The Next Web |
- 12 Latin American startups to look out for in 2014
- How to create a great startup blog and stand out from the competition
- 10 ways modern enterprise performance management is changing businesses
- 89 of the best iOS apps launched in 2013
| 12 Latin American startups to look out for in 2014 Posted: 28 Dec 2013 09:00 AM PST  As the year comes to a close, it's a good time to look back at some Latin American startups that are geared up to make waves in 2014. After quietly gaining traction over the last few months and sometimes years, they are now ready to collect the fruits of their work and pop up on your radar more and more often. It is important to note that we decided to focus on startups that are still exactly that: startups. In other words, you won't find names such as Globant on our list, despite the fact that the company is expected to IPO early next year – which, on a side note, should be great news for Latin America. Nor will we highlight e-commerce giants such as Netshoes, Dafiti, Rocket Internet's Linio and portfolio companies like real-estate site Lamudi, which are already beyond the early-stage phase. Please also keep in mind that this list is by no means exhaustive. For instance, we previously listed Latin American startups focusing on education and on finance that are very promising. In addition, we expect most if not all of the startups that we listed in last year's "top 10″ to do great in 2014. As you may remember, our selection back then was the following: Agent Piggy, Bandtastic (runner-up: Queremos), Cinepapaya, ComparaOnline, Cumplo (runner-up: Lenddo), Descomplica (runner-up: Veduca), Ideame, Pagpop, Workana (runner-up: GetNinjas) and Wormhole IT. Without further ado, here's our selection for 2014, in alphabetical order: Aentropico
Aentropico is a big data company that provides company managers with easy-to-use big data applications that can answer their specific business concerns. While these tools already exist, they are rarely used in the decision process outside of very large corporations. This represents an opportunity for a company like Aentropico to democratize the market and offer big data solutions to all sorts of companies, including medium-sized businesses. Aentropico's platform is currently in closed beta, ahead of a planned rollout in Brazil in a few months. Its existing dozen of corporate testers inside and outside of Latin America give an idea of the wide range of clients to whom it may appeal, from large Mexican retailers to a Latin American food giant and Colombia's government. Aentropico indeed comes from Colombia, where it was born in Feburary 2012 and backed by Fundación Bavaria and INNpulsa. The company also has ties to different Latin American countries, starting from the incubation and capital it received from Start-Up Chile and Argentina's NXTP Labs. Since then, it has taken part in Start-UP Brasil's first batch within 21212′s acceleration program in Rio de Janeiro. In addition, Aentropico's founders received support from Boston-based accelerator MassChallenge and Massachusetts-based open innovation company Innocentive. As a matter of fact, both Aentropico's CEO Sebastian Perez Saaibi and CIO Juan Pablo Marin Diaz have impressive resumes, including as a fellowship at Harvard to work on a stat-based system to monitor institutional corruption, building upon their combined 16 years of global experience in applied mathematics and engineering. Ultimately, Aentropico's founders want to turn their startup into a leader in Latin America's predictive analytics market. It is worth noting that they aren't the only ones to operate in this segment; for instance, the winner of TNW Latin America Startup Rally this year was a Colombian company called Senseta, which sells data analytics solutions to enterprise clients. Avenida.com
Argentine e-commerce platform Avenida.com may only be a couple of weeks old, but it definitely deserves to be on this list due to its founders' agenda. As we wrote in our monthly roundup earlier this week, it is the first project to come out of Argentine company builder Quasar Ventures (see our previous story). Quasar itself is the brainchild of Andy Freire and Santiago Bilinkis, fathers of the office supply chain Officenet, of which Quasar's CEO and third co-founder Pablo Simon Casarino was an early employee. After becoming Argentina's leader and expanding into Brazil, Officenet was acquired in 2004 for $23.2 million by US giant Staples (it changed its name to Staples Argentina in 2011). With that in mind, it wouldn't be surprising at all to see Avenida.com venture into other Latin American countries in the near future. However, the company makes it clear that the first task on its roadmap will be to expand its catalogue beyond the selected verticals it currently serves, such as home and gardening. Quoted by Argentine newspaper La Nacion, Avenida.com's co-founder Federico Malek Pascha explained that the site plans to start selling electronics in the second half of 2014. Ultimately, it is quite clear that Avenida.com will have to start offering "everything for everyone" if what it wants is to become Argentina's Amazon. Whether it can achieve this goal without opening itself to third-party vendors remains to be seen. Still, Avenida's decision to have its own warehouse and control its full delivery process seems wise at this stage, in a region where e-commerce startups are often stumped by logistics. Bunny Inc.
