TCC Blog

The wildly popular photo-sharing platform, Instagram,  is finally getting close to making good on their long time promise to make their app available on Android devices.  In case you are unaware of all the photo-goodness that is Instagram, it is known for its retro filters,  and is a really fun way to share photos, especially if you’re not big into networks like Facebook or Google+.  It’s easy to snap a picture, choose a filter to transform its look and feel, then post to Instagram.  You can seamlessly share to Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr too – it’s as easy as pie.  It’s photo sharing, reinvented. Pop on over to their Android site and sign up for the release.

The best part is that it’s free!

Filed under “you get what you pay for,” researchers at Microsoft tested the energy consumption of various apps on Android and Windows Phone (iOS restrictions kept them from testing the iPhone) and found that up to 75% of an app’s energy use goes to power the advertisements in free, ad-supported apps. The numbers may not have much of an impact without tying them to an app you actually use, so what about an extremely popular game like Angry Birds:

In the case of Angry Birds, research suggested that only 20% of the total energy consumption was used to actually play the game itself.

Of the rest, 45% is used finding out your location with which it can serve targeted advertising.

Free applications typically have built-in advertisements so developers can make money without having to charge for the initial app download.

The lesson: Next time you’re choosing the ad-supported version of an app over, say, its $1 counterpart, you may want to consider whether you’re willing to pay extra just to keep your battery going longer.

Source:  Free mobile apps ‘drain battery faster

Google announced yesterday that ‘Google Play’ is the permanent replacement for the Android Market. This single, unified distribution channel for movies, books, music and apps rolls up all of Google’s media marketplaces in to one location.

Perhaps most notably, Google Play will replace the Android Market as a discovery, sales and distribution channel for Android apps. The company says the combination of the different marketplaces will make it easier for Android users to access different types of content across their devices, through Google’s cloud-based service.

It’s pretty clear that Google’s strategy with this rebranding effort is to makes its content business a distinct entity, as opposed to a bloated limb of its mobile operating system. It makes sense. Apple is doing it. Microsoft is doing it. Our world is quickly getting appified - more and more we consume byte-size (pun very much intended and highly inaccurate) morsels of content, as opposed to grazing in all you can eat monthly fee buffets (admittedly, I still subscribe to Netflix streaming). We’re spawning the world’s first “$0.99 millionaires.”

Easy-to-use “1-click” (please don’t sue me, Amazon) payment solutions and high-speed broadband internet have turned us all into micro-impulse buyers. $0.99 here and there for an app, game, or that one song you just remembered and really want to listen to right now because you haven’t heard it in years. Maybe a few bucks for a movie rental a couple times a month at RedBox orAmazon Instant Video and, if you’re feeling splurgy, that new game that costs $5 but gets so many 5-star reviews you can’t help yourself any longer.

So, why limit that paradigm shift to digital content commerce to the mobile space, or more specifically, Android? Google wants you to make these itty-bitty purchases from your desktop computer, laptop, tablet, smartphone, TV, and probably eventually your refrigerator. And they want you to be able to do it regardless of the fact that you own a Windows fridge or an iOS car. Google Play wants to be your one-stop, multi-platform content shop.

The Android Market name just didn’t allow for this kind of vision, and I think you can see why, now – Android is just one facet of Google’s larger world domination strategy (of smiles, of course).