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- Sep 11, 11The best thing about Producteev is that you can manage each of your course sections, as well as your personal life- all with one tool!There is a delicate balance between juggling subjects, multiple students, and professional goals on top of personal matters. Summer is over, and it's time to get back to the daily grind that is teaching. The workload seems to be ever-increasing with each passing semester, and the old-fashioned lesson planners and grade books can only go so far! Let Producteev for Education help you reclaim your life!Simple Guide to the Path of Tranquility:
- Using your .edu e-mail address, sign up to Producteev for Education. (Link below)
- Once you're in, assign a 'workspace' for each of your sections.
- Under each workspace, plot the information highlighted on the syllabus.
- Assign due dates and reminders as needed. These can be done via e-mail and IM.
- Add some visual appeal! Assign colored labels to each category of assignment. For example: Response Papers = Red; Research Reports = Yellow; etc.
- Observe the activity in all your sections with one glance through the 'overview.'
- As assignments get completed, mark them 'done.' Now onto the next project!
But wait there's more! Producteev for Education adds another layer of awesome to what it has to offer.- Hold that Thought: Add notes to your tasks! Feel free to quickly jot down any ideas you may like to implement... before the thought gets lost in another rush of ideas!
- Sharing is Caring: Collaborate with a colleague or superior on tasks!
Now of course we won't just tell you about our amazing software, and leave you to fend for yourself! We offer videos that would help you get started with Producteev. Heck, whenever you're ready, there are additional videos available to help guide you through the basics of each feature. Once you get into the swing of it all, you will soon find that you have... (get ready for this)... breathing room!Whether you are a school teacher, college/adjunct professor, or even a private/after-school tutor- only you truly understand the workload that goes unnoticed with your occupation.Unlock the door to your peace of mind, and let Producteev for Education be the key. Sign up now with your .edu e-mail address, for this free premium service by Producteev!Recommended Reading: Producteev for Students: Breeze Through that To-Do List! - Aug 14, 10
It’s getting increasingly hard to tell where one Web application ends and another begins. Everywhere you turn these days some provider of a Web application is announcing another application programming interface (API).
The latest example is Producteev, which offers a task-management application as a service. As much as Producteev CEO Ilan Abehassera would like people to use his service online, he’s more interested in having other application providers embed Producteev inside their application services. After all, task management probably is better as a subset of another application rather than a stand-alone app.
As Web applications evolve, they are becoming as borderless as our Web sites. The average Web site today is a collection of modules delivering content from who knows where. The model is now being applied to Web applications that are taking advantage of custom and de facto industry standard APIs that essentially allow customers to customize and integrate these applications with just about any other Web application.
The rise of these new borderless Web applications will present some interesting security and data-management challenges. But what was once a relatively simple mashup concept involving the sharing of data between two applications rapidly is becoming a never-ending series of composite applications that are always connected.
From an end user perspective, this capability presents all kinds of possibilities for mass customization as part of the general trend toward the consumerization of IT. From an IT manager’s perspective, however, mass customization currently equals mass confusion.There's no doubt we're seeing the rise of a new era of applications of the Web; then only real question at this point is how are we going to manage them?
- Jul 08, 10
If you’re a new startup or have a new product you want to launch at TechCrunch Disrupt, we encourage you to submit your company to compete in our the Startup Battlefield. Disrupt SF’s application process is being hosted courtesy of task-management startup, Producteev.
The Startup Battlefield is a tournament-style launch platform where startups demo their products and impress the audience and panel of experts over multiple rounds of competition. Experts will be brought in to mentor and judge startups on product, business models, team, design and usability and more. The final round will put startups in the hot seat where some of the most successful entrepreneurs, venture capitalists and business executives will grill them in front of the audience. Audience voting as well as expert feedback will factor into final competition scores.
One startup will emerge the overall winner and take home a $50,000 cash prize at the close of the conference, Wednesday afternoon.
Deadlines
Apply to compete in the Startup Battlefield.
Open applications will be accepted through midnight pst, Sunday, August 8.
Final decisions will be extended to applicants by Friday, September 3.Applications will be reviewed, companies will be interviewed and offers will be extended on a rolling basis, so it’s to your benefit to submit your application as soon as you are ready for consideration. Applications may be saved in draft mode, so please do not submit an application before you’re ready for full consideration. Powerpoint slides and videos are optional to submit, but due to heavy application volumes, we strongly encourage you to submit a few slides and a short video for the best chance of moving forward with an interview. Video quality is not important, but getting a quick overview of your product is very important to us.
We expect to extend 15-25 offers for companies to launch and compete in the Startup Battlefield. The final number will be based on the applicant pool.
Startup AlleyAny company less than two years old and less than $2 million in financing is welcome to participate in the Startup Alley demo area. The audience’s favorite Startup Alley company will secure a spot into into Round One of Startup Battlefield live at Disrupt.
- Jul 01, 10
Yes, lots of news these days...! And we particularly like this one.
You already know that you can attach files to your tasks as a note. Pretty popular feature, because it's an easy way to manage different versions of your files, related to your tasks. By the way, if you send an email to task@producteev.com with a file attached to it, it will be automatically posted as a first note...
Back to our announcement : What if you didn't have to download those files to view them?
It's now a reality, we've partnered with Scribd (the Youtube for documents), so your files will be displayed right below the note, viewable in one click. And that's a game changer to us, makes things much easier to work on Files and comment on files without going through the painful download process.
You still have the choice though : Download or Preview.
Here is the list supported by Scribd :
- Portable Document Format (.pdf)
- PostScript (.ps)
- Microsoft Word (.doc, .docx)
- Microsoft PowerPoint (.ppt, .pps, .pptx)
- Microsoft Excel (.xls, xlsx)
- OpenOffice Text Document (.odt, .sxw)
- OpenOffice Presentation Document (.odp, .sxi)
- OpenOffice Spreadsheet (.ods, .sxc)
- All OpenDocument formats
- Plain text (.txt)
- Rich Text Format (.rtf)
- And we added Pictures (.jpg, .png, .gif...)
- Mar 27, 10
SquarePik Adds Photos and Video to Foursquare
by rahsheenMarch 22, 2010Foursquare has gained a lot of popularity as one of the forerunners in the location-based application race, facing such competition as Gowalla and Yelp. All of these services are basically the same, but SquarePik adds another dimension of interaction that makes Foursquare just a little more interesting. SquarePik integrates with Foursquare to provide a method for attaching photos and videos to your checkins.
SquarePik is the brainchild of Pikchur Inc. (our coverage) and 39 Inc. It is currently only available as an iPhone application, which you can get from the App Store for $1.99. SquarePik works in three easy steps:
- Choose a venue from the list, or create one if it doesn’t exist
- Take a photo or record a video
- SquarePik automatically checks you in at that location
Not only will SquarePik give you the ability to add rich media to your Foursquare checkins, but it also lets you view any media that others have shared while checking in at that location. This opens up a few different and interesting possibilities. Foursquare has already created a game around their location checkins, but an individual visiting any venue could start their very own game or meme. Those visiting after the fact would see the photo/video and copy it. A real-estate agent could checkin at various properties that they manage and post media describing the details and “secrets” of that property. An artist could post media related to a live performance at a specific venue. People attending any event after that would be able to see, via SquarePik, exactly how that event went down and possibly gain the artist some new fans.
The possibilities here are very interesting and make me think of a Lokast-type system, with the ability to leave things behind for others to find. Also, combined with Zillow, this could be a powerful tool for Real Estate agents. A trusted source tells me that SquarePik may eventually grow into a “full-blown Foursquare client.” That should open up some interesting possibilities in it’s own right. The only thing I wish for is the ability to access SquarePik via the web. Pikchur and Foursquare both have web interfaces, so it’s not much of a stretch.
Category: Reviews | Tags: 39 inc., foursquare, location based services, pikchurvia blackweb20.com - Mar 27, 10
SquarePik Adds Photos and Video to Foursquare
by rahsheenMarch 22, 2010Foursquare has gained a lot of popularity as one of the forerunners in the location-based application race, facing such competition as Gowalla and Yelp. All of these services are basically the same, but SquarePik adds another dimension of interaction that makes Foursquare just a little more interesting. SquarePik integrates with Foursquare to provide a method for attaching photos and videos to your checkins.
SquarePik is the brainchild of Pikchur Inc. (our coverage) and 39 Inc. It is currently only available as an iPhone application, which you can get from the App Store for $1.99. SquarePik works in three easy steps:
- Choose a venue from the list, or create one if it doesn’t exist
- Take a photo or record a video
- SquarePik automatically checks you in at that location
Not only will SquarePik give you the ability to add rich media to your Foursquare checkins, but it also lets you view any media that others have shared while checking in at that location. This opens up a few different and interesting possibilities. Foursquare has already created a game around their location checkins, but an individual visiting any venue could start their very own game or meme. Those visiting after the fact would see the photo/video and copy it. A real-estate agent could checkin at various properties that they manage and post media describing the details and “secrets” of that property. An artist could post media related to a live performance at a specific venue. People attending any event after that would be able to see, via SquarePik, exactly how that event went down and possibly gain the artist some new fans.
The possibilities here are very interesting and make me think of a Lokast-type system, with the ability to leave things behind for others to find. Also, combined with Zillow, this could be a powerful tool for Real Estate agents. A trusted source tells me that SquarePik may eventually grow into a “full-blown Foursquare client.” That should open up some interesting possibilities in it’s own right. The only thing I wish for is the ability to access SquarePik via the web. Pikchur and Foursquare both have web interfaces, so it’s not much of a stretch.
Category: Reviews | Tags: 39 inc., foursquare, location based services, pikchurvia blackweb20.com - Mar 18, 10
Miami, Florida-based Labotec has landed a round of funding from Kima Ventures, a European early-stage investment fund founded by entrepreneurs and angel investors Jeremie Berrebi (Zlio, Net2One) and Square backer Xavier Niel (Free, Iliad).The VC firm thus joins Kipost and FS Ventures as investors of the crowd-sourced mobile app development venture. The size of the round remains undisclosed, but we hear the amount of financing totaled just south of a seven-figure sum, so we'll peg it at in between $800,000 and $999,999.Labotec offers a relatively unique way of mobile app publishing, based on crowd-sourcing ideas from third parties. Basically, people who have ideas for mobile applications on any of the major platforms but lack the time, development skills or resources to actually build them can submit their ideas through the Labotec website. The ideas are subsequently evaluated by Labotec, and if one gets thumbs up from a committee of unnamed field experts associated with the company, Labotec funds the entire development, distribution and marketing of the app. The IP is co-owned by whoever submitted the idea ¿ targeted are carriers and handset manufacturers ¿ and Labotec.The 'Inspirer' (the person or organization that brought forward the idea for the app) doesn't pay a cent, but if the app ends up generating revenue, the first $25,000 that it makes goes to Labotec ¿ no matter how long it took to get to that point. After that, the Inspirer gets 50% of any revenue that may follow. Labotec notes that they're still testing this model and that it is subject to change in the future.Labotec says that it has received hundreds of new project ideas from 27 countries since its inception in May 2009. A total of 3 applications out of those ideas have launched (iSOS for Android, iMove2Music and FakeSMS for iPhone) and 20 are slated for release by the end of this year ¿ which basically means a lot of the submitted ideas are junk. The company says it plans to use part of the just-raised capital to hire 10 more developers of mobile apps for platforms such as iPhone, Android, iPad and BlackBerry.CrunchBase InformationLabotecInformation provided by CrunchBase
- Mar 18, 10
Miami, Florida-based Labotec has landed a round of funding from Kima Ventures, a European early-stage investment fund founded by entrepreneurs and angel investors Jeremie Berrebi (Zlio, Net2One) and Square backer Xavier Niel (Free, Iliad).
The VC firm thus joins Kipost and FS Ventures as investors of the crowd-sourced mobile app development venture. The size of the round remains undisclosed, but we hear the amount of financing totaled just south of a seven-figure sum, so we’ll peg it at in between $800,000 and $999,999.
Labotec offers a relatively unique way of mobile app publishing, based on crowd-sourcing ideas from third parties. Basically, people who have ideas for mobile applications on any of the major platforms but lack the time, development skills or resources to actually build them can submit their ideas through the Labotec website.
The ideas are subsequently evaluated by Labotec, and if one gets thumbs up from a committee of unnamed field experts associated with the company, Labotec funds the entire development, distribution and marketing of the app. The IP is co-owned by whoever submitted the idea – targeted are carriers and handset manufacturers – and Labotec.
The ‘Inspirer’ (the person or organization that brought forward the idea for the app) doesn’t pay a cent, but if the app ends up generating revenue, the first $25,000 that it makes goes to Labotec – no matter how long it took to get to that point. After that, the Inspirer gets 50% of any revenue that may follow. Labotec notes that they’re still testing this model and that it is subject to change in the future.
