Showing posts with label android killer apps. Show all posts
Showing posts with label android killer apps. Show all posts

Tuesday, 2 October 2018

Vodafone V-Auto App and OBDII GSM tracker

V-Auto GSM tracker and more from Vodafone












Saturday, 24 August 2013

netatmo weather station app review

.iPhone and Android killer weather app and weather station - Netatmo

There is only one thing better than a great app (stop it!) and that's a great app with a great piece of hardware. Whether its just (£100) a Jawbone Up and its related app or a BMW i3 and remote control app the netatmo app and its associated hardware are up there with a great hardware/app UX.

For me especially so as I have worked on a lot of weather apps over time, and am a self confessed "weather head", add this to the fact that I am also British and therefore pre-programmed to like Benny Hill humour and talking about the weather, and so I am as much of the target audience for the Netatmo as you can get!

apart from making a living from apps, I am also a hardware freak and love great design and the usually great user experience that comes from this, I am saying all this as to explain what a great experience the Netatmo is from end to end.

This pretty much continues all the way to realising the possibilities of this device (remote wine cellar humidity, humidor monitoring, basement damp linked to remote controlled dehumidifier...) and the usefulness of accurate weather.

Firstly, the product arrives, no fuss, shipped direct from our froggy friends across the channel. And very well presented too.
All good user experiences begin with good packaging
It also comes preparred to be put in the right place, with a handy velcro strap... why on earth many of the others just come with screws is beyond me!
Physical installation is easy as well with a velcro strap using the same slot as the usual screw fixing
So, you've opened it up, could not wait to set-up and that was all very easy... the world is very happy for the control freak, but: Next up - back to the weather station... and a good few gadget freaks ask me, why? what's wrong with all the weather apps out there?

Well for me there are two gaps in the market that Netatmo fill:

Weather app accuracy

Your present weather comes from two places probably anything from a few km to 50km or further away and does not represent where you are if there are significant geographical, demographical or other 'phical disturbances in the way.... At best it represents somewhere near.
Where you live / work and where you get weather from may be very different
So when I get up on an average Saturday in the UK, look at one weather app and it says its going to rain at 10am, another at 2pm, its the difference between being able to do your planned event or not. Accurate weather is important to me as I do a lot of sport, and cycling in the rain is pretty miserable, I also try an plan things like picnics, barbecues and other events that rain puts a blanket over. It's safe to say for me its an important factor in quality of life, being able to plan your day and not have to worry about the impact of the weather. Even if its not raining, a run, walk or ride in the wrong clothes is a pain, especially exercise. In my case my weather is derived from a) Westminster, yes Big Ben Westminster, which is 2 miles of city away and on the river (usually up to 2'C out from my weather and a huge variation in humidity) and Heathrow Airport, south west of me, on this island that has a predominant south westerly wind and so its weather is that of a front or other weather "element" that has yet to hit one of the lowest and therefore most expansive dense urban areas there is (London is very low rise and therefore spreads across a huge patch of ground). This again is pre-pollution, pre city weather. usually lower in temperature and humidity is not consistent with where I am and any rain this weather carries usually get's dumped in suburbia before it reaches me.

This is not just a London thing, a place I have been often between Santander and Bilbao on the Spanish coast has no weather station of its own, but is very different from either, despite your weather app saying "Castro" its actually taking its reading from Santander. I also grew up in a micro-climate on the east cost of Spain that grows mangos and avocado pears due to its tropical micro-climate, and ... the list goes on...

Local weather variations

Weather varies even in the same place whether you are in the sun or the shade, and at different times of the day / year this makes a huge difference. In the summer in the UK, its important to know when its 30'C in the sun (it does happen) but only 20'C in the shade, or worse in winter when it says 15'C, the feels like gives you a clue with a 12'C, but there is nothing like checking the Netatmo in the shade at 9'C to know its colder than it seems... I have tried with Oregon scientific and other alarm clocks / weather stations and they have two problems: 1) they do not seem that accurate, and usually only have temperature with no context, and 2) they are not connected to the internet, and so are, well just dirty. 
zoom in to outdoor for full hourly precipitation of where you are
The Netatmo lets you get this right by placing the weather station, complete with barometer, humidity sensor as well as temperature right where you want to know the weather, not some random approximation between two places.

