I thought I would expand on this idea a little and take a different angle. Many articles have been written about how to develop an app, why you should develop an app, why you shouldn’t, what you should do with the app once it’s developed, and on and on the list goes. In fact, you can read all these ideas and more just on the Amadeus Consulting Mobile Technology Watch blog.

What about the value of an app? Not just revenue, though that is part of it, but the overall value an app will bring your business. Of course, all companies differ and what might make sense for one doesn’t make sense for another, but in general most companies should be at least paying attention to what is happening in the mobile space.

In-App Advertising

I did a little Internet research to find a good infographic about app value and found one by Mobclix, a real-time bidding mobile ad exchange. Although this is from last year, this infographic is great information for any company thinking about using mobile advertising as a way to earn revenue:

Source: http://blog.mobclix.com/index/PDF/january_infographic.pdf

This wasn’t terribly surprising that iPhone app users have a higher value, but I did find it interesting that utility app users have a higher value. Basically, in-app advertising is a good way to make revenue off your app without charging users up front for the app, but this really only works if your app has a large user base to generate enough ad impressions.

In-App Purchases

In-app purchases are a way to make money off your user base without charging them up front for the app. Generally, this is advantageous for newer apps that don’t have a large user base yet and don’t want to charge for the app right away. Some apps might charge for an enhanced user-experience, or use things like tokens that users can purchase to do more with the app.

In-app purchases have big revenue potential, according to IHS Screen Digest, a mobile media intelligence service. In 2011, in-app purchases accounted for 39 percent of the revenue for apps, and will likely be 64 percent (or about $5.6 billion) of total revenue by 2015. This is clearly a big opportunity for companies wanting to have a free app but still earn revenue.                

The Value of Tablets and eReaders

This past holiday season saw a big jump in the number of people with a tablet or eReading device. According to Pew Research Centers Internet and American Life Project, the percentage of adults in the US owning a tablet device jumped from 10% in December to 19% in January. With the introduction of tablets at a lower price including the Kindle Fire and Nook, there is a wider audience in the tablet space.

This new trend represents another opportunity for companies to develop a mobile app optimized for the tablet, since close to half of tablet owners made or completed a purchase on their tablet. Tablets have a lot of potential for more engaging apps, and the more engaging an app is the more value your company will get from your users.

Creating a Mobile Strategy

As I said above, the value of an app isn’t just about revenue. Clearly there are a lot of areas where a business can make a profit in the app space, but companies have to be smart and have a strategy. Considering the number of apps out there in the world right now, a business can’t just expect to build an app and then instantly have a revenue stream. Mobile app promotion is a key part of building value from an app.

Some companies may just want to offer an app as part of their overall product offering. The app itself doesn’t have to be the money-maker. Amadeus Consulting’s CIO John Basso made some 2012 tech predictions, one of those being that mobile will no longer be a feature but an expectation. Especially as more of our technology is becoming integrated with mobile, consumers will soon expect that anything they buy is integrated with their smartphone. So any company not thinking about a mobile strategy right now is likely to get left in the dust.

Mobile app development companies like Amadeus Consulting offer consulting to our clients to help make sure they are taking advantage of mobile in the way that is best for their business model, so if you just aren’t sure what to do or how to get the value you want out of an app, feel free to contact us for help!

Our own Todd McMurtrey, Amadeus Consulting Marketing Analyst, gave a presentation earlier this week about SPYW and its impact on SEO’s. This is a new technology, and no one can say for sure exactly what its impact on search will be, but I think most of us can agree that there is no reason NOT to have a Google+ strategy as part of your overall social media marketing strategy for your company.

First, let me talk a little bit about what SPYW is. When you go to Google.com and enter a search phrase, you now will see:

• Personal Results: Google+ photos and posts—both your own and those shared specifically with you
• Profiles in Search: In auto complete and results as well
• People and Pages, Find people profiles and Google+ pages related to a specific topic or area of interest

Todd mentions in his presentation that this new technology is making some people mad, some people happy, and most people are ambivalent. But there is a lot of potential for Search Engine Optimization here.

