Marriott’s CIO Says Mobile Apps Are Changing the Guest Experience

Hotel giant Marriott International Inc. is working to craft a customer experience that is the right mix of high-tech and highly personal.

The company is rolling out many tech-driven amenities, including the ability to skip the front desk at check-in, order room service via a mobile app and log in to Netflix from the hotel-room television.

Bruce Hoffmeister, global chief information officer and an almost 30-year Marriott veteran, says the rise of mobile has given the company more opportunities to interact with customers before, during and after a stay. His teams must make sure the new technology not only works but is easy to use.

As Marriott prepares to merge with Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide Inc., Mr. Hoffmeister also will be tasked with integrating a new set of hotel technologies.

The Wall Street Journal spoke with him about deploying new mobile offerings and building customer loyalty, among other things. Here are

7 Reasons for taking assistance from custom mobile app development service providers

These days, smartphones have replaced PCs and laptops in such a way that people don’t prefer to do online work on them. Instead, they use smartphones and tablets. Mobile technology also advances as the number of mobile users increases. In such scenario, it is difficult for companies to say ‘no’ to it. In order to leverage the benefits of mobility, enterprises all over the world adapt the concept of enterprise mobility.

Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) concept of enterprise mobility capitalizes on mobile technology advancements. Companies can just install “off-the-shelf” apps on employees’ devices to gain benefits from those advancements.  Such apps can serve many purposes like:

In brief, tailor-made mobile apps become the necessity for the companies. Numerous companies come forward with mobile apps these days; as a result, it is necessary for newcomers to take assistance from custom mobile app development service providers.

The Explanation Behind The High Costs Of App Development

Why is app development so expensive?

I get this question a lot, and it often comes from a shell-shocked CEO or CIO who discovers his five-figure-budget project ends up being six or even seven figures. That’s crazy. Why is app development so expensive?

The easiest explanation is that apps are cheap; it’s the engineering and design talent that’s expensive. If you look in the App Store, you’ll see over a million different apps. These were all built by independent developers, yet the bulk of these apps will never earn a penny.

Using Hundreds of Developers

A different set of apps serves as the foundations of million- and billion-dollar businesses. Solo developers typically don’t build these apps; instead they’re built by teams of developers and designers. These teams range in size from nimble three-person teams to large enterprise organizations that employ hundreds of engineers.

Google launches certification program to recognize app development agencies

As we reported on the eve of I/O, Google has launched a certification program to recognize development agencies that have demonstrated great competence in building apps and services. Any developer can sign up for the Agency Program and get access to dedicated training and the latest products and APIs, but the certification provides an extra step of recognition.

The Google Developers Agency Program was announced last year to help software development agencies that work with Google products. It is not limited to just firms that work on Android apps. These agencies are important to the global app ecosystem, designing and publishing dozens of the top apps every year. Many are located around the world and employ many talented developers

The redesigned Instagram app for Windows 10 Mobile is now live

Earlier this week, Instagram announced an all-new redesign of its apps. The updates came immediately for iOS and Android, but the Facebook-owned social network was promised to be updated for Windows 10 Mobile later that week.

Pushing it to the last minute, the firm kept its word. The update is available for Windows 10 users right now.

Here are the official version notes:

We have a new look! Our updated icon stays true to the camera and rainbow. The simpler design puts more focus on your photos and videos without changing how you navigate the app.

If you're wondering about that new updated icon, they clearly had the Android and iOS apps in mind when they said it stays true to the rainbow. Over on the Windows side, we got a transparent tile with a white outline of a logo.

Email is far from dead, and mobile apps are the new rising stars

A new study from Kitewheel, released today, shows that when it comes to the customer journey, email is still performing extraordinarily well, but mobile apps are the fastest-growing channel of all.

The study, which took in data from over one billion real-time, cross-sector brand and customer interactions, captured via Kitewheel’s Customer Journey Hub, reveals that brands are investing more heavily in omnichannel campaigns than ever before.

