Family Learning Center

Posts Tagged ‘Lasting Impression’

iDroid App Rejected By Apple. Well, Duh.

Here’s a tip for all you iPhone app developers out there. If you want to make sure your app doesn’t join the long list of rejected iPhone apps out there, make sure it doesn’t advertise a competing product, especially if that product runs the Android operating system. Swavv Apps (creators of Beer Pong) learned that lesson recently when they tried to get their iDroid app past the App Store censors.

The iDroid didn’t do much. It didn’t replicate any Droid features or take over any functionality of the iPhone (that would have made it a worthwhile app). All it did was display the glowing red Droid eye. If you tapped on the eye, it then showed some marketing bullet points about the competing phone such as the fact that it can run simultaneous apps and has a slide-out keyboard (something the iPhone lacks). The second page also shows a picture of the Droid with its keyboard out.

Apple rejected the app because it was nothing more than an ad for a competitor. I kinda have to side with Apple on this one, although I think it would have been smarter for them to let the app through.

Sure, the iDroid was an ad for the Droid phone. But what’s the real message it would have sent? What it says is that the iPhone is a powerful marketing vehicle for anything mobile, perhaps even more powerful than Times Square billboards or Google’s homepage.

If you can get someone to download an app to their iPhone and show it to their friends that’s more likely to make a lasting impression than a glaring billboard. Now, why anyone would want to download the iDroid app other than to get the increasingly-familiar, if somewhat spooky, Droid eye on their iPhone as a lark is beyond me.

Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors

Read the whole story…

Playing Around With Ball-it’s Ridiculously Cool Wireless Gaming Device (Video)
Yours truly was in Finland most of last week, visiting a bunch of technology startups at their offices, paying a visit to Nokia’s research center and attending the great MindTrek conference (thanks again for organizing the tour, FinnFacts).

One of the items in the packed schedule was a visit to the Demola facilities, essentially a type of incubator where students from the three universities in the city of Tampere and beyond can come work on projects in an ‘open innovation environment’.

One of the demos there that made a lasting impression on me – and the other bloggers who were invited to the tour – came from startup Ball-it. The fledgling company markets a golfball-sized device that is able to interact with your computer, TV or mobile phone thanks to physical wireless sensing technology that was popularized in large part by the Nintendo Wii gaming console. The technology has been under development for quite a while; tech blog Venturebeat profiled Ball-it about 10 months ago.

Read the whole story…