Indexable Content

If I am logged in and I do a search, Google SPYW will pull up personal results, plus other (traditional search) results. When I type in software development, this is what I see:

Obviously, because of my connections in the industry I see a lot of personal results with this search term. I also see things I shared that are related to the search term. You still see PPC ads, as well as organic search results but if I click on the personal results link these types of results are all I will see:

• Biographical Information
• Full Text of Public Posts
• Photos
• Links to people who have added me to their circles
• Everything I have +1’d, and everything my network has +1’d
• Links people have posted that are not in my network, but Google+ suggests as a connection

Here is the interesting thing – Facebook and Twitter results don’t rank as well. So if you have been spending a lot of time creating indexable content on those social mediums, unfortunately those results won’t show up in search. That is not to say you should stop using those social networks, because you shouldn’t. They are still very relevant in their own right, but do not provide as much value in Google rankings.

SEO Potential

Some businesses are pretty happy about this change because the value of their social content on Google+ just increased. It is pretty easy to build networks and you can pick and choose which circle you share each piece of content with or even share it publicly. And if your customers are talking about you on Google+ it will now help you rank better on searches.

Also, link generation just got a little easier. The ability to link to profiles and content in profiles, and use profiles to link to your content helps spread links throughout your network. You also will see author profiles show up in search. See these profiles that show up when I Google “seo”:

One author I am connected with, the other I am not. How do you show up as an author in search? Here is my favorite thing about Google SPYW. They have actually told you how to do it. If you hover over the author’s name in the SERP, you will see a box pop up that allows you to add that person to your circles, but there is also a link titled “Learn more about how authors appear in search” that takes you to a help page.

What Does it All Mean?

The future impact of Search Plus Your World is hard to tell. One complaint many people are voicing is the concern over relevant results. Will people try to “game the system?” Unfortunately, yes some companies will. But most of us that are reliable and honest Digital Marketing consulting companies will use SPYW as an opportunity to better educate, entertain, and inform our audience about what it is they are interested in. Amadeus Consulting is pretty excited to have the ability to easily share our social content because we try really hard to write and share good content.

Also, remember that not everyone you are interacting with on the web has a Google+ account. Google+ has more than 60 million users, which is a lot, but consider how many users Facebook has (more than 800 million active users). So you should still keep doing the things you are doing and simply add Google+ to your Social Media Marketing strategy.

So we are excited to talk about one of our most recent smartphone apps that we helped develop: Veebow. This app is the brainchild of Tom Vitale and Edward Loew who wanted to connect buyers with savvy companies through local, regional and national special deals using a free application on smart phones and mobile devices. Tom was inspired by his wife, actress Valerie Bertinelli, who has become the face of the app.

A life-long coupon-clipper, Valerie Bertinelli desired to offer something for consumers that is free – like a coupon should be, and thus Veebow was born. Veebow believes that coupons should not be something that consumers have to pay for, and provides a solution to other group-buying sites that require both consumers and the merchants to pay up front for deals. Veebow (Vitale’s nickname for Bertinelli) was designed to provide an exceptional experience for consumers and merchants alike.

As the developer of the Veebow app, Amadeus Consulting is proud to have assisted the Veebow team in fulfilling their vision and creating a working product that met strict expectations. In addition to creating a complex app, we also developed it for a simultaneous Android and iPhone launch, and built the website,  in less than two months.

This included working with Veebow’s creative designers and building an administrative back end to give the Veebow team the ability to add, update and modify deals. This used Amadeus Consulting’s extensive software development experience in .NET and PHP development.

Amadeus Consulting is excited to see the success that Veebow has already achieved including multiple noteworthy mentions:

• Veebow featured on Denver 9 News (NBC)
• Veebow on Anderson Cooper
• Veebow featured on Business Wire
• And many others!

The app can be downloaded through the Android and Apple app stores, as explained on the Veebow website. The site also details many of the features of the app, and deals and coupons that can be accessed through the app.

Veebow is also a good example turning a good idea into a successful product. Amadeus Consulting has a long history of providing development support to startup companies and working with entrepreneurs at all levels.  As with any of our clients, we are very happy for our opportunity to work with them, and are excited about their success.