Labotec says that it has received hundreds of new project ideas from 27 countries since its inception in May 2009. A total of 3 applications out of those ideas have launched (iSOS for Android, iMove2Music and FakeSMS for iPhone) and 20 are slated for release by the end of this year – which basically means a lot of the submitted ideas are junk.
The company says it plans to use part of the just-raised capital to hire 10 more developers of mobile apps for platforms such as iPhone, Android, iPad and BlackBerry.
via techcrunch.com - Mar 16, 10
Miami, FL (March 15, 2010) Labotec announced today that it has secured a round of funding from major strategic partner Kima Ventures, founded by Jeremie Berrebi (Zlio, Net2One) and Xavier Niel (Free,Iliad). Europe-based fund Kima Ventures joins Kipost and FS Ventures as an investor in Labotec. The company plans to use the funds to accelerate growth in all areas of its business and to support its plans for massive scale in 2010.
Labotec is pioneering a new form of mobile applications publishing based on crowd-sourced ideas. Since its recent inception, Labotec has received hundreds of new project ideas from 27 countries. 3 applications have already launched (iSOS for Android, iMove2Music for iPhone, FakeSMS for iPhone) and 20 are slated for release by the end of the year. Labotec engages with innovators that have always dreamed to see their ideas commercialized and be given the right tools to succeed in the marketplace.
“Mobile applications are becoming a must-have for subscribers and carriers, Labotec has the potential to turn an idea into a great business” said Jeremie Berrebi, partner in Kima Ventures.
“Our goal is to produce a user-oriented portfolio of applications on mobile devices such as iPhone/iPad/iPod, Android or BlackBerry” explains Florian Seroussi, Labotec co-founder.
“Kima Ventures and its founders bring another layer of opportunities we couldn’t approach until now” says Pierre-Olivier Carles, CEO of Kipost.
According to research analyst Research2guidance, the surge in applications will be driven by a fast-growing number of smartphone users, estimated to increase from about 100 million in 2009 to nearly 1 billion by 2013. Yearly application revenues will rise from US$1.94 billion (2009) to US$15.65 billion in only four years, according to most recent research findings.
About Labotec Inc
Labotec’s mission is to select great application ideas for iPhone, iPod, iPad, Android or Blackberry, finance them, and gather the required resources together to go to market with a finished application on any Application Store.
For that purpose, Labotec has established a selection and approval process that is both simple and swift. Labotec Inc HQ is based in Miami, Florida, with an office in Toulouse, France.About Kima Ventures
Kima Ventures fund launched in 2010 by entrepreneurs for entrepreneurs. Our goal is to support and finance innovative companies with seed capital all over the world and to promotes the growth of startups, supporting them in the fastest and most effective ways.
Kima Ventures partners with the best business angels and venture, funds, and invests primarily in projects that meet a simple need and have a simple business model.Labotec Inc
20900 NE 30th Ave Suite 603
Miami, Florida, USA
Twitter: @Labotec
info@labotec.comPR Contacts:
Europe
Stephane Menoret
stephane@labotec.com
+33 6 77 55 01 41US
Florian Seroussi
florian@labotec.com
+1 417 262 60060 Comments | Posted by admin March 16, 2010
via labotec.com - Mar 13, 10
This is a review of Producteev by Charles Lau.
In today’s Internet, we have blogs, social networks, social bookmarks, wikis, and all other sorts of webware that we can lay our hands on. The Internet is also finding ways to make you platform independent with all the software that you are using such as office productivity software (with Google Docs), email software (with Gmail) and image editing (with Picnik).
How about managing your projects and tasks with your job? You have been a really busy executives and managers, and you would really hope how you can make your work more efficient.
Well in fact, one of the most time-consuming tasks in your project(s) is the task of managing the priority of all the actual tasks. You would hope to know what you need to do today, and what your staff are doing in exactly the way you wanted. You don’t have to micro-manage them, in order to manage what they are doing today, tomorrow and the day after. All you need to do, is to manage the actual task overview of each employee.
Introduction to Producteev
Today, I am going to talk about Producteev. It is an intuitive and fully drag & drop-able solution to collaborate with your colleagues over shared projects and tasks.
How did I manage to find this site? I chance upon this site through Chris Brogan on twitter. And I thought this is quite a good addition to our world wide web!
Here’s a summary of what Producteev is:
- In a nutshell, you can create tasks for yourself or to assign to members of your team, and you can then leave comments on these tasks as your project evolves with time.
- You will be accessing to a lot of useful task-management features such as file management, reminders, a calendar and numerous third-party applications such as mobile apps, desktop and IM bots.
- You will also be able to manage both the tasks as well as to-do lists, and communicate efficiently with your team.
In fact, as you can see, it is still in beta version currently. Even though the software is already in place, they must be still trying their very best to test the software first before they make it official.
Overview of Producteev
You will see boxes of to-do tasks on your dashboard when you log into the system. And on every box, you will share your tasks with your colleagues, or to make it private. You are free to create a new box whenever necessary. (See below)
There is also a live feed section for you to find out what your colleagues have done in the tasks. This live feed also allows you to message your colleagues, upload a file to the message, and even to message privately. (See below)
You can also upload files onto the server. Your colleagues can also comment on it. (See below)
Any other features on top of that?
Simply said, this is what Producteev is all about. And they surround their features to be compatible with different mobile devices. On top of that, you can also sync Producteev with the various services such as twitter to update your tasks!
Interview with Producteev CEO
I have been able to interview the founder and CEO of Producteev. His name is Ilan Abehassera.
When I approach Producteev, I wonder if they are going to accept my interview questions with my current startup of this blog. Never did I knew that Ilan is a really approachable person who not only answered all my questions immediately, he even added me in his LinkedIn account. Wow! Thanks Ilan.
Here’re the questions I have interviewed on 2 April 2009:
1) When did you start to have this idea of starting this website?
Ans: I had the idea 2 years ago, and starting working on a prototype 1 year ago. I finally decided to start a company around it on July 8, 20082) How long have you been working on this site?
Ans: Since June 1st 2008, so 10 months3) What’s your vision of this site?
Ans: ”Producteev is building the first productivity platform developed on top of the tools we all rely on every day (email, IM, mobile, desktop, outlook, gmail, google docs,…)”Group Task Management is still a largely unsolved problem : emails or IM are used as our main tool to assign tasks to colleagues, but we can all agree those are not efficient to manage and track tasks and projects.
=> With Producteev.com, we help you centralize tasks, projects, internal communication and files by using whatever communication service you rely on.
4) What is the server technology behind? Why is the server able to support all of our information in terms of space and bandwidth?
Ans: We are based on the LAMP stack, with 2 servers (1 web server + 1 mysql server)5) How many of you are working on maintaining this website?
Ans: 3 full time6) Will there be any always-ongoing research to further improve the system?
Ans: Of course, we have a huge roadmap ahead of us, and just recruited a mathematician that will build a better algorithm to prioritize tasks (but sshhhh, this is a secret!)Conclusion
First of all, I would like to thank Ilan for the interview in this blog post. His other two colleagues include Aric Lasry (Co-Founder and Lead Developer) and Simon Dawlat (Director Product Marketing). They have a lot of experiences before they work on this project with Ilan. You may find out more about them in their “about us” page.
Looks like Producteev is progressing as I have just checked Ilan’s twitter that they are employing their first employee! Congratulations!
Producteev certainly has potential as this very simple task management can be quite complicated when it involves two or more people. I can tell you that because I have been working in an office and most of our time is to keep our tasks insync! We’ll see how this project is going to evolve into!
- Mar 13, 10
Fake SMS is out and available on the App Store
Fake SMS is one of the most succeeded app that gives you the opportunity to make some jokes to your friends. Simply create fake text conversations from fake contacts (eg : Barack Obama) or real friends.
You can create as many messages as you want for each conversation and choose the elapsed time between the reception of each one of them. You can also decide if the first message will be sent by you or the fake contact to initiate the conversation!
With this system, you can simulate a strongly credible conversation and trap your friends, family, colleagues … !
Fake SMS will allow you to avoid a party or a meeting by showing a fake text conversation with one of your parent, or let your friends think that you.Get it here: App Store iTunes Link
Posted by admin January 15, 2010
via labotec.com - Mar 13, 10
We here @ Pikchur have been working really hard on a few things lately. The first is our joint venture with 39llc to develop a Foursquare application that allows you to check-in with multimedia.
It’s called SquarePik.
The application allows people to check-in with a photo or video. In addition, the app will show users all photos and videos dropped at a particular venue. Along with some of the expected features such as, the ability to add locations, search for locations, and view your friend’s last checkins, we hope to provide a supplementary application to the already popular Foursquare iPhone app.
The app is built on top of our new “GeoSocial” API (more on that later) and is available in the iTunes store for just $1.99
Now, our new Geo-Social API is aimed at providing developers of geo social apps such as Foursquare the ability to quickly integrate the following features:
- Multimedia check-ins (Photos & Videos)
- Pull feed of Media Dropped @ a venue
- Pull feed of Thumbnails for a list of venues.
- Allow for multimedia tips (coming soon)
Documentation for our API can be found here : http://groups.google.com/group/pikchur-api/web/geosocial-api-documentation
We also added the following to Pikchur.com:
- Landing pages with Foursquare venue badges: http://pikchur.com/Muq
- Geo social venue specific timelines: http://pikchur.com/timeline/foursquare*368848
- Nifty venue RSS feeds: http://pikchur.com/rss/geosocial/foursquare/368848
Well that’s it for now, stay tuned as we improve SquarePik and our Geo social API.
As always, feel free to reach us with your comments, concerns and feed back @ info at pikchur dot com
Thanks,
The Pikchur Crew.
via blog.pikchur.com - Mar 12, 10
iSOS app can be activated in case of an emergency. Just by one click on the icon, iSOS will send emergency voice, texts messages, emails, FB and twitter updates to 5 of your chosen contacts. Plus, it automatically calls 911 (112 UE) and send your GPS-positioning so that people can find you and help you easily & efficiently.
Get isos on Market today
via labotec.com - Mar 12, 10
As Foursquare
continues to gain momentum (both in users and with mainstream deals), a number of services are popping up to augment it. The latest is Pikchur
, a service that already lets you share you pictures on Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, and other services. And now they’ve added Foursquare to the mix, and built an entirely new iPhone app just for it.
SquarePik is an app that lets you check-in on Foursquare while at the same time dropping an image or video at a venue you check-in at. Because Foursquare doesn’t support media natively, SquarePik does by combining Foursquare’s check-in API with its own backend to store the pictures and record their location. Sadly, to see these pictures or videos you have to sign in to your Pikchur account (which you can do with your Foursquare credentials) on the web.
Still, it’s kind of cool that Pikchur was able to build an entirely new Foursquare iPhone app with added functionality. Some people may even prefer its look and feel as it features bigger icons and a large centrally-located check-in button. The downside is that the venue location information doesn’t seem to be as accurate as Foursquare’s actual iPhone app, and there are none of the other goodies such as seeing who else is at a venue. SquarePik also doesn’t break up check-ins by city, it just shows them all in a stream.
Pikchur is the latest service to add picture functionality on top of Foursquare. Last month, Photocheck.in started offering the same idea, but it’s slightly different in that you send a geotagged picture and it checks you in on Foursquare at the address. TweetPhoto quickly followed with an approach that is much more like Pikchur’s (but again, Pikchur’s is all about their native iPhone app).
Given Fousquare’s growth it should be no surprise that we’re seeing these new services that reside on top of it much like we did with Twitter. And while one might think Foursquare could eventually cripple these simply by adding a native photo element, that was also said about Twitter, but it never happened. That said, given that Foursquare is much more app-centric, I wouldn’t be shocked if we do see the ability to tag pictures to venues eventually.
Find SquarePik in the App Store for $1.99
.
via techcrunch.com
-
Posts
- Dec 30, 11
and we have you and many others to thank.
More than two million people have downloaded our apps so far – and our revenues exploded by 10 from the year before. For this success, we thank our customers for trusting Labotec as a partner, We also attribute this amazing growth to our talented team of dedicated men and women who work hard all year long. And of course, we remain grateful to our investors who have been instrumental in our achievements.
Two years ago when we started this crazy project, I sat down with Julien Codorniou (Microsoft) who convinced me to enroll Labotec into the Microsoft BizSpark program. We did and it worked out to be a great move. The Redmond team supported our efforts to develop Pikchur for Windows Phone platform. Microsoft placed our application on a giant phone located in Herald Square in New York City. Unfortunately (or fortunately) our revenues have surpassed $2M and it voids our BizSpark accreditation for 2012. It’s been a wild, wonderful ride!
