The location based app market has been popular for quite some time now, with its major players becoming household names. Foursquare, Gowalla, and upstarts like Booyah’s MyTown are showing impressive user numbers and gaining traction among mobile users. Yet at TechCrunch Disrupt last week, two new startups showed promising twists on location-based services (LBS). DeHood aims to create a new community vibe through its iPhone app and website, each of which pulls in information about their local area. Yet possibly more disruptive is SCVNGR, which takes the game dynamics present in Foursquare and makes them the center of the service, instead of placing them on the periphery as Foursquare does.
Making Checking in Fun Again
Foursquare is designed to one day become a social and local utility, with social gaming mechanics designed to encourage checkins and to get people to use the platform more frequently. With SCVNGR, going to somewhere and checking in isn’t enough. Instead, they make the entire world a scavenger hunt. At Disrupt, challenges included “Double Down,” with users suggesting companies for venture capitalists to invest in, or “Give me a ‘T’,” wherein users had to spell out TCD with random scraps they found at the conference.
SCVNGR has spent the past couple of months working with institutions like colleges and museums to build “treks,” which are essentially scavenger hunts. These are designed to drive more traffic and interactivity with the institutions. One could theoretically travel through the Metropolitan Museum of Art doing a trek, a highlights tour of sorts that was designed with SVNGR. The app includes social features as well, allowing users to see where they rank against their friends and the treks their friends had previously completed.
Developer: Vals Salikhov
Price: $1.99
Version Reviewed: 2.00
Device Reviewed On: iPhone
iPhone Integration Rating: Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
User Interface Rating: Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
Re-use / Replay Value Rating: Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
Features Rating: Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
Over the years web browsers have become more and more sophisticated, adding features like tabbed browsing, bookmark syncing, developer debug modes, etc. Hands down though my favorite has got to be the “Find in Page” feature. Now I’m not talking about the Search bar that lets you Google your heart out without ever visiting Google’s home page. No no, I’m referring to the feature that takes away the need to skim entire pages just to find the one or two sentences that pertain to you. All browsers do it slightly different but Safari’s implementation has always been one of the best by dimming out all the other words and highlighting only the ones you’re interested in. Why Apple didn’t feel the need to port that feature over to mobile Safari, I’ll never understand. Fortunately Vais Salikhov stepped up and succeeded where Apple did not. Find In Page is actually not an App in the strictest of senses, it’s a bookmarklet, meaning that it’s a small piece of Javascript the runs on top of Safari. For a more detailed explanation of how that works see the App’s description page. The basic idea though is it sits as a normal bookmark in the bookmark menu but when you select it, instead of opening up a new page, a text box appears asking what word you would like to locate. Once submitted it will return the number of matches found and highlight them. A set of five buttons consisting of a previous and next arrow, info, a new search, and exit icon, will appear at the bottom of screen. Fortunately exiting the bookmarklet has no effect on the page itself.
Because it’s not an app in the traditional sense it does require some extra steps for setting up. The app gives very straight forward directions and the steps you have to take and the developer’s site has a demonstration video on how to perform them as well. It’s really simple to do but I do recommend watching the video before purchasing it. The only other little hiccup is the inability to search phrases with different formatting. In other words if a phrase has one of its words in italics while the rest are standard text then it won’t turn up in a search. Honestly I’ve never run into a situation where this was a problem and the only reason I know of it is because it’s talked about in the app description.
In the end this is a must buy app. While some may not use it as often as I do, there’s little doubt that at some point everyone will run into at least 1 situation where it would be nice to have.
It’s always funny to spin the rumor wheel and see what falls out.
In this case, it is this idea that Microsoft’s Bing will replace Google as the default search engine on the iPhone.
Say what? Is there no confirmation on this? No, there isn’t. I think the last we heard, Bing will be one of the search engine options on the iPhone, not a Google replacement.
AT&T will offer an iPhone insurance service, named MobileProtect, starting on June 6th, according to a Boy Genius Report.
The insurance plan, which will be run by Asurion, will carry a price tag of $13.99/month and will be available for purchase through Apple’s App Store. The charges will be billed to the credit card on file with Apple. The deductibles range from $99 for an 8GB 3G to $199 for a 32GB 3GS, which is pretty steep — but not quite as steep as $699 for a new 32 GB 3GS off-contract. You must enroll in the plan within 30-days of upgrading/purchasing a new iPhone.
AT&T says that “lack of iPhone insurance is a leading source of iPhone related customer complaints.”
Google may build a Latitude application for iPhone OS 4.0, but will Apple approve?
Latitude is a feature of Google Maps which allows you to see the location of your friends.
TechCrunch asked Google senior product manager Steve Lee about building a native app for the iPhone now that it includes background location.
Lee answered, “From the start, we’ve made Latitude available across platforms. Supporting iPhone with a great Latitude user experience is extremely important to us, and we’re evaluating the best way to deliver that on iPhone OS 4.0 now, so we don’t have anything to announce just yet.”
Back in July, Google admitted to having built a native Latitude application for the iPhone but said Apple didn’t want users to confuse the app with Maps so they offered it as a webapp instead.
We worked closely with Apple to bring Latitude to the iPhone in a way Apple thought would be best for iPhone users. After we developed a Latitude application for the iPhone, Apple requested we release Latitude as a web application in order to avoid confusion with Maps on the iPhone, which uses Google to serve maps tiles.
With the multitude of navigation apps available for the iPhone, it seems very unlikely that this is the real reason for not offering the app.
If Google tries to submit Latitude a second time, Apple could refuse it again; however, Apple is already under investigation for the refusal of Google Voice from the App Store. They may not want another investigation on their hands.
It’s always funny to spin the rumor wheel and see what falls out. 
Comments