Posts Tagged ‘mobile apps’

Do You Have a Diet Mobile App?

Written by Brooks Canavesi on . Posted in Blog, Mobile App Development

These days there’s a mobile app for just about everything, so it figures that diet and nutrition trackers are becoming a big hit. They let you log your nutrition intake, shop for healthy foods and pick and choose healthy eating plans. Take a look at these 5 apps worth trying.
  1. Fooducate (iOS, Android)
This mobile app helps you to both shop and eat healthy. It lets you quickly pull up nutritional information from the barcodes on food products and can help you make sense of those nutrition labels that otherwise come across as gibberish. The app shows you a letter grade from A to D, and offers up a quick summary of nutritional information in easy-to-understand language. It will also suggest healthier alternatives. Whether you eat out or cook, you can manually enter nutrition information. The mobile app also doubles as a calorie, exercise and intake tracker.
  1. Shopwell (iOS; Android)
Shopping well is definitely the first step to eating well. That’s the idea behind Shopwell that will scan barcodes and rate groceries according to your nutritional needs. The app creates a personal profile and will select from various nutritional goals while also implementing necessary dietary restrictions, like food allergies or vegetarianism.  The app takes all these elements into account and uses them to score the items you scan while offering easy-to-follow nutritional pointers.
  1. Calorie Counter Pro (iOS, Android)
This mobile app is an all-in-one exercise tracker, food scanner and nutrition log. Users can scan barcodes for nutritional information and input recipes and custom foods. The exercise tracker lets you enter over 500 different activities and you can also manually enter calories burned, distance and time for walking. What’s more, there are planning features for dieters wishing to set a target weight or plan their exercise and eating.
  1. Diet Point Weight Loss (iOS, Android)
Another mobile app that helps users select the right weight loss program for their needs. There are over 130 diets programmed under various categories as well as complete meal plans and shopping lists. The app will notify you that it is mealtime and help avoid those cravings or overeating. Whether you’re going low-carb or full-on caveman, the app will have the plan for you.
  1. Nutrino (iOS)
This is a meal planning and nutritional goals mobile app. It’s been designed to work with other devices and apps to track physical activity and adjust food recommendations accordingly. Users are able to set their nutritional goals – be it muscle building, weight loss or healthy eating – and also set dietary restrictions such as halal, gluten-free or lactose-intolerant. The app will build a personalized meal plan based on the information and users can further customize the plan by inputting preferred foods or swiping for alternatives. Water intake, sleep and exercise can all be logged. Mobile Apps for Diet – Would You Use Them? Would you use these kinds of apps for your dietary and lifestyle requirements? Have you had any experience with them? Feel free to share in our mobile app section.

4 Mobile Application Development Trends This Year

Written by Brooks Canavesi on . Posted in Blog, Mobile App Development

Developers don’t need us telling them that the mobile application development landscape changes constantly. But let’s pause just for a minute and look at how it’s changing. The best place to start is with the 2015 State of the Developer Nation report from VisionMobile. According to the report, there are 4 trends mobile app developers should be taking note of.
  1. Apple’s Swift
Anyone in the tech industry knows it’s hardly ever a case of “if you build it, they will come.” Adoption of new technologies can take time. So the rapid rise of Apple’s Swift language for iOS apps is worth mentioning. According to the report’s survey of 8,000 developers, one in five of them were already using Swift a few months after its launch.
  1. Growth of Cross-Platform Tools
Mobile application development is seeing an increase in the use of third-party tools. According to the report, 83% of respondents are using the tools for things like testing, analytics and crash reporting. Even more noteworthy, the use of cross-platform tools has increased from 23% to 30% in just six months.  Cross platform tools worth mentioning are Xamarin and Oracle Mobile Application Framework (built on Apache Cordova) So what goes into choosing the right tools? Tech execs seem to agree that it’s important to choose a stable provider that will be in it for the long haul.
  1. Enterprise Apps Are Making More Cash than Consumer Apps
Smartphones are flying off the shelves and mobile application development is teeming with activity. But it’s not guaranteed that your app is going to earn much. Developers working on enterprise apps are actually more likely to make cash. 43% of developers working on enterprise apps hit $10,000 per month or more in revenue. Only 19% of consumer app developers hit that milestone. A lot of consumers aren’t too keen to shell out money for apps but businesses seem to be more than willing to pay for software that helps their employees be more productive.
  1. The Internet of Things is Super-Hot
A lot of developers are investing their energy in the Internet of Things (IoT) even though it may take a while to pay off. Over 50% of developers report to be working on some sort of IoT project, and many seem to be doing so as a hobby. And it’s no surprise that the biggest areas of interest right now involve mobile application development, particularly on Android and iOS. To Sum Up the Report It is still early days, but VisionMobile’s report claims a huge upside in IoT for the developer community. Those products with the best software are going to be the most sought after. And developers will become essential to creating competitive apps.

So we get a picture of a mobile application development market that is evolving rapidly in pretty much everything from languages and tools to economics and device platforms. Keeping up with the changes can be just as challenging as doing your actual job. But that’s exactly why mobile is such an exciting endeavor right now.

Want to know which apps are tops for 2015? Check out my blog, 9 Great Apps for 2015.

9 Great Apps for 2015

Written by Brooks Canavesi on . Posted in Blog, Mobile App Development

Earlier this year, Digital Trends created a list of 208 exciting apps for 2015. While a comprehensive list of this nature is an exciting feat, sometimes too many choices makes choosing harder. So here is a much simpler list to just give you a taste of what is out there.

9 Apps You Should Be Using in 2015

Here are nine especially great apps to start checking out, one from each of Digital Trends’ various categories.
  1. Entertainment: Endless TV
If you like watching TV, but don’t like watching commercials, then this might be the app for you. People watch TV online as much as they watch it in more traditional modes. For many people, online TV is more popular than traditional TV.

