Facebook’s app gives you full access to the social network, where you can upload photos and status messages, check out your News Feed and friends' profiles, and send messages to people either via instant message or email.
Pandora’s mobile app makes it easy to rock out, no matter where you are. Create radio stations and listen to ad-supported tunes for free for 40 hours a month. If you reach the 40-hour cap, continue listening for the remainder of the month for $0.99.
Where can you catch the latest cat video, plus a message from the president in the same place? YouTube’s app makes it easy to stream the videos you love directly to your mobile phone.
Keeping in touch has never been so easy. With Skype, contact with friends and family around the world. The app supports voice and video calls, as well as texting, in many cases for free.
Words With Friends Free is the ad-supported version of the Scrabble-like game by Zynga. In the game you can compete against your Facebook friends, others using the service and strangers.
Twitter’s mobile app ports much of the functionality of the web network to mobile. From the app you can explore tweets, see what’s trending and post your own tweets to add to the conversation. The app also allows you to tweet photos, and has a built-in photo editor for making those pictures look their best.
Temple Run put infinite-runner games on the map. In the game, run until you can’t run any longer while dodging obstacles. Since the launch of this original game, the studio has put out a sequel, Temple Run 2, as well as Brave and Oz-themed versions, in partnership with Disney.
Whether you want to watch a quick episode of your favorite television show, or settle in and watch a feature-length film, Netflix’s app makes it easy to stream TV shows and movies to the palm of your hand. Use of the app requires a subscription to Netflix’s streaming service.
Pictionary goes mobile with Draw Something. Draw a picture, then send it to your friend so he or she can guess what you drew. Originally launched by OMGPOP, the game was later acquired by Zynga.
Having trouble finding your way around? Flashlight turns your phone into a mobile light, brightening up the area around you so you can locate items in the dark.
Facebook Messenger is the messaging portion of Facebook, broken off into its own standalone application. The app also contains Chat Heads, a unique way of conversing with your friends -- their faces appear in small circles on the screen.
Want to take a quick trip to Paris? How about to the house where you grew up? Google Earth lets you see the world through Google’s cameras, giving you a bird’s-eye view of the earth as a whole, and a close-up view of any location you choose – all in the palm of your hand.
With Fruit Ninja, slice and dice fruits as they fly across the screen. The more fruit you're able to chop while avoiding obstacles, the higher your score.
Miss your radio station from back home? iHeartRadio lets you tune in to listen to Clear Channel radio stations around the country, all from your mobile phone.
Want to know whether that latest movie is a must-see? Flixter’s app with Rotten Tomatoes makes it easy to read reviews, while you’re on your way to the theater.
Want to transfer a photo from your phone to a friend? How about some cash? Bump lets you tap two phones to transfer data. Or use the app along with your computer, for transferring images from your phone to PC.
Whether you’re buying or selling, eBay’s mobile app has the tools to help you get things done. The app makes it easy to list items for sale, as well as bid on items you might want to own.
Groupon’s mobile app lets you purchase deals while you’re out and about. You can score bargains – often 50% off or more -- on restaurants and attractions while you’re at them, no planning required.
Although Apple removed Google Maps from iOS, the mobile app made a splash when it returned to the App Store. Unlike Apple’s built-in Maps, Google Maps offers public transit information.
Adult Swim has a reputation for amazing mobile games, and Super Monsters Ate My Condo is no exception. This is probably one of the most twisted renditions on the match-3 gameplay format: You must match colors of precariously stacked condos to clear them and gain powerups. The only problem? Angry monsters surround your stack and threaten to topple it, unless you feed them the matching color buildings, or clear three of that color.
Super Monsters Ate My Condo is actually a free sequel to Monsters Ate My Condo. It added a time limit for games and boosts that can be activated with in-game currency. This game is highly addictive, and will definitely suck hours of your time as you click for one more turn.
