KACHARAGADLA

Traveling in China, I spoke the universal language of app Landing late at night in Shenzhen for my first trip to China, I was nervous about being able to navigate the city. I didn’t speak the language and had never been to Asia. Starting the next day I would have the services of a local translator, but for that first night, I was on my own. Normally I use  Google services for everything , but those are blocked in China. I opened my iPhone, connected to an international Mifi, and tapped the Uber app. The interface alerted me that I would be switching to the Chinese version, controlled now by Uber’s rival turned business partner Didi. The black screen turned a deep shade of red, and just like that, I had hailed a cab. MY CHAT APP ALSO PROVIDED INSTANTANEOUS TRANSLATION I used Apple Maps to locate the apartment we had reserved through AirBnB. Then I found the same spot on the map in Uber, which automatically translated the location into Chinese. I showed that to the driver

Apps are as effective as their reach. It’s the cold truth of marketing—no matter the quality of your campaign, it’s the delivery that makes it successful. To ensure your mobile app lives up to its ROI potential, it’s import to invest in a well designed mobile marketing strategy, which can lead to hundreds or even thousands of downloads when properly leveraged. Here’s a comprehensive guide on making an early dent with your mobile marketing plan. 1. Know your audience If you haven’t identified your core audience, you’ll never hit your sales target. First figure out who your app should cater to, then design for them. Here are some factors to consider: Age range Interests Tech-savviness Industry 2. Don’t overlook keywords App store discoverability is a huge factor to consider when you’re launching your app. At least 63% of iOS users  search for apps organically, and a whopping  83% of all iOS apps  are “Zombie Apps” that are essentially invisible in an organic App Store

Like most of our plans for recreation and leisure in our fast-paced lives in a metro, seldom do we get the time to seek out our hobbies anymore. Remember when you could seek out what you enjoyed doing on weekends or after school hours? Butterfly app aims to change that and provide an online marketplace for extracurricular activities and hobby sciences. Whether one is looking for a gym, an institute for learning foreign language, a dance studio to learn salsa, cooking classes near your house or a certified trainer to teach you martial arts, Butterfly is an end to end solution provider for everyone who wants to pursue a hobby or an activity they are passionate about. The app factors cost, distance, schedule and doesn’t require you to make a call fill forms or wait for responses. We had a chit-chit with the Luv Gupta, CEO of Butterfly app about his story and need for shifting hobby spaces virtually. Here are some excerpts: Tell us about your beginnings? After my schooling from

I’m really excited about this week’s apps. SwiftKey is trying to make its already great (and smart) keyboard smarter. The Podcasting app Overcast is now completely free, plus it’s been updated. And the Truecaller app finally gave its Windows Phone community some much needed attention. There’s also a pretty awesome calendar app that visualizes your schedule, a sweet app for making vectors and...well, Halo. Android SwiftKey Neural Alpha The makers of the smart keyboard  SwiftKey  are testing another type of smart keyboard that’s supposed to be better at finishing your sentences. The name’s SwiftKey Neural Alpha. It’s not that the original SwiftKey Keyboard isn’t good– it’s that it lacks that contextual understanding that a keyboard with neural network-based intelligence would have, as  Chris Mills explained recently . So, instead of the keyboard filling in any logical next word, Neural Alpha uses machine learning to analyze the context of each sentence and—after a

Mobile commerce startup Button launched to  build a smarter affiliate network  for the world of apps. Now, it’s signed big e-commerce sites as a foundation for one part of that network. The company plans to announce on Thursday it has inked deals with Airbnb, Ticketmaster and OpenTable to make it easier for partnering content apps to let their users start booking for lodging, a ticket or a table without leaving the app they’re in. In one partnership powered by Button, for example, Foursquare users can choose a meal time and party size for a given restaurant via OpenTable without leaving the Foursquare app. People can then click through to the OpenTable app to be taken immediately to the end of the booking process where they left off in Foursquare. It’s all done through deep-linking, software that allow apps to work with each other. Button also powers a similar integration between Foursquare and Uber. In these deals, Button gets paid when a Foursquare user goes on to take an a