Arianna Testi, Monday 29 September 2014

Digital Press. A World in High Resolution.

The press industry is based on communication. It's the content that gives articles or books their value, the paper is just the traditional means we use to spread this content. The invention of the telegraph swept the distance barriers between people away, making communication much easier. This has brought nations closer and offered a great opportunity for publishers to spread their news to a much wider audience. Nowadays it's all about digital communication, new original media and news flashs. This is the reality of today! But let's take a step back to when the first major news publications were created.
Written on Monday 22 September 2014

The iPad: A Story of Technology Catching up With an Idea

In the aftermath of brilliant discoveries and inventions, the long and often difficult process leading up to them is often forgotten. We imagine them as the fruit of sudden, brilliant realizations, much like the figurative lightbulb that appears above the cartoon character's head. Of course, the truth is usually far messier, and innovation is above all the result of iterative, incremental improvement. It is as much an editorial process as it is a creative one.  What makes the iPad such an interesting product, maybe even more so than it's capabilities as a device, is it's history. The iPad is an almost perfect illustration of technological possibility finally catching up with a vision, the importance of tinkering, constantly adapting and improving an idea, and above all of perseverance.
katrina bertacci, Friday 19 September 2014

An All-New Design for Your Events; Cleaner and More Elegant!

Today I want to show you all another great update that came with GoodBarber 3! Are you organizing the event of the year? An important art exhibit, a concert or an opening ceremony for your business? If so then keep reading because this is the right article for you! An event of any kind gives you the great opportunity to have direct and personal contact with your audience. To ensure that your event will be a success you have to plan it very accurately down to the last detail, from the promotional aspects all the way to the logistical ones.
Andressa Izumi, Monday 15 September 2014

What Apps Have to do With the Music Industry

If you remember the early 90’s, you should remember when Sony decided to revolutionize the way we listen to music and launched the famous yellow sports WALKMAN :) These were the times when you could record a mixtape to give to your girlfriend and when having the freedom of listening to music while walking on the street was a huge thing! From then on, we evolved first to CDs and then to downloads, and the latter grew very quickly thanks to the democratization of the internet. By now, according to a report of the IFPI (International Federation of Phonographic Industry), the number of paying subscribers to music subscription services - which includes services such as Spotify and Deezer - increased from 8 to 28 million. As the chief content officer of Spotify, Ken Parks, said: “Unlike the distribution of a physical product we can reach every person on the planet, at least every person with a smartphone.” (IFPI Digital Music Report 2014 ) In light of this, we decided to talk about how you can create a good music app. We will address the subject considering two different types of apps: radio apps and band/musicians apps. Let’s start!
Written on Friday 12 September 2014

The Sandbox App: Test Your iOS App Before Building

We recently spoke about how to avoid rejection of your app by Apple, and emphasized the importance of proper testing. We believe you shouldn't just be able to test a proxy version that closely resembles your app, but that any GoodBarber user should have the possibility to see exactly what their app will look and feel like, so they can submit it to the stores with peace of mind. 
Arianna Testi, Monday 8 September 2014

7 Tips to Follow to Prevent Apple Rejecting Your App

It's now extremely easy to build an app! Since there are now many app builders, online tutorials and lessons to learn how to program, more and more people decide to launch themselves into the adventure of app building, in hopes that their project will become popular and repay them with monetary profits. While Google has very few requirements you must meet to publish on the Google Play Store, because it reviews your app after it has been published, Apple has a very strict, zero tolerance policy. The goal of this policy is to protect the end users by not allowing bad quality apps that can be full of bugs or that are not user friendly into the store. But is this goal achieved efficiently? My job brings me to work with a great variety of apps, with different content, design and user experience. I have sent many apps to Apple to be reviewed and I honestly have to say that I still do not understand the logic behind their decisions. After all... Whoever has never downloaded a completely useless or horrible app the App Store raise your hand! What I do see is that many app are rejected because the name of an external platform comes up in a video or article etc... Or they say the content targets an audience that is too small.
Written on Friday 5 September 2014

Everyone Adores Apps! But do They Adore Yours?