Bunny Inc. is the name of the umbrella company that is home to all of the startups related to voice acting that have been founded by Colombian entrepreneur Alex Torrenegra and his wife Tania Zapata over the last decade. Its portfolio includes Voice123 (2003), VoiceBunny (2011) and BunnyCast (2013), which all focus on different product offerings within the voice over segment. As some of you may remember, VoiceBunny came into the spotlight a couple of years ago when it took the liberty to offer audio readings of Fred Wilson's blog AVC.com. The newly set-up venture BunnyCast follows that same line by providing publishers with human narration of their articles. While Bunny Inc. is now headquartered in San Francisco, it qualifies as a Latin American startup for several reasons. Besides Torrenegra's nationality, part of the team is based in Colombia, where he also co-founded the co-working space HubBOG and two tech communities, BogoDev and BogoTech. Besides its product and team, which we expect to deliver newsworthy results in 2014, Bunny deserves to be on this list as an example of a successful bootstrapped startup – and proudly so (see Torrenegra's opinion post in PandoDaily). In an ecosystem that tends to give too much importance to signals such as acceleration cycles and funding rounds, it is important not to forget the fundamentals: the most promising startups are the ones that provide value to their customers. In addition to his activities as an entrepreneur, Torrenegra also set up Torrenegra Labs to make a series of investments in startups such as real estate company VivaReal and travel platform WeHostels, which was recently acquired by StudentUniverse. He recently gave a great interview to Mixergy on his personal trajectory as entrepreneur and angel. Cityheroes
Although Cityheroes' CEO Ponce and his co-founder Mauro Trigo are Bolivian, they had moved to Santiago to participate in Start-Up Chile. As we learned last month, the team is now about to move again, this time to the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais, where it has been selected to take part in the first batch of publicly-funded acceleration program SEED (see our previous post). It was also among the finalists at TNW Conference's 2013 Startup Rally in Brazil last August. Dujour
Dujour is a well-designed fashion app that lets users share the latest trends and looks. In practical terms, these can take photographs of their daily outfits and tag individual items to share what they are wearing and maybe ask for quick feedback. They can also follow friends, fashion bloggers and fellow users from all over the world, building their own personalized style feed. Dujour is has been available for iPhone and iPod Touch since last January, followed by a rollout on Google Play last July. Since its initial launch, it has reached over 125,000 registered users. While most of these come from Dujour's home country, Brazil, the app also has a significant fan base in the US, France, Portugal, Italy and the UK. One of the factors that has boosted Dujour's global growth is the fact that its outstanding UI caught Apple's attention, resulting in the app being featured in the App Store several times for multiple countries. This month it was highlighted as one of the best apps of 2013 in Brazil's App Store. Dujour is based in Rio de Janeiro, where it graduated from startup accelerator Papaya Ventures. Earlier this year, it received angel investment from Sync Mobile's founder Amure Pinho, investor and mentor André Diamand and a small group of foreign angels. It was also a finalist at TNW Conference in Brazil last August. As we recently learned, Dujour will also be part of Start-UP Brasil's next batch. FirstJob
On the other side of the equation, it is helping large companies connect with millennials and adapt to their culture to find the best candidates. As a matter of fact, FirstJob knows that its target audience is more likely to read job postings and get exposed to corporate branding on social media networks than elsewhere, which is why it shares all job postings on its Facebook and other social accounts. FirstJob comes from Santiago, Chile, where it received support and funding from university incubator IncubaUC and Telefonica's accelerator Wayra Chile. As you may have read, FirstJob's team has now been selected to join 500 Mexico City's latest acceleration round. PulsoSocial interviewed FirstJob's CEO Mario Mora last November, and reported that the platform had then reached the milestone of 20,000 resumes in its database, based on which it had achieved 400 matches for its clients. Ultimately, its ambition is to expand in all of Latin America. Interesante
Interesante could be superficially described as a Pinterest for Latin Americans and US Hispanics. These can use its platform to "discover people, products and content about entertainment, fashion and travel in real-time and based on your personal interests." However, it would be misguided to see Interesante as a quick clone of an existing business model: what it has been building is a strong brand with a distinctive design and an engaged community of users within a growing and untapped demographic group that companies are increasingly keen to serve. Its key differentiator is its knowledge of the needs and preferences of Latino users, which have guided many aspects of its approach, such as an emphasis on audiovisual content and mobile navigation. Interesante was first released publicly around a year ago and already launched in Argentina, Chile, Mexico and the US. It is currently available on the Web and as an iPhone app, with plans to launch on Google Play in the near future. While most of its team is located in Argentina, its founders recently graduated from Manos Accelerator, a new US-based incubator for Latino entrepreneurs. Its first Demo Day took place at Google last November. Interesante's targeting doesn't stop at ethnicity, and it also includes a more granular level of personalization. For instance, its algorithms are set to highlight relevant content based on a user's location, which could turn it into an attractive customer acquisition channel for SMBs such as hotels and fashion stores. LastRoom
LastRoom is a Mexican same-day hotel booking service that operates in the same market as HotelTonight, Hot, JustBook and the like. Earlier this month, it won WeXchange, a competition and conference for Latin American female entrepreneurs in which LastRoom's COO Angela Cois took part. The company's first beta was released in December 2012 during Startup Weekend Guadalajara, followed by an app launch in April 2013. Its platform is now available on both iOS and Google Play, which have been downloaded 100,000 times in total. Over the last few months, LastRoom expanded from Mexico to Colombia and Chile, while broadening its catalogue beyond 4 and 5 stars properties to offer mid-range properties as well. The company has gathered $100,000 in funding so far, including bootstrapping plus an investment from NXTP Labs, and is now working on a larger round to finance its growth. According to LastRoom's CEO Josue Gio, LastRoom's plan for 2014 is to focus on the corporate travel segment, which has proven more promising for its model: "When we launched LastRoom we thought that our clients were both leisure and business travellers. After 9 months of operations, we realized that the leisure industry is too seasonal and it does not guarantee a constant flow of sales. [As a result], we concentrate our efforts on the business travellers, more disposed to take last-minute decisions and who [buy from] LastRoom at least 2 or 3 times per month." Last November, LastRoom launched a side product called HotelWalla, which complements its customer acquisition strategy. Thanks to this tool, event organizers can easily add a widget to their website and let attendees look for accommodation near the event venue. Mural.ly
