Startup Founders Looking to AgTech as next Frontier
KisanHub is a startup with a simple mission: using tech to help farmers grow more crops more efficiently, while using less land. While iPad app developers might not immediately think of agriculture and farming when they think of unicorn-level startup opportunities, venture capitalists beg to differ — KisanHub just closed a $1 million seed funding […]
Can Mobile Apps Make a Real Contribution to Social Justice?
While Facebook’s stance on censorship remains murky, the unicorn tech giant has issued multiple statements insinuating that the platform — and Facebook live in particular — can have a positive impact by bringing transparency to everyday life. Last week’s controversial police shooting video, which was quickly removed from the platform before being reinstated after public […]
On-demand Service Startups Start Targeting the Suburbs
Food delivery startup Farm Hill announced their intention to expand into San Francisco last week, which doesn’t sound like hot news until you look at the context — specifically, the expansion “into” rather than “out of” a city. Farm Hill is backed by high-profile VCs like SOMA Capital and associated with Standford’s accelerator StartX. Regardless, rather […]
Freemium Pricing: Can it Work for My App?
In just a few years, freemium pricing for mobile apps has gone from an unusual fringe strategy to the dominant pricing scheme in the mobile app industry. How dominant? Well, in 2014 98% of all app revenue in Google Play came from freemium apps in the form of in-app purchases and monthly subscription fees. Apple […]
Google Launches Hardware Initiative to Teach Kids Code
Google just launched a new hardware initiative, Project Bloks, with the aim of expanding youth exposure to coding principles through “tangible coding.” Unlike the software-based coding systems mobile app developers who work with kids might be familiar with, tangible coding systems represent coding concepts — objects, binaries, if/then statements — as physical objects that can […]
Uber Trying to Win Back Their Most Valued Resource: Drivers
Uber, like any sharing-economy mobile app developer, has two main resources: workers and customers. This may sound simplistic, but it’s actually a tricky and unique balance in the on-demand startup industry, compared with worker and consumer relations in more traditional companies. When a mobile app becomes the interface between employer and employee, efficiency increases — […]
Brexit Vote Sends Shockwaves Through Startup Community
The United Kingdom’s Brexit vote in favor of leaving the European Union (EU) has sent shockwaves through the business world, and tech is no exception. Surging stock prices only 24 hours before the historic vote saw Wall Street place their bets against the UK’s departure, making Friday’s 52:48 near-tie all the more bitter a pill […]
Dogtown Works for Edtech at First Youth Technology Town Hall
Dogtown Media joined Microsoft, Facebook, Pandora, and other leading tech companies in Chicago last week (June 17) for a historic first Youth Technology Town Hall. Congressman Danny K. Davis and community leaders organized the event to promote STEM and computer science education in the Chicago area, tapping the expertise of technologists and iPhone app developers […]
Research Shows Huge Growth in Millennial use of Mobile Apps
Research firm comScore recently released their annual report on mobile app use. The results? Millennials still love mobile apps, to the tune of a whopping 90 hours per month spent on smartphone apps alone. Don’t worry, they love tablets too. Just not as much. Of usage growth across all platforms, mobile represented 65 percent, followed […]
Facebook Embraces SMS, but Chat Apps Are Still the Future
Facebook recently turned heads among Android app developers with the rollout of SMS support in Facebook Messenger, a development that flies directly in the face of the companies pushback against what the social media titan considers an “outdated technology.” The feature has been testing since early this spring and the feature — which allows users […]