Tag Archives: app

Take a peek into a hackathon assembled on the fly.

By Marissa Louie, July 2

What happens when someone come up with a half baked idea that could -potentially- change up the commerce game, then decides to act upon it?

We are about to find out because in the past few hours we’ve assembled a team including up to 8 developers, 1 designer, and myself on the fly to hack it out and see if it will work:

• William Nelson
• Craig Benson
• Sugam Pandey
• Steve Enzer
• Lucija Kordic
• Ari Greenberg
• Joanne Sun
• Michael Arace
• Suyash Joshi
• Marissa Louie

We even have a sponsor who called with a generous offer:

Special thanks to appbackr, The New Way to Finance Your Apps.

The premise: I came up with an idea for a new platform about a day ago. Then we announced the hackathon on a whim.

The plan: Spend up to 48 hours developing an iPhone app while challenging ourselves to produce something of value to society.

This weekend should be a blast. Perhaps more fun than the trip to Belize, surfing, and golfing outings I cancelled in order to build this!

About the Author:

Marissa is a contributor to Adotas, BusinessWeek, and Huffington Post. Follow her on Twitter: @malouie

Marissa Louie is the Founder and CEO of HeroEx, San Francisco’s affordable 1 hour delivery service, where customers buy items then have them delivered in 1 hour or less.

Contact her at (510) 375-1941, or email marissa@heroex.com.

In celebration of the release of their first iPhone application, Dale Carnegie Training is giving away 200 hardback copies of “How To Win Friends & Influence People.” This classic book has sold over 15 million copies to date, and incorporates human relations principles which have helped generations of people worldwide enjoy personal and professional success.

The books will be distributed via contests to the readers at 20 blogs – including Bubblicious. To enter, our readers simply need to follow bubblicious on Twitter, and retweet this post (see the “Tweet this” button below). Winners will be notified via DM. Here are the overall Contest Rules on the Dale Carnegie blog.

The application is a an adaptation of Dale Carnegie courses aimed to help you enhance your relationships with others, gain cooperation, and be a leader. The skills gained can be directly applied to improving public speaking, mastering workplace culture, presentation effectiveness, team member engagement, leadership development, sales effectiveness, customer service and lots more.

For more information about the Secrets of Success app, visit the iTunes store.

Sprite may be looking to join music artists with iPhone users for the creation of the next big hit. A new app called ZoozBeat features tracks from various artists such as Dallas Austin, all of which can be remixed by app users for a unique beat. The ZoozBeat mobile app turns iPhone users into music producers, with the iPhone as your mobile music studio.

What do users get out of it? The fun of making beats based on exclusive content from well-known artists. Users can then upload the music and share it with the world. Artists get the chance to hear their own creations from new perspectives, tapping into the power of the crowd towards this end.

The app itself works by shaking, tapping or tilting their iPhones. The music gets remixed according to your motions, adding a bit of dynamic fun to the ZoozBeat iPhone app. You can download new beats, learn more about the artist that initially created the beat, and edit music to your own personal tastes.

It seems unlikely that the participating artists would want to seek the aid of iPhone users for the purpose of creating new beats. Even if this was the case, the ZoozBeat iPhone app acts as a mini mobile portal for the artist. Creating content for a mobile app like this increases visibility and finds new ways in which to explore the music industry.

The other interesting aspect of the ZoozBeat app is that it utilizes some of the iPhone device’s best aspects, appealing to a wide user base. For the purpose of marketing an artist, combining the iPhone and its capabilities as a device makes for great access to consumers. What the consumers do from there is up to them.

Even as the music industry struggles to find a way to regain its days of glory, the new economies of mobile and web apps introduce new opportunities for it to do so. What remains to be seen is how much the music industry will have to rely on associated branding in order to do so.

Sprite gets to reap the benefits of associated branding by powering the ZoozBeat app, using music as a universal marketing message to reach out to consumers. Artists, on the other hand, rely on brands like Sprite for a certain amount of distribution and access to a wide range of consumers. It’s an interesting play, and it’s one that has been gaining steam in the web and mobile app realms.

Time will tell if such apps have any lasting power, with combined strategies seeking similar ends. The cooperative efforts towards reaching a single goal means that partnerships could continue to be successfully forged, with a necessary focus on the end consumer to help carry the marketing message to their friends. ZoozBeat in particular is an interesting way to promote music, its popular artists, and the engagement of users.

by Brian Solis

Artists, musicians, and those representing them have access to an unprecedented infrastructure for communicating with influencers, fans, promoting and monetizing art, and also building communities – without the need for traditional labels and publishers.

While there’s much talk about Social Media, specifically Twitter, Ning, Facebook, and Myspace, consider the reality of the rapidly emerging landscape for mobile social networks and the overall platform supported by cell phone users worldwide. It’s only going to grow and eventually expand upwards right into the hot, ultra mobile computing category dominated by netbooks right now.

What’s the hottest phone +  mobile Web device right now? You guessed it, the iPhone.

With just over 1 billions apps downloaded, the iPhone represents a huge opportunity for artists to connect with fans while empowering them to act as ambassadors to those with whom the connect with IRL (in real life).

Good friend Paige Craig reached out to let me know about a company he recently invested in, Mobile Roadie. It is a platform for any band or musician to build and manage their own iPhone app, quickly and easily. In minutes, Mobile Roadie provides a powerful connection between artists and fans. The app provides a bridge to sell music, alert fans to about upcoming shows, and communicate directly with them. Plus, the app will help list the final product in Apple’s App Store for fans to download.

The app provides the ability to share music, pictures, videos, albums, and upcoming shows. Artists can stream music and link to iTunes. Fans can connect with each other with the integration of a fan wall.  Mobile Roadie also links outside profiles from within the custom application. It also provides stats to help analyze performance and opportunities to improve the design.

Building an app is usually expensive and arduous process. With Mobile Roadie, the distance between you and your iPhone-equipped iPhone brigade is only $399 to start and $29 per month thereafter. More details and answers are on the company’s FAQ page.

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by Brian Solis

We all live a mobile lifestyle. Whether it’s to make our life a little easier or streamline our professional workflow, mobile productivity is instrumental to our ability to get things done.

If you had a fantasy application to make your life easier or to solve a unique challenge you face, what would you build?

Well the team at Windows Mobile is partnering with some of the most visible and creative minds on the social web to compete for the creation of the next great app for mobile phones. Each represent a unique demographic to appeal to various users that can benefit from their vision.

Special contributors include Tara Hunt (@missrogue), Erin Kotecki Vest (@queenofspain), Steve Rosenbaum (@magnify), Deb Schultz (@debs), David Armano (@armano), Dave McClure (@davemcclure), Robert Scoble (@scobleizer), Charlene Li (@charleneli), and Hugh Macleod (@gapingvoid).

At SXSW in the Windows Mobile & TechSet Blog Lounge, my lovely and brilliant partner Stephanie Agresta, will interview our special guests to let them vividly paint a picture that explains their applications and how they can help you  All you need to do is watch their videos and vote for your favorite app. The solution with the most votes will become a reality. Make sure you are following @wmdev to learn more!

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Twitter, FriendFeed, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Plaxo, Plurk, Identi.ca, BackType, or Facebook