendering SWFs. Integration with Firefox is a possibility if the experiment proves successful.

All of Shumway’s rendering occurs using the HTML5 canvas element, as you might expect. And it turns out, once again, that JavaScript is actually fast enough to make this work well.

Updates to Dart SDK Brings New HTML Editor and dart2js Dart (the open-source Web programming language developed by Google) released a new SDK recently that includes some nice updates including making java faster and a new spiffy HTML editor that will help you build better projects using Dart. If you aren't sure what we are talking about, Dart is a class-based, single inheritance, object-oriented language with C-style syntax. It supports interfaces, abstract classes, reified generics, and optional typing. Static type annotations do not affect the runtime semantics of the code. Instead, the type annotations can provide documentation for tools like static checkers and dynamic run time checks.


Marmalade Dives Into Tizen: Gives Developers First Taste Of Tizen App Development


Introducing a Pure LUA JVM luje luje is an experimental (read: toy) Java virtual machine written in pure Lua. It works by compiling Java bytecode into Lua scripts on-the-fly and then running them using Mike Pall's LuaJIT 2. The result is an extremely fast but incredibly lightweight Java virtual machine which can outperform Sun's Hotspot in some situations.

Rubinius 2.0 Released With New Level of Release Commitment Love Ruby programming? Then you'll love Rubinius (an implementation of Ruby designed for concurrency using native threads to run Ruby code on all the CPU cores.) Now in version 2.0, Rubinius is set to insure Ruby programming stays in focus among the plethora of other languages to choose from.

Hyro: A RealTime Desktop HTML5 Editor Marmalade has announced the release of SDK version 6.4 which features support of the new Tizen platform, which will launch later this year. On downloading the latest SDK, developers will get native access to Tizen and will be able to port existing and new games made with Marmalade directly into the brand new Tizen ecosystem ahead of launch, taking early mover advantage before the crowds come in. Support of the new platform is a pre-cursor to a new developer incentive promotion being launched by the two companies later this fall. The addition of Tizen support to Marmalade further augments its cross-platform capabilities, enabling developers to reach a wide pool of app consumers with just one code base.

Hyro is a live desktop HTML5 text-editor that lets you code HTML5 websites in real-time on your desktop and see the results in real time. It's currently in version 0.0.3 but has loads of features you can use even today. Overall, the Hyro app is a lightweight development tool built by Jared Wright to make testing webpages faster and easier. It is not meant to be a complete supplement for Sublime Text and jsfiddle, but you can use it for these purposes. Jared is open to further development along with bug reports and requests so be sure and send him a note.


MONETIZATION NEWS, NOTES, AND MORE

Opera Latest Offerings

HOT ON THE WEB!

Good things come in threes. Developers of mobile apps needing a boost can find it with the latest offerings from Opera Mobile Store. First, the OMS Developer Blog makes its public debut the week of October 1st. Its aim is to provide insight for mobile app developers in design, marketing and all-around performance. Added to this, developers may find opportunities for interviews, app reviews, guest articles, volunteer projects and some pretty cool prizes. It is just starting, but will mature rapidly. Check it out and see what you think! Secondly, OMS is offering double-shots. Well, let's rephrase that - two new promotional contests start September 30th and run through October 14th. Mobile app developers who add their apps to the Opera Mobile Store will be eligible to win one of three prizes, each worth $3,000US in OMS advertising. Adding your apps to OMS is easy and free - and with your consent can be automatically added to the Yandex Store. Developers opting to have their apps added to the Yandex Store are eligible for a second round of three prizes, each worth $2,000US in OMS advertising. Full official rules can be found at http://business.opera.com/portal/contestrules. Contest is open to legal residents of India, Indonesia, Russia, Ukraine and the United States (excluding Rhode Island), aged 18 or older who successfully register with and submit a complete app to the Opera Mobile Store during the entry period. And... OMS has added developer badges. Developers with apps on the Opera Mobile Store now have their choice of four icons to add an extra small touch of class on their web site and other promotions.

MobFox Mobile Advertising Announces First French Office Due to its quickly increasing demand, with more than 20,000 active publishers and over 30 billion monthly impressions globally, MobFox has announced the opening of its first French office lead by Fabrice Duvoux, previously a mobile specialist at Microsoft.


PayPal Makes it Easier to Pay and Get Paid on Samsung Apps and Samsung Hub PayPal is now available as a payout option for Samsung App developers globally and available as a payment option for Samsung Apps and Samsung Hub in nine markets including Australia, Italy, France, Germany, Malaysia, Singapore, Spain, U.K. with the U.S. coming soon.

Inneractive SSP Debuts Video in a Box for Mobile Publishers

Placecast Debuts Location Based Mobile DSP

Inneractive has added to its SSP services with “Video in a Box,” allowing app developers and mobile publishers to serve full screen video ads in their mobile/web apps or instream properties. Video in a Box enables display and video and includes an integrated video player. Video ads play natively and can be skipped, without forcing the user to close or leave the current app. Mobile web publishers can monetize any app with video capabilities and connect to the mobile RTB exchange using a straightforward JavaScript tag. The full screen video ads are compliant with Google’s recent terms and conditions changes, and skipping the ad is clear and simple. The 15 or 30 seconds video streams allow developers to provide advertisers with a target audience across app interstitials and track view completion, clicks, and engagement. Buyers can programmatically access the supply, bidding on a single impression or audience segmentation. Video in a Box adds to Inneractive monetization platform which is available in one SDK/API which includes programmatic buying, guaranteed delivery of large quantities of inventory, direct sales, real time bidding and mediation of remnant inventory with premium demand partners. It is available for iOS, Android or web apps.

App developers could see increased revenue with the launch of Placecast’s new product, the PlaceAD location based demand-side platform (DSP). With the new service, marketers will be able to launch location based mobile app campaigns with the added benefit of further segmenting their audience by age, gender, interests, device type/operating system, time of day, and weather. Advertisers can receive consolidated campaign reporting down to the individual store level and also receive location-based reporting down to the most granular level, including heatmaps that provide a visual illustration of the intensity of impressions and engagement by targeted locations. PlaceAD has partnered with a number of ad


exchanges and supply side platforms (SSPs) including PubMatic, MoPub, and Smaato to provide access to billions of available monthly impressions. Marketers have the ability to price and deliver on a perimpression basis in real-time and the PlaceAD decision engine optimizes campaign performance based on activity across placements and publishers to maximize performance.


DEVELOPER TOOLS NEWS, NOTES, AND MORE

AppScale 1.11.0 Released


Embarcadero Launches Newest Version of RAD S tudio XE5 Offers Native Android, Windows and iOS Support AppScale (the open source Google Cloud Platform and App Engine all-in-one) has announced the latest version of its software which incorporates many changes, including changing to devappserver2, Ubuntu support, PHP app engine support, and many more updates.

AppScale currently supports and maintains the most commonly used APIs from the Google App Engine stack. This means any app running in GAE will run on AppScale. Here is the best part, it's free and open source so giving it a try won't cost you a thing!

Extreme Reality Opens SDK; Enables 3D Motion Control for Games/Apps Extreme Reality has opened their platform which enables developers to incorporate full body motion control into games and apps on any device with a native camera. By adding a few lines of code into an existing or new game or app, developers can use a device’s camera as the motion sensor to capture and analyze full body motion in order to control the game/app. The new open Extreme Motion SDK, which supports Unity, C++ and C# programming languages for multiple operating systems, enables developers to easily add motion experiences to existing games or applications, and to create a wide range of new experiences (applications, games, security solutions and more) that pioneer Natural User Interfaces (NUI) while breaking the physical barriers of current hardware-based technologies. Currently several game developers, including SEGA, have integrated the SDK into games over a variety of operating systems and devices to create a touch-less motion controlled gaming experience, similar to existing console games.

Flurry Releases Crash Analytics Now a standard feature within Flurry Analytics for iOS and Android monoOne: A New Way of Looking at Your App Code monoOne is a monospaced font with over 300 characters, including the powerline symbols for programming and code review. SOASTA Announces the Latest Release of CloudTest SOASTA has released the latest iteration of CloudTest featuring a new Java Module which now enables developers and testers of Java applications to test any Java component to easily scale. With the new custom Java module, anything that can be done in Java can be tested at scale with CloudTest, such as testing streaming video as well as popular protocols like WebSocket and UDP.

Rust 0.8 Released Mozilla and the Rust community have announced version 0.8 of the Rust compiler and tools. Rust is a curly-brace, block-structured expression language with a focus on safety, performance and concurrency. It visually resembles the C language family, but differs significantly in syntactic and semantic details. This was another very active Rush release cycle that continued the trend toward refining the standard library while making minor adjustments to


the language. In this release the `for` keyword has been changed to work with Ìterator` types, the runtime and task scheduler was rewritten, a new experimental I/O subsystem was added, and they added a new family of string formatting macros, `format!`, that will eventually replace `fmt!`.

The brief release notes are included in this announcement, and there is further explanation in the detailed release notes on the wiki. Documentation and all the links in this email are available on the website. Version 0.8 should be considered an alpha release, suitable for early adopters and language enthusiasts.


ENTERPRISE


Feedly Opens API to App Developers In an effort to move from a product to a platform, feedly has opened its API to developers via the feedly cloud. The company has been beta testing its services with developers on readers, vertical enterprise apps, dashboards, integration hubs, and vertical communities. The feedly cloud API provides data access to millions of feeds and offers a personalization graph that provides users with categories, feeds, topics, tags, mixes, and more as high level concepts. The feedly cloud allows users to create their graph once and access it across many apps. The same graph can power an iPhone reader, a desktop reader, a phone dashboard application, an auto entertainment system, a profile in someone’s favorite fashion hub, or a profile in an enterprise marketing or purchasing app. Apps that utilize the service authenticate feedly users using a feedly OAuth 2.0 interface. The result of the authentication is an access token developers can use to authenticate using an authorization header. A user has a profile and a set of preferences associated with the profile that developers can access using the feedly Profile and Preferences modules.