As we reported last year, the startup launched publicly in September 2012 with seed funding from a group of investors including Intel Capital, 500 Startups, NXTP Labs, Alta Ventures Mexico and business angels. Mural.ly's CEO Mariano Suarez Battan moved to San Francisco earlier this year, while the startup's development team remains in Buenos Aires. This decision reflects the importance of the US market for Mural.ly's freemium approach: although its 250,000 users so far came from all over the world, 50% of paying customers are American. Most of these are corporate clients such as Ancestry.com, IDEO and Steelcase, who have been using Mural.ly to do research, ideation and design collaboration. In addition, Mural.ly is gaining traction in the education sector, where it is used for class projects or for remote collaboration around MOOCs. Suarez Battan co-founded Mural.ly alongside CTO Pato Jutard and Head of Product Agustin Soler. Both Suarez Battan and Jutard previously founded Three Melons, a maker of social games which was acquired by Disney's Playdom in 2010. According to Suarez Battan, Mural.ly is set to make a big push around mobile and touch screens in 2014. In addition, it is currently beta testing a new algorithm-based feature than can detect sticky notes from a physical wall before cropping and arraying them into a mural. Properati
Properati is an Argentine real estate platform that helps brokers, developers and owners find leads without charging upfront listing fees. On the other hand, its app and website helps prospective tenants and buyers find the property they are looking for. As we reported earlier this week, it acquired its Brazilian competitor Imovel do Proprietario for an undisclosed amount of cash and stock to boost its growth in a market where it already passed the 100,000 listing milestone. Following the deal, both sites will merge next March and Imovel do Proprietario's CEO Renato Orfaly will join Properati as country manager for Brazil. According to its CEO Gabriel Gruber, 2014 will be a year of regional expansion for Properati, which is now set to launch its beta in Mexico in January 2014, followed by a beta rollout in Chile and Colombia next July. In addition, it will join Miami-based accelerator Venture Hive next January. Properati had previously participated in NXTP Labs' acceleration program that has also received seed capital from investors such as GroupArgent and Eastpoint Ventures. Nubelo
Nubelo participated in the fifth generation of Start-Up Chile and subsequently raised a $1.3 million USD round of funding led by Latin American VC firm Nazca Ventures and supported by South Ventures and Spain's La Caixa Capital Risk and Finaves. With several offices across the Spanish-speaking world, it is working on launching a pilot program in the US to connect Latin American talent with American clients. It decided to tackle the Brazilian market by acquiring a local competitor, two-year-old company Prolancer. Following the deal, its goal for 2014 is to reach a total of 50,000 published freelance job opportunities. Sympla
Sympla is a Brazilian ticket and event management platform that seems to be on the road to success. Even if it does not get acquired by Eventbrite like its Argentine counterpart Eventioz, it looks perfectly able to reach profitability: since its launch in 2012, 300,000 event tickets have been sold through its platform. Aceleradora's founder Yuri Gitahy has been a mentor to Sympla's team since its early days, later taking part in the angel investment round the company raised earlier this year. According to Gitahy, Sympla is on track to hit R$20 million in revenue (around $8.48 million USD) in 2014. Earlier this month, the company had already passed the milestone of R$5 million ($2.12 million USD) in annual revenue. In addition, it expanded its reach from 250 cities to 1500. If you take a close look at Sympla's home page, you may notice a logo that reads "Made in San Pedro Valley." As you may know, this is a reference to the company's home town, Belo Horizonte, in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais, which is increasingly positioning itself as a tech hub. Which Latin American startups will you be following closely in 2014? Let us know in the comments. Image credit: Shutterstock This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| How to create a great startup blog and stand out from the competition Posted: 28 Dec 2013 08:00 AM PST  Blogging is like the modern day welcome mat, showing passers-by that someone is home and will probably answer the doorbell if you ring it. For startups, this is particularly important as you strive to establish your voice and brand point of view. Beside giving your startup a platform, having a blog can help you establish thought leadership, build SEO, and promote things that central to your brand's messaging. But not all corporate blogs are created equal. When it comes to starting a blog, there are a few basic parameters to consider. Telling the right storyFirst of all, what the heck are you going to talk about? Instead of just writing about your own company, provide content that's helpful for your followers and fans. Here are a few options: 1. Create engaging, thought leadership content Finding the white space where your brand can tell a unique story can help position your company as thought leaders. For example, Contently, a company that connects journalists with brands, runs a blog called The Content Strategist. Publishing original content weekly, it focuses in on relevant strategies, insights and projects central to its mission of creating good content Shane Snow, CCO of Contently adds, "Well-run blogs can be great for attracting talent and building relationships with prospective customers. And in the early days, positioning the founders as thought leaders through blogging is helpful when raising early investment and working on high-profile deals." Additionally, General Assembly, an education group focused on technology, uses its blog to share on tutorials, insights, and spread awareness about its events. Like GA, Birchbox, a subscription-based makeup company, focuses on engaging community members through inspiration, tips, tricks and trends, adding tremendous value to the community by enlisting experts and thought leaders to use their products in new and innovative ways. 2. Celebrate the product or the people who use the product Not every startup blog needs to publish original thought leadership content; many successful startup blogs focus on the people and community using the actual product. The Kickstarter Blog, for example, highlights members of the Kickstarter community working on interesting projects. Porter Haney, CEO of real-time social polling company Wedgies, talks about how its company blog taps into a larger community of people central to the company's mission. "We focus heavily on Wedgies-related material, but we also love to write about the lessons we learn as a startup, things we discover about startup culture, products other startups are building that we love, and what it's like to run a startup in Las Vegas." 