"Smartphones have become indispensable in our daily life. Their penetration has grown up to 41% of the population and who possesses a smartphone relies on it more and more for an increasingly numerous amount of tasks. 63% of this population accesses the internet from their phones daily and most won't leave their houses without them." (Source: Our Mobile Planet Smartphone Research )
Written on Monday 25 August 2014

Updating Your GoodBarber App

Oh no... you just submitted your app to the stores, and now you remember that you forgot to use the new CMS sound section after all! And going through all that trouble of submitting the app again? You can breathe easy, since you don't need to! Only a handful of modifications require you to re-build your app and submit the update to the stores - and even something big like adding a content section isn't one of them!
Written on Friday 22 August 2014

GB3 - Empowering Apps With The New CMS

At GoodBarber we’ve been creating apps since 2009. And with all of our experience from thousands of clients, we realized that a great number of people chose our service because they were able to create, as well as manage, their own content using a simple interface, in order to bring their beautiful app to life!  With this in mind we decided that we should expand and improve our built-in CMS for GoodBarber 3.
Written on Monday 18 August 2014

7 major mistakes to avoid when creating a branded app

Many companies today have chosen to be present on mobile by creating an app to support their business. An app is an extremely powerful tool because it’s extremely versatile, businesses can communicate in a much more personal way. Also, people access the internet always more from mobile devices and less from pcs. Why? Because it’s more practical, we carry our smartphones around with us all day and now there is a good connection practically anywhere, also apps are easier to use. On a phone you don’t have any desktop clutter, you just have to enter a specific app to get the information you need, in a few seconds you can check the weather, find the best restaurant in town, buy those pants you saw in a shop at a cheaper price. But it’s not all as simple as it sounds, many companies have missed the mark when trying to take advantage of the great opportunity an app represents. You mustn't forget there there are some specific rules to follow when going mobile, this channel is very different from the web so you cannot just transplant your web strategy, you have to plan a specific strategy for the mobile segment. Here are series of common mistakes that to avoid if you want your branded app to be a success and bring your business that extra value!
Written on Thursday 7 August 2014

GB3 is Full of Surprises… Come Discover our New Wizard!

As you certainly already know, we have just recently launched the new version of GoodBarber which is even more pleasant and intuitive to use. Our main goal with GoodBarber 3 is to make our product even easier to use, because we know it’s not enough to offer the best tools on the market, we also have to enable you to use them to their best. We’ve used the experience gathered over time from our customer base to develop unique and original solutions that enable you to create Beautiful Apps with ease! One the novelties we introduced is the Wizard; A tool to create the icon and splashscreen directly in your backend. This little genius will make your apps even more magical!
GoodBarber Team, Wednesday 6 August 2014

The New GoodBarber Backend

As those of you who've switched to GoodBarber 3 or even created your first app with it will have noticed, the new backend is radically different from the preceding version. Native mobile applications are increasingly becoming a primary means of web access, and we wanted our backend to reflect that. In essence, GoodBarber is more than an app building tool; it's an app building and management tool. So what exactly is new about the backend, and why? In this article, we'd like to address some of the major changes and the rationale behind them.
Isabella Leland, Friday 1 August 2014

How to Build a Community Around Your App

Be it a real or virtual, it's not easy to create a community! It takes time and a lot of dedication... When it comes to apps in particular, a strong sense of community among users is necessary, but also focusing on the right kind of features to make your app social. But before telling you how to achieve this goal, let's focus on the meaning of community, and why it's so important.
Safa Amari, Thursday 31 July 2014

Let's talk about technology in Arabic! Short geek English-Arabic glossary

In recent years, the internet has come a long way in the twenty-two Arabic-speaking countries. Arabic is now spoken by over 422 million people, and over 140 million internet users use Arabic as their main language on the web. They are increasingly using different applications, and regularly look for translations of various technical terms. However, their success is hampered by the fact that only 3% of content is available in Arabic. I also noticed a growing demand for definitions of technical terms from users, which in most cases are inaccessible in Arabic. Because of this, I wanted to participate in filling this gap by translating GoodBarber into Arabic. I also compiled a glossary of technical terms in the field of mobile applications, translated from English to Arabic. By speaking directly to Arabic readers, we want to facilitate their access to content.
Written on Wednesday 30 July 2014

Useful Tips to Start Developing on Android

According to Mobile Statistics, the number of Android devices sold reached the 156 million mark in the first quarter of 2013 alone, and there are now more than 1,3 million apps available on the Google Play Store. (source: Statista ). Have you ever wondered how to make an app? The web is full of tutorials where people share their knowledge about different subjects. As we have a team of app developers working daily with programming, we decided to ask two Android experts a few questions about Android Development. We already talked about iOS before, but today it’s Android time! Say hello to our special guests: Sérgio and Guido !
Written on Friday 18 July 2014