A great way for businesses to easily scale up and down their staffing needs is to partner with a staffing solutions company. But not all staffing solutions companies are the same, and often they are just temporary employee farms where the level of knowledge and experience isn’t anywhere near what you might need to get a project successfully completed. Because Amadeus Consulting is known as the company that “Does the Hard Stuff,” we have the expertise to be able to evaluate the best talent, and we only hire the best.

Which leads to another issue: talented developers are hard to find. We know this because we spend an agonizingly long amount of time trying to find the best of the best, and our hiring process is incredibly extensive. It is important for us to have talent on our teams, no matter whether they are developers, digital marketers, technical project managers, or business solutions employees; our process is meant to find the best of the best and put them on our team.

“We heard Amadeus Consulting had a solid reputation for working with Microsoft .NET technologies. We were impressed with the company’s extensive skills and previous development successes, specifically in-staff augmentation services.”

- Daren Fankhauser
Development Manager, Data Center International

So, What about Amadeus Talent?

Our clients know that Amadeus Consulting strongly believes in the success of our clients. We have created processes around this belief for many years. Our trademark process – Client for Life, was put into place to ensure the client’s expectations are met at every milestone. We don’t just create great software for clients, dump it in their laps, and walk away. Our style is more of a partnership with communication and touch points along the way.

Because of our commitment to the success of clients, we created a new division dedicated to helping clients with this very tricky problem of scaling IT staff. Amadeus Talent will augment your existing technical staff with a proven expert that can lead your team in an emergency or time of transition.

Key Amadeus Talent Features:

• Assign one or several of our high quality developers, IT professionals, or technical leaders to help you develop and/or integrate your application and get your organization back on track
• Provide professionals through temporary contract, contract-to-hire, and direct-hire options
• Assist with evaluating existing staff and determining what additional skills are needed

With success and increased online visibility comes the challenge of dealing with individuals and organizations that are less than enthused about your status. The adage of “there’s no such thing as bad press” doesn’t exactly hold true when every negative item (whether fact or baseless accusation) about you and your business is archived on the Internet for anyone to dig up. Add in the preference search engines give to recent, timely content and you are faced with the perfect storm of having your well-earned reputation tarnished by vocal individuals with a negative agenda, seemingly without warning. This can be a nightmare without a contingency plan in place to deal with these situations. This is why Amadeus Consulting offers proactive and reactive solutions to online reputation and crisis management.

Proactive Reputation Management

Amadeus Consulting’s proactive reputation management strategy involves leveraging the content-driven tactics of public relations with the technology and intelligent monitoring of search engine optimization and digital marketing intelligence. Put simply, our approach is to create a steady flow of positive content that is released on a very regular basis. This method improves online reputation by adding timely, industry-specific content to your online properties, thus elevating its perceived value to search engines. To further this effort, external resources are utilized to influence the influencers (journalists, bloggers, academics, etc.) within your specific industry. These influencers are engaged to effectively “spread the word” about your initiatives with the goal of further positioning your executives as thought-leaders in your vertical industry while simultaneously providing third-party validation of your content. Then, opportunities are sought for your executives to “guest post” on external web properties.

While these tactics alone will have a positive impact on your online reputation, our capabilities within the realm of intelligent monitoring clearly distinguishes Amadeus Consulting’s approach. Our intelligent monitoring simultaneously helps identify opportunities to further promote our clients agenda as well as discovering potentially damaging situations early before they grow into something bigger.

Reactive Reputation Management

Just as our intelligent monitoring capabilities help identify positive opportunities to promote your brand, they also serve as our early-warning system of potential threats to online reputation. Whether the source is an individual malcontent former employee or an industry-specific journalist with an agenda, Amadeus Consulting’s intelligent monitoring gives us real-time insights as to the “health” of your online reputation and enables our digital marketing and public relations professionals to prepare and enact appropriate responses on an as-needed basis.

Crisis Management

As crises appear when you least expect them, the most effective means to navigate a crisis is via the execution of a pre-defined response plan that can be enacted at a moment’s notice. Amadeus Consulting’s approach to crisis management involves leveraging the tactics of public relations with the tools of intelligent monitoring to provide the most effective and nimble response.