3. Curate content from various sources Curating high quality articles or content from the Web is a low-risk way to insert your startup into a larger conversation and solidify a point of view. By collecting and publishing content from various people, brands, and sources from around the Web, your startup can create a dynamic conversation around things relevant to its core audience. Courtney Boyd Myers, founder of Audience.io, a New York- and London-based audience development company, preached the important of curation for her own ventures. "Startups should curate content that is already out there that relates to their industry," she says. "At Fueled, a mobile development company, we publish 'Top Up: This Week in Mobile,' which features a roundup of that week's mobile news. It's a great way for us to stay focused on the news too!" Whatever focus you choose, defining the goal of the blog and the ways in which your startup can add value to the larger conversation will help your company determine the right content strategy. Choosing the right mediumAfter you've determined the type of stories you want to tell, honing in on the format with which you'd like to tell those stories is the next step. Contently's Snow adds, "To stand out, tell better stories. That might mean any number of things—more thoughtful writing, more interesting or provocative ideas, multimedia." Once you've honed in on the story and the format, you can explore a multitude of free, paid, custom, photo or social sites from WordPress or Blogger, to Instagram, Tumblr and beyond. This will depend on the voice you intend to add to your company, and the types of audience you want to attract. Finding inspiration and always evolvingOnce you've landed on the types of stories your brand wants to tell, how you want to tell them, and on what platform, it's important to let continually evolve and grow with the ecosystem and company. Connor Murphy, founder of Datahug, a digital relationship management tool says a blog is a great way to "scale" your company story. "[Blogs] allow you to quickly and affordable share your story and help customers understand your goals, your product and why your company matters." The most important thing is to continually draw inspiration and evolve with the ecosystem. Keep a RSS feed of blogs that inspire you on Feedly or Netvibes and keep an eye on Twitter and Tumblr. The most important thing you can do is get involved. This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| 10 ways modern enterprise performance management is changing businesses Posted: 28 Dec 2013 07:00 AM PST  Christian Gheorghe is CEO of Tidemark, the cloud-based enterprise analytics company. "This data is 90 days old, but that's okay." When was the last time you heard a C-level executive say that? My guess is it's been a while, because these days, if you don't have real-time access to the data that drives your business, it's all but impossible to arrive at meaningful results that help you grow and compete. Unfortunately, this problem is all too common in enterprises today, where enterprise performance management (EPM) platforms fail to produce actionable insights from current and relevant data. On top of that, most EPM implementations remain complex and difficult to manage requiring power users that serve as data gatekeepers. Not exactly a recipe for success. But EPM is changing, and as a result, it's changing the way enterprises operate around the world. So here are 10 ways that a new approach to enterprise performance management is changing the game for businesses globally. 1. Cloud-first is the new normalIDC Research predicts cloud technology spending will grow by 25 percent in 2014, reaching over $100B. Along with further adoption comes further specialization – and cloud services are increasingly becoming differentiated as vendors seek to provide more infrastructure capabilities. Better infrastructure for the public cloud begets more capable and scalable enterprise apps, with Amazon, Google and others offering more tools for companies to run on the cloud. EPM solutions that offer improved cloud capabilities will be the ones leading growth for businesses in the New Year. 2. Mobility cannot be ignoredWorkforces are now global and remotely connected all the time, so it's not surprising that tablet and smartphone growth is predicted to continue into next year. Mobile is now the de facto platform on which business people and consumers are devouring data, and unlike in previous years, they are now acting on the data as well. EPM tools now need to be able to provide reports on the fly – on any device. Technologies that aren't designed to be device-agnostic will lose market share in the coming year. 3. Big data turns to focus on actionabilityBig data is a key consideration for any EPM system – and today data crunching capabilities alone aren't enough to move the needle. Decision-makers are now looking for easier-to-manage apps that provide more granular, actionable insights in real time. Expect cloud apps with the ability to sift through disparate data streams to become widespread in the finance department. 4. Collaboration has emerged from its awkward adolescenceSeveral years ago, collaborative technologies in the enterprise were new and a little clumsy. But that's history. Platforms that don't include collaborative features are becoming extinct. Innovative technologies such as Yammer and Box that enable employees to collaborate and share information have become critical business functions, not just the latest shiny object. IDC also expects that by 2016, 60 percent of the Fortune 500 will have social-enabled innovation management solutions in place. This also has implications for EPM: Solutions that enable collaboration across the organization fit into today's enterprises, while those that don't literally have no place to go. 5. CFOs have become more influentialThe Wall Street Journal recently reported on how CFOs have a bigger say than ever in determining where and how companies place their bets. Citing new research from Gartner, the Journal notes how CFOs now have 40 percent more influence over IT investments than they did two years ago. So while CFOs have a leading role to play in transforming organizations, many are still struggling to identify best practices for implementing EPM solutions that can help them make the most of their growing influence. 