Time to Speak Out Against the Plan to Destroy Net Neutrality
Even before John Oliver took to ranting about the necessity of net neutrality regulations, mobile app developers were passionate supporters of the open internet. We thought the fight for net neutrality was over after the unified outcry from various internet communities back in 2014, but then along came Trump and his new FCC chairman, former […]
Facebook’s New Drones Will Bring WiFi When Disaster Strikes
Mother Nature has a cruel tendency to knock out cell towers and other infrastructure after major natural disasters, when they are needed most. When communications are down, it’s extremely difficult for disaster relief efforts to coordinate and for panicked families to reach out to endangered loved ones in the impacted area. Fortunately, Facebook and Everfly, […]
Clock In Whenever: The Joyful Anarchy of the Tech Work Week
Eight hours a day. Five days and 40 hours per week. Clock in at 8 and clock out at 5. Regardless of industry or objective, work schedules tend to be remarkably similar. So how come techies, app developers, and startup founders work such odd hours — and can traditional business models learn from their unconventional […]
Geofilter Patent Could Help Protect Snap Inc. from Copycats
After the initial hype of its IPO settled down, many mobile app developers were left wondering where Snapchat could go next. User growth was slowing even before the company went public, and its main competitor Facebook has been steadily cloning its defining features ever since Snap Inc. CEO Evan Spiegel turned down Mark Zuckerberg’s offer […]
Google Spotlights Fact-Checkers to Manage Misinformation
Last week, Facebook announced its News Integrity Initiative, another gesture toward fixing the internet’s misinformation epidemic. While the social media giant has received most of the flak for the explosion of fake news, NYC app developers are well aware that it’s not the only platform guilty of disseminating false information. As the search engine, Google […]
Twitter Moves to Tackle Trolls with Marked Accounts
Twitter and trolls are a love story that goes back as far as Twitter itself. Even for diehard users, dealing with abuse and offensive content on the platform has been a turnoff, and it’s something that Twitter has struggled to fix even as competitors like Facebook and Instagram take hardline approaches that seem to please […]
Will Artificial Intelligence Help or Hinder Empathy Online?
Mental health is the latest trending frontier in the MedTech app development space. If you have a browsing history of seeking out mental health information through Google, you might have even seen ads for such services in the sidebar while you scroll through Facebook. From one-on-one counseling services to artificially intelligent “empathy bots,” startups are […]
Facebook Introduces Stories on the Heels of Snapchat IPO
Facebook has grown to the point where virtually every smartphone user on the planet has the app on their phone — and those who don’t almost certainly use it at home. That popularity has come at a price for the company’s app developers, though, as the original use cases that brought users to the platform […]
Brexit Fears Prompt UK to Issue More Tech Visas
If Brexit made ripples in the economy, it made waves in the tech industry. App developers in London’s thriving mobile development community fear that the separation from the EU could damage their status as the top mobile tech center in Europe — or at least, make it much harder to do business there. The government […]
Finally, A “Turk” That Works for Bootstrapped Startups
Algorithms and machine learning are pretty much a given for serious mobile startups these days. Unfortunately, machine learning takes data, and data isn’t always available — at a startup-friendly price point, anyway. A new startup out of India called Playment aims to solve that problem, and their clever solution deserves a spot in any mobile […]