Appurify Launches Public Beta of Mobile Test Automation Platform Appurify has announced the public beta of its platform for testing, run-time debugging and performance optimization of mobile applications. The launch comes after several months of private beta testing with some of the world’s largest technology companies and independent developers.

Clarizen Introduces Integration with JIRA Clarizen is now providing connectivity to Atlassian’s proprietary bug and issue tracking software, JIRA. Powered by MuleSoft, the Clarizen JIRA integration allows users to plan projects, portfolios, resources, budgets and more, while integrating research and development activities from JIRA to Clarizen and from Clarizen to JIRA. Clarizen allows users to track their work, manage related documents and keep on top of cost implications – all inside a single system. Product and project managers, operational teams, marketing departments, and C-level executives alike can now benefit from seamless integration between Clarizen’s collaborative project management tools and a live and up-to-date R&D project branch managed completely in JIRA. For example, this allows JIRA customers to link bug tracking with workflows, tasks and the projects required to clear them.


Appurify’s platform is available to mobile developers both through its web application and via API. Key features include automation on real iOS and Android devices, actionable text reports, Integration with existing automation test suites, functional stress testing, and compliance with continuous integrations systems.

Appthority Launches Enterprise Mobile App Risk Management Service Appthority continues to diversify its app risk management offerings for enterprises with the introduction of its new App Risk and Policy Management Solution. The new service is integrated with the company’s a mobile device management (MDM) solution to give enterprise IT administrators the tools needed to mitigate app risk. The new app policy management solution allows IT managers to create turn-key mobile app policies that are customized to their specific company culture and risk profile. Enterprises can access and customize the Appthority portal, to create an inventory of the apps (and their risky behaviors) currently present on their employee’s devices and take immediate enforcement action as needed.


Couchbase Announces Native NoSQL Database for Mobile App Development Couchbase’s JSON Anywhere includes three components: Couchbase Lite, Couchbase Sync Gateway and Couchbase Cloud MEF launches AppPrivacy MEF has launched AppPrivacy a free online tool provides a privacy policy generator Appurify Collaborates with Sencha and Adobe PhoneGap Appurify is now fully integrated into Sencha’s Architect 3.0 product as well as PhoneGap Build.


e

MOBILE TECH NEWS, NOTES, AND MORE

Amazon Introduces Kindle Fire HDX and Fire OS 3.0 "Mojito" Amazon has officially launched its new Kindle Fire HDX and new Fire OS 3.0 "Mojito," which Amazon states introduces hundreds of new and upgraded features, Amazon-exclusive services, platform updates and more. Promising that if an app runs on Android, it will run on Fire OS, the new operating system adds cloud services, a contentfirst user interface, built-in media libraries, productivity apps and low-level platform enhancements to integrate Amazon's digital content and improve performance. Fire OS 3.0 is built from Android 4.2.2 and its runtime libraries and Amazon says that 75% of the tablet apps that they tested that run on Android also run on Fire OS with no additional development work. The Amazon developer website provides advice for those apps that don’t run properly on the device. With the new OS, Amazon is emphasiz-

ing its open arms approach to web apps using HTML5, JavaScript, and CSS, promoting Amazon's GPUaccelerated web app runtime built on the open-source Chromium browser. Amazon is offering web app testing, monetization opportunities, security advice, and more in an effort to keep web apps as close to its OS as possible, and of course, create revenue streams as a result. Other news for developers include new Kindle Fire emulators and the Amazon AVD (Android Virtual Device) Launcher which allows developers to develop and test Kindle Fire Android apps without using a physical device.

The Big News at Intel’s High Power Developer Event is Low Power It was all about low power during the keynote address at the launch of Intel’s Developer Forum. Included in the announcement was Intel’s Bay Trail, its first 22nm system-on-achip (SoC) for mobile devices. Bay Trail is based on the company's new low-power Silvermont micro-architecture, to power Android and Windows tablets and 2-in-1 devices. Continuing the low power theme, was the introduction of the Intel Quark processor which will run lower-power products and will extend Intel's reach for what the company dubs as “industrial Internet-of-Things to wearable computing.” The processor is designed for applications where lower power and size take priority over higher performance. Also introduced was a smartphone platform featuring both the Intel XMM 7160 LTE solution and Intel's next-generation Intel Atom SoC for 2014 smartphones and tablets codenamed "Merrifield" based on the Silvermont microarchitecture, again emphasizing low power capabilities. Finally, the company announced a 14nm-based Broadwell system, set to begin production by the end of this year, which will deliver higher performance, longer battery life and low platform power points for 2-in-1, fanless devices, ultrabooks and PCs.



GTA Gaming HUD with the Help of Google Glass Hack GTA3 and Google glass wearable device news Bluetooth Accelerator Source Code for Mobile Apps Released Provides the source code to develop Bluetooth Smart apps across Android 4.3, iOS, OSX and Windows 8 OS platforms Is Amazon the New Apple with Rumors About Its Smartphones? Independent sources from around the web conclude that the online retail giant is indeed working on two individual smart phone devices Smart TV Alliance Releases App SDK Offers Integrated Porting Across Manufacturers

GestureWorks Game Control Software To Reinvigorate PC Games With Touch Virtual Controllers

GestureWorks has announced its new Gameplay software in beta which offers a new way of interacting with popular PC games on Windows 8 driven devices. The software lets gamers use and build their own virtual controllers for touch devices. The controllers are overlaid on top of existing

games. The Gameplay software works with Windows 8 tablets, Ultrabooks, 2-in-1 laptops, all-in- one devices, multi-touch tablets and largetouch screens. The software allow users to individualize the experience by creating hundreds of personalized gestures to interact on the screen.


Building security into the development process with a formal testing program is a key first step in addressing mobile security. However, a comprehensive approach also addresses quality assurance, performance validation, business service automation and management, and other important processes. Orasi supports companies at all stages of the mobile app lifecycle, helping them balance the cost of security testing with the need to minimize vulnerabilities and still offer employees a BYOD environment.

To find out more, visit www.2mobiletest.com.

www.2mobiletest.com.

MARKETING


Vision Mobile Releases App Developer Atlas: Provides Old School Print Poster for Developers We receive literally hundreds of news, commentary and other reports on the app development industry and it is relatively rare that we say to ourselves “Wow, how about that!” However, Vision Mobile’s Enterprise App Developer Atlas has made us say just that with its old school availability as a printed poster coupled with its decidedly new school demonstration on the complicated process and host of decisions developers need to make when choosing third party suppliers. The atlas provides a roadmap of the enterprise developer’s journey, featuring 481 developer tools across 27 tool sectors. It really does a nice job of visually of mapping the challenges and decisions all app developers have to make during the app development process. The atlas is broken down into six sections: integration, development, deployment, measurement, marketing and monetization. It’s a great snapshot of the process and a definite marketing vehicle with suggestions on what vendors to use throughout the process. The marketing aspect is not intrusive, in fact it enhances the atlas and is one of the few places we’ve seen that aggregates multiple service/product providers by similar offerings in a single presentation. The atlas is available free as a PDF or

you can request a printed copy from the atlas’s sponsor, Intel. It really needs to be seen in a large format so we’ve ordered a poster for our wall. Get one for yourself.



Vision Mobile Releases “The European App Economy” Report New report analyzes the relative sizes of the app market in the European Union tracking app revenues and jobs generated by the app economy in the EU28

App Developers Conference Survey Finds Discoverability is a Big Problem In a free-form survey question, most answers were connected to problems with discoverability as developers frequently described app stores as “crowded” and “overpopulated” with lowquality apps

Amobee Acquires Gradient X Mobile App Marketing Platform

Tapjoy Introduces Rich Media/Video Plus and Partnership with Celtra Tapjoy has made several announcements this week including the introduction of a new product, Rich Media, which allows advertisers to create campaigns that offer a single ad unit to cohesively drive consumers from awareness, to consideration, to conversion and referral. Tapjoy’s new Video Plus service offers the opportunity for advertisers to boost video advertising capabilities including the ability to offer an adaptable branded end card to improve post-view conversions. Tapjoy has also announced a partner-

HOT ON THE WEB!

ship with Celtra, a provider of rich media mobile advertising and analytics. The partnership will facilitate the creation of rich media campaigns offering ads that are compliant with the IAB Mobile Rich-media Ad Interface Definitions (MRAID) 2.0 to ensure compatibility with existing creative.

Industry consolidation and acquisition continues with the announcement that Amobee has snapped up Gradient X. Few details were released by either company, with dual news releases available on each site. What does each company bring to the table? Amobee brings its global presence and mobile marketing solutions/ services for advertisers, publishers and operators and a base of major players in the industry. Gradient X, barely out of beta, brings its sophisticated programmatic real time bidding platform.


APP SHOWCASE

NEW OR UPDATED APPS FROM OUR SUBSCRIBERS

SteamGo SteamGO by Hen Soup Studios is a bingo puzzle game that has three modes of play: shuffle, clear, and jackpot. Shuffle mode is where you match groups of numbers and shuffle them up to achieve a higher score. Clear mode has a similar set up as shuffle mode but instead of just shuffling and swapping colors you clear them before time runs out. Jackpot mode is the meat and bones of the game which has a more freed up variant of the Slingo style slot bingo play. The development team consisted of two people, one doing the coding on block graphics and one developing the background and co-design. The game was made with Click Team's Multimedia Fusion 2 and compiled using their Android and iOS exporters. The program helped rapidly prototype and fully develop the game in a month's time. Predator Digital Clock A twist on reading the time, the Predator Digital Clock for iOS by Gilthonwe offers the time in a predator style read-out taken straight off the language of the predators from the “Predator” movies popular in the 90's. It took two months to build and is written in pure Objective-C. One of the biggest challenges was being able to reproduce and animate the alien symbols in three different ways. Coastal Life This app features an all-in-one approach lifestyle app for beach lovers and surfers. It combines several functions into one including weather, surf details, tide info, wind info, fishing info, links to fishing guides and reports, diving info including links to diving locations and certification info. Hotel/resort bookings info and browsing functions are included as well as worldwide event search capabilities for music, festivals, and sporting events. Users can shop for surf apparel, sunglasses, bags and related product viewings in-app with links for purchases. The app took approximately 8 months to create, develop and publish. The biggest


challenge was to bring all the different functions into one app that was not confusing to users and functioned properly. Rip Virtual Remember loved ones (people or pets) with a fully customized memorial using the Rip Virtual App by Brian Goodwin Enterprises. The app was developed in native languages and is marketed through Facebook. Overall it took about 12 months to design, develop and publish because of updates to the UI to enhance the user experience. The biggest challenge was staying sane as Brian went through a steep learning curve.