Being that there is often no more important a time to ensure critical messaging is delivered than during a crisis, in addition to the standard tactics utilized in our proactive and reactive approaches, additional methods are employed in the time of crisis including: leveraging pay-per-click advertising to respond directly to crisis-related search queries (to ensure that official, timely messaging is delivered and available), rapid deployment of micro sites, event-related blogs and social media accounts to further facilitate public access to crisis-related communication as well as the establishment of VOIP-based hotlines to provide quick and nimble responses to non-web-based communication.

If the experiences of other companies have revealed anything, it is the notion that while you are judged by how you communicate your response to a crisis just as much as the actions of the crisis itself, it’s the public’s perception of that response that has the longest-term effects on reputation.

What is biotechnology? Put simply it is technology based on biology. The United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity defines biotechnology as: “Any technological application that uses biological systems, living organisms, or derivatives thereof, to make or modify products or processes for specific use.”

This industry benefits more than just pharmaceutical companies – though huge advances have been made in treatments of rare diseases as a result of biotech’s evolving technology. Biotech benefits agriculture through reducing crop damage by weeds, diseases and insects, and as consumers we benefit by reduced use of pesticides on biotech crops. Biotech is also responsible for the biofuels being developed, helping to reduce the impact on the environment.

The biotech industry is huge (more than 86 billion in revenue in 2010), so it would be difficult to discuss all the new trends and tools in technology this industry is experiencing. But we found five really cool new tools that are entering the market (or about to) thanks to biotech:

1. Fighting superbugs

Hollywood periodically likes to release thriller movies about some superbug that kills everyone on the planet. Scary stuff – but biotechnology is working to avoid the scenario. By changing the genetics of bacteria, Dr. Udi Qimron of the Department of Clinical Microbiology and Immunology at Tel Aviv University’s Sackler Faculty of Medicine has developed a solution to one of the bigger health issues facing the healthcare industry – antibiotic-resistant bacteria. He developed a hi-tech cleanser that disarms and kills bacteria. The cleanser can be added to a bucket or spray once it had been made available for hospitals and healthcare facilities. Read more about this new cleanser on ScienceDaily.

2. Detecting life-threatening brain injuries

A company called PhysioSonics, based in Bellevue, Washington has developed a device that can monitor cerebral blood flow. The monitor is expected to be tested and then deployed for use at military facilities that care for soldiers with Traumatic Brain Injuries (TBI). The device will be optimized to detect a condition called vasospasm that can lead to reduced blood flow within the brain. According to the company, vasospasm occurs in almost half of blast induced TBI victims.

3. Repairing human injuries and defects

Using a 3D Inkjet printer, researchers at Washington State University created a material that is bone-like and acts as a scaffold to support growth of new bone, and dissolves without any bad side-effects. This means that in a few short years, doctors might be able to replace bone tissue using this technology. All that is needed is a CT scan, and this will be converted to a CAD file that makes the scaffold. Read the WSU’s press release about the research to find out more.

4. Producing cost-effective renewable fuels

A new venture between Amyris, Inc. and Total SA will allow the companies to produce and sell renewable diesel and jet fuel. Amyris bioengineers yeast from organic plant sugars, and through partnerships with sugar and ethanol producers, the company sells renewable products including chemicals and transportation fuels that have lower carbon, and are designed to perform better than the products they replace. Amyris, and other companies like it, are using biotechnology to solve problems that nature hasn’t yet had an answer for. These types of technology can re-engineer molecules from more renewable sources, in this case sugar, to make biofuels that ease our dependence on fossil fuels. Read the press release to learn more about the venture.

5. Sustainably producing food for expanding world population

Biotechnology isn’t just a game-changer for medicine and energy products, it can also help solve food supply issues. One example is a study funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council is researching a new way to develop crops that can cope with weather changes. The findings are based on researching how algae survive through renewing damaged cell proteins. The expanding world population and pressure to develop sustainable food sources is stressing the agriculture system, making biotechnology more important than ever. New advances in technology and computing systems, such as high-throughput DNA sequencing machines, are helping to make the process two to three times faster, and much more cost-effective.