Labotec will open new development offices in Manhattan in early February, in the heart of Chelsea. We are starting a large-scale recruiting campaign for Mobile UX/UI designers, iOS and Android Senior/Junior developers to work in New York City. Our goals for 2012 are to grow through acquisitions, geographic expansion, recruiting more talent, and a focus on strategic partnerships, reinforcing Labotec teams located in Miami, Florida, and Toulouse, France, through our joint venture with Digidust Europe, A special thanks to Pierre-Olivier Carles, Labotec’s co-founder for his dedication and support.
Wishing everyone a peaceful, prosperous and healthy New Year.
Florian Seroussi
- Dec 22, 11
We are proud to present KiDSAPP in Africa for Android Tablet!
Following the success of KiDSAPP the Farm and KiDSAPP in Africa on iPhone and iPad, our KiDSAPP applications now enter the Android market, starting with KiDSAPP in Africa.
Since its launch, KiDSAPP applications ranked #1 in more than 35 countries and was played by a million of young children.
Designed for kids from 3 to 6 year old, KiDSAPP in Africa offers kids a playful and colorful immersion into an interactive savanna. Based on sound & touch effects, this app immerse kids into the wild world of the African Savanna.
Developed in cooperation with teachers and parents, KiDSAPP in Africa is designed to both educate and entertain.
Features of the app include:
- Interactive puzzles
- Interactive tracing games
- Drummer game
- Interactive savanna game - day and night
- Sharing option
- Background music
- High quality animal sound effects
- Easy interface
The application is free with in-app purchase to unlock additional features.
- Dec 16, 11
We’ve been hard at work at Labotec, packing lots of new benefits into Prompterous releases for iOS. Let’s dig in on all the things that make Prompterous the best prompter on iPad ever.
New and Refreshed Design
Prompterous needed a clean fresh user interace. We worked hard analyzing feedback received over last 12 months, listening to beta users all around the world, optimizing buttons to be more iOS 5 friendly. Our challenge was to change the look but not the feel although several core changes took place. First noticeable change: the icon but as you will go along using the application you will see a complete new UI.
Dropbox, Google Docs, EC2
Our developers got their hands dirty tweaking Prompterous engine on both the application and the server side. Dropbox and Google Docs integration were dramatically improved gaining in speed and approaching the zero error. Texts sent through email are processed via Amazon Web Services. There too we made major mods to increase response time. Overall we aimed to more efficient.
Behind The Scenes
Our #1 priority is customer support. We have a dedicated team ready to help you if you need assistance. You can join our good people directly from the application by clicking on support@prompterous.com. We keep working on new features and we invite you to send your feedback or wishlist. We want Prompterous to be perfect.
Get it here: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/prompterous-hd/id385053734?mt=8
- New tutorial
- New and improved buttons
- Prompter added to right side
- Oct 27, 11
Based in Miami, Labotec is hiring 6 iOS and 4 ANDROID mobile passionate professionals, willing to develop iOS/Android mobile application developer skills in a growing company.
Candidates who meet all of the referenced requirements below, are encouraged to apply by sending their resume to anna@labotec.com and link(s) to portfolio containing relevant examples.
Requirements:
- Prior experience developing apps for Android/iOS devices
- Prior experience as software application development lead successfully delivering projects, including application architecture, code review, project scoping, bug triage and debugging
- Experience in Android/iOS User Interface Design and User Experience Design
- Success shipping applications to the Android Market/Apple Store as lead developer (please provide links to the apps)
- Experience integrating Android/iOS apps with APIs and other enterprise web services
- Experience working in a team and as an individual
- Familiarity with other mobile application development technologies is a plus (iOS/Android, Windows Mobile, Blackberry).
- Understanding of certificates, encryption, and other security based concepts is a plus
- The ability to be productive and work with short deadlines.
- Passion and curiosity for games, mobile applications, socialization and how they all work together.
Location: Miami - FloridaRelocation package availableWork visa sponsorship available for non US residents. - Oct 13, 11
In partnership with Appsfire, KiDSAPP: The Pocket Farm was offered for FREE for 24 hours.
With more than 10,000 downloads in one day - a 400% spike in downloads - , KiDSAPP has reached a total of 100,000 downloads! The app also made the top 100 in 38 countries i.e. 20 more countries than last week!
We thank our partner, @Appsfire, for such a success.
Made by @Labotec and @Caroline Huet, KiDSAPP the Farm was ranked #1 app Education in 21 countries and voted Best App for Kids by Apps4kids.
- Oct 06, 11
Steve Jobs - Greatest Of All Time.
Thank you on behalf of everyone working at Labotec. We created our company after you invented an industry. You are our Raison d'Etre. Rest in Peace.
Florian, Pierre-Olivier, Anna, Dustin, Karo, Stéphane, Jean-David, Alexander, Sylvain, Paul, Hervé, Hubert, Julien, Philippe, Benoit and all our contributors.
- Aug 18, 11
We heard you and made significant changes on Prompterous HD.
New features added:
- directly import and sync documents with your Dropbox account
- directly import text from your Google Docs
- Minor bugs fixed
- iOS optmization
- Faster rendering when using mail-to-Prompterous option
Prompterous remains the cheapest full-featured teleprompter on iTunes for iPad.
The new version of the most advanced teleprompter for iPad is available!
Prompterous has been ranked #1 Business Application in the U.S and 10 other countries.
- Aug 11, 11
Get ready... Prompterous 1.1.2 will be soon on the market.The new version of one of the most advanced teleprompter for iPad is about to be released.
At this occasion, we offer the current version for FREE. Hurry it's for limited time only!
- Jun 27, 11
Pikchur allows users to quickly connect and share photos to many popular social networks, micro-blogging services, and media hosting websites. The Windows Phone 7 application is packed with new platform features such as Bing map integration for geotagging, pivot controls for organizing photo information and comments, and a live tile, so users can see their most recent photo on the phone’s start screen. The application was launched simultaneously in five languages, provides privacy options, and includes Facebook and Twitter integration, so users can start sharing instantly.
Video Demo here:
- May 24, 11
MIAMI, FL, May 24 2011 /LABOTEC PR KIDSAPP/ -- LABOTEC Inc. today announced tKIDSAPP: The Pocket Farm app for iPhone is now available on iTunes. The app, available for download in the Apple App Store follows KIDSAPP HD: The Farm initially launched for iPad. KIDSAPP HD has been ranked #1 application overall in 3 countries- France, New Zealand and Taiwan and #1 in education category in more than 23 countries including US and Canada.
KIDSAPP: The Pocket Farm for iPhone is a redesigned version of Labotec’s popular iPad application. The application provides comprehensive user interface specially adapted for small fingers. Aimed at children from 2 to 6 years old, the application provides interactive screens around elements of the farm. “We spent weeks exploring different scenarios with young children and PK/early childhood teachers on building the best possible user experience for children.” says Caroline Huet, Art Director and co-producer of KIDSAPP. Other favorite features of the app include:
- Professional illustrations of a day and night farm environment with 26 animated animals and elements: bird, cow, sheep, horse, cat, pig, duck, rooster, chicken, chick, goat, dog, sky, tractor, frog, goose, butterfly, bee, barn, windmill, cloud, sun, moon, tree, windmill, fences.
- High quality animal sound effects.
- High quality images for retina display
- 5 animal puzzles (day and night)
- 5 animal colorings (day and night)
- 1 tractor coloring
- 1 tractor puzzle
- Shaking iPhone function to reset all the drawings
- Saving option for any of your kid’s artwork
- Nice music in background all over the navigation
- Easy interface
- Sharing option KiDSAPP: The Pocket Farm is a simple and intuitive application based on gestures and motion stimulating your kid imagination and senses.
The app will be available on additional mobile platforms, including Android in the near future. Access the app by visiting http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/kidsapp-the-pocket-farm/id436360152?mt=8# . For more details about KiDSAPP please visit http://www.kidsapp.com or http://www.labotec.com About LABOTEC Inc.
LABOTEC is a mobile software company that develops application for iOS, Android, Blackberry and Windows Phone 7 platforms. LABOTEC Inc. also provides support to its customers and their target audiences to better understand and interact with each other in the mobile world. Among other applications, LABOTEC has successfully published KIDSAPP for iPad, Prompterous for iPad, FakeSMS for iPhone, iSOS for Android and Pikchur for WP7. The company is part of Microsoft BizSpark Program. LABOTEC headquarters’ in Miami, Florida with offices in Paris, France and Mexico DF, Mexico. More information available at http://www.labotec.com - Apr 29, 11
New version of the premier application that turns your iPad into a powerful teleprompter is now available on the iTunes Store.
New features available:
- Ability to scroll UP or DOWN during lecture
- New touch gestures added
- Highlighted phrase
- Prompter added to left side
- Fonts updated
- Bugs fixed
- Better compatibility with 4.3 OS
- Apr 15, 11
BestAppsForKids.com has opened votes to choose the best toddler application.
Click here and vote for KIDSAPP now!
- Mar 23, 11
BestAppsForKids.com, the parent selected app and game website, launches a contest to choose the best toddler app and we're very proud KiDSAPP HD – The Farm has been nominated among the competitors!
A public vote will be open once all the nominations are in. Check this out! - Mar 08, 11
The free version of KiDSAPP HD-The Farm has just been released on the app store. Free features available:
- Professional illustrations of a day and night farm environment with animated animals and elements
- High quality animal sound effects.
- High quality images
- Cow puzzle and coloring
- Shaking iPad function to reset coloring
- Saving option
- Nice music in background
- Easy User Interface
- Sharing option
- Mar 04, 11
From tonight until Sunday, BeMyApp gathers once again developers, designers, marketers and idea generators, eager to turn innovative application ideas into reality. This time the event occurs in San Francisco, California at the pariSoma innovation loft.
Same concept: in 48 hours, each team builds a mock-up and develops one application idea. Each of them is presented, tested by beta-users and … voted by users and prestigious judges such as: VentureBeat, Inside Facebook, Free App A Day, 148Apps and Blue Run Ventures.Labotec sponsors this event and gives the opportunity to one of the selected ideas to cut in the line to be Labotec’s first priority and turn the app prototype created during BeMyApp into a sleek and moneymaking appFollow this event for a gallon of fun, energy drinks and absolutely no sleep☺Labotec loves rewarding creative people that see things in the world that others have missed;Good luck to everyone!
- Mar 02, 11
The new version of the most succeeded app that gives you the opportunity to make some jokes to your friends is now released! Your fake messages are even more credible with the new features:
- Lock screen image option added: while the timer is set, your lockscreen looks exactly as your iphone sleep mode screen.
- Dynamic Lockscreen (real time and date).
- Fake message background stick exactly to iphone real sms background (brackets added to phone #, date and time displayed on the messages, text bubble shape improved...).
- ‘Start your conversation’ feature is now available at any step of the navigation.
- Help sections added next to each category.
- Bugs fixed.Fake SMS will allow you to avoid a party or a meeting by showing a fake text conversation with one of your parent, or let your friends think that you’re talking with famous people.
Jokes, alibi and many fun stuff ... no limit but your imagination!
Get you copy now! - Feb 16, 11
Labotec, an independent mobile app development agency with offices in Paris and Miami, is looking for mobile passionate professionals, ready to work in small, award-winning team, developing cutting-edge mobile apps for leading global brands and proprietary products.
Three, Miami based, positions to be filled: Senior Mobile Application Programmer, Junior Developer, UX Mobile Designer.
Candidates who meet all of the referenced requirements below, are encouraged to apply by sending their resume to anna@labotec.com and link(s) to portfolio containing relevant examples.
1) Senior Mobile Application Programmer
If you have a serious passion for mobile application development, we want you to be a part of our team.
Requirements
- 1-3+ years professional experience as a software engineer.
- Prior experience in the mobile industry.
- Experience with C++ and/or Objective-C.
- Experience with one or more scripting language (Javascript, Lua, Python, etc…).
- Comprehensive understanding of at least one current mobile SDK (iOS, Android, Windows Mobile, etc…).
- Good knowledge of scalable server architectures and distributed systems.
- Working knowledge of concurrency and asynchronous architectures.
- Demonstrated knowledge of current development methodologies, patterns and best practices.
- Ability to independently design, write and maintain high quality code.
- Passion and curiosity for games, mobile applications, socialization and how they all work together.ve
- Shipped and supported at least one client/server mobile application on iOS.
- Experienced with SQL and Database technologies.
2) Junior Developer
We’d love you to have experience with any of the following technologies:
- Objective-C
- C++ or Java
- Javascript
- Python.
Not required, but an advantage if expertise in any of: iPhone, graphic design, and commercial work experience.
Work includes Objective-C development on a variety of mobile applications, smaller custom projects and internal product development. Opportunity to work in small, dynamic team working for large international clients, on cutting-edge technology.