Recipe Kitchen Recipe Kitchen pulls recipes from multiple sources across the web to offer the best flavors available. It is a native iOS app programmed in Objective-C. The design was an ever evolving process and the entire project from concept to distribution took nearly 6 months. It is a paid app marketed via social media and review sites. Some of the challenges including making sure that the system worked properly and ensuring that as much of the heavy work (pulling the data from numerous sources) was carried out on the server and not the app. This made the app more responsive and reduces the amount of network data the app uses.

Dance Mirror Dance Mirror is a video recording app that plays a song that you select from your device to play out loud while you record, so that you can dance or make other types of videos with no editing required. It was written in native Objective-C over a period of about 7 months. The app is $.99 per download and is currently marketed via social networks, YouTube and press releases. The biggest challenge was being a new programmer and the learning curve of the entire process itself. The developer had to learn to do everything from scratch or find help in doing it. SellSimple The SellSimple app from Julian Sarokin helps sell items on multiple marketplaces and social networks at once. Snap a few pictures, enter details, and choose where to sell including EBay, Etsy, Craigslist, Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, & more. SellSimple is free to download and free to list an item. If you sell your item through SellSimple they take a 5% fee. If it sells through another marketplace, SellSimple takes nothing, you just pay that marketplaces fee. A majority of the programming was done in Ruby. SellSimple took about 9 months to develop Version 1 and they release new updates monthly. The biggest challenge was building a custom, secure payment system which helps to eliminate scams & fraud.

Photolamus Photolamus by Photolamus lets users order exclusive, handdrawn caricatures made by professional caricature artists. It took over 5 months to design and develop the first version of Photolamus using native Objective-C. The project has been live for over a year in the App Store and the team is still improving and developing it. The biggest challenge during the development process was actually not the developing part, but finding really good painters that would work for affordable prices. The app was advertised when it was first released to attract the first wave of customers and word of mouth is currently the most effective marketing strategy. PoketPostcards PoketPostcards is an e-card making app from Pixel Dirt Studios that can be used to make postcards, invites, announcements and anything else users can dream up. The app comes bundled with frames, cards and stamps ready to use and users can add their own cards to personalize the postcard. Any image users can access from Photo Albums on an iPad can be used. PoketPostcards can be shared on Twitter, Facebook, Weibo and via email. The app is written in Objective-C and is targeted specifically for the iPad. PoketPostcards took approximately seven weeks to design, code and publish to the

Continued on page 30


AppZapp DISCOVER THE BEST APPS

Developer Services

"Follow us on AppZapp" - free for App developers! Through the AppZapp seller alerts your users will be informed about news regarding your apps in the AppStore by email or push into AppZapp for iPhone & iPad directly and in real time.

The more users are following you on AppZapp, the more will be informed about your offers, new apps or updates in the Apple AppStore.

So it works:

As a game publisher, we have great interest that our customers will be informed about new releases or a price reduction directly as possible. The AppZapp seller-alert is the perfect tool to ensure this and the new Follow-Button makes it even easier for the players to use AppZapp for their specific needs. Effective as it gets!“ Gregory Wintgens, Digital Marketing & PR Manager GAS & Eastern Europe, Gameloft

www.appzapp.net

APP SHOWCASE

NEW OR UPDATED APPS FROM OUR SUBSCRIBERS

Continued from page 28 App Store. PoketPostcards was created with a development team of two with one person writing the code and the other creating the graphics. Kickflip Kickflip by publisher R.A.F is a skateboarding game which empowers the gamer to flip their phone just as if it were a skateboard. Users can reenact skateboarding moves with their phone and the moves require physically flipping and tossing a phone which is a bit scary but fun. The app uses Sensor Fusion technology to analyze the flipping motions performed on the phone. It was programmed using native Android Java and marketed using Twitter. Kickflip took a couple of months to hammer out in the native Android Java language with the hardest challenge working with inconsistent sensor data from testing devices. 1 Word in 4 Pics 1 Word in 4 Pics by Algooh Entertainment is a game that lets user’s guess a word. It was created out of the publishers desire to make a cool and ad-free game to create high down-

APP SHOWCASE SUBMISSIONS If you would like your app featured in the App Showcase go to

www.appdevelopermagazine.com and click on the App Showcase banner or send an email to [email protected]. Please include a brief description of the game and any coding/third party products used to create the app. Due to the volume of App Showcase submissions received not all apps submitted will be featured in the magazine.


loads. In each level four pictures are displayed on screen with blank and letter tiles provided. The task is to guess what the images have in common, then select from the available letters to fill in the blank tiles. It took over 5 months to design and publish the app using Lua on iOS and Android. One of the biggest challenges was to create unique game play and random levels so every device has something unique. The app is currently monetized using a “totally free” approach with no ads or in-app purchases. The goal is to try to gain momentum and monetize future revisions of the app. Small Experiments The Small Experiments app by Remy Leglise was created to help users learn science easily. “When I was young I had a small paperback book of science experiments and I thought it could be very interesting to create the same kind of book on iPad using the power of new technology,” says Leglise. One of the more unique features of this app is the ability to watch videos of the experiments inside the app which makes the experience more interactive. It took one month to create the first version and continuous updates are released to keep the app appealing to science lovers. Native Objective-C was used to program the app. The biggest challenge was trying to create an app without any knowledge about how to actually do it. AppOps HiddenAppRights AppOps HiddenAppRights 4.3 by elec29a is one of the smallest apps in the Android Play store but it packs a big punch. It allows users to access the Android 4.3's Hidden App Permission Manager to control the permissions for individual apps on a device. Users can turn off permissions for apps that have ads or that access the Internet without their permission. The app was programmed using Android Java in Eclipse and only took a couple of days to complete. It is marketed on Facebook. The biggest development challenge was finding the undocumented API that’s only available in 4.3. Baby Voice – Heartbeat Baby Voice – Heartbeat by Riccardo Fertitta offers a simple concept, letting expectant mothers listen to the heartbeat of

their unborn child using the microphone built into an iPhone or iPad. Once the heartbeat has been located, Baby Voice lets users hear, record, and share it. It is marketed using social media. Codename Cygnus Codename Cygnus by Reactive Studios is an interactive radio drama where users play the main character (a spy) and the choices they make impact the outcome of the missions. The drama is audio based and currently available on iOS devices. The game was written in Objective-C and took about 6 months to complete. The major challenges in creating the game included getting the voice recognition right and coming up with a process for audio creation. Both posed their own set of technical challenges. It is monetized by allowing the user to purchase new episodes as they come out or they can purchase all episodes at once as a mission. Marketing includes showcasing the app to the gaming community including presentations at PAX and the Boston Festival of Independent Games where the developers won best the Audio Design award. Fun Family Dress Up for Girls – Pro Fun Family Dress Up for Girls – Pro by Joa Griffith is a dress-up game for all ages. It took about 4 months to develop using an outside source for programming and design and was built using native languages. It’s monetized by charging .99 cents and marketed using a Facebook fan page and word-of-mouth. The biggest challenge was working with an outside company and having to deal with communication barriers. Lucky Dragon Fortune Lucky Dragon Fortune by Joa Griffith is a slot machine game that took just 6 weeks to develop. During game play users are surrounded by uniquely designed legendary dragons and Chinese festival music. It's marketed using social networks and monetized using ad networks.


EVENTS

AROUND THE WORLD


ARTIFACT East Conference 2013 Providence, USA November 4-6

IGNITION: Future Of Digital New York City, USA November 12-13

App Developer’s Conference Los Angeles, USA November 5-7

Mobile Roaming World Summit London, United Kingdom November 12-13

RhoMobile Hackathon Berlin, Germany November 5

AnDevCon San Francisco, USA November 12-14

AppForum 2013 Berlin, Germany Novebmer 5-7

AFRICA COM 2013 Cape Town, South Africa November 12-14

BAI Retail Delivery 2013 Denver, USA November 5-7

The Open Mobile Summit and Appcelerate San Francisco, USA November 12-14

Web & Intranet Conference Aarhus Central, Denmark November 5-7

Internet Summit Raleigh, USA November 12-14

Topconf Tallinn 2013 Tallinn, Estonia November 6-7

CONNECTIONS Europe Amsterdam, Netherlands November 13-14

Thunder Plains Oklahoma City, USA November 7

North American Digital Economy Summit San Diego, USA November 14-15

JingJS Beijing, China November 9-10

CocoaConf Atlanta 2013 Atlanta, USA November 14-16

Hungarian Web Conference 2013 Budapest, Hungary November 9

ITDevCon 2013 Verona, Italy November 14-15

Desert Code Camp Chandler, USA November 9

Annual Angel Summit 2013 Alberta, Canada November 20-22

QCon San Francisco 2013 San Francisco, USA November 11-15

Mobile Gaming Europe London, United Kingdom November 20-22


UDE - Ultimate Developer Event - Boston 2013 Boston, USA November 20-22 Canadian Innovation Exchange (CIX) 2013 Toronto, Canada November 21 Telecom Application Developer Summit Bangkok, Thailand November 21-22 LTE North America Dallas, USA November 21-22 Mobile VAS & Applications Conference St. Petersburg, Russia November 21-22 Sainté Mobile Days Saint-Etienne, France November 22-23 Droidcon Amsterdam 2013 Amsterdam, Netherlands November 25-26 Telecoms Tech World London, United Kingdom November 26-27 jDays 2013 Gothenburg, Sweden November 26-27 Handheld 2013 Cardiff, Wales November 27-28 Droidcon India 2013 Bangalore, India November 28-30

Tired of being packed in the app store with everyone else? DISCOVER SECRETS TO BEING NOTICED WITH TIPS FROM APP DEVELOPER MAGAZINE.