For those who like to punch down foes and relish the idea of a brawler coming to iPad, Punch Quest is unmissable. In this game, dubbed an "endless puncher" by its developers, you run through levels of enemies using two types of punches to bring them down.
The game features tongue-in-cheek humor and a great visual style. The different levels give Punch Quest a lot of variety despite its two-button design, and you'll get a lot of mileage out of the game until you finally beat it.
Sid Meier's Ace Patrol, by the legendary game designer, is a strategy title that puts you in the cockpit of fighter planes in World War I, where you'll dogfight against other aircraft for victory.
Sid Meier's Ace Patrol is another turn-based strategy game, a format that works great on touchscreens. On each turn, you'll pick your maneuvers from arrows that climb, swoop and bank your aircraft. You'll be able to attack other planes and dodge their guns.
There are several missions available free in the game, plus mission packs available for purchase if you've liked what you played.
If you love stretching your right brain with puzzles, Blendoku might be the game for you.
This game combines crosswords, Sudoku and color theory in an excellent brain-teaser game. On each level, you're given several color swatches at the top of the screen, then a crossword-style grid at the bottom. You'll need to put the colors in order based on various factors, including shade, hue and saturation. Puzzles eventually get much harder as you have to fill increasingly large grids.
The game is free with small banner ads at the top, but any purchase from the store -- including additional daily hints -- turns those off.
If you've always been interested in games that require resource and energy management, but don't find farming appealing, Clash of Clans could pique your interest.
Clash of Clans is a blend of that formula, with elements of a strategy and tower defense game. You must collect elixir and gold to power your town of builders and fighters, but you need to raise an army and attack goblins or other players. You'll be able to experiment with different troop types, spells and strategies as you level and gain resources. Of course, your camp is also under threat of attack, so you'll need strategically placed defenses to keep other players out.
You can speed up the whole process by buying gems, of course, but generally the game allows a lot of wiggle room without ever having to purchase squat.
While DrawQuest isn't a traditional game, its fun daily challenges ask you to stretch your creativity, and then rewards the best work.
Every day in DrawQuest, a half-started drawing asks you to flesh it out to complete the prompt. It could be anything from "What's Under the Bed" to "Give this guy hair." Once you're done, you can see how other players responded to the prompt, rate your favorites and complete other challenges you may have missed.
It's delightfully right-brained, and aims to encourage creativity in all its players.
Firaxis games has a reputation of strong strategy games, like XCOM: Enemy Unknown and the Civilization franchise. The company's first attempt at an iOS strategy is just as high-quality as its PC and console games, and it's free.
Haunted Hollow is a turn-based strategy game in which you must construct a haunted house and send monsters to terrorize a nearby town. Your goal is to beat your opponent by taking over the town with your monsters. Haunted Hollow can be played against the computer, an opponent via network play, or with two players sharing the iPad.
Letterpress is a competitive game that won't annoy you with in-app purchase reminders, while testing your lexicon.
To play, challenge an opponent to make as many words as possible from a 5x5 grid of random letters. Once you've used a letter, you've claimed it, so players have to pick from the remainder. Players can steal letters back, though, if they surround tiles with the opposing color.
Letterpress runs quickly, much faster than a Scrabble-clone. The game is free; though if you want to play with more than two people at the same time, the game requires only a buck to upgrade.
There's some kind of appeal to sci-fi technobabble. It sounds silly, but shouting "setting phasers to stun!" makes everyone feel a little bit more awesome.
Spaceteam took that idea and turned it into a free party game playable on mobile phones and tablets. This multiplayer experience requires everyone in the same room to look at his or her screen and shout ridiculous sounding directions to each other. These directions correspond with the nonsensically named levers and dials displayed on other players screens, and it's up to them to recognize and then flip them.
If everyone works together, your spaceship won't fall apart, and you can survive to the next lightspeed jump. What sounds silly is probably one of the most fun party games available via mobile, and it's absolutely free.
Racing games are hard to pull off with touch controls, so it's nice to see an arcade racer like Top Bot on iPad. In Top Bot you customize a robot to race against your friends or random challengers.
