Facebook announces App Center

Facebook announces App Center
by Paul Sloan | 10 May 2012 9:26am SGT

(Credit: Facebook)

Facebook put an important marker down today by announcing that it intends to offer what it calls an "App Center" in coming weeks.

"For the over 900 million people that use Facebook, the App Center will become the new, central place to find great apps like Draw Something, Pinterest, Spotify, Battle Pirates, Viddy, and Bubble Witch Saga," Facebook's Aaron Brady said in a blog post. "Everything has an app detail page, which helps people see what makes an app unique and lets them install it before going to an app."

Today's announcement was what Facebook spokeswoman Malorie Lucich described as a call to developers to submit images and copy so that their Facebook can consider featuring their apps. She said Facebook's App Center is designed to push the best social apps through a personalized discovery page.

If you're a person who likes word games--something Facebook would know from your Facebook behavior--the App Center will surface those sorts of apps for you. Then, when you select an app you like, you'll be sent to the Apple's App Store or Google's, depending on your device. "We're certainly not looking at it any competitive way" with Google or Apple, said Lucich.

Yet Facebook will let developers offer paid apps (users will pay a flat fee to use an app on Facebook.com). However, one can assume that with over 900 million users on the social network, there will be no shortage of developers attempting to create apps. Facebook's decision whether to list an app on the site will depend on several benchmarks governing design, user ratings and engagement. According to Brady, developers will be able to monitor how their products fare on the App Center with a new app ratings metric in Insights to report how users rate your app over time.

More than 200 apps are now integrated with Facebook, and each has more than 1 million active users.

Facebook has created an App Center guidelines page which spells out submission and eligibility criteria. The following apps will be considered:

An app on Facebook.com in a canvas page

A mobile app built for the web, iOS or Android that uses Facebook Login

A website that uses Facebook Login and has an immediately logged-in, personalized experience (see App Quality for more info)

An App for Pages built to manage or enhance other companies' Facebook Pages

After creating an application, developers will need to follow these guidelines when creating their app detail pages.

Display Name - Use the exact name of your app, with no extra words or characters.

Short & Detailed Descriptions - Describe how your app works and what makes it unique. Be accurate, so people aren't surprised when they start using it. Use standard spelling, grammar and capitalization. Don't include URLs, excessive punctuation, price information, keyword lists or non-standard symbols.

Category & Subcategory - Select a category that most people would expect. See the category descriptions for more information.

Icons - Upload attractive, relevant, original icons. Icons should be simple and free of visual clutter (for example, buttons or additional info). Different-sized icons should be similar, with no distortion and pixilation.

Cover Image - Choose an image that conveys what your app is all about. Use simple imagery that people will easily recognize, with limited text, shadows, and distracting patterns. Don't use arrows or other references to the buttons below your cover image to encourage people to install your app.

Small and Large Banners - Drive people to your app detail page with visually compelling images that clearly show the name of your app. Don't include buttons, URLs, excess text, promotions, or price information.

Screenshots - Show off unique and engaging parts of your app, and demonstrate how the app is social. Don't use images that are unrelated, misleading, or dramatically different from what most users experience.

Images (general) - Don't put calls to action (for example, "Click here" or "Play now") or arrows to Facebook UI elements in your images.

Via CNET News

Google Currents [App Review]

This was going to be a post about the recently leaked Flipboard app...

But it was a huge meh. The popular app that has been released for iOS is finally coming to Android later this year, and is going to be exclusively available on the yet to be released Samsung Galaxy SIII. The leaked app performance supposedly varied on different devices, and was pretty finicky on my own Galaxy Nexus, so I decided not to (p)review it. Plus there's a philosophical debate about using apps that were hacked from their original intended source.

However, this has renewed my interest in Google Currents, Google's own take on the visual RSS reader game.

I've always been confused on which RSS reader would best work for me. I've gone through the whole lot (at least for Android) such as Pulse and Zinio, and Google Reader. None of them presented themselves strong enough for me to keep using them for long.

Phone format, not too small, not too big

Then comes along Currents, which is more like a magazine service than a simple RSS feed catcher. The Providers (which could be any website, even me) can decide what the reader sees when they subscribe to their current. Subscribing to the Android Central current, for example, shows different sections of their website such as reviews, videos, their Google+ feed and whatever other posts they decide they want. The publisher can also elect to just show their plain 'ole feed from their blog if they don't want to get fancy.

Like any other reader, you can manually add a website's feed, and Currents will "convert" it into more of a magazine format. There's also a list of popular currents to subscribe to, from many of the major news source. Google Reader support is also built in (figures, right?) which lets you import whatever you've been subscribed to and add to Currents' format. Again I'm a Google-centric guy, but this just makes Reader another redundant app which really annoys me.

Reading an article on the tablet

The tablet experience is just as consistent, and scales up quite nicely if I do say so myself. Pictures are just as clear as they are on their original website. Along with video integration, which means you don't have to open an external website, a cool feature lets you view all the pictures in a particular article/post in a gallery-like feature without having to scroll to them individually.

The tablet format is just right

Any article that has been synced to the device will be available for offline reading, images too, depending on your settings. The initial push of Google Currents was focused on offline availability, but I can see it going farther than that. Loading of each provider's currents are fast, and lets you quickly get to reading.