IMAGINE • DEVELOP • LAUNCH www.appdevelopermagazine.com

DEVELOPER SHOWCASE NEWS, NOTES, AND MORE

HOTSPOTIO

SIMON SCHULTZ, PARTNER IN PREHYPE

This month we spoke with Simon Schultz, Partner in Prehype to talk about his app company and latest app Hotspotio ADM: What is Hotspotio? Simon: Hotspotio is a WIFI for favors app. It is a fast and secure way to get or share a WIFI connection without entering a password. A free Android app, Hotspotio lets users gift a WIFI connection to friends or strangers in exchange for favors like a drink, hug or Twitter follow. No matter where you are in your city, Hotspotio lets you track down the nearest free WIFI—and show some love to the nice person who made it available.


ADM: How long have you been developing apps? Simon: I have been dealing with the mobile space for 15 years, before apps were invented. I have done all sorts of mobile projects to all kind of mobile platforms. From the first tele text content on wap portals, to live streaming, votings on TV shows and apps. Mostly apps for the past 4 years. ADM: Do you program the apps or do you hire development companies? Simon: I most often work with the most talented freelancers I know. On larger projects I would team up with small dev shops. Our app

Hotspotio has been created by talented freelancers. ADM: How large is your team? Age range of team? Simon: There are five, one product lead, a creative dude, and three techs on backend and Android development. We are the “Old Boys” ranging from 28 to 38. ADM: Are you full time or part time? Simon: No one on the time is currently fulltime. We love Hotspotio and spend most of our time awake thinking and talking about it. But we all have other projects on the side.


ADM: What languages or SDK's do you typically use for development? Simon: Fully depends on the project. Hotspotio is a native Android application built on top of a REST API that serves all data from our Amazon cloud. ADM: How many apps do you have published? Simon: Just 1 so far. We might follow up with Hotspotio applications for the Windows Phone platform and iOS. ADM: Are you generating revenue? Simon: Not yet, we’re focusing on building the user base. But we have a business plan ready. ADM: Which market is more profitable for you? Simon: Hotspotio is currently only available on Android. ADM: What do you anticipate will be your most successful way of earning revenue with your apps?

Simon: I would say Freemium. You have to get people to download your app and give them an idea of what it is. Just like regular retail, that puts tons of stuff out in the street. ADM: Which mobile ad networks do you prefer? Simon: Admob seems to do the job. ADM: What is your development process (from idea to release?) Simon: I believe we work like any other startup. Keeping it lean. Keeping the releases quite small.

Testing and getting user feedback. Tweak, change, release, test…. ADM: Biggest challenges in mobile development for you? Simon: Just as you thought it was getting easier to develop for Android…. Tablets came :) ADM: How do you market your apps and do you do your own marketing? Simon: PR work, social media, Facebook Ads, Google Adwords. We are setting up our own stuff on Facebook Ads and Google Adwords. ADM: What is the single most important factor in app development? Simon: Give the developers more responsibility as they will give you tons of ideas, better quality and shorter development time. ADM: Do you have any developer tips? Simon: Again, let the developers join the product development. It will also make it much more fun for you. ADM: What is your latest favorite app? Simon: Rando, I love the simplicity. ADM: What device do you use personally? Simon: DeviceS. One is not enough. I carry around both an iPhone 4s and a Nexus 4.



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INDUSTRY SPOTLIGHT NEWS, NOTES, AND MORE

LOCALIZE YOUR APP WITH THE ACKUNA TRANSLATION COMMUNITY Localization. It means adapting your app to a specific country or region. With the opportunities available from emerging markets, it means a potentially big opportunity for expanding your app’s profit base. But the process can be a huge hassle; localizing an app can be a big commitment both financially and logistically. One company that is working to help developers localize their app is Ackuna, a free/paid translation community, which can parse any strings file you upload automatically, storing the text separately from the code while it’s translated. Once the translation is complete, the text is automatically reintegrated into the original file for download. Sound complicated? Perhaps on the backend, but the UI makes it simple for the user by accepting file formats for iOS, Android, BlackBerry, Java, Ruby, APP.NET, GNU gettext format, and XLIFF. For those with just plain text, a simply formatted Excel spreadsheet can also be uploaded (see Image 1). Ackuna is programmed in PHP, using the CakePHP development framework. Data is stored in MongoDB, a “NoSQL” database. Other frameworks and libraries include jQuery, Twitter Bootstrap, and the HTML5 Boilerplate. When it comes to language options, developers can choose one or multiple language pairs at a time. This is useful because there is a “cost-benefit” for different language pairs. For



example, even though Ackuna can be free, it might not be worth your time to translate your app into twenty different languages when only half of them may be for regions with little interest in your type of app anyway. Also, the more languages you have available, the more support you'll have to offer to people who speak languages that you probably don’t understand. So if there's a problem with the app and 20 different language users write in for help, it might get complicated trying to respond to everyone. So a little bit of research into your app’s major target markets can go a long way in limiting the amount of time and energy spent in maintaining your app, while still getting the most from the languages you choose. Along with multiple language options, Ackuna allows you to provide detailed descriptions, both for your app and for each segment of text. You are even encouraged to upload screen shots for each segment. The better the description, and the more sample images or screen shots you can provide, the more context you give the translators working on your project. This is an important element, since many words can have different meanings without proper context. So the more context you provide, the more accurate your translations will be. While the basic translation process is free, Ackuna provides 3 different translation options to choose from, depending on your needs. The first is Social Translation which is the free crowd sourcing option, where you make your project available to the community. Some translators are professional translators looking to build a network of clients; others are simply language enthusiasts looking to practice their skills. There are checks and balances in place in order to provide the most accurate translations possible. Through the integrated voting system (similar in concept to sites like Reddit and Quora) you can choose how many positive votes are needed before the system accepts a particular


translation. Once a translation receives that number of votes, only then is the translation of that segment accepted. Promoting your app within the community can help attract translators. This community atmosphere is particularly useful for developers with multiple projects, because they can establish a network of trusted translators. It’s also useful for translators, because they can maintain healthy client relationships and be a part of translating an app that they themselves might use. There’s mutual reciprocity for both sides. Shown in Image 2 is an example of what the translators see when they are looking for projects to translate. For developers looking for a faster turnaround with the highest degree of accuracy there is the Professional Translation paid option. You get the highest quality translation with a fast turnaround. When this option is chosen, projects will be paired with a pro-

fessional translator through Ackuna’s parent company, Translation Cloud. 2448 hour turnaround is also guaranteed with this option. For developers who simply want their app translated immediately and aren’t too concerned with accuracy, there is Computer-Generated Translation. With this option, Ackuna parses the file and translates it via a machine translator. You still receive your files back in the same format with the translations in place, but the quality will not be as accurate as the other two options. No matter what resource you use to localize your apps, as the internet and technology continues to become more and more global, having multilingual versions of apps and websites will not just be a niche concept. The sooner you adapt your online presence to this standard, ultimately the better position you will have over your competition.


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What Not to

JUST | PEACHY

Name Your App?

With the sheer number of apps available today, many good, original names have been taken, and not always by good, original apps. This list looks at a few stupid app names, although I'm sure it hardly scratches the surface. No offense intended do the developers; if I ever need an app to flip a virtual coin for me, or take $1000 to display a colorful icon, I will be sure to download your software posthaste!

Gimp Not to be confused with the popular design tool "GIMP," Gimp is an app for Android to help you keep up with a bands (presumably the band is called "Gimp", this isn't apparent from the description or truly terrible screenshots available at the time of writing) new music and pictures. The name can only conjure up one of two images, the aforementioned design tool, or someone clad in latex experiencing sensory deprivation. Sexy Girl Talk Does it speak sexy phrases in a female voice? No. Does it say dirty words? No. Moans? Nope. Actual talk? Guess again. This app is here because not only is the name completely unmemorable, but also it's really kind of a lie, in that this $1.99 app is nothing more than a glorified alphabet soundboard, with each letter spoken in a female voice. I Am Rich For those who don't remember, "I am Rich", beyond having an absurdly stupid name, also boasted


zero functionality. For the low, low price of $999.99, a user would launch the app to an expensive looking icon appearing on their screen.

COIN FLIP DIY Had this app just gone with the name "Coin Flip", it would have been alright; I am a name that says exactly what an app does. However "DIY", (Do It Yourself,) would imply there was some alternative when it comes to flipping coins, which I suppose is this app. However, if the app is doing the flipping for you, it's hardly DIY. All I know is I can't understand the reasoning behind that name. Angry finG The capitalization of the name made me think for a moment perhaps it was a palindrome, but alas no, "Gnif yrgna" makes no sense. It also seems to have nothing to do with what the app does. From what I can gather, it random selects a Facebook friend and you then kill them in the game.

name (and icon, for that matter,) I would not have guessed it was a photography app. iAnything Any app name that precedes the name with an "i" deserves to be on this list, unless it was released within 3, maybe 6 months of the App Store launching. It's the most unoriginal app naming "tactic" there is. 50 Shades of Spank No. Just no. Happy Doodle Sushi Smile This is kind of a bonus bad app name; it's the first app I ever coded and at the time crazy, long names made no sense. Now when people ask me about my first app, I cringe. Name wisely!