The position would suit a recent graduate with 0-2 years experience. Flexible work hours available.
3) UX Mobile Designer
Requirements
- Mastery of Adobe Creative Suite, particularly Photoshop
- Demonstrated skills in UX/interface/visual design for web/mobile
- Excellent written and personal communication skills
- Obsessive interest in latest technologies, standards and best practices (iOS HIG, Android, CSS3/HTML5)
- Intuitive understanding of graphic design and software usability principles
Tasks:
- Create stunning, highly usable and technically feasible app designs, from wire-frame prototypes to exquisite finished artwork mock-ups and provision of sliced assets
- Report to Lead Designer and work alongside application developers throughout development cycle to delivery of final product.
- Participate in creative concept/brainstorm sessions for client-facing and internal projects
Document UI/UX specifications
Participate in an agile, supportive, multidisciplinary team where project management, client relations and commercial responsibilities are shared, and initiative and creativity is welcomed.
Desirable:
- Experience in delivery of high quality results against deadlines in a commercial environment
- Experience working in a mac environment
- Business analyst, client scope definition and business development experience
- Artistic/illustration skills covering design, typography, iconography and branding
-
Posts
- Jun 10, 11
You can now use Pikchur on Tweetbot 1.2!
If you already use them, simply go to your “Account Settings” > Select Photo & Video Upload and choose Pikchur.
If not you can download them here!
As always, feel to reach out to info@pickhur.com if ya have any questions or feedback!
~Pikchur Team
- May 12, 11
So you want to add Pikchur to your next App? Great!
Our API mimics the ones you already integrated in the past, and all you need to do is
- Change API End point to http://api.pikchur.com/simple/upload
- Add Parameter api_key, to gain access, can be found here http://pikchur.com/api
- Optional: Add Parameter source
- Optional: Add parameter return_format values json or xml (xml is default)
Also, when you have your app, we can add you to our supported apps page! :)
You have two API options.- 1) Upload, this is your standard method for Twitter clients, you upload to us we post to users synced accounts -except- there one used to authenticate with (in this case twitter, because you already post to it.).
- 2) Upload & Post, this method is used to post to all accounts synced to the user, including there twitter account.
Documentation
upload
This is used if the application wants to post the status message it sent for the authenticated service. For example if you use this with an authentication for “Twitter” we will not post a note to Twitter but the photo will still propagate out to the users remaining synced services (facebook, flickr, etc).
Endpoint XML: http://api.pikchur.com/simple/upload
Required Parameters:
- media
- Binary image/video data
- The image/video data to be posted.
- Binary image/video data
- username
- Text Value
- This is the username for the synced service (default is Twitter).
- Text Value
- password
- Text Value
- This is the password for the synced service (default is Twitter).
- Text Value
Username/Password OR if using Twitter’s echo oAuth system please include the following headers
- X_VERIFY_CREDENTIALS_AUTHORIZATION
- HEADER, Should contain the following
oauth_consumer_key=”YOUR KEY HERE”,
oauth_signature_method=”HMAC-SHA1”,
oauth_token=”YOUR TOKEN HERE”,
oauth_timestamp=”TIMESTAMP”,
oauth_nonce=”OAUTH NONCE”,
oauth_version=”1.0”,
oauth_signature=”SIGNATURE”
- EXAMPLEcurl -v -H ‘X-Verify-Credentials-Authorization:oauth_version=”1.0”, oauth_nonce=”a436ee1ee9437e98ffafa04f39af2a69”, oauth_timestamp=”1274233993”, oauth_consumer_key=”BdkEXpkerXPqJMaiYMN3Q”, oauth_token=”16056271-aVl42OcvOA81cjdBpFy2yaLzmjLiNwSSByMXvh…”, oauth_signature_method=”HMAC-SHA1”, oauth_signature=”LiG5LqZO1Zprc6fJmVci%2FmXIwuk%3D”’ -F ‘api_key=O1kXlYN1SYQG82ZXtvZC0g’ -F ‘media=@/var/test.jpg’ -F ‘message=Hello World!’ http://api.pikchur.com/simple/upload
- api_key
- Text Value
- A Pikchur API developer key, which is used to prevent abuse. It can easily be obtained here: http://pikchur.com/api#key
- Text Value
Optional Parameters:
- message
- Media Caption
- service
- Text Value
- If the service requested for authentication is not Twitter, it can be specified by sending it along with the request. i.e: identi.ca,plurk, etc
- Text Value
- X_AUTH_SERVICE_PROVIDER
- HEADER
- The service to auth with (default is https://api.twitter.com/1/account/verify_credentials.json).
- HEADER
- source
- Text Value
- Request a source id from api[at]Pikchur.com and all photos sent in will say “Via yourApp” and link to your website.
- Text Value
- private
- Text Value
- Overrides users media privacy settings for this one upload. Options “YES” for enable privacy “NO” to make media public.
- Text Value
Sample response
<rsp status=”ok”>
<mediaid>
abc
</mediaid>
<mediaurl>
</mediaurl>
</rsp>
uploadAndPost
Used to authenticate and post a photo to the user’s Pikchur account, along with a status update to Twitter and any other supported service users have synched.
(If the service requested for authentication is not Twitter, it can be specified by sending it along with the request, such as identi.ca, plurk, etc.)
Please make sure all data sent is formatted as multipart/form-data.
Endpoint XML: http://api.pikchur.com/simple/uploadAndPost
Required Parameters:
- username
- Text Value
- This is the username for the synced service (default is Twitter).
- Text Value
- password
- Text Value
- This is the password for the synced service (default is Twitter).
- Text Value
- media
- Binary image/video data
- The image/video data to be posted.
- Binary image/video data
- api_key
- Text Value
- A Pikchur API developer key, which is used to prevent abuse. It can easily be obtained here: http://pikchur.com/api#key
- Text Value
Optional Parameters:
- message
- Media Caption / message to post to Twitter or any other service. The URL to the image will be appended to the message
- service
- Text Value
- If the service requested for authentication is not Twitter, it can be specified by sending it along with the request. i.e: identi.ca,plurk, etc
- Text Value
- source
- Text Value
- Request a source id from api[at]Pikchur.com and all photos sent in will say “Via yourApp” and link to your website.
- Text Value
- private
- Text Value
- Overrides users media privacy settings for this one upload. Options “YES” for enable privacy “NO” to make media public.
- Text Value
Sample response
<rsp status=”ok”>
<mediaid>
abc
</mediaid>
<mediaurl>
</mediaurl>
</rsp>
- May 12, 11
So, you want to convert our URL’s to usable source urls of the media?
We gotcha..
Converting URLs
Photo URLS
- http://pk.gd/<media_id>
- http://pikchur.com/<media_id>
- Thumb (48X48) http://img.pikchur.com/pic_<media_id>_t.jpg
- Small (170XScale) http://img.pikchur.com/pic_<media_id>_s.jpg
- Medium (320XScale) http://img.pikchur.com/pic_<media_id>_m.jpg
- Large (600XScale) http://img.pikchur.com/pic_<media_id>_l.jpg
- Original http://img.pikchur.com/pic_<media_id>_o.jpg (PRO Only)
For example : http://pk.gd/l00 Converts to http://img.pikchur.com/pic_l00_l.jpg
Video URLS
- http://mp.gd/<media_id>
- http://pikchur.com/v/<media_id>
- Thumb Image (48X48) http://vid.pikchur.com/vid_<media_id>_t.jpg
- Small Image (170XScale) http:// vid .pikchur.com/ vid _<media_id>_s.jpg
- Medium Image (320XScale) http:// vid .pikchur.com/ vid _<media_id>_m.jpg
- Large Image (600XScale) http:// vid .pikchur.com/ vid _<media_id>_l.jpg
- MP4 http://vid.pikchur.com/pic_<media_id>.mp4
For example : http://mp.gd/aoi Converts to http://vid.pikchur.com/vid_aoi.mp4 (Thumbnail @ http://vid.pikchur.com/vid_aoi_t.jpg)
As always feel free to drop us a line if you need help @ Support@Pikchur.com
- Jun 28, 10
We recently received a few request with people asking us how it is you go about editing your photos contrast, red eye, rotate or even crop on Pikchur.com
So we decided to write this short 3 step post on how to get started.
Step 1: Login, Go to your photo and click “Edit Photo”
Step 2: Go to the bottom and Click “Edit With Picnik”
Step 3 Begin to edit!
And thats it!
Hope that helps, as always thanks for choosing Pikchur :)
- May 26, 10
Sorry for the late post, we sent out word that we support the new echo Auth functionality twitter released but forgot to write a blog post about it.
For documentation on how to integrate the new support please review our API Docs @ : http://bit.ly/dbWGQe
Feel free to reach us any time @ API@Pikchur.com for support/feedback.
~The Pikchur Crew
- May 26, 10
Hey guys,
As you know Twitter for the iPhone is out, and allows for “custom” photo posting. To Add Pikchur support to your Account simple follow the steps below.
First Click More
Next Click Settings
Now Click Account & Settings
Select Services
Next Click Image Service
Then Select Custom
And Finally enter this URL
(Custom Photo URL http://api.pikchur.com/twitter)
And thats it, you now have the ability to post directly to Pikchur via Twitter for the iPhone.
As always feel free to reach us anytime, we love to hear from you.
~The Pikchur Crew
- May 19, 10
Hey, you can now post images & videos to Pikchur from Twitterrific, how sweet is that!? Here is how you do it:
1) Launch the application and tap on the Compose button in the upper-right corner of the screen.
2) In the window that appears, tap on the camera icon and select “Change Upload Service”.
3) At the bottom of the list that’s displayed, you’ll see “Other…”. Tap that and you see a text field where you can specify the “Media Service URL Endpoint”.
4) Enter “http://api.pikchur.com/twitterrific” and then tap outside the popover window to dismiss it. Done!
That’s it you’re set to use Pikchur in Twitterrific for photos & videos :)
What’s nice is that this media end point supports twitters new echo oAuth functionality so no need to update your settings with the Restful API is shut down.
Hope you guys like it :)
-Pikchur
Thanks to @Davidedichillo suggesting we add the end point, and helping us write the how to get Pikchur on the iPad instructions.
- May 19, 10
Great news, triggers now work within our API as well as our mms/email posting methods. Which means any application that supports Pikchur will now be able to have a basic trigger system which will override your posting settings on the go! We have plans to include some pretty slick custom triggers really soon, but for now refer to this list of service triggers.
To override any of the services you are posting to simply include the trigger in the subject of your post in the following format :
To turn posting OFF for a service: -triggername-
To turn posting ON for a service: +triggername+
Twitter( tw )FourSquare( 4sq )
Flickr( fk )
Tumblr( tr )
Jaiku( jk )
Facebook( fb )
FriendFeed( ff )
Plurk( pl)
Identi.ca( id )
Koornk( ko )
Totspot( ts )
Brightkite( bk )
For example if your account settings are :
- Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare, Flickr > Enabled
- Brightkite,Identi.ca,Plurk > Disabled
Lets say you want to not send to twitter but you do want to send to Plurk.
All you would have to do is in your subject/message is add the following triggers -tw- +pl+
When we recive your request we will override your account settings to match your trigger request and filter out the triggers from your message for that one upload.
We are working on some pretty neat things to be released really soon, so keep an eye out!
~The Pikchur Crew
- Mar 20, 10
Pikchur Teams up with @France2TV to launch a contest for a chance to win 2 tickets to the Coupe d’Europe de Rugby 2010.
Homepage: http://france2.pikchur.com/
Timeline: http://france2.pikchur.com/timeline
Media Landing Page: http://france2.pikchur.com/OsK
“Envoyez une photo typée Rugby à rugby@pocarles.com et vous la retrouverez ici http://bit.ly/9YAfuM Les 2 plus RT avant lundi gagnent ! :-)” - @France2TV
In order to win you must have the most Retweets, we look forward to seeing what Piks come in and good luck!
~The Pikchur Crew
- Feb 10, 10
We here @ Pikchur have been working really hard on a few things lately. The first is our joint venture with 39llc to develop a Foursquare application that allows you to check-in with multimedia.
It’s called SquarePik.
The application allows people to check-in with a photo or video. In addition, the app will show users all photos and videos dropped at a particular venue. Along with some of the expected features such as, the ability to add locations, search for locations, and view your friend’s last checkins, we hope to provide a supplementary application to the already popular Foursquare iPhone app.
The app is built on top of our new “GeoSocial” API (more on that later) and is available in the iTunes store for just $1.99
Now, our new Geo-Social API is aimed at providing developers of geo social apps such as Foursquare the ability to quickly integrate the following features:
- Multimedia check-ins (Photos & Videos)
- Pull feed of Media Dropped @ a venue
- Pull feed of Thumbnails for a list of venues.
