Bespoke development or app creators?

Building a professional looking app is complex and costly, many app developers charge upwards of $125 per hour or $5,000 a week, and apps created from scratch often take at least several weeks to develop, at a total cost of $10,000 to $50,000, not including monthly hosting fees.

What if you do not have that budget and time? Do you have?

• Relatively limited cash budget
• Relatively simple mobile needs for your business
• Some resources available to play around (remember that resources is equal to budget invested)
• A high need to be in several platforms at the same time while minimizing the maintenance cost of mobile apps

Please enter your details once

Many designers that come from web design ask the user of a mobile interface to enter the email address or other similar details twice, that is so they can make sure there was no typo done when entering those. For me the solution to this “problem” causes more negative externalities than anything else.

First I would like to know how often does it happen that users enter and incorrect mail address.

Second what is the most common mistake: Forgetting your password? Or the email you signed in with?

It would be great if on mobile interfaces we tried to help the mobile user as much as we can by not asking him/her to type unnecessary extra information, let’s just ask them once what we want.

From sylorente.com

I know that some back end services require this type of data to be filled in twice, but hey 😉 there are many workaround for that.

What do you may miss when changing you Android for an iPhone?

I have several phones I use:

• My private one, this one used to be an Android (P970 Optimus Black) and is now an iPhone
• My work one, an Android a Samsung Galaxy S
• My dutch phone (just a normal Nokia 😉 )

And I have a tablet: My Android tablet, an ASUS Eee Pad Transformer

As you can I see I had too much Android devices in my life so I decided to exchange my private phone for an iPhone. It took me 30 minutes on a random Friday evening to buy one on eBay, still extremely happy with the deal I made.

The first weeks of using my iPhone I noticed the next differences:

Difference between iPhone and Android

¿Cual es la diferencia entre iPhone y Android? y other words what is the difference between iPhone and Android?

First of all iPhone is the name of a smartphone that has been created by Apple Inc. There are several generations of iPhones, being the latest the 4S. The name iOS is the name we use to refer to the operating system that this smartphone uses, being the latest 6.0.

The Lovebox

In a local newspaper I saw and article of a “thing” called the Lovebox. The “thing ;)” allouws you to make a video in one shot from 2 sides! Great invention! probably not very useful but definitively very cool and fun. it consists of a wooden base and a mirroring system that when mounted with your mobile phone, simultaneously records the front and the back views in one single shot.

by the way the invention is made in Spain and the company that created it is called “Honest&Smile”.

Watch here the video to see more:

Lovebox

Tips to create a great mobile experience

Tips to create a great mobile design experience

Most of mobile sites are not yet optimized for mobile web, responsive design is one of your strategies to offer your mobile customer access to your site, services and/or products. But in order to give them a better service you should synthetize the information and display it in a “mobile friendly way”. Below you will find some tips to do so.

Getting rich with mobile apps? not really!

I just read and interesting article in this site, there you will see that one of the facts they expose is that 59% of the developers don’t break even. From my experience and the people I know I totally relate to this. … Continue reading →

Getting rich with mobile apps? not really!

I just read and interesting article in this site, there you will see that one of the facts they expose is that 59% of the developers don’t break even. From my experience and the people I know I totally relate to this. Two years ago things were different, by just launching an app thousands of people would download it and see if it was of any interest, by then good quality was key to retain them. Today good quality is not enough; you also need to have an appealing design for the segment you are targeting as well as a good marketing strategy around it.  Only a few exceptions get on the exponential curve of the popular apps in iOS, the rest need to work hard for it.

Guide the user

Guiding the users through your app or site is the 2.0 version of what used to be the “F.A.Q” or “Help section”. Giving relevant tips or information in the right context is key to help your users have the best … Continue reading →

Favicon

How to add the favicon to your website?

I am used to have several tabs open in my browser, probably my maximum of tabs and windows open at the same time has been around 3 windows with 22 tabs each. If you are one of those users you really want programmer to use the fav icon to help you visually to find their site back.

Here you can find some useful info about the fav icon : wikipedia favicon

Steps to add one of those to your site:

1. Create the icon. The file can be 16×16, 32×32, 48×48, or 64×64 pixels in size, and 8-bit, 24-bit, or 32-bit in color depth. Use .ico so it is compatible with all browsers.

2. Upload your favicon.ico into the root directory of your website.

3.Add this this code somewhere between the <head></head> tags on your pages:

<LINK REL=”shortcut icon” HREF=”http://www.yourdomain.com/name_of_icon.ico”&gt;

If your site is a ‘secure’ site, you need to provide the path using https:

<LINK REL=”shortcut icon” HREF=”https://www.yourdomain.com/name_of_icon.ico”&gt;

Tell me you love me

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Rate me! Drawsomething had 50M downloads in 50 days! The 21th os March 2012 there was a record in its usage with  3.000 drawings being sent per second. That was the day it was announced that Zynga had bought the … Continue reading →

George Harrison “the quiet Beatle”

The digital world and the role that apps are playing For many of us, mobile apps are part of our daily lives; as a technology lover I am very happy they are here as many of them deliver small bits and … Continue reading →

IT timeline

Playing with the timeline tool. I just created a timeline of some of the major IT technologies from 1040 an on.

Send me any events you want me to include!

http://www.timetoast.com/flash/TimelineViewer.swf?passedTimelines=303488

When do we learn to be social?

Interesting video about the fascinating minds of babies and children.
One of the curious facts she mentions is that studies demonstrates that approximately a 18 month baby would give you what he/she thinks you like but a 15 month baby would give you always what the baby itself likes.

This means that at the age of 18 months babies learn that we don’t always want the same thing and they should do things to help other people get what they want.

Alison Gopnik: What do babies think?

Apple’s ranking

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It is always a question that most of brands ask, How do I get my app in the top 3 of the app store ranking? What I would like instead is that brand managers ask: What can we do to … Continue reading →

The power of IT

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The power of IT Information technology is an important enabler of action for every company. Technology can be used to: Information technology is not only a tool for enabling and coordinating the organization, IT technology has a significant impact in … Continue reading →

Managing remote workers

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Managing remote workers Working remotely presents some unique management challenges. If you are a project manager for a group of remote workers, you must trust your team members to get their jobs done because you cannot drop by their desks … Continue reading →

Thinking in Dimensions

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Thinking in Dimensions In 2002 I was working for IBM at Shell, we developed for them a B2B ecommerce platform based on websphere. The system was build for distributors to buy fuels and bitumen based on the stock price of that … Continue reading →

Jobs following his own path

Jobs following his own path Jobs was an autocratic bully and a business genius who executed the most successful corporate turnaround so far this century. Lessons learned from him: Put engineers above bean counters Feel the passion of what you … Continue reading →

Native vs HTML5

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When do you I for Native I need to support only 1 or 2 platforms I need an app that requires complex graphical implementations I need features that are not supported by html5 Discoverability is key for me Performance is key for me … Continue reading →