Enflick, the Canadian creator of popular apps like TextNow and PingChat, is taking a big step forward today with the launch of Touch, a new mobile messaging platform to help you keep in touch with your closest friends and family.

Yes, that sounds a bit similar to Path, the year-old mobile social network that recently received a major update. But Touch, available for iOS, Android, and BlackBerry, is more focused on real-time chat rather than posting updates. It’s about active communication with your close friends.

And Touch has one other major advantage over its better-funded competitor: a massive pre-existing user base. The company says it has 21.5 million worldwide users on PingChat and TextNow, and Touch will roll out as an update for 13 million existing PingChat users.

Enflick co-founder and CEO Derek Ting tells us that Touch will completely replace the existing PingChat network — which makes sense, since Touch is an evolved form of that app. Like PingChat, you can have quick text conversations with your friends and share photos, but Touch will also let you easily keep track of all of your friends’ updates in typical social network fashion.

The Touch app looks attractive (though perhaps a bit too similar to Path), and it lets you easily move friends in and out of conversations to make group chats easier. Like all mobile messaging apps, it lets you know if your messages have been delivered and read, as well as when your friends are typing.

Still, Enflick has a long road ahead, as there are plenty of other messaging solutions on the market. And when it comes to keeping in touch with close friends, many are already praising Path’s slick new interface and life-tracking features.

Based in Waterloo, Ontario, Enflick recently raised $1 million in seed funding from Freestyle Capital, the Menlo Ventures Talent fund, and both Justin Bieber and Lady Gaga’s managers (not surprising, given the massive teen demographic for free texting services).

Filed under: mobile, VentureBeat

One of the great parts about mobile devices is having the world’s information at your fingertips, whenever you want it. Some apps give you way too much information, and iTriage for iOS could be one of them, even though it’s useful information. But when it comes to your health, I suppose more information than necessary is better than none at all.

For those of you that aren’t familiar with sites like WebMD, iTriage lets you self-diagnose (at your own risk) what’s wrong with you when you’re not feeling right. You can search the app by symptoms, specific illnesses, or start with a particular part of your body and drill down to a potential problem.

If you’re a hypochondriac, don’t download this app. When tapping around to find out issues related to headaches, one of the suggested causes was a brain tumor…yikes. Although, if used in moderation and with good judgement, iTriage is a helpful and handy app to have, especially if you have kids who complain of stomach aches or other mystery illnesses that only happen during school hours from Monday to Friday.

What’s wrong with me, Doc?
As with any information found on the web, if you’re having serious health issues you should see a doctor immediately and not fiddle around with an app.

However, iTriage has some interesting features that help you diagnose a pesky symptom and get basic suggestions on how to treat it or when to see a doctor.



All joking aside, this app will guide you in the right direction when you’re not feeling so hot. For example, you can find doctors in your area who perform certain types of procedures or treat certain types of illnesses. For example, I was able to find five doctors in the San Francisco area to talk to about my Alopecia (hair loss).

The app also has a huge database of medications, and lists out possible side effects and overdose instructions. In short, iTriage could really help you out in a pinch with a lot of your medical questions.



If you do find a potential illness or medical condition that fits the symptoms you’re having, the app will gently suggest a course of action and lists out hospitals in your area. In some cases, iTriage will tell you how long the wait is at its emergency room, which sure beats calling a hospital if you’re already in the car on your way to the ER.

What iTriage does really well is pull together a lot of information into one place and makes it simple to read and digest. While you can’t rely on an app or website to tell you whether to seek medical attention or not, having this type of information readily available does let you breathe a sigh of relief.

➤ iTriage

Inkling, the San Francisco startup that develops interactive iPad versions of college textbooks, made its first big step in courting the mainstream consumer a few weeks ago when it debuted its version of The Professional Chef, the official textbook of The Culinary Institute of America (CIA) chef school.

Turns out, it’s working out pretty well.

This week, Inkling’s Pro Chef title became the third highest-grossing iPad app on Apple’s App Store, Inkling CEO Matt MacInnis said at the GigaOM RoadMap Conference in San Francisco Thursday. That’s compared to all iPad apps worldwide. It also became the top-grossing iPad app in the App Store’s “lifestyle” category.