Quality of life

So why is all this important. Well, I try and swim, bike and run as well as having other commitments like work and a family and so knowing the exact weather where I live, work and train in real time and/or remotely allows me to do more with my time, which for me increases my quality of life. It also allows me to get the most out of my run or ride without sweating buckets in a top designed for a few degress of temperature and 10% less humidity, because I do not usually have time to change when I sneak a run at lunchtime or before work.

Being able to monitor the humidity of things like wine, cigars or other rooms (like a greenhouse, for example) would also increase quality of life for many people.

and obviously when I am there as well, and only something like Netatmo let's you do this without surprises of the weather variety and wearing the right amount of clothing so you do not drown in your own sweat or freeze to death... and the Netatmo let's me do this in just the right amount of control freak I need :)

Netatmo experience

Back to getting to grips with amazing app / hardware integration, the out of the box experience...
You could not open this box, and put it away for later...
To the app based set-up are a pleasure to go through and a masterclass in UX
This process triggers exactly zero calls / emails to customer service asking "exactly how/where do I..." 
To then swiping up and down between modules.... and the ipad app is even better...
Tablet experience is built around the tablet screen size and DPI
So any gripes? well, I have not yet tried to add other modules for my non existent wine collection or very small humidor, or other locations to see how they work with the app, and honestly cannot imagine how they will do it an keep the whole thing as slick as it is... But will experiment at some point soon...

Wednesday, 8 May 2013

google chief game designer ingress

Ingress, Google and the cheif game designer

So Google has hired a Chief Game Designer called Noah Falstein; as of starting to draft this post there was no reason why, which has now been updated courtesy of the Tech and Coffee group, so I thought it apt (no pun intended) to post on the Google labs Ingress app, which I have been meaning to do for a while as I think Google are onto something, something very big indeed, in fact its mobile marketing and mobile gaming gold...

Its still in closed beta, so you will need an invite to play, but from some of the screens you start to get a view of why its not only marketing gold, but also a very interesting trend in mobile gaming (anyone mentions "gamification" now; please leave).

Ingress mobile marketing gold

Ingress subliminal mobile marketing

Every so often you see a trend in marketing that verges on subliminal marketing, but is, and should remain perfectly legal, but just as effective. Ingress is one of them. On the ingress game you see a series of dots, these are XM (see the Ingress wikipedia entry for explanation) which we believe, are lead to believe or hope is mobile phone activity... android or chrome activity? The concept that android, the chrome browser, Google maps, apps, etc is everywhere is quite a powerful one - much more powerful, visual and direct than the assumption that Google's traffic data for example, requires a solid base of android devices. The first perception is that Google is everywhere, and it is now mobile everywhere.
The dots are XM; chrome, apps and android users?

Ingress local marketing gold

The second level of marketing gold is the fact that people like Zipcar have entered all of their car locations. This now makes me not only aware of how close all my local Zipcars are, but it also asks me to enter the car's details... if the car is available: I now know not only where all my local Zipcars are, but what model and when they tend to be available... unfortunately I am no longer a member of Zipcar as they tried to bill me when my card was stopped, and after 2 years of loyal service decided that sending me a court order was the logical way to inform me of this, and still continued to pursue this despite paying the amount settled... there are some things no amount of marketing can overcome in the social networking age... but were this not the case; it would be good marketing for thee right target audience. Convenience stores, restaurants, bars, cycle hire schemes (please Google add the London Barclays bicycle hire scheme) and more can be interactive in a way that Foursquare never really managed to get a grip.
Google ingress is mobile marketing gold for localised businesses
Personally I think Zipcar have missed another trick here, as each location's car should have an image of the car or van in question... doh!

Ingress experiential marketing gold

One of the types of Ops (PC way of saying weapons or arsenal) is media, which at the moment is just marketing the game but could easily provide a key experiential marketing tool to more points via an experiential video... where you want it, when you want it; do I need to go on???
Ingress delivering an experiential video where, when and to whom you want...

Ingress tribal marketing gold

This is my last post on marketing, and yes I did put lots of marketing points first to wind up the certain kind of geek who has been marketed to by Google so well they do not know it and still think they hate marketing, when in fact they have just never bothered to take the time to understand it... at the moment
Why stop at two factions, why just ingress, the next app could be whatever brand  you subscribe to
However, where Google has truly triumphed, is how it has managed to keep something special scarce in mobile, and as such desired. Its an often forgotten fact of mobile marketing, that what put these little devices firmly in our hands as the must have device in the first place, was its very scarcity, exclusivity and desirability... if I have to hear, read or see another dreadful mobile marketing plan that plans to "distribute", "free", or "unlimited" ... Mobile is not unlimited; it is scarce, a valuable, limited resource; and products, services and people that use this angle to market mobile wisely have very successful products. Fact. Ingress will be one of them. Oh and by the way, did I say I have an ingress account :)

So what is ingress like as a game?