However, while online TV options are great, there are still many commercials and buffering to contend with. Endless TV is designed to eliminate both of these problems.

*** If you are a Comcast / Xfinity customer – then Xfinity TV GO app is really nice for plane trips as you can download some networks show like Showtime’s – Ray Donovan!
  1. Work and Organizing: Slack
Slack allows you to communicate better with your co-workers. It encourages inter-office communications and then allows you to save and organize your files and messages in one place. Along with real time messaging, you have options to file share and have group conversations. If you work at a software development shop like I do, then you will love the integrations with Jira, GitHub, Bitbucket, Drive, Heroku, Jenkins, Papertrail, Trello, Stripe, Zapier and many more.

All this, and you can sync the app across multiple platforms including the Apple Watch.
  1. Security and Utilities: MyScript Calculator
The MyScript Calculator is more than just the standard phone calculator. It actually recognizes your hand writing and turns it into equations. Because this works similar to a notepad, you can copy the info to the clipboard in order to save it.

It is also easy to erase, undo, and redo parts of the equation. Basically, it gives you the ease of writing out formulas on paper with the convenience of having technology do the math for you.
  1. Around Town: Drync
Drync helps you remember the name of the wine you are drinking when you know you will not be able to remember it later. Scan the bottle, and it will track it and let you order it. You can read reviews, learn about various wines, and find new wines to try.

If you are or would like to be a wine connoisseur, then getting an app like Drync could be great for you.
  1. Social and Chat: Brewster
Brewster allows you to combine all of your contacts across various platforms and puts it into one database. This way, no matter how you know them, you can more easily keep track of all of friends and acquaintances. Having a one stop source for this information can help make organizing contacts much easier.
  1. Fitness and Health: Mimi Hearing Test
If you are unsure how well your hearing is, but you do not want to make a trip to the doctor to get it tested, then the Mimi Hearing Test app could be great for you. It allows you to test your hearing and then shows you the frequencies you can hear as well as how well you compare to people your own age.  If you have young children this is a nice app to have.
  1. Travel and Maps: MotionX GPS Drive
The MotionX GPS Drive app allows you to view real life traffic maps while it gives you turn by turn navigation. It is set apart from other similar apps by its large, easy to use buttons and its lane guidance. In addition, it has a parking spot meter.   This app is still missing police and traffic camera warnings like Waze which many have come to rely on.
  1. Photos and Creativity: Flic
The Flic app allows you to look at your pictures in a Tinder-like scenario. When you want to get rid of pictures, it allows you to search through your gallery and swipe right keep the photo or swipe left to delete it. This makes it much easier to clean out your photo stream.
  1. The Dark Arts: Cydia
For those who are a little more interested in breaking some rules and who are a little more tech savvy, there are apps you can use when you jailbreak your phone. For those of you who fit into this category, Cydia is an alternative app store where you can find many cool apps within.

If You Don’t Like Any of the Options …

Of course, if you want something specific and nobody else has created it yet, you can just make it yourself. Innovation is always welcome and needed in our society. It is going to be a great year for new and exciting tech.  

Closing the Security Gap in Mobile App Development

Written by Brooks Canavesi on . Posted in Blog, Mobile App Development, Software & App Sales

You know there’s an issue when the very industry that promotes standards related to security, is having an issue with security vulnerability.  Internet of Things (IoT) systems are being easily compromised by hackers. A recent study  by HP found that one of every 10 popular Internet-connected security systems – as in systems implemented to increase your security and peace of mind and reduce your risk like cameras and locks – had significant security vulnerabilities that allow for hackers to access them and ultimately control them.

There are a growing number of major Fortune 500 companies developing mobile apps that have security issues as well.  These are companies we really want to trust, like banks, health care and online retail organizations handling our billing and personal health information. The hackers themselves have reached a new level of attention in the eyes of the public.  60 minutes featured a story with hackers selling the malware that was used to hack into Sony, now widely available to anyone who has the ability to pay for it.

It is concerning to discover that cyber security experts say over 40 percent of companies developing mobile apps do not scan their apps for vulnerabilities before releasing them to the public.  Some test only a portion of their apps or never test them at all.  Corporate budgets often don’t include funds for testing.   We are seeing only the beginnings of regulations being put in place to deal with this reality.

Serious data breaches can cost companies millions of dollars. The issue causes firms to invest in securing their IT networks, computers and servers linked to them.  But strangely, not the mobile apps that are brought into the workplace on worker’s mobile devices.  With mobile devices and the amount of data growing at a rapid pace, the opportunities for hackers are growing as well.  Companies will be forced to take action and protect themselves from mobile data breaches from unverified apps downloaded by personnel on work devices connected to company networks.  What does the company stand to lose?  The reputation of brands for products and services, sensitive documents, proprietary information, customers, amounts in the millions of dollars.

Mobile Apps Become Major Growth Tool for Restaurants: Best Features to Include

Written by Brooks Canavesi on . Posted in Blog, Mobile App Development

By virtue of the fact that we as human beings need to eat, typically 3 times per day (more like 6 for me), we often turn to restaurants to satisfy that need in the most convenient and satisfying ways we can find.  Predominantly, the search is for local businesses, but travelers rely heavily on mobile apps to steer them in a restaurant search, and the way we go about this has fundamentally changed because of the tools we have at our fingertips.  For app developers, this is a fascinating study of how emerging technology is taking hold of an ancient and timeless quest for nourishment and foods that satisfy hunger across all demographics, cultures, tastes and budgets. Industries such as entertainment, hotels, retail outlets and personal services take a back seat to restaurants when it comes to online searches, and then the statistics say that over 75% of people choose a restaurant to dine based on the results of their mobile search.