6. In-context analytics drive decision-makingWe are moving from an age in which log analysis was enough, to a business analysis perspective that is predicated on what's happening right now. The importance of context and real-time data is now mission-critical for EPM. In the coming year, the role context plays in making smart use of data will start getting the recognition it deserves. 7. Machine-generated data is now part of the packageWith more data attached to every system, machine-generated and unstructured data represents a wealth of information that EPM solutions need to take into consideration. RFIDs, sensor data and more will become more important. 8. Enterprise technology innovation will start to drive consumer technology innovationThe enterprise is becoming a new source of innovation. While in past the consumerization of IT drove enterprise trends, next year the enterprise will start to take the lead. The intersection of cloud, mobile and social at enterprise scale is helping to create highly available and user-friendly experiences in the workplace. Enterprise applications that aren't designed with these considerations in mind will not be adopted. 9. Competition will drive rapid technology adoptionIt's dawning on CFOs that their systems are outdated, and budgeting platforms that still require up to four months to complete a budget are no longer sufficient. On average, companies that employ rolling forecasts save between five and 25 days each year in their budgeting process, according to research by the American Productivity & Quality Center. CFOs are beginning to understand that the current environment is "eat or be eaten," and if they don't adopt new technologies to reduce the time they spend planning, they will become irrelevant. 10. Agility always winsIn today's evolving market, there is no silver bullet to success – in any industry. But what does work is to continually be looking to the future, and considering the next move. Forward-thinking CFOs will be looking for EPM solutions that think like they do – well ahead of the now – and if the variables change, they want a solution that can pivot quickly and adjust to the new conditions. For the only constant is change itself – and even that needs to be planned for. This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| 89 of the best iOS apps launched in 2013 Posted: 28 Dec 2013 05:30 AM PST  In a year that saw Apple finally pass the one million milestone in terms of live applications in the App Store, it's fair to say there's a deluge of file-managers, smart calendars, budgeting tools and funky cameras to sift through to get to the real gems. Here's a quick snapshot of some of the more notable apps and services to launch for Apple's mobile platform in 2013. For the most part, these are all available globally, though a handful are restricted to certain markets – these are clearly marked. So, in no particular order… PRODUCTIVITY: GET THINGS DONECal2013 may have been the year of the snake according to the Chinese calendar, but from an app reviewer's perspective it might just have been the year of the calendar itself. Well, the smart calendar that is. Readdle relaunched a fully re-imagined Calendars app that packed a punch, while Sunrise and Tempo had compelling propositions of their own. To-do list startup Any.DO also spun out a brand new calendar app called Cal, which represented the "first in a suite" of standalone apps from the Israel-based company. More to come from them soon, we expect.
It's worth noting that although it is indeed a 'standalone' app, insofar as it's a separate entity to Any.DO, there is actually a fairly tight integration between the two apps – so you will be asked to sign-in using your Any.DO credentials. Cal syncs with all the major calendars on your iPhone, including Google, Exchange & iCloud, but it's when you start adding items to your calendar where things get interesting. It asks to use your current location, so it can deliver additional details for each entry. For example, if you enter a location name such as 'Concert at Finsbury Park', Cal detects it. It will even plot it out on a map for you and offer to help you navigate your way to any event. ➤ Cal RecordiumRecordium was one of my favorite iOS apps of the year, serving up a powerful audio-recording tool that lets you highlight, tag and edit clips on the fly. You can 'edit' the audio as you go along – so as the recording is taking place you can click the little highlighter icon to mark specific segments that you may wish to revisit later – this could be a particularly intriguing quote, demo or anything. By hitting the little 'cross' icon, you can also choose to add notes, pictures or tags.
You can revisit any clip and see all your annotations – clicking on each one reveals its contents. You can also move each annotation to a different part of the audio, say, if you want to mark the beginning of a key announcement. Recordium also features a very easy-to-use trimming tool to carry out audio snips on the fly – you can create entirely new files based on these snippets, moving any associated annotations with it. Or if you want to trim out that annoying video demo or audience Q&A, you can do so. A really terrific app. MegaFollowing the introduction to Android back in July, Kim Dotcom finally launched Mega for iPhone four months later.
The cloud storage service lets users manage and move files, as well as upgrade accounts with more storage space via a Mega Pro subscription, costing $10.99 per month or $119.99 per year. Mega Pro provides 50GB of storage and 1000GB of bandwidth transfers. ➤ Mega IFTTTIFTTT finally launched for iOS back in July, bringing a set of new channels specific to Apple's platform and a sweet mobile-focused service for building and using its automated actions. IFTTT, if you're unfamiliar, is a utility that you can use to hook multiple Web services together to perform automated actions for you. Want a text message every time you get an email from a friend? Care to have your photos automatically shipped off to SkyDrive as they're shot? There's a ton more stuff you can do too. ➤ IFTTT AtlasA Launchpad LA accelerator company, Atlas is geared towards helping users take control of time and be better at collaborating with their colleagues. Atlas makes it possible to display a person's calendar publicly (with key details hidden) and invite people to send up to three available slots when they could potentially meet. The invitee receives a notification on their mobile and can accept or decline as they see fit. Atlas syncs with most calendar platforms (e.g. Google Calendar, iCal, Yahoo, and Outlook), including the native one on Android and iOS devices, and the newest ones like Tempo, Sunrise, and Fantastical. The company tells us that any calendar set up on the phone will have read and write privileges. ➤ Atlas QuickofficeGoogle launched Quickoffice for iOS this year, making it available gratis for all its Apps for Business customers.