Diptiq PDQ This is a photography app and when reading "Diptiq" out loud the first time, it sounded like it meant something vaguely obscene. Then there's the "PDQ" part of the name, which upon further investigation stands for "Pretty Dang Quick." The app itself looks nice but from the Peach Pellen is an Evangelist and Beta Program Coordinator at Lanica, she has over 60 published apps in the mobile market and operates PeachPellen.com - http://peachpellen.com and Techority.com - http://techority.com in her spare time.


READERS | TAKE

Why ASO is not the only choice for app marketing A SMALL APP DEVELOPER’S PERSPECTIVE The app industry is still hot, however as a small, indie app developer, the question of how to market your app can be overwhelming and confusing. There can be two different mindsets for developers considering creating an app: (1) You can jump into the industry and make a ton of money; (2) It can be very difficult to make money with apps. The first is very simplistic but optimistic, while the second sounds doom-and-gloom. Most developers are very much divided into the two extremes in terms of their entrepreneurial circumstances. An established, successful “appreneur” can continue their successful app activities, updating existing apps and creating new ones, and continue to succeed based on the momentum he/she has created. Many of these successful appreneur’s are successful because they take advantage of tools that not all developers utilize. After all, not every appreneur is created equal.

READERS TAKE SUBMISSIONS We would like to hear your take on an issue facing app developers. Simply email to

[email protected] Readers takes submissions are limited to 600 words and one jpg or tiff graphic. Please include your name, headshot photo and a 20 words or less bio.


On the other hand, a budding appreneur can jump in, having very little knowledge of the industry, build an app, launch, and but not get enough traction to rack up their returns. They fret and throw up their hands saying: “I give up.” Appreneurs that belong in this second extreme tend to have a difficult time surviving in this industry. Why? One likely reason is because they only use ASO to market their products. Many appreneurs have been taught with the same lesson: use ASO and you will rise up the ranks in the app stores. I believe this is overly simplistic and wrong. I don’t dismiss ASO entirely, it is obviously a critical tool to increase your app’s searchability. However, this leads to an important point in that app stores don’t do the marketing for you. Although this sounds obvious, I want to make it a point. Typically an appreneur uses some combination of ASO tools to find the best keywords based on what competitors are possibly using (some are close to being accurate, but not always). However, app stores are unpredictable. Policies change, and ranking algorithms are based on a variety of factors. These can be contributing factors as to why not every new or struggling app rises up the ranks. If you have a new app or an existing app that isn’t doing well, you need to put more effort in marketing your app in order to improve your ASO. And it could take a long time. This can be a slow and ineffi-

cient approach. Because much of the app’s success depends on the app stores, many appreneurs feel that it is the only place to market. Any educated appreneur would know that the landscape is very different from that of 2008. The iTunes store was much smaller back then. But because today there are millions of apps across multiple platforms, it is very difficult to get your app noticed inside the stores, no matter how great an app. The good news is successful entrepreneurs in other crowded fields don’t market their products in only one way. There are a variety of different marketing opportunities these entrepreneurs utilize to help sell their products. I do not devalue ASO and I do not suggest you to abandon ASO. Yes, it is a good idea to come up with good titles, descriptions, keywords, and visuals to get your app catch eyeballs. But what I suggest here is to not rely on app stores alone. I am not a marketing expert, just a small developer, however it seems to me the crowded app stores are similar to overstocked retail stores. If you go to any retail store, you will notice that there are products categorically sorted into different departments. An electronics department would showcase different LED TVs, Blu-Ray players, and discs. A gaming department would include different video games developed for different popular gaming platforms. The list goes on and on. All these products are in stock, ready to be sold to


READERS | TAKE

consumers who walked into the store. However, the products that used to be in stock today will get replaced tomorrow by other products. A good example is security software. Security software that is built for this year will become obsolete next year and next year’s solution will replace this year’s solution. The similar idea goes for games, game consoles, movies, and many other types of products. Why is this? Because the companies that develop these products have to stay ahead of their competition. They periodically develop different products in order to continue innovation and distribute to new customers. Also, retail stock gets replaced to make room for those new products to sell. Now, if you think about this analogy and look back to app stores, do you notice the problem? App stores are - by definition retail stores for buying mobile apps. They are the stores where apps get sorted into different categories and customers buy them. However, they do not make room for other apps. An app that was developed roughly five years ago for iOS still remains in the iTunes store today. A new app that aims to compete in its category will simply have a hard time trying to succeed, no matter how hard you have worked on the ASO. So you need to examine alternative marketing opportunities outside of the app stores. These marketing options are not new or unique, but most developers do not spend the time or resources on them. These should include social media, app directories, paid advertising, and guest blogging. These techniques are not going to work unless you put in the appropriate amount of effort and creativity. But the good side to this is you are in control of your marketing. You are not just relying on ASO or app


stores to help you get to the top, so this is your chance to explore cheap to zero-cost methods and be creative about how you are going to market. Sounds old school? Well, many companies have been pro-active in their approach and many times their work in these areas pays off, no matter what industry they are in. Social media continues to grow and there are a variety of ways to approach social media marketing. Social media can be tricky because you have to know what kind of content to include to attract customers. The increasing number of opportunities now available are way beyond the scope of this article, however the good news is there is a wealth of information and advice available on promoting your app through social media. I suggest you spend time reading them, create a template on your specific approach and then execute it. App Directories are a great way to get an app to get noticed. An important thing to consider is to choose which directory can get the most eyeballs. Some directories tend to get a lot of traffic, and because directories are generally smaller than app stores, it is possible for your app to get noticed there. Paid advertising is known to help developers improve their metrics. The most obvious metric is the number of downloads. Ad networks such as Revmob and Admob exist to not only help developers monetize apps, but also distribute that information via the web. Moreover, developers can customize their ads to tailor to the types of consumers they want to attract. This is a great advantage because a consumer can be intro-

duced to related apps in the same category such as placing a gaming app ad in another game. Another advantage is that paid advertising can improve one of the most important app store rankings, the number of downloads. And this, combined with good reviews, can help improve an app’s rankings. You can also do guest posts which are effective when you are given the opportunity to share your content on popular sites. This is a win-win situation because the blog can showcase an article to visitors and you have a chance to gain some exposure. If you are a blogreader such as myself, then you probably know what it is like to be a visitor. It’s a good idea in your post to show links to your own personal content. As some readers like to just go from link to link, it can increase your traction as well. So, while I really just touched on the surface of marketing outside of the app stores, I hope that I have made my point that using ASO and app stores marketing opportunities alone are not always going to drive your app’s success. The overcrowding problem is solvable. Other small, niche companies compete in markets crowded with similar products. Companies succeed, despite a cluttered market and the searchability problems that app developers also face. So can you! So the next time you create an app, take the time to explore other promotional possibilities and at least experiment with them. There are no clear-cut solutions to build a successful app but once you get the hang of it, you hopefully will find a process that works for you. Entrepreneurship, including appreneurship, requires discipline and practice.

Vincent Lu is an indie app developer working towards a Bachelor of Science in Information Technology degree from Excelsior College.


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DEV | APP RANKINGS

Don’t Let Poor Analytics Kill Your Game Launch The secret to a successful mobile game launch is gathering and understanding your analytics By Rick Evans, Senior Director of Data Services, PlayHaven

Once you have this information, you can easily fine tune and fix it before it's broadly distributed.


As a mobile game developer, analytics are without a doubt one of the most important tools to help you launch your game. Not only do analytics help you understand the early performance of your game, but they also provide the context necessary to guide future product developments and optimize your marketing efforts. When you’re launching your mobile game into the market, it is critical to have a plan in place for monitoring your analytics. Understanding your game’s performance within the first of weeks of its life will enable you to make

strategic decisions related to product development and marketing campaigns, such as paid user acquisition. During launch beta tests for example, analytics can identify potential problems in your game such as payments or first time user experiences (FTUE) highlighting the need for tutorials. Once you have this information, you can easily fine tune and fix it before it's broadly distributed. Though this might sound daunting, preparation will ensure you're set up for success from the beginning. In the following few


DEV | APP RANKINGS

paragraphs, I'll breakdown how to understand the most important metrics including user retention, engagement and revenue metrics. I've included what actions you should take before game launch and in the first few weeks of your game's life. ● Part I: Understand Your User Retention ● Part II: Gauge User Engagement ● Part III: Evaluate Revenue Metrics ● Part IV: Know Your Benchmarks


PART I: UNDERSTAND YOUR USER RETENTION User retention is the single most important key performance indicator (KPI) for any game launch. Understanding retention will allow you to forecast daily active users based on game installs. With a forecast of your DAU, you can accurately estimate daily revenue and determine how much budget to allocate to paid user acquisition. User retention is generally expressed as the percentage of returning users in days from their install date. For example, Day 1

retention is the ratio of the number of people who installed yesterday who are playing today compared with the number of people who installed yesterday. Similarly, Day 7 retention is the ratio of the number of people who installed a week ago who are playing today compared with the number of people who installed a week ago. So, what’s a good retention value? You should expect the value to vary by game type - free vs. paid - and by game genre. However, here’s a quick overview of what a healthy game should


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DEV | APP RANKINGS

Image 2 - View of a mobile game with a healthy retention rate

look like: Day 1 Retention: 35%+; Day 7 Retention: 15%+; Day 14 Retention: 10%+; Day 30 Retention: 5%+. Day 1 retention is the most critical retention metric to understand and monitor. As a general rule, if you retain less than 30% of your users on Day 1, you need to investigate why your players are not returning. Look at your user flows. Are there areas where you are seeing a large number of drop offs? Try to optimize these areas with better game mechanics. Image 2 shows an example of what your retention curve should


look like when launching your game. Now that you’re able to determine the percentage of users that are likely to stay in your game after installing it from the retention curve, you can now build a model to forecast how many installs you will need to hit or maintain a certain DAU level. This will be helpful when planning paid acquisition for your game launch. Shown in Image 3 and Image 4 are examples of how to forecast your DAU growth with your user retention metrics.

