Dogtown Media and Congressman Ed Royce Present 2016 App Challenge Winners
Dogtown Media’s commitment to tech education continues, as CEO Marc Fischer spoke on a panel alongside California Congressman Ed Royce at the awards ceremony for this year’s Congressional App Challenge. The presentation featured incredible app designs from some of the brightest elementary, middle- and high-school students in the 39th district of California. This isn’t the […]
How a French Startup Is Re-making Privacy-first Ai Tech
When techies think of artificial intelligence, they usually think of big venture capital projects in the US and app developers in London. But there’s another player on the AI field, and it’s actually bigger than you might think. There are about 180 AI startups in France, mostly in Paris, and a thriving scene that’s unfortunately […]
Mobile Forecast: Upcoming Sharing Economy App Opportunities
Twenty years have passed since eBay democratized auctions and seven since the first Uber rolled onto the highway, but the “sharing economy” is showing no signs of stalling. If anything, the trend seems to be gathering steam, with local app developers launching more disruptive sharing economy apps every week. Startup founders looking for bright app […]
Who Decides Which Emojis You Get on Your Smartphone?
The Unicode Consortium does a lot of good for the world. It’s thanks to the efforts of this mostly volunteer organization that smartphone users can type in Chinese and rest assured that it’ll be readable on any other device. For speakers of obscure languages like Fulani, the consortium’s work literally pulls a whole culture across […]
What the Touchbar Means for iOS and OSX App Users
There’s been talk of iOS and OSX merging into a single operating system for some time now. Many iPhone app developers here in NYC believed that the new Macbook might offer a clue as to if and when it would finally happen. The release of the new Macbookdidn’t disappoint, and the “touch bar” at the […]
Facebook Messenger Launches In-App Games to Take on Apple
It sometimes seems like Facebook gets a cut of virtually every market these days, from media to communication. One market they’ve had trouble breaking into, however, is the mobile gaming industry — particularly ironic, for anybody that’s tired of getting Farmville requests from vague acquaintances. With the launch of “Instant Games” within the Messenger app, the […]
What Happens to Workers in an AI Economy?
If you were in Pittsburgh in the past couple months, you might have spotted one of Uber’s self-driving cars — or even had one stop to give you a ride. The opt-in program, conducted under the careful watch of trained real-person driving assistants, was for many NYC app developers a glimpse of the future. Futurologists […]
Instagram Introduces In-App Shopping for Brands
If Twitter is the poster child of angry users and poor monetization attempts, Instagram is the opposite — a massive mobile app startup that’s somehow perfectly balanced monetization and user experience. That balance in on display currently as the company just launched “shoppable tags,” which allow select brands to display purchase information embedded within tags […]
What Would Happen If Capital Hill Ran the US Like a Startup?
Government is often slow and difficult to understand. Tech moves quickly and is relatively simple to comprehend. Most importantly, consumers tend to get the feeling that tech products put the user first, while government “products” could care less. Because of this difference, mobile app developers are often fond of the idea that the US should […]
How to Make Mobile Payments Work: Imitate Credit Cards
A new study from Points might point to the biggest barrier holding back mainstream use of mobile payment options like Android Pay and Apple Pay: and that barrier is rewards. Credit cards often wind up costing the average consumer money, but they still flock to them in droves: and it’s not just because they let […]