Geek Video of the Month

This month’s Geek Video combines one of our themes of the month, social commerce, and our love of anything Smartphone and App based into one neat little package.

Last month saw the release of Pizza Express and PayPal’s innovative new app, combining the physical retail industry with online payments for the first time in the UK market. As demonstrated in the video above, it’s not just about paying! You can also find a restaurant, book a table, see the menu and keep track of receipts for purchases.

Currently the app can be used in all 370 Pizza Express restaurants in the UK, and will ultimately be supported by a company-wide roll-out of free WiFi in each restaurant. Depending on its success and uptake, perhaps we can look forward to seeing versions developed for other operating systems and maybe even other retail companies taking a look into integrating their online-offline shopping experience! Well done Pizza Express ;)


Author: Alice Cheetham

Geek Video of the month

This video is a definite winner this month. Parrot AR Drone has developed a Wi-Fi helicopter with 2 cameras!! The Wi-Fi helicopter can be controlled by the iPhone and IPod Touch, allowing you to play the augmented reality game indoors or outdoors. Depending on the applications the user downloaded, it will open up a whole new world to the user, they can take part in wild races or discover aliens hidden in their living room. Pretty cool. Watch the video and to find out more about this new concept of video gaming using augmented reality, then visit the developers site here: http://ardrone.parrot.com/parrot-ar-drone/en or follow their conversations over at Twitter @ardrone.

iPhone Applications on the move

Expect over the next six months to start to see a major growth in development of iPhone applications.

The stats to support this include:

607.5 million people globally accessing social networks by 2013, which is 43% of all mobile internet users (eMarketer)

50% of mobile phone users will access the mobile internet at least monthly by 2013 (eMarketer)

Also recent studies (from America) shows the % of people accessing websites via mobile phones are increasing: in January 2010, 25.1 million mobile users accessed Facebook via their mobile browser, up 112% from 11.8 million mobile users in January 2009. Twitter also experienced high growth attracting 4.7 million mobile user in Jan 10, up by 347% versus previous year. (Source: ComScore, Feb 2010, Facebook and Twitter Access via Mobile Browser Grows by Triple-Digits in the Past Year).

Content on the go

If your consumers/clients would benefit from content on the go being pushed to their phone (via 3GS) then talk to Rocktime Sales about Mobile Application development. We can create mobile applications for the iPhone, Android, Windows mobile and more. A benefit of working with us is that as we develop everything in house you will also be able to have complete control of the look and the feel of the application. The main design considerations we review to in creating your application with you, is to make sure it is easy to read, easy to navigate, fun or/and extremely useful to target market.

Recent iPhone development

Rocktime recently developed an iPhone application for Local Food Advisor linking into their site database, to share 4000 award winning producers, suppliers and farmers markets in the UK & Ireland read more about the iPhone app integration here>


How to get your app noticed?

There are over 100K 3rd party applications available to download, so the big question is how to get your application noticed? As part of social media optimisation we would advise you to network with your communities on social networks before launch and during launch. If the application development was based on feedback from your community then thank them and make them feel involved, they too will then share the love of your new application. If you have employees on Twitter talk to them about the new app let them know test dates, let them spread the word too around their own networks. Join in with application developer forums, get their feedback and continue to spread awareness of your application once launched.

Location based apps growing

Tech journalists and bloggers anticipate an increasing number of iPhone applications will become location based: so as tweets, blog posts, site content are based on a specific area the content will then be delivered to the iPhone application when required. On upload of the application it will ask “would you like to use your current location”, you may have already seen this already on sites such as http://gowalla.com/ and http://foursquare.com/ (see above blog post image).

Via 3GS and interaction with the location targeted apps, local businesses are benefiting as they are able to serve up adverts that are specific to the application users location ie: a coffee shop may tweet out to Four Square members, “Why not pop in to our branch on the High Street around 3pm and have Coffee for half price”. Pretty amazing yes, indication that web technology is continuing to empower the consumer even further, as they not only check for real time offers whilst on the move but receive them automatically too (Push & Pull notifications).

Be inspired

It is worth your while exploring iPhone applications even if you don’t have an iPhone, what works well on a phone could work for your site. The application store is also a great place to help create or build on new ideas, especially if you read the feedback pages.

If you are totally new to mobile phone applications and would like a little insight into how they function. look and the benefits to the user, we would recommend you go visit this post at Mashable, who in celebration of the 40th anniversary of Earth Day, shared their top 10 free iPhone applications that promote continued environmental awareness, hopefully they will be of interest to you. For extra advise and guidance in this growing market of mobile phone applications pick up the phone to talk to Rocktime Sales.


Author: Sarah Griffiths

Geek Video of the month

Introducing the “Dr Who” Dalek controlled by iPhone accelerometer. UK Robot enthusiast Steve Carpenter and founder of BotBuilder.co.uk has created the first Iphone controlled Dalek out of a Dalek bubble bath container. This video does use very geeky terms, hence winning the status of geek video of the month, what we particularly like is Steve’s passion for Robots. Take a look at Steve’s Bot Builder website here and find out how his bots go from the drawing board to the packaging box, look at the Bot Birth links on relevant product pages.

Geek Video of the month

Our Geek Video of the month goes the iPhone app which allows motorists to drive a car using their mobile phone, developed by German researchers. It is pretty cool and very Kit car (Knightrider),

What would be better is an Iphone App which will direct your supermarket trolley back to the trolley bay when it's raining - now that is cool !!

Find out more over at the Telegraphs Motoring News here