Cool Apps Only Work if Used – Duh!

Anyone who knows me knows I love my iPhone. It is far more than a phone, and more than a computer, because it’s so personal.

 

Which is probably why I have over a 150 apps on the thing.

I have an app -- SoundHound -- that will “listen” to songs, identify the name of the song, the band playing it, the songwriters, even display the lyrics in Karaoke format as the music is playing so I can sing along.

I have an app that tells me my current heart rate, and what I should be aiming for at rest and during a workout. I have an app that will help me rest and sleep, by playing soothing sounds, images and binaural beats – which the documentation claims, are psychological sounds to put your mind in specific mental states.

When you have apps to seduce you to sleep at the psychological level – you just know they must have an app for everything.

But then you get apps which do wonderful and amazing things, but they require your friends to use them too.

One of the coolest apps I have is Bump, which allows you to instantly share selected photos and contact details with another person, just by bumping your smartphone (iPhone, BlackBerry or Android) together.

It eliminates the hassle of trying to type in their contact details quickly, and ensures that neither person writes down the wrong information. 

Whenever I want to exchange my contact details with a new friend or colleague, I always ask “do you bump?”

After their initial reaction of “WTF?!?” fades, I explain the Bump app, and ask if they use it.

Although everyone seems really curious how it works – by sharing your contact details over Wi-Fi or 3G networks – they admit that they don’t have the app. So, instead of getting to use this really awesome high-tech way of connecting with someone, we do it the old fashioned way, and either exchange business cards, or verbally tell each other our contact details, as we hammer them into our phones.

What a waste of good tech!

Another really cool app I use which goes to waste far too often is Viber. Viber allows you to make voice calls and send Short Message Service (SMS) text messages to anyone around the world, using your smartphone’s data plan, instead of it’s voice plan. This means you avoid long distance calls, and don’t use up your voice plan’s minutes. 

I’ve used Viber, and text messages are sent and received almost instantly – you’d never know it was being relayed using a data service instead of your service provider’s SMS network. Voice calls are crisp and clear, and you’d never know you were talking on a data plan instead of a voice network.

Problem is – as with Bump – in order to utilize this cool tech, your friends have to use it too. I have a handful of friends using Viber. 

Or should I say, I have a handful of friends that HAVE Viber on their phones. When someone in your smartphone’s contact list installs Viber, you are automatically notified by the app, so you can now use it.

However, you can still make calls and send text messages to those who have Viber using your service provider’s voice and SMS network – and I find on average, most people still do.

Doesn’t this defeat the purpose of having the app? 

Viber doesn’t share any personal information, you don’t have to join anything to use it. Just you and your buddy have to have the app installed and running on your smartphones to make voice or text message calls using it.

I turn off apps when I’m not using them, but I always keep Viber running so that those who have it and have my iPhone’s number can take advantage of it. But they don’t – usually when they call me, it’s through the normal cell network.

Another cool use of tech wasted.

Makes me wonder if I should even bother to keep Viber running, or if I should even bother to keep Viber or Bump installed on my phone. Although they are both great apps, what’s the use if no one is using ‘em?

Sometimes, even the best apps can be so frustrating!

What Good Are Social Networking Apps That Don’t Work?

Recently, the fine folks at Google released the latest updates for their social networking app for Google+ on iPhone, and just last week for Android. All the tech media was buzzing with how Google had done a wonderful job, producing one of the most visually stunning apps ever.

Even I was impressed with the sheer beauty of the Google+ app’s design. The app smoothly scrolls both the image and the text of a post, placing the emphasis on the image by showing you that, as you scroll through your post streams.

As the app seductively scrolls in a full-color image, and alluringly pumps in the comment and descriptive link, you’re drawn into its appeal, like a lonely person surfing the net for some much needed company on date night.

However, just like that lonely person on date night may be taken in by lust at first sight, instead of love, my lust over the Google+ app has ended abruptly, and I wonder what I ever saw in it in the first place.

Although the Google+ app is a beautiful piece of app, it’s completely useless otherwise.

When you create a post on Google+ via the web, as soon as you enter a web address, Google+ pulls in images from the post, allowing you to choose which image to associate with your post. That image is then displayed along with your post on both the web and app feeds. It also uses the title of the page or headline from the text as the hyperlink as well as the description of the web page.

However, when I tried to post a link using Google’s beautiful new G+ app, it just posted the HTML link to the stream. I tried several times, and in all frustrated attempts, instead of getting the stunningly beautiful images, headlines and page descriptions, I got an ugly HTML link. I checked this out on the website, and sure enough, the link I posted was just that – an HTML link – nothing to look at.

Who’s going to click on some ugly link without any description or image, amidst a sea of descriptions and images from those posting on the web? Isn’t the whole point of the G+ app to create complete posts – with images and descriptive links – from anywhere at any time?

What good is an app, if all you can do is view the amazing things others are posting via the web?

To be fair, the G+ app does have some useful functions – you receive alerts on comments, new followers, and other notifications, and you can take a picture from your Smartphone and upload it to your stream. You can even use the G+ cool Messenger to ‘Hangout’ with up to 10 friends in a video conference using the app – that is really impressive.

But the most common thing we do on any of the social networks – from Facebook, Twitter, even Pinterest, is post to our feeds and streams.

You can post to your G+ stream using the Google+ app. You can choose which ‘circles’ (groups) of people your post is visible too, post your location, and attach a photo from your phone.

But when you try to attach a link you’ve copied while browsing the net as most of us do, all you can post is the ugly HTML link, along with any comments you add.

I suppose if you have the time, you can capture a screen shot of an image from the page you are linking too, save it to your phone, and then attach it to the post, along with the link. Aside from this being a lot of work, you’ll still have an ugly HTML link, as opposed to a clickable headline.

I’m a big fan of HootSuite to manage my Facebook and Twitter feeds. From Vancouver, Canada, HootSuite is a great piece of software, which allows me to create complete posts. What I really like about this application, is it’s a real time saver – I can schedule posts to go off to any or all of the social networks it supports at anytime on any day. 

The mobile version of HootSuite isn’t as fully functional as the web-based application, but I can still post complete posts – with images and shortened links – from the app.

Google+’s app doesn’t even shorten the links.

The chatter over at HootSuite is they are working on adding support for G+ “as soon as immediately possible” – which can’t be soon enough, because although the Google+ app is great eye candy, looks will only ever get you so far.