The Top Bot races are asynchronous, so you'll be able to compete any time a match is set up. The one-touch controls are easy to learn, and the race track is full of fun powerups and obstacles that make each race unique.
Most people expect a genre like collectible card games to stay analog, and yet the addictive nature of card collecting and the deep strategy to building your deck works perfectly on a tablet.
Zynga, better known for casual games, created War of the Fallen to give players who are new to the idea of deck building and card strategy a game that would teach them the basics, offer some real challenge and get them hopelessly addicted to the format. War of the Fallen is a fun game with great art and funny, creative character designs depicted on each card.
If you've always been interested in card games without the investment, this is a game worth trying, especially at the nice price of free.
Sometimes the most interesting games just make no sense. Take Whale Trail, a game where you, a whale, harness the power of rainbows to fly through the clouds to escape an evil monster. You know, just like real life.
Whale Trail is an endless runner style game, where you only control the whale's altitude and descent by tapping the screen as it swoops among the clouds. Your goal is collect more rainbow fuel to keep it flying, and avoid the grumpy nimbus clouds that will sap your juice. While Whale Trail is simple in premise, the short rounds will keep you coming back for more as you level up your whale. Keep chasing that rainbow!
If you're looking to duel it out in a traditional fantasy tactical game, Wizard Ops Tactics is for you. This game is part army building and part turn-based strategy, as you send out your army of wizards against opponents.
Wizard Ops Tactics has detailed environments in which to play, with terrain that can help or hurt players. A "fog of war" system shields your movements from your opponent until you meet face to face. Each wizard has spells rendered with dramatic effects that add a level of fun to the game, and the sounds effects, all created by the mouth of Michael Winslow of Police Academy fame, will make you want to wear headphones.
Wizard Ops Tactics provides you with one army, which you can upgrade as you play, or you can spring for more stuff in the store.
If trivia is the name of your game, you've probably already heard of You Don't Know Jack. The trivia software relaunched last year with a free-to-play version on both mobile and Facebook, and it's a total blast.
You can play one or more episodes of You Don't Know Jack each day for free, and earn money to unlock new episodes. Each episode is recorded with different questions and original dialog, making for short bursts that only take about five minutes. The trivia references a lot of current events and popular culture, so you'll see questions occasionally ripped from the headlines.
Since Temple Run, top-down endless runners have been in vogue, with many great variations. Subway Surfers is worth recommending because the brightly colored levels offer variety as you swipe to duck, jump, dodge, climb ramps and collect coins.
As you run to escape the ever-present train conductor, the level gets exceedingly more difficult and requires quicker reflexes. The coins you collect in-game can be used to purchase revives after you get knocked out -- or you can purchase them for real money. You'll end up addicted to Subway Surfer as you try to beat your score.
YouTube has just turned eight, and the company is marking the occasion by sharing a couple of cool stats about the service.
Users of the world's most popular video sharing service upload 100 hours of video to the site every minute. That's 6,000 hours of video every hour and a whopping 144,000 hours of video every day.
YouTube also repeated a recently revealed number of one billion visitors to the site per month.
YouTube, which was founded in February 2005 and first launched in May 2005, was acquired by Google in October 2006 for $1.65 billion.
Though the site's growth to one billion users was stunningly fast, Google expects further growth thanks to the rise of mobile devices. Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt recently said that number could even grow to 6 or 7 billion.
And if you're wondering where and how Google is storing all those videos, check out this tour through the company's data centers.
Image courtesy of Google
This post originally appeared on the American Express OPEN Forum, where Mashable regularly contributes articles about leveraging social media and technology in small business.
Looking to up your mobile marketing game? Here are five vendors that can help.
1. MailChimp
Email marketing is one of the most popular ways to stay in touch with customers, and there are now many tools that can help you mobile-enable these programs.