Biotechnology is a fascinating field with state-of-the-art technology that can make any non-techies head spin. This is just a small example of some of the great uses of technology this industry is applying to solve real-world problems we all are facing. And it is a field that has grown in leaps and bounds, largely due to better computing systems and software. It is a good “marriage” of better technology and really smart scientists and engineers. As a company that is always interested in the leading edge – Amadeus Consulting like to keep an eye on this industry as it grows.

Business Challenge:

Power Leasing came to Amadeus Consulting because the company needed to help bring its vision for enhancing the leasing experience to reality.  A vision that could streamline the apartment leasing process and increase productivity, increase lease sales and improve data management. The current approach in most apartment communities requires the use of pen-and-paper “guest cards” that prospective residents or leasing professionals fill out and submit.

These guest cards include basic demographic and interest-based information that can help Leasing Consultants filter potential apartment home alternatives and narrow down the choices for potential residents. However, this sales process can be inefficient, often leading to lost or missing information. The manual process historically has been difficult to track for company’s who manage these communities. In the end the experience often is seen as tedious from the perspective of potential residents.

The goals for Power Leasing included finding a solution that created a memorable experience for apartment hunters and streamlining the leasing process for leasing agents, all the while enhancing the professionalism of the customer experience. However, creating a digital solution that could be used by leasing agents or customers required the integration of multiple disparate technologies into one functional and easy-to-use application.

Solution:

Amadeus Consulting’s mobile application development team developed an iPad™ application for Power Leasing that replaced the apartment communities’ outdated paper form process as well as combined multiple technologies into a single client-facing app. Amadeus Consulting also helped with the user interface design of the iPad application.

Features of the app include:

• A simple and elegant flow of screens which invite the customer to share key contact and demographic information about housing preferences
• The ability to process customer information and display relevant property leasing recommendations
• Integrates with 3^rd party property management systems to provide recommendations among available properties as well as available floor plan options
• View pictures and floor plans of available properties
• Schedules visits, schedule follow up appointments, and take notes
• Allows back end administration through the web
• Manages secure and public data (private personal information versus property marketing information)

Rather than filling out a paper form, leasing consultants can enter the prospective client’s information and preferences directly into the app. This data is used by the leasing agent to follow up with the client, and to provide recommendations as new properties come available.

Customers and agents can also use the app to enter preferences about the type of property they were looking to lease. This includes the number of people that would be living in the property, number of bedrooms, specific amenities, etc. The app then displays available properties that match those preferences.

“Amadeus Consulting took the time to truly understand our business and helped us develop a solution that will be a game changer for our industry,” said CEO Karen Gladney. “Throughout the process the team proved that they are extremely knowledgeable in developing mobile applications that integrate with the business and the company was a pleasure to work with.”

In order to provide a list of available properties, Amadeus Consulting used RESTful web services to integrate with Yardi™ and OneSite™, which are two of the largest property management systems.

Through these integrations, Amadeus Consulting enabled the ability to push up user preferences to a Power Leasing server and pull down information about each available property, including pictures and floor plans related to those preferences. Agents could then schedule visits and take notes as needed. It was also necessary to ensure that private user data remained secure during the process and that nothing was stored locally on the device.

Amadeus Consulting also helped develop the back end management system for the app that helps manage inquiries, available properties and agent assignments, and tracks important information about the process.

Throughout the process Amadeus Consulting worked with Power Leasing to design the look and feel of the app. This included coordinating on the app’s UI design and layout, as well as the overall structure and flow. During the early design phase, Amadeus Consulting also created a working UI prototype to showcase the look and feel of the app for Power Leasing. This acted as a preview of the final product and allowed the company to make further improvements and design tweaks before completing the back end development and coding.

Cloud Computing is dead. Ok, so not quite dead, but still hibernating for a few years longer. You’ll know it’s real when the Google laptop becomes a reality.

Cloud computing offers the promise of being able to do a majority of computation somewhere else and then stream the results to you over the Internet. It is almost like having your computer at home and just running a really long cable to a monitor at work. All the processing occurs somewhere else, and you just see the results.