Google's Quickoffice is meant for business users that have to share files and collaborate with users who don't yet use Google Docs. "From Word to Excel to PowerPoint, you can make quick edits at the airport or from the back of a taxi and save and share everything in Google Drive," said Google. CompositeComposite might just be the ultimate iPhone app prototyping tool for Photoshop, which connects with your Photoshop mock-ups and converts them into fully interactive prototypes in seconds, with no need to do any exporting or anything else. With Composite, all you need is Photoshop (CS5+ or Elements 10+), the $9.99 iPhone app, and you're good to go. WriteIf you own an iOS device, there's no shortage of apps available to help you jot down text-based notes; Evernote, Byword and Simplenote all do a pretty decent job. Write for Dropbox deserves to be added to that list though.
It's an incredibly quick and elegant solution that uses natural navigation and extensive sharing features to optimize your productivity. ➤ Write Documents by ReaddleIn January we called Documents by Readdle a lean but powerful file-management app for iPad, one that supports document-viewing and media playback. It later arrived for iPhone/iPod touch too. In a nutshell, the app lets you read, listen, watch, annotate and download almost anything you want to your iOS device. VizViz lets you create quick charts and graphs directly from an iOS device. The app allows users to easily create charts by inputting data and selecting the type of chart they'd like to use from a choice of Bars, Pie, Cloud, Scrapers and Parliament.
Once chosen, the user can then tweak the color scheme before confirming the changes and being presented with the option to either share it via a social network (Twitter, Facebook or Instagram) email it to someone, or save it as an image file (JPEG). ➤ Viz CodecademyAll this talk about apps might make you feel like building one yourself – but to do so, you'll need to learn how to code, right? The How to Code app by Codecademy targets total newcomers with the basics of computer programming. Its relatively short repertoire covers the absolute basics, such as how programs are written and a few examples of what can be achieved with just a few lines of code.
The lessons cover strings, operators, and many other building blocks associated with computer science. You won't be publishing an app once the 60 minutes are up, but it's a brilliant taster that should get students and teachers alike interested in the subject. MailboxMailbox was probably one of the biggest email-client success stories of the year. We loved it the moment we set our eyes on it – so did Dropbox, so much so it gobbled Mailbox up.
Mailbox takes advantage of three main actions – for every mail item, you're able to move it to your archive (check it off), delete it or postpone it until later. Much like a list of items that you can complete, remove or time shift until you're ready to deal with them. The time-shifting mechanism allows you to choose between general times like later today, tomorrow morning or this evening, or specific dates that you choose. Available initially for iPhone only, it eventually arrived for iPad too. And though it was Gmail-focused to begin with, it now also supports iCloud, me.com, mac.com, and Yahoo Mail accounts. ➤ Mailbox Yahoo MailBelieve it or not, Yahoo is still one of the more popular email services in some countries – particularly the US. So its arrival for iPad this year will have been welcome news for many.
As you'd expect from any tablet-optimized app, Yahoo Mail has a full-screen 'reading mode', meaning you can use the device's full real estate when reading emails or viewing photos. One tap, and you're there. You can also scroll through email messages like turning the pages of a book – no need to exit back to your main inbox (via the gift shop). ClozeCloze brings together all your relationships from email and social media into a single view. Prior to last February, it was only available as a web-client, but with the roll-out for iOS, it ramped things up considerably and broadened its appeal.
The basic premise behind Cloze centers on three core ideas: unite contacts, email, and social data under one area, create less noise through smart filtering of "non-humans and those you don't know well", and place people first; the channel and time come second. ➤ Cloze Molto / IncredimailMore than ten years after Incredimail first launched its email client for Windows computers, it finally moved beyond Microsoft's omnipresent desktop operating system and into the modern touchscreen, tablet-centric era, kicking off with the iPad. As we wrote on its launch, Incredimail for iPad is more than an email client and could become the ultimate unified messaging app. It later rebranded as Molto and arrived for iPhone and Android tablets too.
The app is designed to deliver your messages from any of your existing email accounts with a social feel that emulates social networks and mobile messaging apps. ➤ Molto SwizzleSwizzle for iOS promises to clean up all your email offers into one simple digest. Download the app, enter your email address and it'll redirect you to authorize Swizzle to scan your mail. It will identify the junk and offer emails, a process that'll take anything from a few seconds to a few minutes depending on how much email you have.
