Mobile Forecast: Upcoming Sharing Economy App Opportunities
Twenty years have passed since eBay democratized auctions and seven since the first Uber rolled onto the highway, but the “sharing economy” is showing no signs of stalling. If anything, the trend seems to be gathering steam, with local app developers launching more disruptive sharing economy apps every week. Startup founders looking for bright app […]
Who Decides Which Emojis You Get on Your Smartphone?
The Unicode Consortium does a lot of good for the world. It’s thanks to the efforts of this mostly volunteer organization that smartphone users can type in Chinese and rest assured that it’ll be readable on any other device. For speakers of obscure languages like Fulani, the consortium’s work literally pulls a whole culture across […]
What the Touchbar Means for iOS and OSX App Users
There’s been talk of iOS and OSX merging into a single operating system for some time now. Many iPhone app developers here in NYC believed that the new Macbook might offer a clue as to if and when it would finally happen. The release of the new Macbookdidn’t disappoint, and the “touch bar” at the […]
Facebook Messenger Launches In-App Games to Take on Apple
It sometimes seems like Facebook gets a cut of virtually every market these days, from media to communication. One market they’ve had trouble breaking into, however, is the mobile gaming industry — particularly ironic, for anybody that’s tired of getting Farmville requests from vague acquaintances. With the launch of “Instant Games” within the Messenger app, the […]
What Happens to Workers in an AI Economy?
If you were in Pittsburgh in the past couple months, you might have spotted one of Uber’s self-driving cars — or even had one stop to give you a ride. The opt-in program, conducted under the careful watch of trained real-person driving assistants, was for many NYC app developers a glimpse of the future. Futurologists […]
Instagram Introduces In-App Shopping for Brands
If Twitter is the poster child of angry users and poor monetization attempts, Instagram is the opposite — a massive mobile app startup that’s somehow perfectly balanced monetization and user experience. That balance in on display currently as the company just launched “shoppable tags,” which allow select brands to display purchase information embedded within tags […]
The NYPD Just Got Smartphones: Not the Brand You’d Expect
The Windows Phone accounts for less than 1% of the US smartphone market. That might seem like a death sentence for app developers on the platform, but it has a ring of opportunity for an unexpected group: namely, the New York Police Department. The department has been working directly with app developers in NYC to […]
How to Make Mobile Payments Work: Imitate Credit Cards
A new study from Points might point to the biggest barrier holding back mainstream use of mobile payment options like Android Pay and Apple Pay: and that barrier is rewards. Credit cards often wind up costing the average consumer money, but they still flock to them in droves: and it’s not just because they let […]
Want to Get into Y Combinator? Check out This Data.
Jared Friedman of Y Combinator has shared a fascinating talk that looks at formerly closed data from Y Combinator companies and applications throughout the program’s history, uncovering some fascinating trends in tech funding and cultural interests. For Los Angeles app developers, the presentation is a gold mine of inspiration and “food for thought” about how […]
MACRA Medicare Update Fails Patients, Doctors, and Startups
The Los Angeles app development community has been cautiously optimistic the past few weeks about the outcome of this year’s long-awaited updates to MACRA (the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act). In partnership with ACT The App Association and dozens of other leading tech companies across the country, we submitted detailed comments and research to […]