As we wrote in the piece about the Pro Chef launch last month, the cookbook represented a bit of an inflection point for Inkling, which had up until then produced more strictly academic titles. Inkling thought that Pro Chef would have a wider appeal, MacInnis told me in a brief interview, but its current performance has certainly surpassed its expectations. This means that there will likely be more crowd-pleasing titles with crossover appeal in the future — and that’s good news for students, as well as the rest of us.

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Sharing things using your mobile phone is nothing new, but apps like Path are putting a new spin on sharing by only allowing you to have a network of fifty people to share photos and videos with.

One app wants to take that number down to two. It is called Cupple, and was built by creative agency Darling Dash for iOS.

Cupple focuses on sharing the most private moments, those being ones between you and your significant other.

Perfect for long distance relationships
If you travel a lot, or have a long distance relationship, Cupple is a pretty handy app. While sending photos back and forth with love notes might be something you use text messaging for, the location features in Cupple allow you to let your loved one know that you’re thinking of them.



While the app only lets you share photos right now, the idea of collecting moments and locations as your relationship with someone grows is a cute idea. I’d like to see a web component at some point, because if you’re lucky enough to have your relationship turn into a marriage, it would be nice to glance back at all of the moments you’ve shared with each other.

I spoke with the Co-Founder & CEO of Darling Dash, Tim Allison, about the originating idea behind Cupple.

TNW: What was lacking with other sharing sites or services, like email, that couples needed?

Tim Allison: I think there is an uncertainty around sharing really personal content on existing social media. It doesn’t feel like the right place for it. Cupple allows the two people in a relationship to have fun sharing photos and building a feed of memories and there is no concern over how that might be viewed by their wider social network. Email and SMS certainly have their place but they have become very functional and often just blur into the daily routine. Cupple is a richer, more connected sharing experience. And of course, completely mobile.

TNW: Why is sharing for couples so important?

Tim Allison: We’re different people when we are with our partners. The intimacy that people share, albeit in-jokes, experiences, places and memories is unique in a relationship. Cupple recognises the bond and the timeline that exists between two people who share a life. Cupple works for teenagers who have just got together just as much as it does for a couple that have been married for 5 years.

TNW: Are you finding that more and more couples share things on the go?

Tim Allison: We have busy lives and we use mobile all day. Whether it’s a simple ‘thinking of you’ share or letting your partner know this restaurant is a ‘place we should go’, Cupple connects people when they are apart and adds a context to the message. I want to be able to share something I’ve seen with my girlfriend when I’m out and about, if I’m traveling with work, having dinner with friends, or I simply see a dress in a window I know she would like. Cupple let’s us share the moments when we are on the go and keeps that memory in a a private place.

TNW: What are your future plans for the app, what will you be adding?

Tim Allison: The plan is to build the best private sharing experience on the planet. We wanted to launch the service with the core features working really well. There are so many ideas we have around the user being able to modify and customize their sharing experience. Of course, shared calendars and ideas around bookmarks and content of interest is on the roadmap. We see Cupple as a platform that is truly scalable. Right now, we’re focused on delivering a great service and paying attention to what our users say about their experience. It’s really just the start of a journey.

If you’re looking for a way to share moments with your loved one while on the road, or from up the street on your way from home, Cupple could be a nice way to text less and share more.

The mobile web version of Nokia Maps now looks and behaves more like a standard native application on Google Android and Apple iOS devices, thanks to HTML5: The navigation service now provides offline downloading of maps. This ability can reduce mobile broadband data charges or allow map usage in areas that have limited or no wireless data service.

Enthusiast site Android Community noted the updates on Monday by way of the HandHeld Blog. In addition to the downloadable maps, the service — found at http://m.maps.nokia.com — also adds public transit directions to supplement the existing walking and driving navigation as well as points of interest (POI) and guides to the local area.

Nokia’s mapping service is arguably one of the best software products to come from the Finland-based handset maker, and this update makes it even better. Why else would Microsoft decide to integrate Nokia Maps in the Windows Phone platform going forward? I used the web version of Nokia Maps earlier on Monday, finding it to be so full-featured that it was almost difficult to believe it to be a web application.