Once it has done its thing and picked up on all the senders that seem to contact you with newsletters, offers, vouchers and all sorts of other promotional content, you're then presented with a list of offers. ➤ Swizzle Sift [US only]Similar to Swizzle, Sift turns your mass of email deals into a catalog-like magazine. Sift also now includes a Shopping Circles feature that lets users create a virtual wishlist from millions of items across thousands of stores. The appeal for consumers here is that the seas of offer emails become easy to browse and genuinely useful. On the downside, however, it is still limited to users in the US. ➤ Sift MONEYDollarBirdThis was actually one of my favorite apps to launch in 2013, and perhaps hasn't had the level of fanfare it deserves. Dollarbird is what you get when you cross a smart calendar app with a budgeting app. Indeed, it uses a familiar calendar layout to help you track and forecast all your spending.
An absolutely imperative feature here too is the 'recurring' tab. This is often missing or well-hidden in expenses apps, and it's useful to be able to tap this when setting up an expense, so that it automatically populates your calendar for future weeks/months. There's also a reminder/alarm function, which will ping up a message whenever you're due to pay something. This can be set for up to four days prior to it coming out of your account. Two dollars well-spent. BUDGTBUDGT is another beautifully designed app that helps you keep to a budget and manage expenses on a monthly basis.
BUDGT automates all of the associated maths and routine calculations, while making the process of documenting expenses a little less soul-destroying. On both counts, it really does succeed. ➤ BUDGT BillPinBillPin is a handy little app for splitting bills between friends and tracking who owes what. Yes, it's perhaps aimed primarily at social butterflies, those who regularly rack up bills eating out and getting merry, but it can be used for splitting accommodation expenses and generally manage cashflow between multiple people. The app syncs a device's address book and uses Facebook to discover friends and tag them into bills, even if they haven't downloaded the app. ➤ BillPin Level [US only]Level is a real-time money meter app that wants to be your Fitbit for personal spending. The services inks up with your bank accounts to deliver real-time metrics on your spending, savings and general financial standing. Available for the US market only, Level gives a snapshot of all your available 'spendable' income for that day, week, and month.
Level isn't about sticking all your purchases in categories, such as 'travel' and 'groceries' – there are other apps for that. It basically analyses and calculates a user's total income, recurring bills and recommended savings each month. Based on this, it delivers the 'spendable' balance broken down by day, week and month. And every time a transaction is complete, these numbers are updated accordingly. ➤ Level CurrencyCurrency conversion apps exist in something of a saturated market, but that doesn't mean there's not room for one more. Indeed, a new app called Currency launched this year, and it's a beautiful thing.
The app comes replete with more than 160 currencies, so it likely has you covered. It also has an offline mode, but obviously for you to have up-to-date conversation rates, you will need to connect from time-to-time. However, Currency is all about the interface and usability – trust us on this one. ➤ Currency Google Wallet [US only]Google Wallet finally arrived for iPhone this year, exactly two years to the day after it launched on Android.
You can scan your debit and credit cards into the app, and use them to send money to anyone in the US who has an email address, and you can store credit and debit cards, loyalty programs, and more. It can also be used to pay for things on Google Play, and shop on some mobile websites. BillGuard [US only]Launched in the US back in April 2010, BillGuard sells itself as the world's first 'people-powered antivirus system for bills'. However, it was an entirely Web-based endeavor until it hit iPhone a few months back.
BillGuard's predictive algorithms alert users of unexpected charges such as hidden fees, billing errors, scams and fraud on credit card bills. It also issues alerts when a similar dubious charge has been flagged by other users, or receives a complaint elsewhere on the Web. As such, the 'BillGuard brain' becomes more accurate over time. TRAVEL, NAVIGATION AND LOCATIONWhat3wordsAvailable for iOS, Web and Android, What3words lets you find and share very precise locations via Google Maps with just 3 words. Say wha'? Read on. It sells itself as a new universal address system, designed to make it easier, and more accurate, to describe exact locations anywhere on Earth. The UK-based startup has basically partitioned the whole planet into 57 trillion 3m x 3m squares, and assigned each square a unique 3 word address. This will work anywhere that's searchable on Google Maps – parks, monuments, buildings, residential addresses and everything in between. So, rather than saying "I'll meet you at The Fox & Hounds pub, 29 Passmore St, London, SW1W 8HR" – or any shorter/longer variant – you would plug these details into What3words to learn that "Dimes Random Tunnel" are the three allocated words for this precise location.
These are the three words you would use to tell people where you're meeting, which could be over the telephone, by Twitter, Facebook or email – all channels What3words makes it easy to share through. BanjoBanjo launched an iPad-optimized version of its location-based service to help people get involved in events happening around the world from the comfort of their own home.
The company kicked off by using the service during the National Football League (NFL) playoffs, for those who like or follow the sport, but it's not limited to sports — it can work with any live event. It integrates all the usual social networks to serve up an an on-the-ground view of what's happening at any time, and lets you see where your friends are and what they're doing. ➤ Banjo Field Trip (Google)Google launched its location-aware Field Trip tour guide app for iOS this year, having launched initially for Android back in September 2012.
Field Trip runs in the background on your phone, triangulating positions via cell phone towers, and only notifies you when you get close to something interesting. This can include local businesses, historical facts, landmarks, art, and any cultural artifact. Babberly (formerly Jabberly)Babberly (then called Jabberly) launched its iOS app way back in February, letting users ask questions about a particular location and get answers quickly from those on the ground.