PART II: GAUGE USER ENGAGEMENT Engagement is a KPI that tells you how active your users are in your game. Engagement metrics look at the activity of existing users, where retention (as discussed earlier) focuses on the activity of new users. There are different engagement metrics, but the most common are Number of Game Sessions Per User, Ratio of DAU to Weekly Active (WAU) or Monthly Active Users (MAU), and number of days a user plays on average per week. Since sessions per user vary


DEV | APP RANKINGS

Image 3

considerably based on the game type, it is best to use a metric that accounts for this variability and provides a good overall view of your game. The best metric I’ve encountered is the ratio of DAU to MAU. We’ll call this your Monthly Engagement (Image 5). Helpful Hit: Since DAU varies quite a bit during the week, calculate Monthly Engagement as the ratio of 7 day average DAU compared to MAU. For example, your Monthly Engagement would be calculated as: (DAU day 1+2+3+4+5+6+7)/7 divided by MAU. What Monthly Engagement value should you be aiming for? Like we mentioned in the retention section, this varies from genre to genre. However, 40% is a good ratio to shoot for initially.


Anything above 50% suggests that your players are highly engaged. PART III: EVALUATE REVENUE METRICS For a free-to-play game, the most important revenue KPI is Average Revenue Per Daily Active User (ARPDAU). ARPDAU measures your revenue and performance of your monetization campaigns at the per-player level. This metric also varies depending on the game genre, but here are some examples of the standard ARPDAU to aim for in each of the following genres: Casino games: $.14 USD; Farming/Economy games: $.08 USD; Arcade type games: $.05 USD; Advertising only games $.02 USD. It is fairly easy to calculate

Since sessions per user vary considerably based on the game type, it is best to use a metric that accounts for this variability and provides a good overall view of your game. App Developer Magazine

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DEV | APP RANKINGS

Image 4

review your in-app purchases and ensure they are priced effectively and placed meaningfully in your game 46 | App Developer Magazine

ARPDAU. Just gather your revenue numbers from Apple or Google and then divide it by your DAU, which is typically gathered from your own internal system or a 3rd party mobile platform provider. With an accurate view of your ARPDAU, you understand how your monetization campaigns - virtual goods or displaying ingame ads - are performing. If your ARPDAU is less than the industry averages outlined earlier, review your in-app purchases and ensure they are priced effectively and

placed meaningfully in your game. Another important metric to consider at game launch is the Average Revenue Per Paying User (ARPPU), which gives an understanding of repeat payers. This metric can help you quickly determine if you’ve priced your virtual goods appropriately. For example, let’s say you’re looking at three pricing options for your lowest priced virtual goods package: $0.99, $1.99 and $2.99. Through game analytics,


DEV | APP RANKINGS

Image 5 - Monthly Engagement is the ratio of Daily Active Users (DAU) to Monthly Active Users (MAU)

you know a large segment of users buy the lowest priced package and only make one in game purchase. You also know that dropping the price by half is unlikely to double the conversion rate for this segment of users. Therefore, you may want to consider choosing the $2.99 option to maximize your revenue. SECTION IV: KNOW YOUR BENCHMARKS If you’ve launched a game and wish to launch a sequel or the


same game on another platform, benchmarking is a great way to compare the results of both game launches (see Image 6). From this analysis, you can quickly see how well the new game performs. The KPIs I’ve outlined earlier are ideal for benchmarking, in particular retention and ARPDAU. Knowledge is power. Understanding how your new game compares to a previously launched game will help you quickly determine necessary

resolutions and uncover successes. From here, you can adjust accordingly for continued success. You can also use benchmarking to compare similar games and different platform versions to get more insight into how your games are performing relative to each other. SUMMARY To set the foundation for success, it’s critical to understand the metrics in your game, their


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DEV | APP RANKINGS

Image 6 - iOS and Android Retention Benchmarks

Focusing on the most important areas, such as Retention and Revenue, can help steer your product development in the right direction.


relationship with each other, and the impact they have on your game early in its launch. The use of analytics should be built into your game launch strategy. Testing your game in smaller markets provides you with the opportunity to understand what works and what doesn’t. Focusing on the most important areas, such as Retention and Revenue, can help steer your product development in the right direction. Plan to iterate and improve your game before launching at a broader scale. The actionable insights gathered early on will help prepare you for a successful worldwide launch and beyond. ❖

Rick Evans

As Senior Director of Data Services at PlayHaven, Rick oversees the company's strategic business intelligence and data warehouse infrastructure. With more than 5,000 mobile games in PlayHaven's network, Rick delivers actionable, data driven insights to leading developers and publishers to help optimize and maximize the performance of their games. Rick has extensive experience building successful business intelligence and analytics systems for large game mobile publishers including Atari and Zynga. Prior to Atari and Zynga, Rick held senior data analyst roles at several e-commerce and technology companies including eBay and SAS Institute.


Tired of Waiting for People to Download Your App? Is your app floundering in the marketplace? Find the answers in each monthly issue of App Develper Magazine and at

AppDeveloperMagazine.com Imagine • Develop • Launch

DEV | MARKETS

MICROSOFT and NOKIA How a cohesive developer program will bring out the real value of this deal By Steve Glagow, EVP Sales and Marketing, Developerprogram.com

ike many people in the mobile industry, we’ve been following the news of Microsoft’s purchase of Nokia’s mobile phone unit with great interest. It’s a deal that seems to make perfect sense coming after

L


three years of partnership between the two companies. But despite their efforts over the last three years, a recent survey found that only 40% of mobile app developers are interested in developing for Windows Mobile,

versus 78% for Android and 90% for iOS. So will an acquisition change that? And what must Nokia and Microsoft do to work effectively with the developer community and create new opportunities?


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DEV | MARKETS

THE IMPORTANCE OF CREATING A UNIFIED DEVELOPER ECOSYSTEM ACROSS SOFTWARE AND HARDWARE There is no doubt that Microsoft and Nokia are in possession of some of the world’s finest developer talent. However in recent years they have disenfranchised much of that talent by failing to articulate a clear business case and path to success. Trying to combine developer talent, from two of the IT world’s richest legacies, in a rapidly changing app ecosystem, is not going to be easy. Successfully bringing their pools of developers together, in a single program that explains the benefits it offers to all of them, is crucial to Microsoft and Nokia’s future success. By acquiring a handset manufacturer, as Google did with its acquisition of Motorola in 2011, Microsoft gains the ability to create a unified

developer ecosystem across software and hardware that will let it innovate both in handset design and in user experience, as Google is now doing with Moto X. But unlike Google and Motorola, Nokia devices already make up the largest share of the WM8 market so the opportunities for a combined program are arguably even greater. Well run developer programs enable a strategic partnership between a company and its developers; one that sees talented developers bring their best ideas forward with a clear understanding of the mutual benefits to be gained. These developer programs grow customer loyalty,

decrease customer churn and increase revenue for all parties. Not only that but engaged developers then become valuable evangelists for a brand.

THE COMPONENTS OF A SUCCESSFUL DEVELOPER PROGRAM So what steps do Microsoft and Nokia need to take to build a successful and engaged community of developers, working within a single program? Step one is to design a program that is equally focused on the needs of both developers and the company. This may seem obvious but in many programs, the benefits to developers are not made clear at the grass roots level, failing to attract new developers, or re-engage existing developers, who aren’t able to see the value proposition. Developer acquisition, another core part of a program, is something that should be ongoing, especially in an environment like the one Microsoft and Nokia face, where far more developers are currently focused on their competitors. When launching a new program, with dif-

ferent components to the previously independent programs, initial acquisition efforts are crucial in establishing the brand and value proposition correctly in the developer community. The platform that underpins a program can make the difference between success and failure. Creating a developer portal instead of a website will lead to better engagement. A portal registers and authenticates its users with advanced registration and security capabilities that recognize users and their company relationships as well as displaying multiple user experiences depending on the user’s specialization or role. A website, on the other hand is open and displays the same content for everyone. A portal should have a simple initial requirement for

information. Only when developers have invested time in a program and understood the benefits it offers, should they be asked to supply more detailed information. In



DEV | MARKETS

addition, it’s important that the system architecture and programming approach used supports rapid changes as mobile developer programs always need to be updated with the freshest content to remain relevant to developers.

Finally, creating a sense of a combined community is particularly important if the companies want to combine two great legacies into an even greater future. Developer conferences and developer days are a great platform to reach out to

large groups and publicize programs that have been designed for their benefit. Giving developers direct access to a group of senior decision makers so technical and business issues can be discussed is very valuable.