 LoadingNextPreviousPicture 1 of 6 nokia-maps-1-save-local

The offline mapping mode is welcome, especially when many smartphone owners pay for set amounts of wireless data. Google, too, recently introduced downloadable maps, partially for this reason. Nokia’s implementation is somewhat limiting, though, at least in my short tests. The initial geographic area I wanted to map was too large, so Nokia Maps wouldn’t save it. I had to keep zooming and cropping before saving.

The end result was a reasonable size — about 15 square blocks of Philadelphia — and I had to boost the storage limits allocated to the service to get the 19 MB area map downloaded. Nokia calls these “neighborhood maps,” so if you’re planning to visit several areas, each neighborhood will have to be downloaded separately. That differs from Google’s solution, where I was able to grab a map of 10 square miles. Once you have a local map from Nokia stored on the device, you don’t have access to the guides and POIs, but you can zoom in for greater detail, just like Google’s version.

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The moments we have in life are important, and sometimes when we’re using social media tools like Twitter and Facebook, we forget to fully enjoy the moment. Or worse, we totally forget the context of the moment. We’re left with a bunch of photos, videos, and tweets with nothing more than a date and time on them. No notes, no guidance on what was really going on at that very moment.

Nostalgiqa for iOS wants to take your memories as they happen and store each item as a “fragment”, with a parent memory. For example, the “Snoop Dogg Concert” would be a memory and “The Cute Girl” would be a fragment. With Nostalgiqa, you could take a picture of said cute girl and tie it to the parent memory.

After you’ve started your memory, and start to save your fragment, you can record text, a picture, and your emotion at the time of the memory. The text feature is interesting, it’s like keeping a private diary that you can make public if you like, or keep for yourself. All of these extra steps will pay off in the future, as with any service, the more data and information you put in, the more you get back by way of visualization and collection.

This is a really neat concept and the app is drop dead gorgeous. It’s nice to see some visual designs in apps, as some developers are using the basic design kits days, and everything is starting to look like Instagram. Sure, the Nostalgiqa way of adding items takes some extra thought, but the outcome is well worth it in the long run.

Nostalgiqa is 99 cents in the iOS app store, and I think it’s well worth it, especially if you prefer to privately record memories and moments for recollection. Facebook’s timeline is a way to bring up the context of when something happened, but again, the full picture of the experience still isn’t there.

There’s public sharing here as well, letting you take a glimpse into other people’s memories and fragments. This exploration feature is equally gorgeous as the rest of the app. After going through some of the text and photo posts that are shared in public, it feels very reminiscent of LiveJournal’s early days.

It will take a lot for the public sharing aspect of Nostalgiqa to take off, but if enough photo moment collectors enjoy the concept of adding a little more “color” to their memories by way of text, then it could happen.

When developers have the ability to craft applications for multiple platforms with little to no barrier, amazing things can happen. 6Wunderkinder is a prime example of this, as it managed to deliver its popular Wunderlist productivity app to additional platforms in short order thanks to a partnership with Appcelerator. But not every developer has the time (or resources) to forge such a relationship, and thanks to Friday’s release of Nitobi’s PhoneGap 1.0, they don’t have to.

PhoneGap is an HTML5 platform that allows developers to use HTML, CSS and JavaScript to create native mobile applications. Now developers can write their app once and deploy it to six major mobile platforms and app stores, including iOS, Android, BlackBerry, WebOS, Bada and Symbian. With the open source code receiving contributions from a dedicated community of developers, PhoneGap has increased in both stability and durability – which has played a large part in the project averaging approximately 40,000 downloads per month at the time of writing.

While PhoneGap 1.0 was officially released by Nitobi at PhoneGap Day in Portland, Oregon on Friday, the company is based in Vancouver, BC. In fact, The Next Web Canada covered PhoneGap’s initial launch late last year. But the building of PhoneGap has been an effort that goes well beyond the team at Nitobi, a fact that is not lost on company CEO Andre Charland.

