3 reasons why apps fail to work for content marketing -- and why web sites will survive

From Copyblogger:

There’s one thing that people turn to the Internet for en masse that apps are not better for, and that’s freely available content. When it comes to content marketing (as opposed to data like flight schedules), there’s no beating the open web. 

Most of the content we consume is not what we already subscribe to. We discover and search for new content daily, and we expect to be able to experience it without downloading an app. 

Luckily, cutting-edge mobile-responsive websites are faster, more user-friendly, and more powerful than ever. And with HTML5, a webpage can be built to perform any function an app can. 

On the other hand, putting your content in a traditional app means:

• Your content is invisible to search engines.
• Your content is blocked from seamless social sharing.
• You’re asking people to download an app before they’ve experienced your content, which will sharply diminish your audience-building efforts.

That’s a really bad idea.

KitCam: It's a lot of camera for just $1.99

Here's a new camera app I'm playing with. It's called KitCam, and it offers some interesting advantages over Hipstamatic, Instragram, Magic Hour and other such apps. The app comes with a wide range of lens and film choices. It handles video and time-lapse and tilt shift and even multi-exposure. It connects you to Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Tumblr, Dropbox, Instagram and more. And almost all of it comes with the basic $1.99 package.

Here's a video introduction:



Give it a try and let me know what you think.

Create a web site in seconds from your smartphone

Here's an idea: How about an app that let's you quickly and easily create a website from your smartphone? In this video, Robert Scoble interviews the founder of a company that has created just that.  It's call Zapd.



The potential applications for the mobile publicist are enormous. Using Zapd, you could create mobile, social web sites that:

• Let you cover an event in real time, curating all the coverage onto a unique site while also pushing the coverage to Facebook.
• Allow your client's employees to collaborate on a public project from their smartphones while still allowing you to manage the results.
• Let your customers crowd-cover an event or collaborate on a specific subject.
• Host a real-time employee blog that allows contributors to post from anywhere in real time.
• Allow your CEO to communicate with stakeholders in real time.
• Establish an instant base of important information for stakeholders and media during a company crisis.

That's just off the top of my head. Going to play with this over the next few weeks and let you know how it performs. If you have any interesting thoughts on this, let me know.

How to control your GoPro Hero camera from your smartphone

Here's the tutorial from GoPro. You will need a smartphone, the GoPro app, and a GoPro Hero camera armed with a GoPro wifi backpack.

The Flip Cam gets new life as an iPhone app (what else?)

Don't know about you, but I really loved the FlipCam. It was elegantly designed, easy to use, and produced amazing HD video. The audio was lacking, but the next generation would have improved on that. Then Cisco bought it up, hyped it, then dumped it. But what can you expect from short-sighted greedy SOBs?

But now the Flip is reborn as an app for iPhone. All I can say is ... cool!

Apps: You may build one, but will anyone notice?

Apps can offer an exciting opportunity to publicize your client with highly targeted audiences. Unfortunately, they can be very expensive to create. And, as many companies are finding out, just publishing an app is not guarantee that anyone will notice. In this post,  Ouriel Ohayon from Appsfire explains why the app market is tougher than you may imagine and how you can succeed against the odds.:

•  So you’ve created an app; now why hasn’t anyone discovered it? — Tech News and Analysis

Looks like Android is losing to IOS among apps developers

Jill Asher explains:

First, there's the growing strength of iOS in the enterprise, which is not accidental. Not surprisingly, the massive popularity of the iPad (which outsells all Android tablets 3 to 1) has given Apple a boost in the business app space. But the company has made a concerted effort as well. Once known primarily as a maker of machines for consumers and schools, Apple has focused heavily on the enterprise of late: with its website focused on marketing to enterprises and case studies to support those efforts.

Let's not forget to mention the enterprise-oriented sales reps and how-to staff focusing on iPhones and iPads for business in each Apple Store (they are the reps wearing black polo shirts).

Conversely, the case for Android has suffered from frequent reports of malware and from widespread Android fragmentation. In addition, Android support for mobile device management (MDM) has been very spotty, resulting in bad publicity for the platform and very low adoption among enterprises.