OPPORTUNITIES FOR DEVELOPERS TO CREATE A SUSTAINABLE APP BUSINESS WITH MICROSOFT AND NOKIA If Microsoft and Nokia follow the steps outlined earlier and bring together all the components for an engaged community of developers, there will be many opportunities for those who come on board early and tie their success with the combined company. Both Microsoft and Nokia have significant marketing expertise – and of course budget – that will be brought to bear in helping the best developers promote their products and stand apart from the crowd. In a competitive marketplace of hundreds of thousands of apps, discovery is a major challenge developers face and Microsoft and Nokia programs for marketing apps will go a long way towards addressing this challenge. While Microsoft currently has a low market share in the US, in the Latin region Windows Mobile has the second largest operating system

market share, largely attributed to the success of the low cost Nokia Lumia 520 smartphone. This opens up a huge opportunity for developers who want to expand their presence into a fast growing international market. Equally, Microsoft’s strength and heritage in the business market should not be overlooked by developers working in the enterprise space. It’s been shown that enterprise customers with custom-built applications are less likely to switch to a competitor – and in turn, their customers who are using these apps on their handsets are more likely to remain – so this creates a viable ongoing opportunity for enterprise developers within the Microsoft/Nokia program. These are just a few examples many more opportunities will come to light if Microsoft and Nokia

prioritize the creation of a combined developer program. If the new combined company truly embraces the developer community around it, there is no doubt that it will increase pace of mobile innovation and provide some much needed competition in the duopoly of today’s mobile market. ❖

Steve Glagow

Steve has over 25 years of experience in the telecommunications, management consulting, software and computer hardware industries, including the last 12 years in which he has earned a reputation worldwide as a developer program authority within multiple industry segments. He specializes in successfully setting up and running developer programs for large multi-national organizations - either employed by them or providing a service to them via his current organization, developerprogram.com - and has both opera-


tional and strategic business planning experience, together with marketing, product management, sales,consulting and technology development skills. Heading up the Sales & Marketing division at developerprogram.com, Steve previously held the position of VP Marketing for Orange Group for six years, building the Orange Partner developer program from nothing to a membership base of 55,000 members during that time. Prior to joining Orange, Steve was Director of HP’s international Software Developer & Partner Program and has also held senior positions with Bluestone Software, Informix Software, Silicon Graphics, Digital Equipment Corporation and Coopers & Lybrand.


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It takes more than a bright idea. Is your app floundering in the marketplace? Find the answers in each monthly issue of App Develper Magazine and at AppDeveloperMagazine.com


DEV | GAMING

BRINGING

Old School Games INTO THE NEW WORLD OF MOBILE APPS By Anton Faulconbridge

Right now we’re in a golden era of gaming – mobile technology has brought iconic games from days gone by to a fresh new audience, and the industry itself is pushing itself to create ever more amazing experiences. But as mobile app developers are finding, the next big thing needn’t be brand new…! It’s true to say that the elements that make a game great haven’t really changed, and probably never will. Playability is a combination of lots of things – difficulty, balance, emotion and innovation. How we play has changed, but the essence of a great game remains the same. Back in 1982, a totally unique video game console was launched called ‘Vectrex’. What made the Vectrex unique was that instead of Imagine • Develop • Launch

the ‘raster’ style of graphics that were common in systems of the time, Vectrex used ‘vectors’ – perfectly straight, pure, totally unpixelated phosphor lines. It was state of the art. And I had one. The games – by modern standards – are incredibly simple. You probably even recognize some of them - like Scramble (the first ever side-scrolling shooter), Pole Position and Minestorm (an Asteroids-style clone). What the games lacked in outright graphics chops by modern standards, the games more than made up for with play-it-one-more-time addictiveness. After all, when you’ve only got 8k of memory per game to play with (about a million times less than ‘Call of

Image Courtesy of Evan Amos

IT WAS STATE OF THE ART. AND I HAD ONE. App Developer Magazine

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DEV | GAMING Image 2

WE DECIDED THAT IT WOULD BE COOL TO BRING VECTREX BACK TO A NEW AUDIENCE 56 | App Developer Magazine

Duty’ incidentally!) the game play has to be addictive outside of a purely graphical experience. That’s all well and good, but where do mobile app developers come in? Here are a couple of answers to that question, For a start, if you consider ‘handheld gaming’ as a category (including dedicated hardware like the Playstation Vita), the current generation of smartphones and tablets are incredibly capable - to the point where, for lots of people, they have entirely replaced consoles and desktops as the platform they use to consume their gaming. And the trend is for that to continue. The mar-

ket is huge as well – on iOS alone (iPhone, iPad, iPod) you have access to over 500,000,000 people. And practically all of them have credit cards linked to their account. We decided that it would be cool to bring Vectrex back to a new audience – the physical size of the iPad was almost identical to the original Vectrex screen, and with high resolution ‘retina’ displays it gave us the potential to re-create the unique look of the original console with its crisp lines (see Image 2). We managed to secure a global license to the Vectrex brand, and set about bringing it to the App Store. It was a pretty major undertaking – in all around 11 months of mobile design and development. THE CHALLENGES Vectrex has a very vibrant user community – with new titles still


DEV | GAMING being developed and released as ‘homebrew’ titles. In fact, there are now more homebrew titles than there were original titles! Having such an active community is great, but it also means there were huge pressures to deliver something that was totally in-keeping and 100% authentic with the original console. We wanted the user experience to be stand-out, and ended up going through a number of prototypes before we settled on our final concept. The main objective initially was to find an immersive way of having the player choose the game they wanted to play from the collection. We started out with just choosing from a drop-down menu4, before moving to a visual game shelf which could be flicked left and right to select a game (Image 4). We then understood that we had the wrong focus – it shouldn’t just be on the games – but on the console itself – we wanted people to understand the physicality of the system. So we settled on presenting a complete 3D virtual 1980s style bedroom with desk, Vectrex console, shelves holding games and historical items, an old TV with VHS video (for playing old Vectrex adverts), a chalkboard for scores and a corkboard for achievements the player won when playing their games (Image 5). It’s true that some of the Vectrex games are quite hard (though it varies) – or at least they could appear to be if you compare them to some of today’s perhaps more ‘hand holding’ titles - so do people really want to play these games? Our experience says yes, they do. The kind of games (i.e. simple) fit well with the ‘mobile mindset’ of small, pick-up-put-down style games, and the difficulty is less of a barrier than you might think – with many modern mobile games (think ‘Super Hexagon’ and ‘Impossible Road’ etc) playing up to their ‘easy to play, difficult to master’ image. The final major challenge was the


Image 3

controls. The original Vectrex has a fantastic controller, with an analogue joystick and 4 very tactile buttons. It’s regarded as one of the best joysticks of any console, ever (no pressure there then!) and we had to transfer this experience to a flat, touch sensitive screen. In the end, we approached the problem from multiple directions – we made the joystick and button placement extremely customizable; we also made sure we

supported external controllers like the ‘iCade’ and devised a clever ‘external controller’ mechanic of our own by allowing players to use an additional iPhone or iPad as a controller. MONETIZATION Mobile gives you quite an array of monetization options varying from a standard paid app to more exotic combinations of freemium, paid with In-App, ad-supported and lots of dif-


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DEV | GAMING ferent currency models. We opted for a freemium release, as we felt strongly we wanted players to get a feel for the game before making the decision to purchase. We decided to have just one single ‘purchase’ – which would give the player all the games, iCade support and external controller support. BRINGING VECTREX TO MARKET Anyone who has ever tried to create a game or any meaningful piece of software and bring it to market will have experienced the resistance, the downright latency associated with… well, actually shipping. We also experienced just how difficult it is to step back from a project. When you’ve dedicated so much time to a project there is always something else you can add or a feature you can refine or tweak. In fact, that was probably part of the reason it took us so long – we weren’t willing to compromise on the features and player experience we wanted to offer. That doesn’t mean we were working without deadlines – we had a solid titanium, bullet-proof, ten-foot-thick wall of a deadline. And it had to be met. Cue weeks of pizza, late nights and stress. Crunchcity welcomes you… From the point you

Image 4

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publish to the App Store, it feels like you are on autopilot. Apple is reviewing, press releases have been written and the main development is all done. You’re waiting for that Thursday. Thursday is the day the App Store churns over, lots of new stuff gets launched and the world finds out what Apple wants to showcase this week. It’s pretty tense. Thursday finally came and we found out that we had been featured on the homepage of the App Store in 141 countries! We also got great coverage in hundreds of blogs and news sites internationally, which gave us giving us a huge amount of exposure. FINAL THOUGHTS It’s impossible to come up with a repeatable formula for making a successful game or app, but there are some things you can do which will help to swing things in your favor. Fundamentally, I think it’s about ‘heart’ – you’ve got to have a passion for what you’re doing, deliver something stand-out and go the extra mile. It may seem like the little things don’t matter; but they absolutely do. ❖

Anton Faulconbridges President AssertID Anton is a digital technologist who has worked in software, creative and interactive media since 1994 and has a wealth of experience developing and managing creative software projects. Anton founded Rantmedia in 2003. Initially offering high-end web application services, Rantmedia morphed into a team of mobile app developers in 2008, and has since created mobile apps and games for many international brands. Anton founded the dedicated games studio Rantmedia Games - in 2012. The studio has so far created numerous games, receiving international acclaim and being featured internationally on the App Store.


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DEV | LEGAL

If You Can’t Beat Them -

Join Them By Adam D.H. Grant, Alpert, Barr & Grant

California Attorney General Launches Mobile App!

even if it did,

the law did not apply to mobile apps


California’s Attorney General, Kamala Harris appears to have finally seen the utility of mobile apps and embraced the proverb, “if you can’t beat them – join them.” On September 9, 2013, Attorney General Harris issues a press release announcing the launch of “JusticeMobile app.” The announcement is particularly noteworthy as Harris in December 2012 initiated the first lawsuit in California against Delta Airlines alleging Delta’s mobile app violated California’s Online Privacy Protection Act. According to The Yale Book of Quotations, which attempts to trace all famous quotations to their earliest findable occurrence, the earliest citation given, in the form “If you can’t lick ‘em, jine ‘em,” is from the Atlantic Monthly, February 1932. The phrase is described as one of Senator James E. Watson‘s “favorite sayings.” It appears that Harris has embraced this saying in the political climate created after a San Francisco Superior Court dismissed her case against Delta Airlines on the grounds that