The problem is not with the ability to do remote processing, but with the ability to transmit data quickly enough through the current infrastructure. It is too slow. Also, it means that if you have no Internet connection, you have no processing capability and whatever device you were hoping to use suddenly becomes worthless.

There are plenty of cases where cloud computing works wonderfully, such as cloud storage for documents and images, but it will still be several years before cloud computing it is really accessible to consumers.

One of the biggest changes we will see next year will be in our expectations of mobile technologies. In other words, mobile will no longer be a feature, but rather an expectation.

For example, a few years ago it was pretty cool that you could order something through the Internet. Now any company would be foolish not to offer that service. Also, a few years ago, it was cool that you could order something like sports tickets on your phone and then use your phone to check in at the gate. Over the next year or so, it will be foolish of any company to not offer this service.

As technologies improve, our expectations improve as well. Would you buy a new car that does not have keyless entry? No, and you’d probably get the dealership to throw it in as a free upgrade, along with an iPod compatible sound system, GPS, heated seats, and lots of other things that were once “luxury features” but now come standard on most vehicles.

As mobile app development increases, our expectations for mobile integration will increase as well. Will you buy a new car that doesn’t sync its diagnostics to your phone? Can you automatically track gas mileage, tire wear, performance, and time since your last oil change? These will become expectations, rather than bonus features.

But not just for cars either. If you are buying a new furnace or thermostat, will you buy the basic one, or the one that can be temperature controlled through your mobile application to save money? Does your fridge know when you are low on milk? Does your home know when you left the lights on, the oven cooking, or the garage door open?

With the technologies we have readily available (you can buy them at almost any home improvement store, electronics store, or big box store), it is fairly easy to make such things happen. However they are still considered “luxury features” because they are not entirely prepackaged.

Over the next few years, consumer expectations will demand mobile integration to the point that it will be stupid for any company not to offer.

Right now we only have the illusion of digital security, and there is little incentive to change that. We have the technology and ability to add multiple levels of security but in almost every case, we’re only covered by the most basic layer.

Since most companies have no real incentive to provide deeper security, few companies provide anything beyond the basics, and even those leave dangerous holes that can be easily opened. Often, the most protected systems are business intelligence systems and proprietary databases that provide a monetary advantage over competitors, and customer information is left poorly protected because there is not financial incentive to do so.

This isn’t even for elite hackers – though those problems exist too. Mostly I mean that individual consumers leave themselves extremely vulnerable to identity theft and exploitation. Some common examples:

• Using the same password on multiple sites
• Using the same “security” code word to bypass the password entirely (what is your mother’s maiden name, etc.)
• Using a security code that is easily researched (what is your mother’s maiden name)?
• Not securing information “hubs” such as a common email address which – if accessed – can be used to reset all your other login information
• Not securing the information on your smartphone

Smartphones – iPhone, Android, Blackberry and Windows – all leave users open to exploitation. Specifically, smartphones are almost always “logged in” to accounts, like your Facebook, Email, Bank, or whatever else you have on your phone that can expose personal information and be used to access additional secured areas.

Proper and professional app development can help protect user information, but hackers can also create legitimate-looking apps that secretly steal information.

Even password protected phones, which are only secured by 4 digits, could be manually guessed in a matter of hours (only 9999 possibilities, right?). But approximately 40% of users use one of the same 10 variations (like 1-2-3-4), so it’s more likely that it would take a matter of minutes. Android’s new facial recognition is helpful, except that you also need a 4-digit passcode as a backup in case it doesn’t recognize your makeup.

Or as another example, Facebook recently reported that .06% of its accounts are compromised every day. While .06% in only a tiny fraction, it amounts to 600,000 accounts per day. Or as Sophos.com notes, one account is compromised every 140 milliseconds (by comparison, a blink of the eye takes 300-400 miliseconds).

In other words, it doesn’t take hacking into a bank’s database in order to get your information. As phones, computers, sensors, wallets, cars and homes become more integrated, losing your phone might even mean that someone could steal your car, rob your house, overcharge your credit cards and empty your bank account.