While not surprising, given everything we know about email marketing from our research and those of our peers, the study confirms that email is still a channel to be reckoned with. In fact, the it shows that email has captured 23 percent of total journey interactions, up 270 percent year-over-year.

Combine the increase in email marketing with the return on investment (ROI) we’ve shown in VB Insight studies, and it is clear the old dog still has some new tricks up its sleeve, even in a world dominated by smartphones.

The report also shows that while the bulk of interaction volume occurs on social media (48 percent), social media marketing’s overall share of interactions declined 23 percent year over year. It appears there is a lot of noise on social, with our research showing that 70 percent of major brands still use social channels in ‘broadcast mode.’

GoPro's New Mobile Apps Are Designed To Make Editing Easy

Quik is hailed by GoPro as the fastest and easiest way to create awesome videos from your GoPro or smartphone footage, offering “automated simplicity”, while Splice focuses on desktop editing software power for mobile devices.
Quik automatically analyses your footage to find the best moments, adds transitions and effects, and syncs it all to the beat of the music (from the app or your own library).

You can choose from 28 unique video styles, each with unique filters, transitions, graphics and fonts. Custom text overlays, title slides and emojis are also on offer.

Quik also has ready-­‐to-­‐watch videos made from related moments on your mobile device automatically created once a week, which you can share on social media straight from the app.

 Splice is designed for those who like to be a little more hands on. You can pick your transition style, trim clips, add filters, show off an epic shot in slo-­mo, and much more. You can add photos to your video and add documentary-­style effects.

Open source framework enables native mobile app development

Although HTML5 has allowed apps to work across platforms, there's still demand for companies to develop native apps for the major mobile platforms.

Progress Software is launching the latest version of NativeScript, an open source framework on the Telerik platform, enabling developers to use JavaScript to build native mobile apps running on the major mobile systems.

With the release of NativeScript 2.0, developers using Google's Angular 2 JavaScript framework can now write native mobile applications for iOS and Android. They can reuse existing skills and code from the web and achieving time and cost-efficiencies.

"Angular integration first shipped with our popular Kendo UI library nearly two years ago, and we continue to see high demand for Angular from our community," says Todd Anglin, chief evangelist and VP technology at Progress. "For the more than one million developers using the Angular framework to write interactive web applications, the NativeScript 2.0 framework represents a giant leap forward -- they can finally create zero-compromise mobile apps with Angular featuring truly native UI and performance".

Android app pirate pleads guilty to criminal copyright infringement

An individual involved in running third-party Android app marketplace Applanet has pleaded guilty to criminal copyright infringement, the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) announced. According to the DoJ, Aaron Blake Buckley entered his guilty plea in response to charges that he sought to help distribute pirated versions of Android apps normally available on Google Play worth over $17 million. An associate of Buckley's, Gary Edwin Sharp II, previously plead guilty to the same charges in January.

According to statements made in court, the conspirators identified themselves as members of the Applanet Group. From May 2010 through August 2012, they conspired to reproduce and distribute more than four million copies of copyrighted Android apps through the Applanet alternative online market without permission from the victim copyright owners, who would otherwise sell copies of the apps on legitimate online markets for a fee. On Aug. 21, 2012, the FBI seized the Applanet website, which marked the first seizure of the domain name for a website involving a mobile device app marketplace.

The release also notes that Sharp has also admitted to having a role in running a separate third-party app marketplace called SnappzMarket Group. Both Buckley and Sharp are scheduled to be sentenced on August 1.

This New App Will Help You Live Like 'The Rock'

Called the ‘Rock Clock’

Do you aspire to live like Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson? Well, there’s now an app for that.

The actor has unveiled a new mobile app he is calling “Rock Clock,” which is essential a lifestyle app that says it wants to help motivate users to reach their personal goals.

The Fast & Furious and Hercules actor had this to say about his mobile aspirations: “When millions of you shared your goals with me, it inspired an idea to create something to encourage you all to chase greatness. Pulling the best resources, we were able to make it happen.”