For example, MailChimp has added a number of mobile features that allow you to view your email campaign stats, see who is tweeting about you and manage your lists and subscribers from your mobile device. MailChimp also offers mobile-friendly templates for your newsletters, so your campaign will look good when users read it on their mobile devices.
MailChimp customers can now also take advantage of services such as Chimpadeedoo, which gives customers the ability to sign up for your newsletter via an iPad. Customers visiting your store, restaurant or trade show can sign up on the spot. One company, Monkey Joe’s Parties & Play in North Carolina, was able to grow its subscriber list from 250 to 10,000 users using this app.
MailChimp offers a free plan (2,000 subscribers and up to 12,000 emails per month) that includes all of these mobile-friendly features and more.
2. Red Stamp
If you’re looking to make an impression with your digital correspondence, check out Red Stamp –- the company just launched Create Your Own Collection that enables small businesses to create and send custom, branded letterhead, business cards, notes, invitations and announcements from mobile and desktop devices.
Red Stamp says its customers are landing new clients by sending customized thank you notes as they walk out of meetings, and they’re also using the service to share visual, branded, real-time conversations with their social networks and create festive, branded invitations for events and get-togethers.
Golden Age Design, a small business that restores mid-century furniture, is using custom stationery from Red Stamp for several types of correspondence with customers, including sending out photos of their furniture finds to their clientele in real time.
The cost is a one-time fee of $29.99 for custom design and set-up and a $4.99 monthly fee for unlimited digital and social sharing. Paper postcards are just 99 cents — including $0.33 U.S. postage — and Red Stamp will print, address and mail your cards for you. International sends are an additional 30 cents.
3. Swipely
Mobile functionality can also make it easy for customers to join your loyalty program. For example, payments company Swipely now offers a simple “text to join” mobile loyalty program that works seamlessly with the credit or debit card consumers already have in their wallet, as opposed to having them manage (and often lose!) paper cards, punch cards or key chain plastic cards.
A popular organic restaurant with multiple locations in the Bay Area is using Swipely to run its mobile loyalty program, promoting it with signs in their restaurants that invite customers to join the program with one simple text message. In one month, they saw that 60% of the customers that hit their mobile signup page submitted their credit card to join the rewards program. In January alone, hundreds of customers signed up, which means that the restaurant can now market to those customers via email.
Swipely’s loyalty program is free for existing customers.
4. TextUs.Biz
A recent Time magazine mobility poll found that 32% of people would rather text than talk if given a choice. With this in mind, TextUs.Biz allows businesses to send and receive texts from customers via their computer or iPad. Small businesses can use the service to send customer appointment reminders or group promotional offers, while customers can use it to text the company's main business phone number to request an appointment or reservation.
According to the company, the service is ideally suited to customer requests such as restaurant reservations, changing hair appointments or answering questions about car repairs, which are often easier to manage via text messaging versus a phone call.
Connor Doyle uses TextUs.Biz to manage customer service at West End Salon in Boulder, Colorado.
"TextUs.Biz has greatly reduced the amount of time our front desk staff is tied up on the phone and has allowed us to concentrate on even better customer service,” says Doyle. “Our clients love the ease and simplicity of sending us text messages and our staff uses the service almost exclusively for communication with the front desk.”
TextUs.Biz is free for the first 100 messages, which includes web and iPad access. For small businesses sending more than 100 messages a month, the "basic" cost is $24/month for 1,500 messages, the "premium" is $44/month for 5,000 messages and "pro" is $74/month for 10,000 messages.
5. Facebook
According to recent Facebook usage research by IDC, smartphone users check Facebook an average of 14 times per day, so make sure to consider Facebook's latest advertising products, such as Facebook Offers and Promoted Posts, to reach and engage your target customers on mobile.
For example, SweetFrog Frozen Yogurt recently saw an average of 2.9% redemption rate on Facebook Offers, Facebook’s virtual coupons that are available on both desktop and mobile. Some stores reported over 10,000 in-person redemptions.
