iPad
Groupon launches Breadcrumb iPad app, vows to not be a typical POS
Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/05/14/groupon-breadcrumb-pos-ipad-app/
Yesterday, Groupon POS appeared in the iTunes Store, but was quickly pulled. Now we know why. Breadcrumb POS, which is the official name of yesterday’s leaked point-of-sale iPad app, is now officially available, bringing a simple interface and a handful of financial incentives. The application, which can be downloaded for free, charges vendors a credit card processing fee of 1.8 percent plus 15 cents per transaction, assuming you’re swiping plastic from MasterCard, Visa or Discover. In an effort to get small businesses signed up, however, Groupon is offering to cover the fees on the first $5,000 in credit card transactions, a savings of $90 by our calculations, plus whatever you’d be paying per swipe
The app enables you to log transactions, manage menu items and issue refunds, in addition to processing credit cards and emailing receipts. The POS uses Breadcrumb Payments for processing, with deposits posting within 24 hours, and can be paired with a card swiper and optional printer (you can email receipts if you’d prefer). There’s also free 24/7 telephone support, should you run into any issues while using the system. Breadcrumb POS won’t replace the more sophisticated Pro version, which is available starting at $99 per month, and retailers will still be able to use the Groupon Merchants App for redeeming vouchers and processing supplemental payments. If the new Breadcrumb POS sounds like a fit, snag some more info at the source link below.
Filed under: Software
Source: Groupon
ColorSnap Studio Digitally Paints Your House to Help Pick a Good Color
Source: http://lifehacker.com/colorsnap-studio-digitally-paints-your-house-to-help-pi-493838015
iPad: Painting your walls requires a commitment. You have to choose from thousands of colors, figure out how much you’ll actually need, spend hours doing the work, and hope it all turns out well. ColorSnap Studio takes some of the guesswork by digitally painting your walls and calculating what you’ll need to get the job done.
ColorSnap Studio comes with a variety of features, but digitally painting your walls makes the download worthwhile. Choose a color from the color selector, take a photo of the room you want to paint (or use an existing one), and paint the room with your finger. While you won’t get the most precise results with your finger and an iPad screen, ColorSnap Studio intelligently blends the paint color with the wall to show you what to expect should you actually do the job yourself. When you’ve committed to a color, the app can calculate how many cans of paint you’ll need based on a few simple measurements.
You can download ColorSnap Studio right now for your iPad. We’d like to see an Android tablet version and one that works on smartphone, but obviously a larger screen helps when digitally painting a wall.
ColorSnap Studio (Free) | iTunes App Store
drag2share: MOBILE INSIGHTS: Android Tablets Overtake The iPad In Shipments Last Quarter
MOBILE INSIGHTS: Android Tablets Overtake The iPad In Shipments Last Quarter
May 2, 2013
Mobile Insights is a daily newsletter from BI Intelligence that collects and delivers the top mobile industry news. It is delivered first thing every morning exclusively to BI Intelligence subscribers.
Android Sees More Tablet Shipments In First Quarter Than Apple (Business Insider)
IDC’s latest data on tablet shipments confirms the trend we’ve been following: the steady gains of Android tablets around the world. Taken together, Android tablet manufacturers shipped more tablets than Apple in the first quarter of 2013. Apple was still the largest single manufacturer, with Samsung in second place. Microsoft shipped a respectable 900,000 tablets. A contrarian take: Greg Sterling of Opus Research points out that iPads still account for over 80% of actual usage — globally and in the U.S. — as measured by Web traffic. Read >
CHART OF THE DAY: This Is A Business That Will Die In Five Years, According To BlackBerry’s CEO
Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/chart-of-the-day-macs-vs-ipads-2013-4
BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins said, “In five years I don’t think there’ll be a reason to have a tablet anymore.”
He believes we’re going to carry around a single device that powers all our other screens. That since device is going to be a smartphone in his opinion, and therefore tablets are going to be totally irrelevant.
He also says, “Tablets themselves are not a good business model.”
To which, we present this chart from Dan Frommer. As you can see, through three years the iPad has sold 140 million units, almost double what Apple has done with the Mac.
Perhaps the wheels fall off this thing, and it disappears from existence in five years. We doubt it.
The reason the iPad sells well, despite being slightly redundant, is that people like to have dedicated gadgets. People don’t want one device to power everything.
Apple Buys Indoor Mapping Company WifiSLAM
Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-buys-indoor-mapping-company-wifislam-2013-3
Apple has bought WifiSLAM, a company providing indoor mobile location services, which lets people figure out their location inside a building using the strength of its Wi-Fi signals.
Indoor mobile location is a burgeoning field as more and more people use their smartphones inside buildings – with at least two Finnish companies, Walkbase and IndoorAtlas, offering their own systems for zeroing in on where they are, and a map of their surroundings.
Apple confirmed to the Wall Street Journal that it had bought the company, though it didn’t comment on the estimated $20m price tag. It said that it “buys smaller technology companies from time to time”.
WifiSLAM uses the variation in different networks’ Wi-Fi signal strengths to triangulate the user’s location. The company co-founders include a former Google staffer, and has backing from Don Dodge, who worked at both Google and Microsoft.
Walkbase has been developing its offering since 2009, and presently has an Android app offering. IndoorAtlas uses variations in the earth’s magnetic field to determine the user’s location – meaning it doesn’t rely on Wi-Fi or other data, and doesn’t need hardware.
