50% of Facebook users actually connect to the site via mobile – and no other app in the world has as many users.

Gone are the days when 25% of project time was spent on the design phase; these days, pioneers like Apple now ensure that the design phase of their projects occupies no less than 60% of a project’s time, which underscores the importance of this phase. Now, many more are following their design phase model.

Apple’s Design Process Model Involves:

1. familiarizing yourself with the device as well as its purpose,
2. defining the product,
3. presenting the design and prototype on paper,
4. refinement for developing an application for the best user experience.

The emphasis here largely concerns presenting the design (point 3).Why Present the Design on paper:

Many people may use something like PhotoShop or OmniGraffle for this phase, as it is perhaps easier for them or convenient since they are doing everything else on screen. However, doing things the traditional ‘low tech’ way may work better because you can sit almost anywhere and work on the presentation. It is also cost-effective and may even be a real comfort zone for some.

It is noteworthy to mention that in one of the sessions on Stanford’s CS193P iPhone Programming class on iTunes, Steve Marmon talked about how useful and important paper prototyping for iPhone App design is. All-in-all, it’s a great way to think through the UI process.Creating Designs via Stencils:

Using stencils might be a great advantage at the presentation stage, as these can also give you a tangible feel to your design, and this can actually help when considering what the design might look like in the hands of a user.

While just one of the 4 steps for the iPhone graphic UI design process has been focused on in this article, the emphasis here largely concerns presenting the design. This is a unique approach considering that most designers present their work on a computer screen. While it makes perfect sense to do so, it makes even more sense to present a tangible design to place in someone’s hands. At the end of the day, you’ll be putting a real iPhone in someone’s hands, and it must have the best design so that it appeals to the user.

iOS – The Apple Family

When Apple released the first touch screen device in 2007, it set the wheels of a huge mobile revolution in motion. A device that was smart enough to respond to touch gestures and provide you amazing functionalities that was never seen before on conventional mobile phones. iPhone apps were created of various websites, businesses, games and many other items just so that the average user could get access to a high level of functionality through a touch of the screen. From iPhones, came iPads and iPods, each of them functioning on the iOS platform. A huge success within just weeks of its release, the iOS was hailed worldwide.

The Good

- The iOS is derived from the MAC OS X which means it works on a UNIX platform and therefore it incorporates the same features as that of the MAC – except that it’s a touch based OS.

- Applications meant for the iOS is to be developed through the use of a software development kit (SDK) released by Apple.

- The strict environment of the iOS ensures that users have data security and are not affected by malware or spyware as each app is tested before it is allowed to go live.

- There have been five revisions to the OS with the iOS 5 as being the latest of them and incorporating excellent features such as the Game center, notifications tab and a complete syncing feature with all of Apple devices.

- Developers would have to have a license to develop and maintain their apps on the Apple Store which makes it all the better for users to trust apps from the store.
- High end user experience with focus on a fluid interface, user security and only approved/quality tested apps.

The Bad

- A restricted platform that restricts a user from gaining the full advantage of a smartphone.

- No support for Flash neither for theme customization.

- Users have to jail break in order to run apps that are otherwise not functional on the phone.

- Less functionality for the user.

- The demand for iTunes to be installed on your PC for sending/downloading/accessing information online.

- Users cannot copy paste songs or files from their systems directly on to the iPhone, iPod or iPad. That has proved to be quite inconvenient for users who would like to be able to do all that easily.

- An OS platform that cannot be used on any other device apart from the above mentioned Apple devices.

At the end of the day, there are millions of users who don’t mind these flaws and would die to have an iPhone because of its brand power and tightly compact user environment. On the other hand there are millions out there who consider Apple to be a dictator and that isn’t appealing at all. You will hear rants and groans from iPhone users who would find it extremely annoying and hate it with passion. But eventually, its user centric. If you are all cool with these restrictions then sure, go for it – be the iGeneration .

Android – The Google Mastermind

So how can Google ever be left behind in a technological revolution! When Apple released its first touchphone – months later Google released its Android OS and that was even a bigger hit than the iOS, so much that today Android has successfully managed to come first in its sales record. But for now…this seems to be an enough read for you…wait more for our part 2 where we bring you in light with our Android superhero Stay posted!

