Mobile App Industry Reacts to Trump Presidency
Reactions from the tech sector have been particularly charged since the final votes were tallied in this year’s presidential election. While Trump’s campaign platform made promises that worried most tech leaders, others hoped that laxer regulations under a Republican administration could hold equally large opportunities for iOS app developers, particularly those in the financial sector […]
App Developer Challenges: Writing Helpful Bot Dialogue
The chatbot trend has been burning for a while now, and one of the biggest challenges facing app developers who jump into the fray isn’t entirely a question or programming. Instead, it’s a question of writing. Dialogue isn’t simple, and the trope of the anti-social hoodie-and-flip-flops San Francisco app developer doesn’t exactly lend itself to […]
What Would Happen If Capital Hill Ran the US Like a Startup?
Government is often slow and difficult to understand. Tech moves quickly and is relatively simple to comprehend. Most importantly, consumers tend to get the feeling that tech products put the user first, while government “products” could care less. Because of this difference, mobile app developers are often fond of the idea that the US should […]
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 […]
UK Data Spying Case Shocks and Outrages Tech Community
While much of the app development community assumes the Snowden disclosures only really applied to NSA operations in the US, the UK was also found to be conducting illegal data collection operations. From 1998 to 2015, the UK’s collection program collected massive amounts of private data including location and call records from every phone in […]
What’s better for developer productivity: music or silence?
The question of what music is best for triggering app developer productivity — if any at all — is a debate that has raged on since, if not the dawn of time, at least the introduction of the iPhone. Every developer is likely to have their own answer, but there are a few trends that […]
Facebook Launches “Lite” Messenger Version For Old Devices
Designing for a cross-platform world can be difficult for startup app developers, especially when you consider the severe limitations of “legacy” devices compared to the incredible computing power, memory and storage capacity of the smartphones now considered standard by the US public. Facebook recently launched a standalone app for messenger users on older devices, showing […]
Hackers Wreak Havoc Using IoT Exploits
This past Friday, much of the United States’ internet access came to a crashing halt. Services like Twitter, Spotify, Reddit and Netflix were rendered inaccessible because of a Mirai botnet attack on servers owned by Dyn (the source code was actually released a few weeks ago and the creator of the code, a hacker dubbed […]
Anki’s Cozmo Shows the Humanistic Potential of AI Products
When most people think of robots, they think of the tropes played out in popular culture: Terminator war machines, job-guzzling automation devices, and other mostly negative, faceless stereotypes. Even the AI assistants trotted out by Android and Apple app developers have been met with a sense of distrust, especially when it comes to “always-listening” products […]
MedTech IoT Products Prove the Critics Wrong
A popular criticism of the Internet of things (IoT) is that it’s “just not necessary.” (Neither are running water or air travel, but I digress.) Given the poor execution and poorly thought-out market targeting of early IoT devices, it’s no surprise that consumers and critics feel this way. Yes, a cloud-connected toaster is silly and […]