- Allow for multimedia tips (coming soon)
Documentation for our API can be found here : http://groups.google.com/group/pikchur-api/web/geosocial-api-documentation
We also added the following to Pikchur.com:
- Landing pages with Foursquare venue badges: http://pikchur.com/Muq
- Geo social venue specific timelines: http://pikchur.com/timeline/foursquare*368848
- Nifty venue RSS feeds: http://pikchur.com/rss/geosocial/foursquare/368848
Well that’s it for now, stay tuned as we improve SquarePik and our Geo social API.
As always, feel free to reach us with your comments, concerns and feed back @ info at pikchur dot com
Thanks,
The Pikchur Crew.
- Dec 17, 09
Wether you guys have been naughty or nice this year, doesn’t really matter to us! As thanks for all the support you have given us, we decided to throw a short but sweet holiday contest.
Head over to the contest page, check out the prizes, and start sending in those holiday photos for your chance to win.
To enter this holiday cheer contest all you have to do is send in a photo or video that is holiday related to your Pikchur account with the hashtag #holidays09
We will select a winner based on a few attributes
1. Number of Re-tweets
2. Number of “UNIQUE” views (not view counter on landing page)
3. How creative the photo or video is.
4. Your entry must be dated after our contest has started (Don’t tag one of your popular photos or videos :-])
Happy holidays :-)
Pikchur
- Oct 09, 09
Hey, you can now post images to Pikchur from Tweetie, how sweet is that!? Here is how you do it:
1. Open Tweetie and go to settings, should be under account.
2. Click on Image service and then go down and click on custom.
3. Enter http://api.pikchur.com/tweetie as the posting url.
That’s it you’re set to use Pikchur in Tweetie for photos :-) If they add a custom url for video posting then you will also be able to post videos to Pikchur via Tweetie.
Happy Friday
-Pikchur
- Sep 25, 09
Good evening ladies and gentelman, on this edition of what’s new on Pikchur, we bring you Picnik editing and Retweeting of photos and videos!
We don’t know about you but we have grown to love Picnik’s service, it really makes editing photos a snap. Well, we are proud to announce that we now support full photo editing via picnik. All you have to do is edit any of your images and a nice little “Edit With Picnik” section will appear on the bottom right of the page. Click on it, and edit away! Once you are done, our busy rendering bots will grab your edits and spit out your image to reflect the changes you’ve made.
While doing this update we also decided to jump on the tweetmeme bandwagon and add a Retweet button to all image and video landing pages (Just like the one on the top right of this post). So if you see a nifty image of a kick ass Leprechaun, or a crafty video of a nifty pigeon exercising, you can quickly and easily surface it to your Twitter stream.
Below is a short screen cast of the photo editing features in action. Enjoy
-Pikchur
- Sep 18, 09
Hey guys,
As you may or may not know, we moved our servers to a new home today! This means we are going to be a lot more responsive and overall better!
As for the more interesting stuff, we pushed a slew of sweet new updates for you guys. By far the biggest item on the list .. drumb roll… Motion Pikchures! You can now use your mobile device or our website to upload videos! Yeah, you heard us, we now support video in addition to photos! So give it a try, you don’t even to change anything, just send in videos as if you were sending in photos.
As for the complete change log, here it is:
-Video support
-Find friends on facebook and twitter that are also on pikchur
-Completely revamped profile pages.
Ex: http://pikchur.com/people/jewgonewild or http://pikchur.com/people/Orical
-API upgrades and fixes
-API modified to support videos
-API feed functions revamped
Happy Piking!
- Aug 26, 09
Hey again! Another day, another update..This time we are showing Nokia some love and welcoming them to our family of supported services. If you haven’t noticed Nokia Ovi Share is pretty nifty and has very cool media management, so we decided it would be a great addition.
If you don’t have an account you can sign up, it’s quick and easy, once you’re done, head over to Pikchur, log in and sync in your Ovi account!
Important: In order for us to post photos to your Ovi Share page you must add an album called “Pikchur” to your Ovi account. (Excuse my quick ‘photoshopping’)
These are just minor updates for now, but stay tuned, we have a big one coming out reallllly soon.
Hope you guys enjoy!
The Pikchur Crew
- Aug 25, 09
Hey guys, hope everyone’s having a good Tuesday. We pushed a small update and added Posterous as a posting service. Now you can add your primary Posterous blog to Pikchur, snap away and your shots will cross post to your Posterous blog!
I leave you with a video of bunliu for inspiration. Happy Piking!
- Aug 07, 09
Updated: We are back up and running with Twitter posting, any photos sent in via MMS,mobile,web and 3rd party apps should now be posting to Twitter, happy days ;-)
Hey guys,
We are aware that none of you can log in to Pikchur via twitter basic authentication or OAUTH (Please note that Twitter OAUTH is completly down). It seems that the basic Twitter API is up and running, however our servers seem to have been mistakenly blacklisted from using it.
This is most likely do to the Twitter DDOS attack that occured yesterday. They are probably blacklisting a lot of people in order to get the situation under control.We have contacted Twitter and are waiting for a response back. Hopefullywe can get back up and running ASAP.
These issues also effect posting your photos via the web, MMS, and certain Twitter clients that use our API. Please be patient as we are trying our best to get Twitter authorization and posting back to normal.
Thanks,
The Pikchur Crew.
- Jul 14, 09
Hey guys!
Hope everyone is doing great! We wanted to let you know that we just enabled a Content Distribution Network (CDN), which will make everything on the site load a little faster, well a lot faster ;-)
The CDN has various access points, so no matter where you load up Pikchur from you’ll notice an instant boost in speed, and overall responsiveness. The following edge locations are enabled:
United States
• Ashburn, VA
• Dallas/Fort Worth, TX
• Los Angeles, CA
• Miami, FL
• Newark, NJ
• Palo Alto, CA
• Seattle, WA
• St. Louis, MO
Europe
• Amsterdam
• Dublin
• Frankfurt
• London
Asia
• Hong Kong
• TokyoThis is one more step we are taking to ensure you enjoy your experience with us. Feel free to drop us a line with any questions/suggestions you have.
Happy Piking!
~The Pikchur Crew
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Posts
- May 15, 12
Yes, we're live with a brand new home page, and we think it rocks, check it out here : www.producteev.com.
A few weeks ago we decided to redesign the Producteev home page. We liked the previous version, but we wanted to see if we could do better. Specifically we wanted to provide a better presentation of Producteev and its unique features. We were interested in less copy, more visuals, and a step by step presentation.
Down the road, we've noticed that visitors were mainly looking for three things: what we do, what makes us special, and how much the product costs. Based on feedback we focused on building a layout that would give all this information at a glance.
We came up with a fancy slideshow that first describes Producteev as an easy-to-use and cross platform task management application. Then we emphasized the fact that Producteev was great either if you use it as an individual or as part of a team. Finally, we highlighted the “mail-to-task” feature because we believe that one of our main goal is to get your tasks out of your e-mail inbox.
We also brought the sign up form right to the home page. We did it because we firmly believe that the best way to discover the added value of Producteev in your daily projects is to experience it by yourself instead of reading features descriptions here and there.
2012 has been a very exciting year so far. Lots of companies signed up for PRO accounts. We decided to give them some room on this new home page. We’re happy to introduce you to a few of them like Apple, Financial Times, Logitech, and lot of Small Businesses who make us proud to develop a better product for them, day after day. We’re looking forward to create a customer section on the website so we can present different successful use cases of Producteev in various industries.
We hope that this new home page will help building a wider and stronger Producteev community.
For reference, here was the previous design:The new one:
Hope you enjoy it!
The Producteev User Experience team.
- May 14, 12
After the long wait (thank you for your patience), the subtasks feature has been released in the latest Android update. Download it here : https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.producteev.android.alpha22.
Right from the task details screen, you will be able to see the subtasks associated to it. If you click on the subtasks list, you will access the edit screen where you can add, delete (long click), check on/off and change the title (simple click) of a subtask.
This is pretty much following the same flow as the web app and the other native apps. The drag and drop re-ordering will come soon.
**This major feature release requires a complete upgrade of your local producteev database. If you decide to update the app, you will be logged out and on your next login, a complete fresh sync will occur for a few moment. All data -all tasks, workspaces, labels, notes- not synced with the web app will be lost, so make sure you do a full sync before the update.**
Please let us know if you have any comments or questions. The next features will be the social logins (google and facebook sign on) and the Android native push notifications.
Looking forward to your feedback.
The Producteev Android Team.
- May 08, 12
[Thanks A LOT to Lee Gooding for providing that excellent tutorial on our Support Center, let's give him the stage!]
This isn't so much an idea, as a way to import tasks from Toodledo. I have about 100 tasks in my Toodledo account and I wanted to move them over to Producteev. It took me about 15 minutes.
I have tested this with the Android version of Astrid.
Step 1:
Download and install TaskUnifier (http://www.taskunifier.com/)
Step 2:
Add the Toodledo sync plugin, and the Google Tasks publish plugin available for FREE for TaskUnifier.
Step 3:
Sync TaskUnifier with your Toodledo account
Step 4:
Publish your newly synced tasks to your Google Tasks (using the TaskUnifier publish plugin)
Step 5:
Install Astrid for your mobile device (Android). Setup syncing with Astrid.com and Google Tasks. DO NOT SETUP PRODUCTEEV YET.
Step 6 (this may not be necessary):
Once your Google tasks have been synced to Astrid, you can go ahead and remove the connection to Google.
Sync with Astrid. Login to the web version Astrid and you should see all your Toodledo tasks now in Astrid.
Step 7:
Add your Producteev account to the Astrid mobile app.
NOTE: If you already had a producteev link then you must remove the connection to reset sync data, otherwise this will not work.
Once you have added your login info, it will sync automatically.
Step 8:
Check your Producteev account. All your Toodledo tasks should now be imported!
I really hope this helps some of you!
- May 02, 12
The sync feature runs as a Background Task so you don't have to wait until sync is finished before leaving the app
This new sync makes it faster to synchronize with other Producteev platforms.
Our new QuickFilters selector is simple! Just swipe up to open and you will save time. You can still long press the button too.In the Task LIst, you can set a reoccurring task as done and it will now display it's next due date. We also fixed a few things:- Saved Quickfilter tab (Starred, Late, Today) displays the correct filtered view after launch.
- Editing a Label's name no longer creates a new one in some cases.
- Sync error when creating a label with the same name as another.
- Removing all the labels from a task is now possible
Go update it here: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/producteev/id306289289?mt=8
^Carolyn
- May 01, 12
- Apr 26, 12
You've been waiting for it, it's here!
We've just updated the Mac app with a couple of new things and fixes :- Subtasks!
Yes you can now create, sync, edit, delete and rearrange subtasks from the Mac App
- New Design: faster, simpler, whiter, better
- Improved Collaboration filters: It now behaves like the web app. Click on your avatar top left to change the view
- A bunch of bugs are now fixed, like crash at logins for some users, and little improvements here and there.
Update it here : http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/producteev/id450283360?mt=12
If you like it, please rate us 5 stars, it does help a lot!
Enjoy!
- Find out how a Creative Agency uses Producteev to juggle their online presence for important clientsApr 23, 12
Daniel Atzil, 28 years old from Ramat Hasharon, Israel.
Co-Founder and Creative Director at Purple Interactive – Digital-Creative Agency.
"Two years ago me and two partners opened Purple Interactive, a leading digital-creative agency that manages the digital presence for some of the biggest brands in Israel. Malls, drug companies, car rental agencies, magazines, fashion brands and more. Recently we also started working with clients in the States and Europe.
Our specialty is the social arena and mainly Facebook, we build fan pages and promotional applications, manage all the content in the page and create campaigns that integrates offline and online.
We started out as three people with two clients, on a couch, but soon enough we found ourselves moving the office for the third time and now we are 12 people and growing. We got more work but didn’t find the solution to manage and supervise all the tasks and projects. It was very clear to us that projects that aren’t majored are not managed properly, but we just didn’t find the right tool to do that. Then came Producteev and it changed our world!
Since we started using the product we increased our work and profit by almost 50 percent. It sounds crazy but it became an integral part of our staff everyday work. If you run a company but find it hard to keep up with all of your staff's tasks this is the tool for you, it saves you time and money from day one."