10 Ways to Get Good Reviews for Your App

For anyone who publishes an app, getting good ratings in the stores is important. Ratings play a big part in where the app appears in the rankings of the stores. Even if you’re not interested in rankings, you still don’t want your users to start out with a poor first impression of your app even before they’ve started using it.
Dumè Siacci, Thursday 26 June 2014

How I'll Buy my Next Car, or Why I Love CarPlay

A few months ago, Apple unveiled its strategy for conquering the in-car entertainment market. Even if we don't yet know very much about CarPlay , it's still interesting to think a bit about the perspectives it will offer, both from the point of view of the final user as well content creators.  Speaking with Jérôme and Arianna , I realized that this could radically change the way I think about cars.
Written on Thursday 19 June 2014

The shift of habits can hide new opportunities?

I grew up in a relatively big family. And I remember I had this period of my life, being a child, where I competed with everyone else at home in the marathon to pick up the phone that was ringing. It was a real thrill for me, having this feeling that someone on the other side of the line was going to speak with me, even if most probably I was not the person they wanted to talk with. On those days people communicated and related mostly within the reality of a local reach. The fix telephone had its own moment of glory in my life, so much, that it printed in me this feeling that turned into this happy memory that I share with you. This makes something very clear, all of us were made to relate, to communicate.
Written on Friday 13 June 2014

The Golden Rules for a Food and Recipes App

Who, if not me, the GoodBarber with the chef hat, could have written this article?! I remember standing in the kitchen about four years ago, surrounded by pots and pans, with my little booklet with recipes handed down for generations in my family, and also with those gathered at parties, dinners and birthdays. Who could have imagined that this little booklet could have been the prelude to a mass phenomenon, called Food Blogging. Once I became a vegetarian, though, my collection gave me little satisfaction, since it was full of recipes with meat sauce, ham and steak. Following the traditions of my mediterranean origins I started to eat only salads, until, out of desperation, I began searching for inspiration on the web.   During the last 4 years, things have changed a lot. Once upon a time, the web was something exclusive and the recipes you could find were mainly high cuisine, and too difficult and complicated for everyday cooking. No longer! The web, but also mobile apps, have something to offer for everyone. Finding recipes from countries on the other side of the world, or easy and original ideas for making the most out of what you have in the fridge, has never been faster and easier.    Starting a food blog now is very different now than it was 3 or 4 years ago. The competition is fierce and it’s no longer enough to segment your audience by choosing a small niche. If you already have a blog, my advice is to complete your offer by creating an app, complementary to your website. This will allow you to increase your audience and traffic, and become more competitive in the eyes of potential sponsors and investors. If this is an adventure you’re just starting, perhaps the smartest choice might be to go straight to mobile, avoiding the never-ending war between the giants of the virtual kitchen. Let’s find out why!
Erik Rossen, Wednesday 11 June 2014

The Right (and Wrong) Way to Use Push Notifications

It's important to understand what's unique about push notifications in order to be able to truly leverage them. If you think they’re just text, think twice. Misunderstanding the specificities of push notifications can not only make you miss out on their potential, in some cases it may even be damaging.
Written on Monday 2 June 2014

Crowdsourcing: How to tap into the knowledge of your users

As we know, crowdsourcing is an increasingly used problem-solving method because it is one of the most reliable, fast and cheapest ways to get a job done. Instead of spending massive amounts of money on R&D, many companies are now using online communities to solve tricky issues, discover fresh ideas, eliminate the need of market studies to find out what their customers want and increase customer loyalty. In this article I’ll explain how this is possible.
Jerome Granados, Thursday 29 May 2014

Native Advertising in Your App

Have you ever considered inserting native ads in your app? Native ads are an open secret when it comes to monetizing content. So much so that brands are shying away from traditional advertising. Why? Because this marketers' favorite tool makes for more efficient ad placement, with messages tailored to the target audience.
Jerome Granados, Tuesday 20 May 2014

7 tips to market your mobile app

You spend a lot of time and energy to create your app. But what do you do to promote your mobile application? In this article, we'll review 7 actions you can take to market your app on the App Store and Google Play.