California law did not even apply to Delta Airlines mobile app. After giving Delta Airlines notice that she believed Delta’s mobile app violated the law, Harris filed the complaint in December 2012. In the complaint, Harris alleged that Delta failed to “conspicuously post a privacy policy in its Fly Delta app” and failed to comply with its own website privacy policy. The complaint alleged that these violations of California’s Online Privacy Protection Act (CalOPPA), constituted Unfair Competition. California law requires commercial operators of online services to conspicuously post privacy policies informing users of what personally identifiable information is being collected and how it will be used. In March 2013, Delta attached the basic allegations of the complaint. Delta argued that California law did not apply, that even if it did, the law did not apply to mobile apps and that Delta complied by including a notice in its website. On May 9, 2013, the Superior Court of


m

DEV | LEGAL California for the City and County of San Francisco's agreed with Delta’s argument that California law did not apply. In a brief two-page order, the court sustained Delta's demurrer to the complaint. “We are pleased the Court has confirmed our view that the California statute does not apply to airlines because it is preempted by federal law,” Paul Skrbec, a Delta spokesman, stated on May 10. “The protection of customer information is something that Delta takes very seriously.” Initially, according to Lynda Gledhill, a spokeswoman for the AG’s office, the California AG's office was reviewing the decision and had no further comment. Apparently, after reviewing the decision and the complaint, the AG’s office felt that it wanted another bite at the apple – so it filed an appeal. As of the date of this article, the parties are waiting for the Court of Appeals to tell them when their briefs will be done. Given the short lived life of the underlying case, the briefing on this matter

justice information. Until now, officers have had to use a phone or radio to contact personnel to obtain this information.” JusticeMobile was tested over the past five months by more than 600 San Francisco Police Department (SFPD) officers. Now, JusticeMobile is being rolled out to all SFPD officers, giving them access to internal SFPD, California DOJ and federal law enforcement databases. Justice Mobile will soon be available to law enforcement agencies across the state. The Los Angeles Police Department plans to equip 3,600 officers with the technology. “We have mobile apps for everything from banking to board games on our phones. But, incredibly, law enforcement hasn’t had the tools to access important criminal justice information on handhelds and tablets until now,” said Attorney General Harris. “JusticeMobile is a quantum leap forward for public and peace officer safety, and it demonstrates our commitment to facilitating the

Image 1

information gathered by the app? According to the AG’s release, “JusticeMobile employs many rigorous security standards, including:

law enforcement hasn’t had the tools to access important criminal justice information on handhelds and tablets until now should be concluded by March 2014 and oral argument will likely occur during early summer. Despite this bitter defeat, the California AG’s office is joining the 21st Century by launching its own mobile app, “JusticeMobile app.” The AG’s office joined San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee and San Francisco Police Chief Greg Suhr to launch the app. According to the AG’s office, “JusticeMobile is a mobile app that gives law enforcement agents, for the first time, secure and immediate access to state and federal criminal


adoption of new technology by law enforcement. I thank Mayor Lee and Chief Suhr for their partnership on this important project.” The press release goes on to tout the app by stating, the “JusticeMobile smartphones give officers on the streets instant access to law enforcement data where information in real time counts.” Given the AG’s push toward online and mobile app privacy laws, the question becomes – just how does this app protect people’s privacy and maintain the security of the

strong password requirements, a Virtual Private Network requiring two-factor authorization, encryption, limits on downloads and backup/syncing, and prohibiting copying or screen captures.” This sounds promising, but so did the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) until a leaked copy of a top secret court order revealed that the NSA required Verizon to hand over all telephone records in its systems. As the app is also being used to check the identity of gun buyers against the Bureau of Firearms Armed Prohibited


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DEV | LEGAL

Apparently the user can

tap into records from the Department of Motor Vehicles, criminal records and even mental health records. Adam Grant Adam is the Chief Legal Contributor for App Developer Magzaine and is a partner with Alpert, Barr & Grant, A Professional Law Corporation. With over 20 years of experience, he supports the firm’s litigation practice with expertise in complex business disputes, mobile app law, privacy and embezzlement issues, construction law and real estate matters. He has litigated in both state and federal courts.


Persons (APPS) database, one questions whether the proper notices are being provided to consumers. The AG’s office posted electronic images of portions of the app on its website to help preview the app. The app looks just like any other app on an iPhone (Image 1), but appears to be a very powerful tool. The opening page of the app (Image 2), while not the most visually pleasing, employs the use of easily identifiable icons to assist the user in navigating through its various levels. Apparently the user can tap into records from the Department of Motor Vehicles, criminal records and even mental health records. Clearly each category includes what California would consider, personal identifiable information. The real issue for the AG’s office and Ms. Harris involves whether people are notified that their information is going to be used and accessed through a mobile app. Initially, you might say; Is that really necessary? People already know that their information is being accessed through various data bases over the internet. According to the AG’s lawsuit against Delta Airlines, that is not enough. One of the key allegations in the lawsuit involved the interplay between the privacy notice contained on Delta’s website and the alleged lack of a compliant notice in the actual mobile app. According to the AG’s complaint, merely because Delta had a privacy notice on its website, did not shield it from liability when California consumers used the Fly Delta mobile app. So, simply telling people that their information is being used online, does not shield a company from using the same information in a mobile app. Based on Ms. Harris’ own argument, it appears she will need to insure that California consumers who’s mental health, criminal records or DMV records are accessible on line are also told that their information may be accessed via a mobile app. The

Image 2

release does not address these issues so it remains to be seen whether the use Ms. Harris’ own app will comply with the CalOPPA by somehow disclosing to California consumers that their personal identifiable information will be used in a mobile app. It is truly ironic that California’s Attorney General, who has been at the forefront of insuring compliance with privacy laws to mobile apps, has launched a mobile app that inherently relies on the culling and use of personal identifiable information. While seemingly ironic, the AG’s move actually reinforces the value of mobile apps. Apps are tools that help consumers accomplish a myriad of tasks, store information, gather information from numerous locations, to name only a few uses. However, apps are also used as a means of gathering information from user for again, a myriad of uses. As indicated by the California AG’s application of CalOPPA to mobile apps, the gathering of information is entirely permissible, the operation just needs to inform the user. Thus, by launching the JusticeMobile app, the California Attorney General realized, since she could not beat them, she might as well join them. We will just have to see what happens to the Delta case on appeal and if the app draws criticism from the FTC or non-governmental privacy advocates. ❖


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DEV | TOOLS

5 Reasons HTML5 is Right for You and Your Next App



DEV | TOOLS

HTML5 fits the needs of a dynamic market By Dmitry Sergeev, Co-Founder and CSO of Playtox

When it comes to creating an app, many developers choose the iOS or Android path to market. However, these shouldn’t be the only options that are considered. HTML5 is picking up steam worldwide and for good reason. It provides many benefits for developers that native apps simply don’t have – from the development process down to the user acquisition stage. Developers should consider the following key characteristics of HMTL5 when determining how to bring their app or game to users. 1. It makes coding easier. During the coding stage, a developer considers which operating system they want to create their app for – iOS, Android, other platforms? If they want to reach users on all of these platforms, then they have to code an app for each of them. And they’re not even done then – they have to code for each type of device that consumers have as well – tablets, computers, phones, and more. The coding of HTML5, on the other hand, will allow you to do it once and be done. Once the code for your app is


written, then it can be used on any device with a modern browser. It is also extremely cost effective when you don’t have to devote time and resources into creating multiple versions of your product for each operating system. You’ll also be avoiding a lot of the headaches associated with coding on iOS and Google Play. 2. It allows for easier social media integration. According to Forbes, social media usage is up 800 percent for U.S. online adults from 2005. HTML5, especially when it comes to gaming, makes social media integration much easier than in native applications. Social media sharing is critical to user acquisition. For example, as of March 2013, there were over 1.5 million apps in Apple and Google’s stores combined, and about 60 percent of those had never even been downloaded. Not even once. But when your game is available via a linkable webpage then it can be distributed through Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Email, Google searches, Skype, and any place you can think of – the sky is the limit. Friends can send each

HTML5 is picking up steam worldwide and for good reason.


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DEV | TOOLS

HTML5 fits the needs of a dynamic market, providing superior accessibility and apps that are constantly being improved.

other access to the actual app, instead of giving direction on how they can hunt it down themselves. 3. You don’t have to meet the stringent app store regulations. As a developer, the process of making upgrades is very different in an app store. When your app or game is in the app store every little change needs approval and those changes need to be within their guidelines. To add even more complexity to that rule, the restrictions on apps are constantly changing. Even if your app is compliant one minute, all it takes is a change in policy for your app to be dismissed from the store. Another downfall is that placement in the store requires you to hand over 30 percent of your profits right up front, just to be in the store. Imagine having one of those apps that is never downloaded. 4. It avoids the extra step in the conversion funnel that app stores add. Conversion rate for good applications in an app store is about 3-4 percent (so, if you buy 100 clicks to the store you will get about 3-4 downloads from that, and 30 percent of those will never even launch your app). On the other hand, the web will direct your users instantly to your product (the conversion rate is 30-40 percent from a landing page). Stop wasting your money in the store when users are more likely to download another game instead of yours anyway! 5. There are more revenue opportunities. App stores restrict your payment options to credit cards. You might


think that is not the worst thing in the world, but if you are aiming to take advantage of a more international market it can be an issue. U.S. consumers rely on credit cards, but that does not apply to the global economy by any means. The opportunities in HTML5 have been recognized, and advancements are being driven by browser vendors and investors alike. In fact, top browsers such as Opera and Mozilla have been expanding their capabilities to better suit HTML5 apps for quite some time now. Recently, the main investor in Angry Birds, Kaj Hed, made headlines by announcing his investment into Goo Technologies’ HTML5 technology. BoostMedia also announced a $5M Series A round of funding in September. HTML5 fits the needs of a dynamic market, providing superior accessibility and apps that are constantly being improved. Developers have the tools available, now is the time to use them. ❖

Dmitry Sergeev Dmitry is the co-founder and CSO of Playtox, Inc., a leading mobile game developer of free-to-play browser games. Dmitry is also CEO and co-owner of Next Media Group (NMG). Dmitry has spent his career working in different gaming companies as a gaming producer, business developing director, and head of the departments of the license and publishing of gaming products.


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5 reasons html5 is right for you and your next app - App Developer ...

5 reasons html5 is right for you and your next app - App Developer ...

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