- Apr 17, 12What do you do Karl?I'm a business analyst for Agile Frameworks (www.agileframeworks.com) in the Minneapolis / St. Paul, MN area. Agile Frameworks designs and builds technology solutions that automate field data collection, quality control and client delivery of documents for the AEC industry. My core responsibilities include writing and managing the business user requirements for the technology solutions we develop.How do you manage your busy schedule?Like any Producteev user, I too juggle tasks required at work, at home, at volunteer organizations, etc. The lines between "personal" and "professional" are not as distinct as they once were. Producteev helps create some order around the tasks and actions I have planned so I can rely on my system at any time for the next thing I have time, energy and resources available for.How did you find out about Producteev?I discovered Producteev about three years ago. It was at the same time I was starting to read and better understand David Allen's "Getting Things DONE" (GTD) book and approach. I was intrigued, but I knew my GTD system needed a technology-based solution. It's just the way my mind thinks and acts. I started doing some searches for and trying various GTD apps. I ran across Producteev and decided to give it a try. It stuck (for a while...). I'll be honest too - I stopped using Producteev about a year ago, as I really needed a better tablet (iPad) solution for my GTD app. During this time, I had a job change and needed to re-evaluate my task management solution, as I now had a mixed-OS environment (Windows on my Desktop, Android on my phone, iOS on my tablet). Producteev had made some significant changes to their website tool and introduced an Android phone app during this time. I decided it was time to head back to Producteev, and I'm glad I have.How does Producteev help you?Simply put, Producteev really helps me achieve order in my tasks and next actions. I utilize the email integration capabilities daily so I don't have to create tasks from scratch in Producteev. This helps me achieve a "zero email inbox." Workspaces help me organize tasks related to larger focus areas (work, personal, home office, home maintenance, errands, etc.). Labels help me classify the contexts of my work (phone, email, computer, face-to-face meeting, etc.). Repeating tasks help me keep order in my personal finances. I know each month what dates I need to reconcile or pay various statements. As soon as I complete those tasks for the month, I know the next occurrence is queued up and waiting for me when the time comes. No need to "remember" any of this, as I trust my system.Why I enjoy working with Producteev.I've really enjoyed working with the Producteev team as an active user of the tool. I've used a variety of tools and have gathered some overall best practices that have worked very well for me. I think that I can speak on behalf of many of the users in the user community in saying that some additional enhancements to the tool will make Producteev and even stronger tool and player in the task management space. I'm personally really excited to see how some "hot topics" in the user community forum will eventually be addressed (fingers crossed). A sampling of some "hot topics" include...
- Having a dedicated iPad app (versus an iPhone app displayed on an iPad screen).
- Better sub-tasks. I really look forward to being able to manage certain tasks as "projects" (more than one task). I would really love to see the ability to assign the same type of metadata (due dates, labels, notes, etc.) to sub-tasks that we can with "parent" tasks records. Along with this, being able to see and manage sub-tasks on a mobile device (not just the website).
- Universal (versus workspace-specific) labels / contexts. At any given moment, I would love the ability to quickly see what tasks (across all workspaces) I could accomplish using a phone (context) because I have the time, energy and resources available to do so.
- Etc...
What do you do when you have a task that's overdue?
Overdue tasks happen for a variety of reasons. They happen to all of us. I simply re-evaluate my task / actions landscape and act accordingly (evaluate why the deadline was missed, reset the deadline if still applicable, delete the task if no longer applicable, etc.).Thanks alot for participating Karl! https://twitter.com/KarlBurkum
- Apr 16, 12
You can now create a new workspace without retyping all of your tasks and labels!This new and highly requested feature will let you create template workspaces.
You can start a template with pre existing tasks from another workspace to make your life easier. This is especially helpful if you have a business and you want to create a new workspace for each of your projects that contain the same tasks.
You can duplicate: labels, colleagues, completed tasks and active tasks. The colleagues that you invite will receive e-mail notifications with their invitation.This feature is just available for the web app for now. It is accesible from the workspace drop down list by hovering the workspace you want to duplicate.
- Apr 04, 12
Now the new iPhone App can do just about everything, so you can be more productive!
With the added subtasks feature you can now: view, edit, create, reorder or set your subtasks as done! All your existing subtasks will be synced at first launch.
We have also included Push Notifications with sound that is now enabled.
You can now create a new label on any of our apps by typing a hashtag before the word and your new label will appear. Example: #yournewlabel will automatically create a new label called #yournewlabel.
You can now turn on and off your team's tasks! This feature gives you the option to view only your tasks or to view everyone's tasks in your workspace. We have also fixed various display bugs on the App making it more perfect and user friendly.
Update your iPhone app here : http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/producteev-cross-platform/id306289289?mt=8
PS: Yes, subtasks are coming very very soon to our other apps
-Carolyn
- Apr 02, 12
Check out our new How-To Infographic.
To learn how to write prioritize and assign a task, attach a file, make a label and add a deadline: Producteev makes it easy!
Created by Carolyn
- Mar 20, 12
Jerome:
Where are you from?
What do you do for Producteev?
I joined Producteev 1 month ago as an iOS Engineer. I'll work on the Producteev iPhone app and on a "another-ios-device" app. I'm very excited about all this !
I'm from Marseilles in the south of France. A very pleasant city near the Mediterranean sea, with the best soccer team ! Favorite Food ?
Chicken Fresco from Fresh&Co ;) I'm kidding, I would say Italian Food in general. I hope #Seamless will help me discover new food !What is one way that helps you be more productive/motivated?
Users ! When I work on something it's for them, user satisfaction and experience are the two things that keep me motivated.What do you do in your spare time?
There are so much cool things to do when you're in the Big Apple ! Let's say I love hanging out, discover the American culture and meet new people... Oh, and I try to never miss a soccer game of Marseilles ! I was also a local organizer for Startup Weekend in France Carolyn:
Where are you from?
What do you do for Producteev?
I am Producteev's new Community person. I am very excited to work here and I enjoy all things technology. I formally interned at Tutorspree as Marketing Coordinator.I am originally from New York, but live in Chatham, N.J
Favorite Food?I like all food but if I had to choose I guess I would pick ice cream. I also love cheese and all dessert.
What do you do in your spare time?In my spare time I enjoy making art, hiking and playing with my two cats.
What is one way that helps you be more productive?A side from using Producteev ;-), I find that yoga and running help me think more clearly and organize my thoughts making me accomplish more at work and all day.
- Mar 07, 12
The University of Utah did a study were they financed $50,000 worth of monitors by NEC Display to various companies. The study concluded that productivity was higher with two monitors than with one. In today's society we have multiple windows and applications open at the same time including, e-mail, internet, I.M, etc. making it hard to keep track of them all at once. People save about "10 seconds in every 5 minutes of work" which adds up over time and does not break the flow of work. On the contrary having too many monitors can feel like a boundary isolating you from your colleagues and can make you feel more over whelmed.
With that said, you're better off just having two monitors because you're eyes don't have to focus on too many things at once. Your eyes can just sweep over all the tasks without interruptions. This way you will definitely have room for Producteev ;-) on your screen for maximum work productivity.
^Carolyn
- Mar 05, 12Tell us about yourselfI've been married for 20 years. Emily and I have four kids ranging from ages almost 7 to 17. I used to be in local government. I was a city manager. In 1998, I transitioned into church ministry. I've worked for three large, fast-growing churches each with several thousand people attending. It was through those experiences that I began writing and speaking to leaders. In 2009, I launched my own business to provide consulting and leadership coaching.What do you do?I'm the founder and Chief Strategic Officer of Tony Morgan Live, LLC. We help leaders and organizations get unstuck. The solutions we offer include consulting to help organizations get healthy and have highly effective leadership teams. We also offer leadership coaching. Of course, most of the engagement I have with leaders happens through the daily content we deliver at TonyMorganLive.com.How do you manage your busy schedue?Well, I mentioned I'm married and a dad to my four kids. On top of that, I'm in my third year of launching my own business. I'm very involved in the ministry of my church. And, I'm active with social media to stay connected with leaders throughout the world. I'm always busy, but I'm super-committed to staying healthy. That begins with setting priorities. My faith comes first. My marriage and family come second. Making money to put food on the table comes third. Staying healthy begins with priorities, but it's executed through systems. The systems are where Producteev comes in.How did you find out about Producteev?I found Producteev when trying to search for a solution for task management. I needed a web-based solution that provided access on my Mac computers and Android phone. I was also looking for something where I could track all my tasks for family, ministry and business. The bonus feature that I really love in Producteev is the ability to delegate tasks to different people depending on the "workspace" I create. As a leader trying to empower other people on my team, this has been a real important feature.How does Producteev help you?I'm always explaining to leaders that "Teaching has the potential to shift thinking, but systems have the potential to shift behaviors." Because of that, systems are very important. Producteev is flexible to support my task management systems. And, like I said, I can use that system with other people on my team. That's the advantage over many other task management solutions that are available. My favorite features include the ability to assign tasks, create separate workspaces for different areas of my life, use labels to group like tasks, set up recurring tasks, and sync tasks across my Mac, my Android phone and my Kindle Fire.What do you do when a task is overdue?If it's overdue, my first question is, "Do I still need to do it?" Many times a task ends up in the overdue category because it's not a priority. When that's the case, the best option is to use the delete button. The next question I ask myself is, "Who else can do this?" Again, most of what I do is empower other people. Leadership isn't leadership unless it's released to other people. Finally, if I determine it's still my task, I prioritize and reschedule the task for the future. Of course, all of these filters are easy to implement using the tools built in to Producteev.
- Feb 27, 12
This guest post is contributed by Producteev user Doreen Bloch, an Entrepreneur & Author whose new book "The Coolest Startups in America" was just released to the public.
People say that ideas are easy, but execution is difficult. When I started penning my book, The Coolest Startups in America (find it here on Amazon) last year, I had a simple thesis: there should be a book that introduces people to startups. But in practice, it was not so straightforward. To write and publish a book, there are hundreds of moving parts and dozens of players.
After six months of writing and hours of interviews (Producteev CEO Ilan Abehassera included!), my idea for The Coolest Startups in America book became reality, available to delight readers around the country on the best startups in the nation. As I reflect on my process, there was one tool with me at every step. That’s right, my Producteev account.
Here is how I used Producteev to move my project from goal to reality:
1. Use Producteev to Brainstorm
Inspiration can come from anywhere. I used my Producteev account to collect quotes, notes and images that would be useful in the writing process. Because Producteev focuses on cross-platform fluidity, I was never pigeonholed into using Producteev.com specifically, instead adding to my account on-the-go via Producteev’s iPhone and iPad apps.
2. Use Producteev to Land an Agent or Publisher
I decided to pursue finding a literary agent and publisher early on in my book-writing process. Because Producteev allows multiple Workspaces within each account, I could keep my writing work in one Workspace and use another for the purpose of securing representation.
While Producteev won’t magically get you interest from an Agent or Publisher, it can help coordinate your outreach. As a first-time author, agency names and publishing houses were esoteric and niche, so I used each "task" in Producteev to store notes on the organizations. And, for each Publisher rejection (happens to every writer like a right of passage), Producteev lifted my spirits because I could cross a name off the list to see a pretty green check mark indicating that I was only getting closer to my goal, never farther from it.
3. Use Producteev to Organize Research
Over a span of about two months, I conducted 50+ interviews with startup CEOs, government officials, academics, thought-leaders, and journalists for The Coolest Startups in America, so staying on top of scheduling could have become a fiasco. Not so with Producteev! Rather than create calendar alerts for checking in with PR reps and sources, I could schedule reminders within Producteev so that the contact information, notes, interview questions and scheduling for each person remained centralized.
I also put Producteev’s labeling features to good use. With 72 startups featured in the inaugural volume of The Coolest Startups in America, organized into 18 categorical sections, colored labels helped to keep the content tidy so I could easily navigate around the tasks for the many chapters.
4. Use Producteev During Editing
When it came time to involve my editor in the book process, Producteev was a gem. I could “assign” chapters to my editor as I finished working on them. If there were items within the chapter for me to review, he could seamlessly assign the task back to me within Producteev.
5. Use Producteev for Publicity
Among bookers, producers, articles, friends & family outreach, volume sales (Plug: Want to order 10 or more copies? Email me for a discount code! ;) and more, there is so much for authors to do after the writing process is complete. No matter whether an author decides to use a traditional publisher or go DIY, book promotion always has the author in the driver’s seat. Producteev is helping me stay on top of publicity for The Coolest Startups in America. In fact, I’m off to cross off the to-do item for this article right now; using a spreadsheet is so last century.
Producteev was named one of “The Coolest Startups in America.” Buy the book to find out about the best new companies around the nation in the first-ever mainstream book about entrepreneurship.
Author Doreen Bloch is an entrepreneur & writer in New York City (hometown: Palo Alto, CA). Her first book “The Coolest Startups in America” was released in February 2012. She is a member of the Young Entrepreneur Council and a former Analyst at SecondMarket, where she worked on the auctions for shares of Facebook Inc. and other leading private companies. Her personal website is http://www.DoreenBloch.com.
- Feb 24, 12To all of you Android fans, we've got great news, our Producteev Android app, now has beautiful widgets!Thank you very much for your patience. We tried to make a widget as elegant as useful.
You can choose between 2 versions, or 2 sizes to be more precise: Large and Medium.