Finnish mobile phone company Nokia already offers Destination Maps, an indoor mapping service.
For Apple, improving its maps offering has become increasingly important since it dumped Google’s mapping service for its iPhone and iPad products last September. That met with widespread criticism, and forced chief executive Tim Cook to issue a grovelling apology, and saw the ousting of Scott Forstall, who had been in charge of the iPhone software division, and of the head of the mapping team.
The iPad Business Is Collapsing (AAPL)
Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/citi-the-ipad-business-is-collapsing-2013-2
The strength of Apple’s iPad business is collapsing as lower priced, smaller tablets eat into sales, says Citi’s Apple analysts in a new note this morning.
The 9.7-inch iPad’s unit sales were only up 1.8% on a year-over-year basis in the fourth quarter, says Citi, citing IDC data. In developed markets like Apple and Japan, unit sales were actually down quite a bit.
The bigger iPad is being replaced by Apple’s iPad Mini, as well as the 7-inch tablets sold by Samsung and Amazon.
A Security Company Is Neutering Hundreds of iPads So The Government Can Use Them
Traditionally, Blackberry has been the choice of the majorly security conscious, but the times are changing. iOS has been shaping up to be pretty secure, and has even coaxed some US government agencies to jump ship. Now a security firm in Virgina is “neutering” iPads so G men can use those too.
The report comes from Bloomberg, which says the company with the cyber-snippers is one CACI International Inc. What this “neutering” process—CACI’s own words—actually involves is anyone’s guess, but chances are it has something to do with the wireless capabilities, and maybe the camera. CACI CEO Dan Allen put it this way to Bloomberg: “It’s a neutered iPad. We’re working on how do we effectively brand it.”
According to Allen, any iPads you already see in a government leader’s hands, probably came from CACI or someone they work with. So far no one in the government has made a statement about whether or not Obama’s iPad has gotten the treatment, but it doesn’t seem unlikely. If this really takes off, you could start seeing a lot more iPads in active government service, but only if they’ve lost their fun bits first. [Bloomberg via 9to5Mac]
Who’s Winning The Android Tablet Race?
Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/whos-leading-the-android-tablet-race-22013-1
Kindle Leads Android Tablet Market Share (Localytics via Digital Trends)
Localytics, a mobile analytics firm, has released a report on the current global market share of Android tablet, and it spells good news for Amazon. According to the report, Amazon’s Kindle brand holds an impressive 33 percent of the U.S. Android tablet market, followed far behind by the Barnes & Noble Nook, Samsung’s Galaxy series, Google’s Nexus 7 and other devices.
Distantly behind Amazon is the Nook with 10 percent, the Samsung Galaxy series with 9 percent and Google’s Nexus 7 with 8 percent. In contrast to the others, Google’s Nexus 7 is just one device that has been around a mere six months. If this kind of growth continues for Google, it will challenge Amazon in the near future. Note: These numbers do not include other, non-Android tablet devices like the iPad, Surface or Playbook. Read >>
Global Smartphone OS Market Run By Two Companies (Strategy Analytics)
Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android combined to take over 92 percent of the global smartphone market in the fourth quarter of 2012, according to a report from Strategy Analytics.
Android secured 70.1 percent of the fourth quarter 2012 global smartphone market, while Apple’s iPhones accounted for 22 percent, leaving a mere 7.9 percent to competing platforms (poor Microsoft). In terms of overall shipments, global smartphones grew 38 percent annually from 157.0 million units in the fourth quarter of 2011 to 217.0 million in the fourth quarter last year. The full report can be found here. Read >>
Instagram Can Now Use Your Photos in Ads
Source: http://lifehacker.com/5969237/remains-of-the-day-instagram-can-now-use-your-photos-in-ads
Instagram changes its terms of service, Facebook wants a piece of the SnapChat pie, and Rhapsody launches an iPad app.
- Privacy and Terms of Service Changes on Instagram Effective January 16, 2013, Instagram is updating its Privacy and Terms of Service documents. The new policies, which can be read on their blog, addresses sharing user information as a part of Facebook and new spam/abuse policies. The biggest change, found in the ‘Rights’ section of the new Terms of Service, gives Instagram the right to use your photos and profile information in ads without compensation. [Instagram Blog]
- Facebook to Launch Its Own Snapchat Competitor App Facebook is prepping to launch a service that will go head-to-head with Snapchat, a popular app that lets users send photos and short videos to one another—which are then automatically deleted after a brief increment of time. Facebook’s as-yet unnamed application will be, much like its Messenger and Camera apps, entirely self-contained and separate from the main Facebook app. Look for its release before the year’s end. [AllThingsD]
- New Rhapsody for iPad and iPad Mini: the Fastest, Most Visually-Stunning Rhapsody Experience Yet Premium music streaming service Rhapsody has released a new iPad app. Built for the ground up for the tablet with a visual-heavy interface, the Rhapsody app comes with a free 30-day trial for those looking to give it a shot. [Rhapsody Blog]
Photo by photastic (Shutterstock), a2bb5s (Shutterstock), and Feng Yu (Shutterstock).
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Dr. Augustine Fou is Digital Consigliere to marketing executives, advising them on digital strategy and Unified Marketing(tm). Dr Fou has over 17 years of in-the-trenches, hands-on experience, which enables him to provide objective, in-depth assessments of their current marketing programs and recommendations for improving business impact and ROI using digital insights.
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