Again, its a game changer (seriously, this pun was not intended either...) for a few reasons:

Ingress is a properly social game

On my first outing with my college Keith to show me the ropes (trust me, you need help getting your head round the game) I was in the centre of Reading (yes, I know) and we were approached by some members of the opposite faction who came up and started talking in a very friendly manner. I was quite literally astounded, however this may change.... At this point I should point out that there are (to date) two factions: enlightened and resistance. I remember I am the blue one, as that's what the person who gave me an invite told me to do, and  luckily for me I would have done anyway (see the descriptions on wikipedia) if I had to make a choice based on the very serious descriptions of the two factions.
There are two factions, to date; all very sociable
At this point I should also point out that Reading is actually quite civilised (by day at least) and in a chavvier part of the country recently; I resisted taking over someone's portal, well, you know, just in case: don't blame me if you find the game not to be as social as I did, and bear in mind that this could change very quickly when Ingress goes out of closed beta. The principal however is the same; apply the theory with a different skin to a sociable group and you will have a highly social game.  The real social nature however is that it gets people to work together, introduces you to names locally that maybe on other social networks (instagam, twitter??) although I have not personally used my ingress pseudonym elsewhere... 

Ingress is a healthy game

...Ingress seems to get people out an about together, which is a good thing for people, and is a good thing for gaming: while the nintendo wii and its clones may have got us off the lazyboy and waving our arms a bit; in general games have just added to most developed nations' obesity problem - not ingress. People extend their walk from the tube, go out for a walk in evenings and lunch, and even organise trips to claim portals. even in the coldest winter we have had in the UK in 20 years... a look at will show you how far you can go even in a town centre.
Nothing can get a geek round a park as well as ingress...
Even as a triathlete (we are nuts and need no excuse to go for a run instead of going for a beer...) Ingress got me doing an extra run to get to level 3. This is an amazing achievement for a game, for a tech company, for a mobile OS provider, and its all still in closed beta!

Ingress strategy game

I never got strategy games. I love pixel art, and so wanted to like what we know today as a strategy game on a visual level. I love great strategic moves and use of guile in the face of adversity, like the scuppering of the armada... so I should like strategy games; but I do not. I work every day on corporate strategy in technology marketing, product design and contract negotiations and so should love strategy games... but I actually cannot stand them. That is because, compared to ingress, what we know today as strategy games are just glorified Sodutu or whatever those overcomplicated crosswords are called... 
Ingress is the first strategy game that appeals to me as someone who is paid to put strategies together...
Ingress has me planning when and where to attack, military style, but with a positive outcome, no camo or ammo or over zealous testosterone alpha males needed... you also need help, and dare I say it, teamwork (sorry) would achieve better results, which is nice...

Ingress will destroy your life and eat hours

As all good games should... you start changing your route to work, your meetings, and I even found myself stopping the car to do a hack... the questions of "what are you doing" are as inevitable as the answer "you don't want to know". This gets more questioning... and then you tell them, and you get the added pleasure of being right - yep; they didn't want to know! Told you... Thankfully I have triathlon training to occupy the obsessive part of my personality... my colleague Keith... he's not so lucky and is a self confessed Ingress junkie...

Ingress is not all that it should be yet

Ok, so if you do not have an ingress account and are left wanting, here are a few things it is not:
  1. accurate: the GPS is all over the place and will drive you up the wall
  2. data connectivity is needed, otherwise the app looses the plot entirely and spins the globe eternally of you are lucky, does not get past the welcome screen if not
  3. every so often you forget to mute and people think you are a trekkie, or worse, if that is possible?
  4. the UI is woeful, even by Google standards
... so its just as well Google have hired a chief game whip then isn't it...

Monday, 28 January 2013

killer apps - vivino iPhone & android app, snooth iphone

Wine mobile apps


Wine Mobile App history


Community & Social key for killer apps



Antisocial drinking apps

Snooth: another apps that thinks people need yet another login!


