Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Nobody Knows That I Use These Apps

jakelevine.me

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 66 posts

Re: Nobody Knows That I Use These Apps

#31

Post by freehunter »

MatthewPhillips wrote: post #28
kbenson wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah. From that description it sounds like there's not a real difference in what widgets allow apps to do, but there is in how easy it is to add and utilize widgets (with Windows being at one extreme, where all or most app icons are widgets)? Do you think that's an accurate assessment?

Sort of, I guess the biggest difference is in how you add them. Adding widgets is an intentional thing; you decide you want a weather widget on your screen. A tile is something you discover and decide to keep for later. So you find a restaurant you like, you pin it. You don't say "I want to pin something, let me look through a list of pinnable things and pick one".

That's one use for Tiles, but not the one I'm referring to. Pinning a map is great, but pinning a weather app makes it continuously update the local weather and forecast right on the app shortcut. Pinning a stock app makes your stock quotes show up right there on the app shortcut. There's many use cases for pinning a Live Tile, and the best part is they're all done using the same mechanism.

Re: Nobody Knows That I Use These Apps

#32

Post by freehunter »

error54 wrote: post #17
freehunter wrote: post #4

I love this about Windows Phone's Live Tiles. I never open my weather app. I hardly ever open the Facebook app. I hardly ever open my stock market app. I just check their Live Tile, and at a glance it tells me exactly what I need to know. It's the biggest thing I miss, by far, when I'm using my Android phone. The information density of Android and iOS doesn't even come close, even with a proper notification center. I…

I think the Google Now widget does quite a good job. It tells me the weather, if I have a package being delivered, sports scores, and quite a few other things. Granted, I've used Live Tiles and did find them pretty useful and I like the flat UI so I think my ideal experience would be a combination of both Now with Live Tiles.

If I could get all my apps to work with Google Now, I would love it. However, Facebook, for one, does not update Google Now. Is there a public API so apps can push data to Now?

Re: Nobody Knows That I Use These Apps

#33

Post by fyi80 »

MatthewPhillips wrote: post #28
kbenson wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah. From that description it sounds like there's not a real difference in what widgets allow apps to do, but there is in how easy it is to add and utilize widgets (with Windows being at one extreme, where all or most app icons are widgets)? Do you think that's an accurate assessment?

Sort of, I guess the biggest difference is in how you add them. Adding widgets is an intentional thing; you decide you want a weather widget on your screen. A tile is something you discover and decide to keep for later. So you find a restaurant you like, you pin it. You don't say "I want to pin something, let me look through a list of pinnable things and pick one".

To do something like this on Android, you'd need an API for an app to install a widget. I don't know if that's possible outside of the standard appstore download/install process.

Re: Nobody Knows That I Use These Apps

#34

Post by fyi80 »

MatthewPhillips wrote: post #16
kbenson wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Widgets just aren't comparable. I'm curios, I haven't used Windows Phone, what's not comparable?

The live-ness of tiles is overstated, in my opinion, but the concept of tiles is wonderful. Here's an example: you're going on a trip so you pin restaurants that look interesting from Urbanspoon, a map to your meeting location from Maps, and some sites you want to see from their web pages. It turns your home screen into a todo list, which is interesting to me.

Widgets could do this on Android, if Widget makers chose to implement that. For example Facebook's widget is your stream.

But most widgets are not very interactive, they are more like app preview snapshots, with a tap to launch the app.

Re: Nobody Knows That I Use These Apps

#35

Post by ikhare »

Seems like the author has only worked with iOS.

On Android push notifications are done through GCM (Google Cloud Messaging), when it's sent your application gets a callback (Intent). So it is up to the application to decide what to do with it, whether it is to show a notification or do something else entirely. So on Android you have a pretty good idea that the the user is actually getting a notification. Jelly Bean and up you can also do very rich notifications with images and actions built right into it.

On iOS when a remote push notification is received there is no indication sent to the application at all. The only way the application knows something has happened is if the user actually opens the notification.

I haven't programmed on windows phone, so I am not sure how much an app developer knows that a user is viewing a live tile or not. Maybe someone who's built one can chime in.

Overall it seems to me, that what the author is describing is Android, where the app developer has at least some feedback as to whether a user is seeing the notification (albeit not an exact: user has seen x notif).

Edit: Wording

Re: Nobody Knows That I Use These Apps

#37

Post by fyi80 »

jrajav wrote: post #18
hkmurakami wrote: post #7

I know this is completely off topic, but is there any reason a website should have a rapidly changing gif animation as their tab icon? I tend to open a ton of tabs and leave them open ( particularly if they're interesting and I want to re-read it or refer to it in a blog post), but the constant oscillation of that tab icon is so distracting that I feel compelled to close that tab as soon as possible since it's going…

I had to test in most of my installed browsers before I found one that actually animated the icon - Firefox. Chrome, Safari, and Opera have all decided (rightly, you'll probably agree) that allowing animated favicons is not a good idea.

Chrome has a hideously awful alternative though: The tab icon throbs when AJAX updates a page (Gmail, etc), regardless of the web developer or user's preferences.

Re: Nobody Knows That I Use These Apps

#38

Post by fyi80 »

taude wrote: post #13

Isn't the value from the number of installs of a app or the number of times someone paid for the app? Unless they started using notifications to send me ads....which with 100% certainty cause me to uninstall the app (if such a practice is even allowed).

Spamming ads to the notification bar is a popular technique on Android. Zynga loves to do it, as do others.

Re: Nobody Knows That I Use These Apps

#39

Post by benjamincburns »

ikhare wrote: post #35

Seems like the author has only worked with iOS. On Android push notifications are done through GCM (Google Cloud Messaging), when it's sent your application gets a callback (Intent). So it is up to the application to decide what to do with it, whether it is to show a notification or do something else entirely. So on Android you have a pretty good idea that the the user is actually getting a notification. Jelly Bean a…

> On iOS when a remote push notification is received it there is not indication sent to the application at all.

I'm not well versed in push notifications, but I thought this was part of the value that a company like Urban Airship would provide?

Re: Nobody Knows That I Use These Apps

#40

Post by fyi80 »

> The business impact is that companies are evaluated and funded on the basis of metrics like Daily Active Use, Monthly Active Use, Impressions, Visits. Notifications happen prior to all of these metrics.

These are all vanity metrics, not revenue metrics. There is no problem in adding a new one to the list: "Notifications served" and assuming they are received by engaged users. Just like page views and visits, as good and as bad.

Post reply on HN