The large one displays 6 tasks and 2 tasks for the medium one.
Once set on your Home screen, the widget allows you to quickly view your tasks (status, title, due date, priority, repetition). Use the arrows to navigate it in your task list. You can check done or undone tasks directly on your widget. If you need to do more actions, just click on a task and you will be led to the task details for full control of your task.
The Producteev icon opens the app and the top right icon opens a dialog to quickly create a task in your to-do list. The widget's task list is also customizable. Click on the widget’s title bar and an option panel allows you to select a workspace, a filter or a label, and a sort for the widget tasks list.
As a first version and still in beta, we need your feedback to improve our Product, so please contact us if you have anything to share.Now, go update it on the Android Market!
Thanks,The Producteev Android Department ;) - Feb 10, 12
We get that question pretty often, so let us try to clear that out.
Here are a couple of things you should know:
LOCKED MODE (Default mode):
1. When you collaborate with other users on a specific workspace, by default, everyone will be able to see all tasks posted by the members of this team (members who got invited and joined the workspace). Note that except the creator, the assignee and the administrator of your workspace, no one else can EDIT them. They can only view them, and post comments on them. They can’t change a deadline, edit labels or change the person in charge for example.
UNLOCKED MODE:
2. If you want more open collaboration, and let everyone from your team interact with all of your workspaces’ tasks, we recently launched a new setting for that, it’s called an “unlocked” workspace. Once that feature activated, anyone from your team can : complete a task, edit labels, set deadlines and reminders, change the assignee, etc. Anyone can do anything! Your workspace is not public, just editable by all the members of that workspace.
PS: TASK LEVEL PRIVACY:
On Producteev, you can also select who’s seeing each and every one of your tasks if you want to. Click on the ‘privacy’ feature in your task detail panel. If you want to hide that “get my boss a birthday present” task in your team’s workspace, you can do it :)
Those settings are only available from the web app for now, but obviously reflect on all of the other apps once approved.
Hope that helps!
UPDATED ON MAY 7, 2012: Thanks to @stoweboyd for helping find the right terminology for "Locked' and "Unlocked"!
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- Jan 05, 12
Google is the father of Android operating system and unlike Apple they decided to stick to making solid software independent from hardware. Android is not a phone but really an advanced computer system to smarten any device with an on and off switch, phones, appliances, car media systems, televisions, watches…All those OS (operating system) implementation are actively being researched in Mountain View facility by remarkable engineers.
Andy Rubin – Mr Android- created the Nexus series. Nexus phones are especially designed to match Android operating system with most adequate hardware. First gPhone was made by HTC, sold exclusively via Google.com under the overblown Nexus One name, fully unlocked. Google managed to piss off everyone in the process: manufacturers (why pick HTC), carriers (why no deal a la Apple) and consumers who expected subsidized phones and live support (not Google’s strongest point).
Bottom line, Nexus One was called a failure. Google was ridiculed and attacked from all sides. A nice welcome from the Telecom industry to Silicon Valley giant.
But Google is too big to fail. Too smart to be impressed. They learned from their mistakes, they poured more gazillions of dollars, invaded every space left open by Apple and Nokia, making Android the dominating platform as we speak. Apple fanboys will argue about revenues, look and feel but it doesn’t really matter. The simple fact that there is an actual argument is a victory for Google.
Second
Google PhoneNexus phone was manufactured by Samsung under the name Nexus S. Launch was simultaneous in the US with T-Mobile and UK with Vodafone. All carriers distributed new Nexus phone. It became an immediate success thanks to its amazing Amoled screen, SIP/Voip capabilities, NFC chip, 1Ghz cpu, true multitasking – all those things still absent from iPhone.While Apple had 3 iterations of their phone since June 2007 with 1st generation (iPhone 2G), 2nd generation (iPhone 3G and 3Gs) and 3rd generation (iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S), Android jumped 7 major upgrades (from Cupcake to Ice Cream Sandwich) since March 2010. Progress of Android is incredible for a large corporation going through extensive Q&A before release.
It brings us to a short review of latest Galaxy Nexus phone. I’m using a GSM version (not the Verizon LTE). Note this GSM is a penta-band which means it operates identically on both AT&T and T-Mobile 3g/4g network. It will provide HSPDA on any GSM network. Amazing.
Phone is running latest ICS (Ice Cream Sandwich) 4.0.3, rooted, non branded and factory unlocked.
In hand phone feels large but not thick and holds pretty well. Case is all plastic, not very elegant. Thin sporting a large, vivid 4.65-inch screen.
Face unlock will certainly be standard in smartphones a year from today. It works well, and in case it doesn’t you can use PIN login.
Once unlocked i was amazed by transition speed between screens. Android always struggled at it while 3rd party launchers offered good alternatives. I guess Google looked into those apps and patched their OS on ICS.
Another standout for Nexus and ICS is the notification system. Apple recently introduced notification drawer which often overlaps native applications. On Android each notification can be dismissed with a single swipe to the side or can be batch cleared with a simple touch.
Now diving into built-in apps we discover a brand new stock browser offering realtime sync feature between Nexus and Chrome browser, fullscreen view, “request desktop site” which you can click if you want to see the full desktop version of a site and incognito mode (browser doesn’t keep browsing history).
A redesigned Gmail app adding an action bar allowing almost any operation, and best of all you can now store up to 30 days of your emails for offline viewing. Very handy during long flights.
Among cool gimmicks, you also find a panorama mode in camera settings, time-lapse video recording, magazine UI mode in gallery and DUC – Data Usage Control to monitor your data usage according to your billing cycle and Android beam which is like Bump app on iPhone but uses NFC technology.
NFC (Near-Field Communications) is a technology that establishes radio communication with each NFC enable device by bringing them into close proximity. Practically NFC can be used in contactless payment systems, you load a virtual card with prepaid credit and you can make payments using your phone. How does it work? Simple, bring your phone near the credit card terminal, a popup appears on your phone prompting for a PIN code. Enter your custom PIN and bing you just made a purchase. You don’t have to show your credit card to teller, no need to put your PIN in front of a waiting line, no phishing, no skimming, no identity theft. You lose your phone, still fine unless you have a post-it glued in the back with your pin-code.
Verizon has blocked Google Wallet on CDMA version. My GSM factory unlocked device is working fine with Google Wallet. Only thing wrong with this technology is the non awareness of cashiers. I paid using my phone at local CVS and it created a real drama. They had to call store manager, who then called CVS HQ to find out what this NFC thing was all about.
One important thing to know about Galaxy Nexus is NFC is integrated into the battery. Be very careful when buying an extra or extended battery to use exclusively Samsung batteries. Forget about eBay knockoffs.
Battery life wise I’m holding a full day with standard 1750mAh but arguably I’m not running the LTE version which apparently drains much more power. In case you need more you can upgrade to a second battery or the 2100mAh extended one. An option iPhone users don’t have.
There are few differences between LTE and GSM version. GSM is 10grams lighter and about half a cm thiner. LTE carries 32Gb while EU version is only 16Gb. LTE stock battery is 1850mAh vs 1750mAh for GSM.
Bottom line Galaxy Nexus is a true innovative device adding much more features than any other phone. Google Voice, Google Talk, Google + and Google Search are so deeply integrated into Android that it’s make usability a bliss.
What Google wants, Google gets and unless Apple pulls a rabbit out the hat quickly…
- Jan 03, 12
Most of my non american friends keep asking me how to bypass roaming charges when visiting the US.
Couple of years ago, it was very hard to find decent voice/data prepaid in North America but things have changed. Changed a lot.
Here is a list of Prepaid services I know of (feel free to point out new providers).
H2O (an AT&T MVNO) http://www.h2owirelessnow.com Technology: GSM
You can chose from $40 for unlimited voice/text/MMS to $60 for unlimited voice/text/MMS/data. They are my favorite as they are working in any AT&T locked devices (such as iPhones) and provide 3G/4G on AT&T bandwidth. No ID required. Free SIM. And cherry on the cake, you have $10 of FREE international calls anywhere in the world.
Any H2O Unlimited Plans include FREE $10 Int’l Calling to over 100+ countries. At 3.5cts/min to France that’s over 5 HOURS of free talk time from you cell to France. If you need more you can just add $10 and keep calling the world.
H2O also offers prepaid broadband at 4G speed for $50/month UNLIMITED (yes no cap) no contract nothing.
Pros: AT&T Network, coverage, speed, pricing, Broadband plan
Cons: Very few point of sales, top-up can complicated without a US credit card, hard to find top-up cards, expensive international rates after free $10
Simple Mobile (a T-Mobile MVNO) http://www.mysimplemobile.com/ Technology: GSM
Simple Mobile is a H2O copycat but based on T-Mobile network (US smallest carrier). They are excellent for short visits as they offer a 15 days unlimited voice/text for $25 (no data).
Here is a list of existing Simple Mobile plan:
$25 Unlimited 15 Day Talk & Text
$40 Unlimited Talk, Text & Web
$40 Unlimited Talk, Text & Web + $10 Unlimited ILD
$60 Unlimited Talk, Text & High Speed Web
$60 Unlimited Talk, Text & High Speed Web + $10 Unlimited ILDSimple Mobile also offers BlackBerry PREPAID plan. Just slide your SIM, sync your device with your BlackBerry ID and you’ve got your own BBM running for free in the US on 4G speed and unlimited international long distance calls.
BLACKBERRY PLANS
$50 Unlimited Blackberry Talk, Text & Web
$50 Unlimited BlackBerry Talk, Text & Web + $10 Unlimited ILD
$60 Unlimited BlackBerry Talk, Text & High Speed Web
$60 Unlimited BlackBerry Talk, Text & High Speed Web + $10 Unlimited ILDI highly recommend Simple Mobile for their incredible selection of prepaid service. They are innovative in this space, aggressive and there is actually real people handling customer support.
Pros: good customer service, easy top-up, short stay plans, blackberry plans, 4G speed, full website management, lowest international rates I’ve seen in prepaid mobile.
Cons: poor broadband, limited coverage (T-Mobile), their plans can be confusing sometimes.
MetroPCS http://www.metropcs.com/ and Virgin Mobile http://www.virginmobileusa.com/ Technology: CDMA
Personally I don’t like CDMA as I need to use my own phone when travelling. Buying a new phone, transferring contacts, messages, bookmarks, and emails is not an option. But you might want to consider them as an option if all you want is a cheap voice/text plan for your visits in the US. Coverage is really average.
Other solutions:
T-Mobile Prepaid http://prepaid-phones.t-mobile.com/ too many options, they always try to upsell more expensive features.
AT&T Prepaid http://www.wireless.att.com/cell-phone-service/go-phones/ same as the above.
According to BusinessWeek China Telecom is preparing a major offensive in prepaid telecom offers. First they are said to start with an MVNO but should soon work on their own infrastructure.
Bottom line there are plenty of options for tourists or business people to use a phone on US soil without spending more than $50 for all-you-can-eat talk, text and web plans. Think about it if you are coming to Las Vegas for CES.
- Jun 29, 11
World has changed, business is global and no one wants to travel so conference calls have become a daily protocol.
Unfortunately a conference call can easily turn into a farce. And it happens A LOT.
I just can’t put up with heavy-breathers or “do you hear me better now” crap. So I decided to drop out certain conference calls where a minimum essential politeness is not met.Based on my experience participants should stick to rules below:
- Be on time.
- State your name when you sign in.
- Don’t call from a mobile phone (if you do- make sure you have great reception, not in motion and no environmental sounds).
- Don’t call in from a noisy place.
- Wait for other party to finish his sentence. Do not interrupt.
- No more than 5 participants.
- Shut off you other phones or computer sound notifications.
- No more than 45min.
- Mute yourself but KEEP listening. No one likes to feel he is left alone on the call.
- Conference call time is not lunch time.
If within first 5 minutes, participants are not ALL on the call, I’d rather re-schedule.
Feel free to share your tip, eager to learn.
- Dec 16, 10
Until few months ago, “no” was not in my vocabulary. Shortest word to write and yet hardest word to say.
I grew up thinking no was the most awkward, guilt inducing, nerve racking, embarrassing word in the language.
Society evolves around yes or hope and when a no comes around it must be accompanied by weak excuses and rationalizations.
“No” is offensive when said in an unassertive or aggressive manner. That’s how we all use it, faking sorry feelings or exploding because too much is too much.And when we force ourselves to say yes instead of no we feel pitiful adding more anger to our lives.
At 42 I discovered the power of no. The decisive no that doesn’t need explanation, direct and simple.
The no that saves so much time at the end of the day and makes your yes so much valuable.
No to a bunch of small things we keep in the air because we fear hurting feelings.
