Tag: MOBILEAPPS

Advertisers and retailers have been looking for new and unique ways to leverage the recent influx of GPS-enabled smartphones in attracting customers and gathering important information about their shopping behaviors. Foursquare introduced some new ideas, but retailers wanted to take it a step further. Enter Shopkick. The new app turns shopping (and violating your privacy) into a game that, ...

Just in time for the Fourth of July, the federal government's official Web portal, USA.gov, has been redesigned and relaunched with more comprehensive tools for citizen browsers. The clearing house for all other government sites and services has a brand new search engine that is reportedly nine-times faster than the original, and now boasts search-as-you-type features. The site also puts mobile ...

Twitter's 140-character format -- and the tendency of users to follow hundreds, if not thousands, of incessant linkers and tweeters -- provides an almost perfect mobile means of instant communication and interaction. Together, the App World and the Web currently offer a variety of free apps allowing BlackBerry tweeps to keep a constant eye on their feeds and friends, with each selection offering ...

Share At a live event in New York City yesterday, Microsoft launched its Office 2010 software package. The ubiquitous productivity suite, available now for volume license holders, can be downloaded starting May 11th, and will hit store shelves in June. The updated package focuses on making Office more mobile and Web-friendly, which is likely Microsoft's response to the growing popularity of ...

Almost a year ago to the day, CBS introduced its Sulu app for the iPhone, and one major competitor is finally following that pioneering move toward mobile programming. Fox Mobile Group, which is a division of Fox Entertainment (itself a division of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp.), has created Bitbop, a smartphone subscription service. The Bitbop app, which will officially launch within the next few ...

The iPhone increasing lets you do many things, but playing a real piano in real time so far hasn't been one of them -- at least until this past week at CEATEC, the annual consumer electronics show held in Tokyo, Japan, which we were fortunate enough to attend. On display at the Yamaha booth was one of the more impressive iPhone apps we've seen to date: Called Finger Piano Share, since it lets ...

The iPhone may not be as big in Japan as it is in the States, but that hasn't stopped Nissan from developing an app that shows the residents of Yokohama City, Japan how to drive better. The new program is part of a trial service called E1 Grand Prix. Here's how it works: The app connects to your car's On-Board Diagnostics (OBD), and extracts information in real-time to determine how efficiently ...

As part of an ongoing effort to refine and improve mobile communication options for the blind, Nokia Labs has introduced a new SMS application (video after the break) that allows blind users to receive Braille text messages via the company's touch phones. The program receives the tactile texts, and, with a series of coded vibrations, relays the message to the user. To date, most blind-accessible ...

You can't turn on the radio without hearing the impact Auto-Tune, a software program that corrects a singer's pitch. Whether that's good or bad is up for debate, but that hasn't stopped both schools of thought from cashing in on the craze. Jay-Z pumped out his anti-ballad 'Death to Auto-Tune,' and, on the other side, T-Pain now further cements his status as 'King of Auto-Tune' with a new iPhone ...

Our friends over at The Unofficial Apple Weblog just launched a new iPhone app (already #3 in the free news category on the App Store), available now via iTunes [iTunes link] and via the TUAW app page. You mobile Mac-heads out there probably know about i.tuaw.com, the iPhone-optimized version of TUAW. Why go native? The new app offers offline browsing, allows you to bookmark articles for later ...

Like Heather Locklear of 'Dynasty,' 'TJ Hooker,' 'Melrose Place' and 'Spin City' fame, Greg Grunberg is one of those actors fortunate to have starred in three back-to-back hit series. His first big roles came in the J.J.-Abrams-produced 'Felicity' and 'Alias,' but now he is best known for the NBC show 'Heroes,' in which he plays Matt Parkman, a policeman who can hear what other people are ...

digg_url ='http://www.switched.com/2009/08/03/cell-phones-boost-saucy-manga-comics-sales-in-japan-among-women/'; The manga (Japanese comics) industry in Japan has been in steady decline for the past decade, but it seems an unlikely savior has finally arrived: the cell phone. The New York Times is reporting that direct-to-cell sales of manga have jumped up 43-percent from last year -- a ...

High-end jeweler Cartier garnered itself a bit of (perhaps unwanted) attention this past weekend when it filed a trademark infringement suit regarding a small time iPhone app developer -- Digitopolis Game Studio. The company created a pair of apps, called Fake Watch and Fake Watch Gold Edition, which featured recreations of Cartier's "Tank" watch. Oddly enough, Cartier didn't sue Digitopolis, but ...

We here at Switched are what you might call e-mail addicts. In fact, we have no idea how we survived before the invention of mobile e-mail and smart phones -- but even we have to admit that the Email 'n Walk iPhone app is a little ludicrous. Free for a limited time, Email 'n Walk for the iPhone lets you safely (in theory) compose e-mails while walking by displaying a video feed taken live from ...

You know the deal -- there's an app for everything. Literally. And now there is an app for tracking the over-hyped medical threat that the press has dubbed Swine Flu. Sure, Swine Flu has been less deadly than Bird Flu (which wasn't particularly deadly to begin with), and less fun to say than Monkey Pox, but that hasn't stopped the media from turning it into a story you can't avoid. So, while you ...