So if you want to know what the top burger joint in your locale is, or where the best cocktail bar is Babberly's worth a shout. ➤ Babberly GAMESAngry Birds FriendsA new installment of Rovio's hit franchise arrived back in May with Angry Birds Friends, offering a Facebook-powered social twist on the game that pretty much every single person in the galaxy has played by now.
As with the version that has been available on Facebook since last year, the game lets you connect up your Facebook account to compete against friends to achieve the highest score on each level. Angry Birds GoRovio launched its Mario Kart-style Angry Birds racing game in December, hitting iOS, Windows Phone, Android, AND BlackBerry in one fell swoop. The Angry Birds franchise is really growing arms and legs now, and based on our tinkerings with this game, it has another hit on its hands. You're best password-protecting this baby, as your kid could run up a fairly hefty bill through in-app purchases. The CroodsBack in March, Angry Birds developer Rovio released a new video game, inspired by the then-upcoming DreamWorks Animation film The Croods. Players take control of Grug, a prehistoric caveman who has to "survive the wild" by trapping and taming imaginative creatures such as the "Girelephant" and "Molarbear". QuizUpQuizUp is striving to be the biggest trivia game in the world, and judging by its inaugural app (for iPhone) it stands a good chance of doing so. Featuring 100,000 questions across 300 categories, QuizUp follows the likes of Words With Friends by letting you pit your wits against both buddies and strangers from around the world. It also includes one-to-one messaging, discussion boards, and localized leaderboards by city, state and country.
When you choose to play a stranger, it will eke out the most suitable candidate based on your playing history – so if you're a noob, you'll likely be put up against a fellow noob. From here on in, you'll be fighting against the clock to answer each question, for which you have ten seconds for every one of the seven rounds. It also offers in-app purchases to let you 'level up' faster – these XP (experience points) boosters cost $1.99 (double boost), $3.99 (triple boost) and $5.99 (quadruple boost), and means you'll gain more XP when the boosts are on for each game you play. ➤ QuizUp Pet Rescue SagaKing, the maker of the hit game Candy Crush, launched an iOS version of the popular Pet Rescue Saga that launched first on Facebook last October.
It calls on players to save animals from two evil snatchers by eliminating colored blocks from the board. Much like King's earlier cross-platform titles, the game tracks progress and purchases between its mobile and Facebook apps. DotsDots is a highly addictive mobile game created by Betaworks, landing first for iPhone before arriving for iPad later in the year.
The idea of the game is rather simple in nature — which probably is what makes it so addictive. Players connect dots in a linear fashion, meaning that you tap a dot of a specific color and connect it with as many dots of that same color. ➤ Dots FIFA 14Ahead of the FIFA 2014 World Cup in Brazil next summer, EA launched FIFA 14 as a free download for iOS and Android.
Though this year's version is free (last year FIFA 13 cost $6.99), it's targeting revenue from in-app purchases such as unlocking game modes and buying points to form your fantasy team. ➤ FIFA 14 Star Wars: Tiny Death StarDisney unveiled its first Star Wars-themed game for mobile in November, in collaboration with game studio NimbleBit.
Star Wars: Tiny Death Star is an 8-bit builder game – players find themselves on the dark side of the force helping Emperor Palpatine and Darth Vader build a fully-functional Death Star. Of course Star Wars wouldn't be what it is without the Rebel Alliance, so players must prevent Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia, and others from escaping. HatchFrom the creators of to-do list app Clear comes Hatch, a Tamagotchi-like game bringing virtual pet cuddliness to your iPhone.
Hatch may exist within the App Store's 'Games' category, but it doesn't see itself as a game. Or an app, for that matter. It's a living, breathing animal that needs love. We first previewed Hatch way back in December last year, posing the question: What does it take to make the iPhone feel alive? The answer, it seems, is to transform your iPhone into a cuddly creature. ➤ Hatch DrawQuestHaving initially been iPad-only, DrawQuest finally made the journey to iPhone and iPod touch in November.
DrawQuest is a social drawing app from 4Chan founder Chris "moot" Poole's startup Canvas, and launched for iPhone with new features, including a zoomable canvas and the ability to create your own drawing challenges. DrawpLaunched way back in February, Drawp threw its hat into the social drawing ring with a neat kid-focused iPad app that lets young 'uns share their doodles only with those in their parent-approved network.
The founders say they created the app to help address "the need for parents, family, and friends to remain involved and responsive in all aspects of a child's life." The app also works offline, which is good news for kids in transit or any scenario sans Internet connection. ➤ Drawp Temple Run 2Temple Run 2, the follow-up to the massively popular Temple Run, landed in the App Store way back in January.
The game follows the same form as its predecessor, with the main characters traversing across all manner of landscapes as they flee the dreadful temple beasts that chase them. It's a simple concept but it's one that works well, as players use swipe-based commands to jump, slide, turn and move out of the way of objects in their way. FirstOkay, not a game as such, but if you're into gaming, then First is a slick, 8-bit inspired community mobile app for discussing video games. A social network for gamers, in other words.
First is built around real-time conversations. Just like a traditional message board, it's possible for anyone in the community to start a video game-related thread by posting either a headline, photo, URL or YouTube clip. The post will then appear within the app for other users to read and comment on. ➤ First MEDIA & WEATHER |
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