After broadening the iPhone’s distribution to include Verizon and Sprint, Apple announced that they had sold over 37 million iPhones in the final quarter of 2011. So far this year, 43 percent of smartphones purchased in the US were iPhones. Accordingly, countless businesses have realized the value of developing high quality mobile apps for Apple’s iOS. Here are several key benefits of creating an iPhone app:

Reach Millions of Potential Customers

There was a time when many businesses went door to door with marketing pamphlets, or spent significant amounts of money for a small advertisement in a local newspaper. Today, thanks to the iPhone, all you need to do is create an interesting and functional app that people will download and use. This can generate extra revenue and attract the attention of a staggering number of potential customers.

Save on Marketing Costs

Companies often spend thousands of dollars to publish advertisements on digital and print platforms. A mobile app, however, may cost only a fraction of this amount and a good app can reach a virtually unlimited number of users. Just one efficient app will save a significant amount of money to reach many more people.

Earn Extra Revenue with an App that Sells Well

Apple has a great platform for businesses and developers to earn a substantial amount of revenue from any app that is purchased and downloaded. Apart from receiving great promotion for your business, extra revenue is good for any company. There are many businesses that have earned remarkable revenue on top of achieving significant exposure thanks to their fantastic games and apps.

Be Part of a Technological Revolution

The world is consistently evolving into a technological dreamland. From mainframes to home computers to laptops, today is the dawn of the smartphone and tablet era. This current trend emphasizes micro-computing and managing business operations from small portable devices. Unless businesses can keep up with technological evolution, they are likely to fall behind the competition and lose thousands of potential customers. Build a Strong Brand

An app doesn’t just give your business an edge over the competition, it also helps you strengthen your brand. People who enjoy using your app will recommend it to their friends via social networks. They will also start exploring other dimensions of your business and develop a unique bond with your company, relating with the products you offer because they have already experienced your quality services through that wonderful app. This builds brand loyalty and leads to powerful brand development.

Remember you can build a strong brand power only if the app you build is credible enough. A poor app is actually detrimental to your company’s image. Social Cubix is a leading iPhone application development company. We can help you get your application off the ground and headed in the right direction. Call us at 866-978-2220 for more information.

Learn more about our iPhone App Development Services.

Dynamics founder and CEO Jeff Mullen will create a new mobile payment experience™ application in real-time during the 30-minute presentation on May 7, at 11:30 a.m. in Room 344 of the Earnest N. Morial Convention Center in New Orleans.

“The payment industry has not progressed very much when it comes to providing personalized, value-added services to consumers – the vast majority of retailers and entertainment brands have not had proper access to consumers through the payment ecosystem,” said Jeff Mullen, CEO of Dynamics. “Dynamics’ technology breakthrough is a game changer and will power a new wave of innovation that benefits consumers while enabling a much broader range of consumer brands to tap into the unprecedented opportunities of the existing payments infrastructure. Dynamics is the first to achieve the holy grail of payments – a platform that truly provides personalized experiences to the individual consumer – the ‘segment of one’.”

The API will allow developers, such as charities, retailers, entertainment properties and gaming companies, to create unique, branded experiences linked to the revolutionary Dynamics ePlate™ payment device. The Dynamics’ ePlate™ device gives consumers the ability to personalize the experiences they earn with each purchase.

New Revenue Opportunities for Developers

To encourage the development of revolutionary experiences, Dynamics is providing developers with 0.25 percent of each transaction where the experience is used. For example, if a consumer makes a $200 purchase using their favorite application, the developer earns $0.50. Moreover, developers are able to receive consumer-approved purchase data in order to create deeper personalization and make highly targeted purchase incentives.

“Developing on the world’s first true API into the $4 trillion domestic payments ecosystem is a pure treat,” said Udoka Mark Uzoka, CEO of Social Cubix. “Dynamics’ API is as empowering as it is easy to use. We can now build best-in-class consumer products utilizing consumer-approved payments data while funding those products with 0.25% of each transaction.”

Initial Dynamics ePlate™ device experience™ providers include:

Upper Deck®: A digital trading card system that includes exclusive sets of digital cards. When a user completes a digital card set, the user is mailed one of numerous exclusive, physical collector’s cards.

Dark Horse® Comics: As a user makes purchases, the user earns exclusive digital comic books from their favorite properties. After a user collects a certain number of digital comic books, the user is provided with exclusive physical collector copies of the comic books.

Evil Genius Designs: A game for your iPhone and Android device that lets users experience the thrill of the craziest shopping day of the year every time they make a purchase.

Social Cubix Games: A game on the Facebook platform where users engage in a scavenger hunt as they make purchases around the world.

