Software posts

For every valid, working app on the App Store, there are two apps that are considered “walking dead” by German mobile analytics firm Adeven. By their count, there are 400,000 apps that do not get downloaded, are invisible to users, and have no ratings. “The reality is there are only a couple of thousand apps that really make some kind of downloads,” Christian Henschel, Adeven CEO, told David Meyer at Gigaom. “This is based on Apple’s closed system — it’s tough to discover those kinds of apps. You don’t have proper search, so the only way to discover new apps is through the top listing.”…

Upon walking into a business or home office, you might notice a key component that appears to be going extinct before our very eyes. That piece is the office filing cabinet. It’s being replaced by new technologies that make it easier for us to store files and data in places that can be accessed easier. Digital storage is the new filing cabinet, and it takes up a lot less space in the office than a clunky metal filing cabinet. Digital storage comes in many forms. It includes physical storage devices, such as external hard drives and USB flash drives. It also includes the larger physical servers. But…

The news of Google’s purchase of the 5-person Sparrow team struck me as a bit odd. Sure, they’ve done some great things in email with their native iPad app, but the concept that they were purchased “to bring polish, ‘beauty’, and ease of use to all of its Gmail experiences” isn’t jiving. Google has been in email for a long time now and they have a lot of really smart people working on it. It wouldn’t be hard to reverse-engineer anything that anyone is doing in email (it’s not rocket science, after all). Why buy a team? Some would say it’s a value-buy; $25 million is a drop in the bucket for the Mountain View…

When Bouncer was unleashed this February, it was touted as a one-unit malware detection army. However, researchers have found holes in the Android spyware detector with such an ease that one has to ask Google what the hoopla was all about. Granted, monitoring software for cell phone are becoming more menacing with every passing moment, but surely Google could have conjured up something more steely than an app detector that allows fingerprinting!   Bouncer; say what? Bouncer, an automated process for scanning apps which are suspected to have Trojans, spyware and malware like monitoring…

A June update to the Skype software adds recipients to some of the instant messages you send out through the system. Instead of just sending it out to the person or people selected for the message, it includes other people as well without your knowledge. According to VentureBeat, Skype knows all about it: “We are aware that in rare circumstances IMs between two contacts could be sent to an unintended third contact. We are rolling out a fix for this issue in the next few days and will notify our users to download an updated version of Skype.” Be careful what you say and who you’re saying it about when…

The mobile revolution is now, and marketers across all industries are being strongly encouraged to start taking advantage. Who’s doing all the encouraging? Oh, only marketing experts and some of the biggest names in the world of business. Among them is Google, who recently teamed up with global media network Mindshare to launch Mobile Garage.   What is Mobile Garage? Mobile Garage is a joint initiative geared to provide Mindshare’s worldwide client base with the advantages that come with leveraging Google’s mobile expertise. The venture will lead to the creation of global hubs…

The foreign exchange market (“Forex”) is the largest market in the world, and increasing in popularity.  Forex trades are based on currency pairs and are made to take advantage ofminute changes in the exchange rates, with prices changing very quickly.  In such a fast changing market, an investor needs to have a good trading strategy to make sound decisions. Since the Forex market is open 24 hours a day, six days a week, there is a vast amount of data to process.  Technical analysis tools have become vital in making decisions based on the available data. Even cable ties companies do worry…

While Silicon Valley is still the hub of IT (Information Technology) in the United States, New York City continues to climb the charts and is now bested only by Boston for the top spot. While Microsoft, Facebook, and eBay have officially announced they will open offices within the next year, big corporations have a huge interest in opening up locations in the Big Apple. Even the internet giant Google has purchased a 2.9 million square foot building in lower Manhattan. While in a recession, New York City has managed to increase tech related jobs by 28.7% from 41,100 to 52,900 and added 486 digital…

When people say, “there is an app for everything,” that is nothing short of the truth. The medical industry has gone digital with the arrival of medical apps that help doctors diagnose on the go. Now this does not mean that your average Joe should download these apps and drop his HMO. My friend and social media community manager Justin Maas recently injured himself playing Frisbee (who does that?!) and is self-diagnosing his condition. Do I recommend this course of action? Absolutely not. What I do recommend is that you check out these medical apps and see just how efficient the medical field…

Research In Motion has been the whipping post for tech bloggers for a couple of years, now. We’ve taken our own swipes at them here (and here, and here, and here), but that doesn’t mean that there isn’t a smidgen of hope coming from the Blackberry maker. The hope is being broadcast loud and clear by CEO Thorsten Heins who was claiming on Tuesday that “there’s nothing wrong with the company as it exists right now.” Blackberry 10, which many consider to be the last chance RIM has of regaining a bigger slice of the pie and staying in business as they are now beyond 2013, was delayed again last week. 5000 layoffs…