I won't go into how much customization the providers have, but my own setup is in the following screenshot, more of an aggregator of my own posts. Kind of limited right now, but hopefully they start to support more feed types than simple RSS and Google's own services like Picasa.

Terrible colors... need to change that

You can download Google Currents for your device down below:

Download on Google Play | Download for iOS

NBC Politics Launches Free Elections App for iPad and iPhone

NBC Politics Launches Free Elections App for iPad and iPhone
May 3, 2012 by Alex Fitzpatrick on Mashable

NBC Politics launched a new iPad and iPhone app Thursday that lets users keep tabs on the latest news coming out of the 2012 race to the White House.

The app, which is free, first opens to a page of recent headlines. Users can tap a headline to get the full story, including images and video. A daily “tip sheet,” which is a round-up briefing of the latest political news and headlines, is also included in the app. Candidate profiles give users full biographies of the presidential candidates. Also featured: Video clips taken directly from the latest episodes of NBC’s many news shows.

“With all eyes on the 2012 election, the NBC Politics App delivers the best political content and reporting -– wherever you are,” said David Gregory, moderator of NBC News’ Meet the Press. “This all-access, easy-to-navigate resource puts the full power of NBC News in your hands, from the top headlines and stories to innovative features that allow serious political junkies to dig even deeper.”

For you political geography geeks out there, the app has two different sets of maps: one that shows real-time results from primaries and, eventually, the general election, and another that’s a game-based election simulator.

The real-time results map is visually inviting and simple to use, although the county-by-county results pull down from an outside web page, which can feel awkward and is occasionally buggy. However, if the data gets updated promptly on election nights, it could prove to be an excellent poll-watching tool.

The simulator presents a national election map, then challenges users to guess which way each of the 50 states will lean – heavily Democrat or Republican, slightly Democrat or Republican or neutral. Depending on your guesses, either Barack Obama or Mitt Romney is bestowed the presidential seal.

The truly nerdy amongst us will be disappointed to know that you can’t — yet — predict results on a county-by-county basis.

There’s a sharing element, too — users can easily post articles or video from the app to their Facebook or Twitter feeds.

NBC’s new app was designed by Method, and is available for download in the App Store.



Source: Mashable.com

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Apple, Google move to tackle app store issues

Apple, Google move to tackle app store issues

Apple Touch

Apple has warned that any developers found to be artificially inflating the rankings of apps will be kicked off the App Store.

It follows a developer blowing the whistle on the practice of using automated PCs - known as bot farms - to push apps up the charts.

The anonymous developer said that it was common practice to pay bot farms to inflate rankings.

Meanwhile, Google's attempts to clean up its app store have been questioned.

Shocked
Apple faced fresh scrutiny over how its apps are ranked following an anonymous posting to the Touch Arcade gaming forum.

In it, a developer claimed that an unnamed firm had offered to give his app a top 25 ranking in return for $5,000 (£3,144).

He said that the firm had listed some of its other clients, and openly described its business model.

"I was totally shocked when I heard that there were eight apps in the top 25 were all promoted by them.

"He said he had outsourced someone to build him a bot farm and the bots will automatically download his clients' apps and drive up their rankings," the developer wrote.

Bots are pieces of software that run automated tasks on the internet.

It prompted plenty of news chatter about bot farms and forced Apple to clarify its position.

In a statement on its developer forum, Apple said: "Once you build a great app, you want everyone to know about it. However, when you promote your app, you should avoid using services that advertise or guarantee top placement in App Store charts.

"Even if you are not personally engaged in manipulating App Store chart rankings or user reviews, employing services that do so on your behalf may result in the loss of your Apple Developer Program membership."

Real people
Apps are now big business. A recent study by tech industry network Tech Net suggested that since 2007, the "app economy" had created 466,000 new jobs in the US alone.

Getting a top 25 position in the rankings means more downloads for an app and more cash for the developer.

It seems to have spawned an industry dedicated to boosting rankings.

One firm, Top Deal Apps, has admitted the practice but says that it uses people rather than bot farms.

Speaking to gaming website Pocket Gamer, a spokesman for the firm said that it employed more than 200,000 users in the US with iOS devices and iTunes accounts.

"Each time we take a new case from an app developer, our users will be notified to download the certain app during the required time period. After the verification, the users will get money for this download," he told the online magazine.

Bouncing back?
As Apple fights its own issues, Google is determined to make its own app store more secure. Android apps have gained a reputation for attracting malware because of the more open way they are developed and the lack of pre-screening.

Last week the search giant revealed that it had been using a malware checker dubbed Bouncer for the second half of 2011, and its use had led to a 40% decrease in the number of potentially malicious apps on Android Market.

Security firms welcomed the step towards better security but warned that it might not be enough.

Writing on the Bitdefender Blog, security expert Catalin Cosoi said there it could be a problem that Bouncer only scanned the Android market.

"There are several other websites from where Android users can install applications. In fact, most malicious applications we discovered were actually hosted on third-party markets and not directly on Google's (Android) Market," he said.

Bouncer also only emulates apps uploaded on the Android market, he said.

"There is a high chance that we'll see apps behaving correctly when used on a simulator and turning malicious when used on the mobile device," he added.


Source: BBC