Promoted Posts, which allow business owners to easily turn an engaging post into an ad to reach more people with their messages, also work well on mobile. According to Facebook, Sam's Chowder House, a local restaurant in Half Moon Bay, CA, used Promoted Posts to drive a 19% increase in both their monthly number of guests and monthly gross revenue.
One final note: Facebook's Pages Manager app now allows you to manage your Facebook Page, post photos, comments and ad campaigns all from your phone.
BY LEYL MASTER BLACK
Samsung will be displaying some of its latest and greatest notebook and tablet screens at the Society for Information Display's Display Week 2013. Among them, one stands out: a 13.3-inch notebook display with a 3,200x1,800 (WQXGA+) pixel resolution.
For those keeping count, that's quite a bit better than Apple's 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro, which has a maximum 2,560x1,600 pixel resolution. To make things even better, Samsung claims that LCD can deliver "30 percent" greater power savings than existing LCD displays.
Of course, we're not quite sure what we'd do with such a high resolution on a 13.3-inch screen, but it's comforting to note that the 1,600x900 pixel resolution — exactly half of the screen's maximum and much better suited for 13-inchers — will be perfectly crisp.
On the tablet front, Samsung will be showing a 10.1-inch WQXGA (2,560x1,600) LCD for tablets, which also boasts 30 percent better power savings than current tablet displays.
Visitors of the exhibition, held May 21-23, 2013 in the Vancouver Convention Centre, will also be able to see Samsung's Full HD (1,920x1,080 pixels) mobile AMOLED display, as well as an 85-inch Ultra HD (4,840x2,160 pixel) LCD TV panel.
BY STAN SCHROEDER Image courtesy of Samsung
Users of the world's most popular video sharing service upload 100 hours of video to the site every minute. That's 6,000 hours of video every hour and a whopping 144,000 hours of video every day.
YouTube also repeated a recently revealed number of one billion visitors to the site per month.
YouTube, which was founded in February 2005 and first launched in May 2005, was acquired by Google in October 2006 for $1.65 billion.
Though the site's growth to one billion users was stunningly fast, Google expects further growth thanks to the rise of mobile devices. Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt recently said that number could even grow to 6 or 7 billion.
And if you're wondering where and how Google is storing all those videos, check out this tour through the company's data centers.
Image courtesy of Google
Looking to up your mobile marketing game? Here are five vendors that can help.
1. MailChimp
Email marketing is one of the most popular ways to stay in touch with customers, and there are now many tools that can help you mobile-enable these programs.
For example, MailChimp has added a number of mobile features that allow you to view your email campaign stats, see who is tweeting about you and manage your lists and subscribers from your mobile device. MailChimp also offers mobile-friendly templates for your newsletters, so your campaign will look good when users read it on their mobile devices.
MailChimp customers can now also take advantage of services such as Chimpadeedoo, which gives customers the ability to sign up for your newsletter via an iPad. Customers visiting your store, restaurant or trade show can sign up on the spot. One company, Monkey Joe’s Parties & Play in North Carolina, was able to grow its subscriber list from 250 to 10,000 users using this app.
MailChimp offers a free plan (2,000 subscribers and up to 12,000 emails per month) that includes all of these mobile-friendly features and more.
2. Red Stamp
If you’re looking to make an impression with your digital correspondence, check out Red Stamp –- the company just launched Create Your Own Collection that enables small businesses to create and send custom, branded letterhead, business cards, notes, invitations and announcements from mobile and desktop devices.
Red Stamp says its customers are landing new clients by sending customized thank you notes as they walk out of meetings, and they’re also using the service to share visual, branded, real-time conversations with their social networks and create festive, branded invitations for events and get-togethers.
Golden Age Design, a small business that restores mid-century furniture, is using custom stationery from Red Stamp for several types of correspondence with customers, including sending out photos of their furniture finds to their clientele in real time.