“The community built up around PhoneGap is its greatest asset,” says Charland. “The PhoneGap community identifies common pain points and works together to overcome them.”

A team of senior software engineers at IBM have also been involved in the development of PhoneGap, and the assistance has been a major benefit to the community.

According to Nitobi, today’s major release puts the focus on accessing native device APIs, which is new ground for the web. Other improvements include overall API stability and “pluggable” architecture, W3C DAP API compatibility, contacts API and remote debugging tools. Moreover, a new unifying bridge interface was added that makes adding platforms and platform extensions simpler, along with simplification of the plugin development process.

“Most of these new enhancements come from our community,” said Brian LeRoux, Senior Software Engineer at Nitobi and PhoneGap evangelist. “For instance, PhoneGap developers were calling for a consistent way to make plugins that would run on all major smartphone platforms and this release does that.”

To learn more about what PhoneGap has to offer, check out the introductory video below.

With over 600,000 downloads of the PhoneGap code to date and thousands of apps built using PhoneGap available in mobile app stores and directories, the arrival of version 1.0 may just keep those numbers growing – and spur further growth for the company behind the project as well.Image Source

Crittercism, a platform that allows developers to track support issues in their mobile apps, announced today at VentureBeat’s MobileBeat 2011 conference that it is launching to the public with funding from Google Ventures, Kleiner Perkins, and others.

Crittercism’s technology is easily integrated into any mobile app and connects to a cloud-based service for monitoring apps. The company has focused on iOS for some time, and today it also announced that its SDK will also be available for Android apps.

During beta testing, Crittercism saw over 700 developers implement its technology, and it has been installed over 1 million times since it launched on iOS in January, CEO Andrew Levy told VentureBeat in a chat last week.

“Mobile app users had no recourse when an app crashed or misbehaved and were left with no other option than to leave a bad review in the App Store,” Levy said in a press release. “Crittercism gives a voice to an app’s user, keeps them engaged, and provides tools for a developer to diagnose, fix, and communicate the issue back to its users.”

The company is an alum of startup incubator AngelPad, just like task manager startup Astrid, which also announced funding from Google Ventures today. Crittercism says the funding helped it to make the transition to Android.

The company has also received funding from Opus Capital, Shasta Ventures, AOL Ventures, and early Facebook engineer Lucas Nealson.

Filed under: deals, mobile, VentureBeat

Bloom Studio, which was founded by three stewards of data science and visualization, is working on a suite of iOS applications that present social media and streaming data in playful visualizations with personal context.
Bloom, which refers to its applications as “instruments,” is now pushing its first iOS release, Planetary, through the Apple App Store approval process, just as co-founders Ben Cerveny, Tom Carden and Jesper Andersen are closing the company’s seed round of funding.
Planetary turns music data into a solar system-inspired visualization experience. In the app, music is sourced is from the user’s iPod library and reconstructed so artists are seen as stars, albums as planets and tracks as moons. The user can fly between entities to build playlists.
“It’s about seeing your collection in a new way,” says Cerveny, who shares that the application will understand the relationships between songs, genres and artists. Future versions of Planetary will incorporate streaming music services — think Rdio or Spotify — and work the user’s social graph into the galaxy to allow for new music discovery.
Planetary is just one of many little instruments that Bloom is working on. The startup aims to present the user with new ways of understanding, interacting with and acting on data visualizations for many social data streams. They’re all playful and game-like visual search applications, says Cerveny. He hints that a visualization around Netflix is in the works and that the startup will eventually bring these instruments of discovery to the living room.
To finance its endeavors, Bloom has closed a seed round of funding led by Betaworks with participation from Ron Conway’s SV Angel and individual investors. Cerveny says the financing will provide the four-person, San Francisco-based team with enough funds to operate through the year. Bloom is actively considering a follow-on addition to the seed round.
Those anxious for a sneak peek at Bloom’s idea of fluid playful discovery can take a look at demo applications Fizz and Cartagram, which offer up visualizations for Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.
Image courtesy of iStockphoto, scorpion26
More About: betaworks, Bloom, data visualizations, iOS, Seed funding, sv angel
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