And I will accept your no over a million of “yes but” that will never happen. You don’t lose friends over a no, you lose them over a wrong yes.I made so many mistakes by not saying no. Mistakes costing friends and monies.
Please people, accept my apologies for not saying NO when I wanted needed to.Bottom line, no has changed my life in the best possible way.
“Tone is the hardest part of saying no.” — Jonathan Price
- Dec 06, 10
Everywhere I go, everywhere I read, eat, train or work, Wikileaks is the center of most conversation.
The world is divided in those who believe Wikileaks is a public service aiming for more transparency and those who believe Wikileaks is a dangerous anarchist movement.
I support the latter and will explain why.
Liberty, democracy, journalism vs privacy, diplomacy, and equilibrium.
Unfortunately it’s not that simple. Let’s rewind time. Wikileaks stole classified information from US Intelligence by hacking into access-restricted computers or calling for US employees to steal files. This action by itself is definitely a crime. And no one can contest that so far.
I find it amazing some seem surprised US is running a diplomatic ballet. They do LIKE ALL OTHER COUNTRIES ON THIS PLANET.
It would be childish to think other democracies are not using the exact same modus operandi. Collecting and reporting info is the oldest form of Intelligence countries have put together way back in the days of Romans, Egyptians and Greeks.
Wikileaks targets specifically the United States of America.
Why? I think we should legitimately ask ourselves this question.
In a quest for ‘open transparency’ wouldn’t it be fair to get classified cables from all the parties involved?
But Wikileaks is obviously not interested in stealing German, Russian, Chinese or Iranian classified information. In fact Wikileaks has never unveiled any ‘secrets’ about any other country but US.
Their tweets are clearly showing their motivation:
Actually the whole stream is anti-American. How pleasant for the free world…
Like other terrorists, Wikileaks is relying on US infrastructure to relay their heinous message- Amazon, Paypal, EyeDNS. Here comes Dumb and Dumber screaming for boycott against those companies who stopped providing support to Wikileaks. Pathetic…
“Obama and Clinton must resign”. Maybe they should; but not for any of those ‘embarrassing’ cables. Just because they failed to protect sensitive information from going public.
Martin Varsavsky wrote a short piece on how Wikileaks has taught us a lesson. If it’s private – keep it private. I cannot agree more. Countries will increase their level of security and the whole Wikileaks plan for transparency goes flushed down the drain. Bravo.
What’s Wikileaks next target? Take a wild guess? Bank of America. Yes, another stolen hard-drive (thank God it’s not an iPhone- Jobs would have sent Apple Police) from a high ranked executive-which violates, corporate and personal privacy, bank secrecy and 100’s of common laws. Oh, and yet another American symbol. But that is for the greater good argues the hypocrite humanitarian.
No one was hurt.
Julian Assange claims no one was hurt in the process. Is this his perspective? Your perspective? Or the perspective of thousands of diplomats, ambassadors and consuls around the planet being “invited” to provide explanations and apologies?
If I post a picture of you naked it won’t kill you. It won’t hurt me either but will it hurt you?
All other countries are picking whatever they need from Wikileaks to serve their local political careers.
Segolene Royal likes the way Sarkozy is painted by US diplomats.
Antonio Di Pietro enjoys every word describing Silvio Berlusconi.
Netanyahu likes to read embarrassing cables regarding Ehud Barak for a reason.
Censorship of the uncensored documents.
Only a small portion of documents has been published. Why not all? What is the logic of sorting messages when you claim transparency? Is Wikileaks releasing documents in filtered manners? Is there a negotiation behind the scenes on the release of those documents?
We know absolutely nothing about Wikileaks, their founders and the organization. And yet, every frustrated anti-American is ready to embrace their cause to Satanize a great country.
Here in America, we have this thing called the First Amendment, which allows people to express what they think in political and social speech.
It doesn’t mean you can steal classified information, publish it, and then hide yourself behind a convenient Amendment of a Constitution you are not part of.
You should know US administration is the only one to declassify Diplomatic Cables on regular basis as stated in The Freedom Of Information Act [PDF] . You can also find the archives online here from Georges Washington University.
Time will tell if Wikileaks intentions are nobles or not. But I strongly believe Wikileaks is conveniently irresponsible and damaging to the World.
Let’s hear your opinion.
- Nov 08, 10
Yesterday I was driving to Kennedy Space Center near Orlando. I say “near Orlando” because if you use a GPS forget finding Nasa Visitor Center on your map using Orlando as a city. So I thought checking their address on Google would help me set-up my GPS – unfortunately they give you directions but no address.
GPS wants an address starting with a Zip code or City and Street name.
Digging a bit further – I found out Kennedy Space Center is located in Orsino Florida.
Hurray!! Ooops. Nope, Orsino doesn’t come up on my GPS.
Annoyed but not desperate I followed the driving instructions from their website and…we made it.
But driving back home, I had an eureka moment.
What if our GPS could use an extra simple trivial entry mode?
Hmmm, the idea is appealing but the infrastructure to build something like this is ridiculous. Just think about indexing millions of places around the globe and assigning a unique ID. Impossible.
I’m still thinking, brainstorming while everyone is deeply asleep in the car…I needed to keep my neurons alert to resist diving in a coma myself.
Bang! Why not use Foursquare? Each venue is clearly marked with a unique ID. Each ID fits a description and best of all it offer tips, specials and nearby points of interest.
Man this is too simple. Way too simple. Imagine your email signature now:
Florian Seroussi
@florianseroussi
LABOTEC Inc.
Venue: 250674Now just plug 250674 on Google maps, car GPS, TomTom, NavTeq, VZ Navigator or any tracking device and there you are, on your way to our office.
The service should shine by its simplicity, be global, accurate (something Foursquare might need to work on a bit) and reliable (no whale fail kinda).
I’m sure some of you will comment that this can be done using phone numbers in some GPS. True – but reality is:
- Not every business publicize their phone number
- Less and less people have a land line
- Phone numbers rarely match the physical address
- Privacy concerns? Unsolicited phone calls?
Anyway, far from the Groupon-coupon-discount-lbs bs, I think Foursquare should definitely explore this opportunity to offer car manufacturers a solid and inexpensive alternative to complex existing entry mode on navigation systems.
If not Foursquare, then maybe a reckless entrepreneur ready to build a layer on top of the existing location based service? Facebook places? What do you think?
- Oct 24, 10
I was lucky to be seated on the perfect side of the plane with my point and shoot camera within reach. The image is a bit shaky, backlight disturbing for a couple of minutes but overall, a great view over NYC.
Few minutes of post-editing on iMovie (yes- I’m learning) and below the result.
- Oct 14, 10
In case you live under a rock, a short recap of “the lost iPhone” saga.
6 months ago Gawker Media admitted that it paid $5,000 to get their hands on a prototype of a fourth-generation iPhone for its gadget blog, Gizmodo. Seller of the device told the editors of Gizmodo and other technology blogs that he “found” it unattended in a bar.
I’m not trying to debate if buying a lost or stolen phone is legal or not. This is for the big guys. My opinion on the subject is that as long as Gizmodo did not pay to get the phone stolen in the first place, it sounds legitimate to publish the info (although I think it’s wrong). In comparison Techcrunch did post stolen Twitter documents aka Twittergate [documents stolen from Twitter’s servers- not lost, or found. Stolen…and the thief is actually behind bars in France for hacking.] and I was shocked. Maybe my expectations for TechCrunch ethics are higher than for Gizmodo.
There was a before April 2010 and an after. Gizmodo was the underdog gadget blog, TechCrunch the REAL valley mag (no reference to Valleywag – a Gawker zine) and Mashable the gossip tech people magazine.
What happened next? Gizmodo boomed with 4M unique (up to 5M in April, more than TechCrunch and Mashable altogether).
Gizmodo got more publicity for this stunt then any PR could dream of.
Mainstream media started leaking the info on national networks and traffic picked up almost instantly.
Oddly they didn’t ‘take’ any customers readers from their competitors; on the contrary they brought nearly 3 Million fresh souls into the game.
Was it worth it? Hell yeah. And for everyone! Do I approve? No, but I’ve proven wrong many times.
Now that 6 months have passed I see no downside for Gizmodo.
Apple screwed this one up pretty badly. Losing a prototype in a bar was epic. Denying and covering up the mess was like pouring oil on fire. Finally sending the Feds after Gizmodo made Jason Chen look like Robin Hood and Steve Jobs an arrogant little rich kid going after his lost toy. Last but not least, Gizmodo is banned to any Apple event. No biggie there.
Don’t they have teams full of damage control experts in Cupertino? PR moguls?
Apple is a marketing raw model for tens of thousands of entrepreneurs. Where did it go wrong? Why such a drama?
A simple “Yes this is one prototype of a phone we might or might not decide to launch. It’s just that – a prototype. We would appreciate a prompt return of the device in our lab.” would have sufficed to kill the story.
Was the all thing staged to get more publicity?
Obviously a phone was lost and Apple’s execs were all over the case. But Jobs is smart enough to make the best of any given situation- so yes, it’s possible that they played it all along to get more coverage for the launch of the iPhone 4.
Arrington said he would have not paid for the phone. Not so sure he’d say that again today.
TechCrunch is by far my favorite source of information. I can’t read Gizmodo – too inquireresq- and Mashable is full of buttons and boxes which makes the content completely unattractive.
I’m glad Mike sold TechCrunch to AOL. Hope they make good use of his baby.
So, do you think it’s legit to pay for exclusivity?
- Oct 10, 10
A year ago I would have been harsh on a new Windows Phone OS. I was harsh in this post.
In April 2010 I saw a very early stage Windows Phone 7 prototype and I said to myself “the whole idea sounded bad, now it looks terrible”.
Microsoft challenge was to start from a blank page. Forget Windows Mobile, WinCE and even Windows to re-create a different user experience based on what was learned from iPhone and Android.
The very first device Microsoft handed out to me for testing purposes was a huge brick, barely functional. My partner Pierre-Olivier Carles needed a phone for a few days and I decided to let him try ‘the phone of the future”. Let’s keep it nice and just say he wasn’t convinced
In the meantime, Apple and Google were upgrading and updating their OS considerably adding speech to text, turn by turn navigation, better applications, new features…I was even more perplex on Microsoft’s strategy.
I was wrong. Wrong to under-estimate the power of a world leader in Operating Systems, best software company of all times.
Few days ago as part of our Device Agreement we received a pre-production unit which has nothing to do with anything you have seen before. It’s snappy, reactive, user friendly, reliable, well presented and integrates the best of Microsoft.
I’m not sure if Microsoft will grab the smartphone market. But they did a wonderful job in a short period of time under huge competitive pressure.
95% or so of computer owners are using Windows, 99.99% of all users are using Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint), and 90% of the enterprise world is running Exchange mail server. Well if you are one of those users, this phone is for you.
Native integration of Office Suite makes DataWiz/DocumentsToGo looking almost ridiculous. Outlook native integration with Exchange will ease the life of millions of users.
Admittedly I’m not one of those. But let’s not ignore the vast majority of users because we live in a bubble where Apple rules.
Apple and Google have almost zero experience in gaming unlike Microsoft Xbox solid success. WP7 fully uses Xbox Live so players can stay connected to their favorite games. Gaming + Enterprise might be the winning combination.
I’m not sure how much money Microsoft is investing to conquer the phone segment but last Thursday I was face to face with Steve Ballmer and I felt an incredible energy around Windows Phone 7. It’s not a side project – with all the risks attached. Microsoft will use all of its influence to convince manufacturers, distributors, publishers, and users that Windows Phone 7 is a winner.
I have a feeling that Microsoft is going after Google and too bad if Apple is on the way.
Below a short video of a pre-production unit. What do you think?
- Aug 25, 10
Today Google announced the integration of Google Voice into Gmail allowing users to place and receive phone calls from their computer from any place in the world to the US for FREE.
Since the acquisition of GrandCentral by Google, Craig Walker and his team have been working hard to make the world a better place for communication.
One of the targets is to make Google Voice accessible to all users (meaning outside the scope of Google) with an horizontal approach ranging from Mobile phones to Web based applications and device dependent applications as well. Google Voice has been available for Blackberry and Android phones for over a year. But they never could make it to the iPhone. The application went live for a few hours before Apple’s executives decided to remove it from the app store raising a Valley drama on Twitter and Facebook.
Google asked the FCC to look into Apple’s motivation, Apple replied, FCC sent a few letters, AT&T denied any implications…bottom line: nothing happened. In a world where technology is evolving around time, FCC has failed to do its job.
Worse, I believe FCC integrity is challenged by its dependance to regulatory fees mainly paid by carriers and manufacturers e.g. AT&T and Apple. I see an urgent need to reform FCC processes to adapt to 21st century technology pace.
Here is an imaginary open letter from Google to FCC regarding Apple’s Rejection of the Google Voice for iPhone Application.
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