For the past week, I’ve been graced by the mobile-Gods with the new Nokia flagship cellphone, the Lumia 900. My immediate impression was, “what the heck is it with this awful blue color?” I also wasn’t expecting much, if anything, from the Windows Phone 7 (WP7) platform in terms of available apps in their marketplace.
When we think of our neighbors to the North in Canada, we think of bountiful natural resources, open land, and flannel shirts; we don’t necessarily think of tech. The major cities are dominated by industries such as oil, resource exporting, and politics. With the latest in RIMs downward spiral, Canada should be expected to leave this industry to the Valley. So, when I arrived back in my home country after six years of sunny and buzzing California, I thought that finding a tech scene would be a needle in a haystack. I couldn’t have been farther from the truth.
So far, I’ve covered how to decide which type of app you’re looking to create and how to use your market research to decide what features you want your app to have. The next phase in making a great app is the creation of solid User Stories. Part of this will help you continue defining your feature-set, but it will also help you know what sort of brand you need to create and how you’ll eventually market your application to those users.
Customer loyalty, one of those seemingly innocuous facets of both large and small scale businesses that can be easily overlooked, but generally understood as ultra important to how well a business thrives. You’ve taken care of the 1) product, 2) marketing, 3) overall experience (to garner positive reviews), but then what? How do you guarantee a simply favorable review versus a regularly returning loyal customer?
Have you ever found yourself standing in a crowded bar during happy hour, waiting for what seems like hours to get a drink or food? Don’t feel bad, we’ve all been there before. You stand around hoping to catch the bartenders attention. When you finally do, you order up your round and snacks. Then you get to think about starting a tab or cashing out? Should you have ordered an extra drink so you don’t have to fight through the crowd again?
All you hear about these days is Mobile. Companies are spending more time and money on their mobile sites than their full-fledged website. It’s hard to even watch a TV commercial without some sort of mobile app shout out. You read in newspapers that app downloads hit an all-time high, nearly every week (now at 1 billion in a week iOS + Android). Yet did you know that only 38% of adult Americans even have a smart phone?
This weekend UCLA has put together 48hr Startup and TechZulu will be there to bring you all the final startup presentations live. UCLA 48hr Startup brings together people with technical, design or business background to share ideas, form teams, build products and launch startups. Although put together by UCLA its not just a UCLA Student event.
Once upon a time we had inboxes with messages only from friends and family or work. An inbox that could be managed in a matter of minutes rather than hours or days. Then the Internet grew up. The chain letters started coming in strong. You HAD to sign up. You didn’t want to be that person responsible for breaking the chain. However after passing on a few, you inbox started to show signs of being cluttered.