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Lack of Evolution

It’s hard not to be judgmental here but one has to look at this fall from a harsh angle. The world changed, technology changed and innovation was the call of the day; unfortunately, R.I.M (Research in Motion, the developers of Blackberry) decided to bask in its initial glory and pay no heed to evolution. This is one reason why Apple and Android got ahead while R.I.M got lost in its own bubble. Smartphones with the ability to entertain as well as to connect while also being productive were making waves while Blackberry phones remained highly traditional with the same old design, same old interface and same old functionality. It did not evolve as per expected.

Lack of Innovation

When was the last time R.I.M decided to be innovative? Unfortunately, there’s no record of that. While Apple and Android dedicated time in developing latest, state of the art touch based devices, R.I.M did not bother releasing touch phones way until 2011 when the other two dudes had already captured the mobile market. It was released as the Blackberry Torch series, which apparently, didn’t go down well with consumers. Innovation at a very late stage and that too with nothing spectacular to offer.

Unaware of Consumer Wants

R.I.M designed Blackberry with special focus on businesses and it was loved well by companies because of its strong servers and highly secured data maintenance. In the midst of all this, businesses loved Blackberry but somehow consumers never felt connected to the company. An average consumer would want a device that is fun, flexible and offers them entertainment, connectivity as well as productivity. The company did not focus on the larger circle of consumers and very much limited itself to businesses, thinking that if companies would adapt to R.I.M so would consumers. Sadly, they were wrong.
In a decade where IT was seen at its revolutionary peak, only those companies or brands survived who dared to take risks and make changes. Companies that stayed stuck in its initial glory failed to move on. Blackberry was the classic example of this traditional and closed box approach. The fall of Blackberry has proved to be a great lesson for IT companies including an app development company like us. Social Cubix has always strived to be an innovative and evolutionary Facebook and mobile app development company that can cater to the rising demand of high tech smartphone functionalities.
By the way, we also develop Blackberry apps for businesses that are still brand loyal to the company. In case you need a Blackberry app developed, drop us a line or call at 866-978-2220.

Well, the concept is pretty simple. All you got to do is guess the word your opponent is coming up with the images they draw. You on the other hand will be guessing the word they have with the image they draw. With the correct guesses, you can score points. The fun part of this game is in enhancing your creativity to the extent that you can draw images well enough to describe a word while also being able to decipher what your opponent has in mind. Simple enough? Great. Let’s take it further.

How to Play?

You can play the game by registering through your Facebook ID or signing up as a new user. With the Facebook registration you can then provoke your friends into playing the game along. If playing with Facebook friends isn’t your call, you can simply find random opponents to play the game with.Next you are given a list of words, each of them with various difficulty levels. You pick a word that you wish to draw with having a choice in picking pen thickness and font color. With that, you can now start drawing a visual image of that word and have your opponent guessing about the image. The guesses are done based on a selection of letters to tap which sorts of restricts the free flow with which users can guess.

With the points you earn, you can buy more colors or bombs – items which blows up letters that you have to choose from, thus giving you easier options. As you play and go towards higher levels, you will find a number of words being repeated and you may also start becoming familiar with various images.

Basic Features of the Game

Here’s a quick review of some basic features of the game.

• Universal iOS compatible which means you can play on the iPhone, iPad or iPod.
• You can draw almost anything, in any shape with no artistic excellence required.
• With more than 50 vibrant colors to play with.
• Turn based game which means dynamic gaming.
• Available on the iTunes for FREE!!

Our Take on It:

Currently, the game is one of the most popular apps on the iOS as well as Android platform. You wouldn’t want to miss this game if you want your kids to have some fun time on their iPad because this is also a great way to teach your kids words and drawing images. It sure perked our attention because we are the people behind such exciting game developments. If this game sounds exciting to you, we can develop a smarter, faster and better version than this! Drop us a line if you would like to have an iPhone game app developed within a budget.

The market for these apps is growing at a staggering rate, and shows no signs of slowing. For reference, the most popular film so far this year is The Hunger Games, which has been seen by about 50 million people since its March 12 premiere. The year’s fastest growing mobile app, Draw Something, has experienced similar exposure; it reached 50 million downloads within 50 days of its release.
Although it’s a free app, Draw Something has also achieved comparable financial success – according to OMGPop (the developer behind Draw Something) the game produces profits in excess of $100,000 per day. Furthermore, app development giant Zynga reportedly purchased OMGPop for about $200 million. Draw Something, however, was probably produced with just a tiny fraction of The Hunger Games’ whopping $78 million budget. The potential for such an astronomical return on investment makes the app development industry an exciting one.