Friday, 28 December 2012

connected car m2m with Torque and Bluetooth dongle

One of the most interesting apps I have come across while researching emerging apps for a client is Torque. There is a light version, that serves more than anything to check if the hardware you bought of the internet works, however the true value is unlocked in the £2.99 pro version.
Torque main screen invites further delving
The first thing it buys I suppose, is not a product, but a service: piece of mind. I do not think its just me, but even with the modern cars of today, a trip to the dealer can be an expensive outing and when you hear a new noise or the engine reacts differently to usual for whatever reason, the mind begins to wonder if you are in for another unforeseen bill! This is particularly the case as your warranty is ending. This may also mean buying a car second hand is now a much more reliable exercise, assuming the present owner gives you permission, of course. If they do not, you probably have your purchase decision made for you!
You will be amazed at the level of detail OBD2 gives
Secondly, as anyone who has ever looked longingly at a classic Ferrari centre console and seen the three dials with oil temperature, water temperature, etc will appreciate being able to have these without recurring to some after market monstrosity. enable this HUD display mode for real man-child behaviour.

more practically, you can use it to monitor your driving style and become a little more eco, which in the real world means saving money. On a diesel a heavy foot may not make that much of a difference, but on a petrol automatic you can double the fuel economy around town at least, which at £80 to fill the tank of a small car, is £2.99 well spent!

Beyond there you can also record your trip with transparent overlay, if your morning commute involves sleepy people pulling out in front of you or road rage, you can capture it in detail with your careful and considerate speed overlaid as proof or your coffee induced wide-awakeness, as well as accurate fuel economy.

I am surprised this has not appeared in car magazines so far as a much more accurate tool, not just for comparing more details on laps and getting more data, like g-forces that a driver is subjected to, how much fuel a car used to get round a track, what revs and amount of fuel were needed to get the same performance, etc. In short; how hard a car has had to work to get the same result is a strong indicator of how good it is and moreover, how good a car is likely to be in a few years - fatigue and wear and tear are not friends of the motorist.

In order to get all this detail, you need a Bluetooth (as I have) OBD-2 or OBD-ii as it seems to be often referred to, device. I got mine off of ebay for only 3 to 4 times the price of the Torque app, search for "bluetooth obd-2" and you should see them. Mine is this one, I had a choice of getting it slowly from Hong Kong, or quickly for a premium locally... I chose to get it locally as I like supporting prospectors.
Bluetooth dongle clips into car's OBD port (where your mechanic plugs in to your car)
On my car this was under a small rubber cover under the steering column.

If you do not like the idea of cheap Bluetooth, there are more expensive wi-fi ones, which you could read from your laptop from comfort of your home, if that's what float's your boat (or if you are really geeky, the vpn to your on-board mi-fi from anywhere....) and Garmin also make an official Bluetooth one called the Garmin EcoRoute HD. When speaking to a contact in the EE (the merger of UK mobile operators Orange and T-mobile, previously called Everything Everywhere) m2m department, they also had one with a SIM in it that let's you read it from anywhere.

One interesting use, if you have, or should I say for when you have a deduct old android device, is to plug an old android permanently on power in the boot or somewhere and have tracking enabled, which may be useful in many scenarios:
  1. the event of an accident, and 
  2. For security: even more useful if your car is stolen - with not only the record of where it is, but also any speed or other related crimes committed as well. If you are lucky enough to have several houses and associated cars or a collection of cars you can also ensure that nobody misuses them.
  3. if you have a family member who is on your insurance and known for accidents, or very young, you can at least incentivise good driving (I cannot see a mode to remotely disable a car being abused!)
  4. if you run a small fleet of vehicles as a business, good driving by your employees is part of your brand and image, as well as the obvious locating ability, will be very useful.
  5. if you are a control freak or technologist in general. (I am glad to say I am the latter)
So by now many will be asking: why no apple app? Well Apple, rightly or wrongly (there is a case for both) only allows connectivity from Bluetooth devices with an apple security chip in it, and no of course your $10 device from Hong Kong does not have one. For apple devotees you will need the wi-fi devices, which for some reason are ten times the cost of the Bluetooth versions.

The best consumer use of this is to get a nexus 7, for example, or an android handset and enable wi-fi sharing and you have wi-fi in your car as well as diagnostics. And no that knocking noise is not about to become a £700 bill... or is it!

Wednesday, 11 April 2012

instagram for android added to killer apps list

Instagram is now on android and what an app, and have added it as soon as I have played with it for a week to the andorid killer apps list. Very few ports are better than the original, but hat's off to the instagram team, they deserve their new found bounty as they have done what few people do and I have spent millions of my clients' money ensuring: that the port is better than the original... read the full article here