The cost is a one-time fee of $29.99 for custom design and set-up and a $4.99 monthly fee for unlimited digital and social sharing. Paper postcards are just 99 cents — including $0.33 U.S. postage — and Red Stamp will print, address and mail your cards for you. International sends are an additional 30 cents.
3. Swipely
Mobile functionality can also make it easy for customers to join your loyalty program. For example, payments company Swipely now offers a simple “text to join” mobile loyalty program that works seamlessly with the credit or debit card consumers already have in their wallet, as opposed to having them manage (and often lose!) paper cards, punch cards or key chain plastic cards.
A popular organic restaurant with multiple locations in the Bay Area is using Swipely to run its mobile loyalty program, promoting it with signs in their restaurants that invite customers to join the program with one simple text message. In one month, they saw that 60% of the customers that hit their mobile signup page submitted their credit card to join the rewards program. In January alone, hundreds of customers signed up, which means that the restaurant can now market to those customers via email.
Swipely’s loyalty program is free for existing customers.
4. TextUs.Biz
A recent Time magazine mobility poll found that 32% of people would rather text than talk if given a choice. With this in mind, TextUs.Biz allows businesses to send and receive texts from customers via their computer or iPad. Small businesses can use the service to send customer appointment reminders or group promotional offers, while customers can use it to text the company's main business phone number to request an appointment or reservation.
According to the company, the service is ideally suited to customer requests such as restaurant reservations, changing hair appointments or answering questions about car repairs, which are often easier to manage via text messaging versus a phone call.
Connor Doyle uses TextUs.Biz to manage customer service at West End Salon in Boulder, Colorado.
"TextUs.Biz has greatly reduced the amount of time our front desk staff is tied up on the phone and has allowed us to concentrate on even better customer service,” says Doyle. “Our clients love the ease and simplicity of sending us text messages and our staff uses the service almost exclusively for communication with the front desk.”
TextUs.Biz is free for the first 100 messages, which includes web and iPad access. For small businesses sending more than 100 messages a month, the "basic" cost is $24/month for 1,500 messages, the "premium" is $44/month for 5,000 messages and "pro" is $74/month for 10,000 messages.
5. Facebook
According to recent Facebook usage research by IDC, smartphone users check Facebook an average of 14 times per day, so make sure to consider Facebook's latest advertising products, such as Facebook Offers and Promoted Posts, to reach and engage your target customers on mobile.
For example, SweetFrog Frozen Yogurt recently saw an average of 2.9% redemption rate on Facebook Offers, Facebook’s virtual coupons that are available on both desktop and mobile. Some stores reported over 10,000 in-person redemptions.
Promoted Posts, which allow business owners to easily turn an engaging post into an ad to reach more people with their messages, also work well on mobile. According to Facebook, Sam's Chowder House, a local restaurant in Half Moon Bay, CA, used Promoted Posts to drive a 19% increase in both their monthly number of guests and monthly gross revenue.
One final note: Facebook's Pages Manager app now allows you to manage your Facebook Page, post photos, comments and ad campaigns all from your phone.
BY LEYL MASTER BLACK
For those keeping count, that's quite a bit better than Apple's 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro, which has a maximum 2,560x1,600 pixel resolution. To make things even better, Samsung claims that LCD can deliver "30 percent" greater power savings than existing LCD displays.
Of course, we're not quite sure what we'd do with such a high resolution on a 13.3-inch screen, but it's comforting to note that the 1,600x900 pixel resolution — exactly half of the screen's maximum and much better suited for 13-inchers — will be perfectly crisp.
On the tablet front, Samsung will be showing a 10.1-inch WQXGA (2,560x1,600) LCD for tablets, which also boasts 30 percent better power savings than current tablet displays.
Visitors of the exhibition, held May 21-23, 2013 in the Vancouver Convention Centre, will also be able to see Samsung's Full HD (1,920x1,080 pixels) mobile AMOLED display, as well as an 85-inch Ultra HD (4,840x2,160 pixel) LCD TV panel.
BY STAN SCHROEDER Image courtesy of Samsung