Like the motion picture industry, an aspiration to create the next blockbuster app sparks the imagination of thousands – but with mobile apps, the chances of watching your creation become reality don’t seem quite so intimidating. An aspiring filmmaker might spend years sending their screenplays to major motion picture studio executives that will never read them, or trying to raise the hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars that would be necessary to capture their vision on film. A hopeful and determined app developer, on the other hand, might be able to develop a relatively simple app in just a few months, and may even see their application on an iPhone a week or two after submitting it to Apple’s App Store.

Challenges of Mobile App Development

The relatively simple process of creating apps and the potential for massive monetary gain comes with a price: the industry is overcrowded. More than 500,000 apps are available for iPhone in the App Store – and not all of them are turning a profit. In fact, some apps don’t even make it to the App Store; several developers have invested thousands of dollars and months of hard work on the design and marketing for an app that was rejected by Apple. Even apps that have been accepted often don’t incorporate an appropriate layout, employ ineffective marketing or suffer from a myriad of other issues that their creator didn’t notice or didn’t properly address, and consequently achieve inadequate sales.

Overcoming the Obstacles

So how can a mobile app developer ensure that their app stands out from the crowd, and gets a fighting chance in such a fierce market? Obviously, a great idea is the backbone of a great application. Unfortunately, this is where the development of many potentially successful apps comes to an end. The following steps are much more complicated, and simply having a great idea and knowing someone with programming experience usually isn’t enough. An experienced app development company, however, can facilitate the creation of your mobile app, utilizing the most efficient design, layout and functionality, and often even providing a marketing campaign that will expose your app to millions of potential users. If you want to make your next project a success then we would love to hear from you. Contact Us!

Yes, the key to doing more is doing it with less. With all of the changes that have been implemented among Facebook Brand Pages within the last year, from the end of Facebook Discussions and Reviews in October to the roll-out of Timeline for Brands this spring, it’s hard to keep track of what’s actually working for brands on Facebook. The most recent numbers actually indicate fan growth slowed with the Brand Timeline switch. But thinking smart transcends those changes — and never goes out of style.

“You want to engage your audience and make sure that they feel like they’re apart of something — not just being marketed to,” Shankman explains. “Then they will do your PR for you.”

Shankman’s experience with brands runs deep. The former journalist and founder of Help A Reporter Out has written two books on marketing and customer service in the social media world — Customer Service: New Rules for a Social Media World and Can We Do That?! Outrageous PR Stunts That Work — and Why Your Company Needs Them. He’s also frequently globetrotting to consult and speak on PR and social media, and has worked with major companies, such as American Express and Disney. through his company, The Geek Factory.

Mashable spoke with Shankman about the inner workings of Facebook marketing and what users really want to see on your brand page.

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1) Bugs in the App:
Did you perform a quality assurance test before officially launching the app? If not, you should not expect your app to see remarkable sales, especially if another existing app offers a similar product without the bugs. Developers are often so excited near the end of the app creation process that they don’t bother putting it through a quality assurance check, or even a trial test on a mobile platform before they launch.

2) An Uncomfortable User Interface:
People can be quite finicky when it comes to an app’s user interface. They would generally prefer a simple and straightforward interface to one that is flashy and complicated. The simpler the interface, the easier it is for a user to install and add to their app collection. There are hundreds of apps that offer great functionality but cannot attract users because of their poor interface design or an unattractive display picture.

3) Poor Marketing Strategies :
Simply launching a great app is not enough to guarantee its success. An extensive marketing strategy can spread word of your app to local and international customers. Launch a blog or write articles about your latest app and market it using popular sites. If you have the cash, you can even start a PPC campaign and get banners of your product whirling all over the web.

4) Poor Social Media Integration :
Social media is the platform that can reach a virtually unlimited audience, provided it is used appropriately and efficiently. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Pinterest are some of the most effective social websites for promoting apps. When the correct demographics are targeted, there is almost no limit to the traffic social media can create.

5) Lack of User Reviews:
User reviews build credibility, increase awareness of your app and help convince potential new users that your app is worth the download and installation time. Request a review or a rating from those who have used your app.

Addressing all of these potential problems before launching an app may save a great deal of time and countless headaches. Likewise, seeking the assistance of a professional app development service like Social Cubix should resolve these issues and any other obstacles that may arise in your app’s path to success.