TechCrunch
Google Analytics For Android Gets Card-Based UI, New Visualizations And Improved Real-Time Reporting
If it’s a Google product and it’s on mobile, it’s getting a card-based user interface. The latest product to get this treatment is Google Analytics for Android. With today’s update, though, the app isn’t just getting a new look. It’s also getting a slew of new features based on feedback Google received from the 700,000 users who have already downloaded it.
In addition to the card-based UI, Google added a few other design-centric features, including its standard slide-out side navigation bar. This update also introduces new visualizations for your stats that automatically resize to fit your screen size and orientation. On a small screen, Google argues, users can quickly become overwhelmed with too much information, so with this update, all the relevant metrics are now spread out over multiple cards so users can get an overview of what’s happening on their sites and then drill down deeper as needed.
As for features, the app now puts a stronger emphasis on real-time data, a feature Analytics first introduced in 2011 but only really started to emphasize over the last few months. The app now also supports Analytics’ Advanced Segments for isolating and analyzing specific types of traffic (say visitors from users who also recently purchased something from your online store) and presents an overview screen for each one of your Analytics reports that allows you to drill down deeper into your most relevant stats to get a closer look at your data.
The app now also allows users to access both web and app reporting views so, as Google notes, “you can keep track of all of your important data with reports that are optimized for whatever device you’re using, ensuring a beautiful and intuitive experience.”
Google developed the app using the Google Tag Manager for Mobile Apps, which allows developers to make small changes to their installed apps on the fly without having users download a new version of the app. Because of this, the Google App team says, it will be able to quickly add new reports and visualizations to the app without having to update it.
Syncsort Acquires Circle Computer Group As Companies Struggle To Get Data Off Ancient Mainframes
Syncsort is acquiring Circle Computer Group, a software maker that allows organizations to make data securely available for analytics on platforms such as Apache Hadoop. The terms of the deal were not disclosed.
The mainframe is that dinosaur of the prehistoric age of IT. But unlike the pterodactyl, mainframes will continue to have a hulking presence as long as corporations use them to store all their data. Circle Computer Group has developed a process for removing the data from these big-iron infrastructures and into more accessible database environments such as those from IBM.
Syncsort is one of those companies that feeds off these old, closet-sized machines with its technology for making a mainframe’s data accessible. Its competitors are legacy technology companies such as Informatica that made their fortune on extracting data and then processing it for analysis. The company maintains that its differentiation is in analyzing mainframe data using Hadoop, the de facto method in the enterprise for setting up data to be analyzed across distributed infrastructures. Syncsort opens the mainframe environment a bit more for analysis, giving companies greater ability to analyze data that has traditionally been unavailable.
Mainframes will never go away. But in this age of data, these old systems have to be accessed as much as the rest of the corporate infrastructure. To reach that data requires complex data-integration capabilities, a booming market that is emerging as more data is sought to do predictive analytics. Data integration startups include companies such as Mulesoft that are developing new methods for integrating data from on-premise environments and cloud services so it can be analyzed for further use.
With Launch of iOS App, 99dresses Goes Mobile-Only For Dress Swapping Goodness
99dresses, the Y Combinator graduate that gives women the ability to hit “refresh” on their wardrobes as often as they like through clothing swaps, has gone mobile-only with the launch of its new iOS app. The startup has fundamentally reworked the virtual currency system on which its swaps operate, due to the fact that U.S. users didn’t take to it the same way that the startup’s original Australian user base had.
99dresses recreates clothing swap parties in a digital format — the main point is to unload pieces you don’t like any more with the possibility of picking up a cute new piece for free.
When 99dresses launched, it was based on a “button” economy in which users received buttons in exchange for each piece they sold to another user, which could then be used to purchase another item. The site sold additional buttons for $1 a pop, in case someone wanted to go for a bigger buy.
But while that system worked well in 99dresses’ native Australia, it didn’t work so well when operations moved to the U.S., founder Nikki Durkin explained. The startup no longer operates in Australia.
“We wanted something in America that was more about instant gratification,” Durkin said.
The new economics of 99dresses, which launches with the app, means that as soon as you list an item, you receive buttons with which to purchase other points. But Durkin’s team has introduced a new element to keep people in line: karma, which rises when they sell and falls when they buy, all according to how many items they have listed and how many people want them.
Each listed item has a 24 hour hold on it, during which users can toss their name into the ring to claim it, and the person with the most karma receives the prize. Someone who consistently lists less desirable clothing will are lower karma, which may mean she’ll only win on less desirable pieces she bids for. If an individual claims five items and wins the first one, her karma will decrease such that her odds of winning the second decrease.
Durkin said the team spent about five months tweaking this system prior to the app’s release today. Karma, which is now invisible to others, was publicly displayed in a previous iteration, and although the aim was social accountability, it only created a gridlock in transactions.
“In theory it seems like a good idea, but it works too well,” Durkin said. “It would get to the point where they didn’t realize that in order for one person to receive something, one person’s karma is coming up, and it’s coming from the other’s. In order to make anything happen in the system, someone has to be in the negative.”
With the new model, the person who buys pays for shipping, a change from the previous model in which the seller paid it forward by providing shipping. 99dresses adds a 5% charge on top of that. For an item above $100, that still feels like a deal.
Most of the items listed on 99dresses fall in the H&M/Zara/Forever21 price range. Those pieces don’t have great resell value in consignment shops, but paying shipping and a 5% surcharge can be justifiable so long as it’s less than the price of replacing it with a new item.
The tricky thing about building a reselling app around fast fashion prices is that fast fashion is meant to be discarded and replaced as trends change, which is why it is priced so low. Clothing sold at stores like Zara stand a better chance of working on a platform like 99dresses because it hits in the $50-150 range.
The 99dresses team has shifted since it graduated from Y Combinator, as co-founders Peter Delahunty and Dan Walker have left the company. Marcin Popielarz has joined as technology manager.
Durkin said she could not provide numbers on user engagement, since the new system is only launching today. Here’s hoping American users will take to the new platform like they failed to do before.
Dropbox Continues Its One-Click Campaign To Be Your Default Photo Library
If you’ve been watching Dropbox at all over the last couple of years, you’ll be completely unsurprised at a new feature announced today. The apps on Mac have gained the ability to automatically detect, upload and ready shared links to the screenshots you shoot on your computer.
That’s pretty much the main reason apps like Cloud.app even exist, and really throws a wrench into that app’s core feature set. But in reality, this move will be useful to a mere subset of Dropbox users. Automatic screenshot uploading is great for ‘Internet people’. Journalists, heavy Twitter users, app developers, designers and collaborative teams. This is not a tiny subset and I’m certainly very grateful that this feature gives me an alternative to Cloud.app. And I’m sure that sharing snaps of a screen might actually become a more common behavior just because Dropbox has added support for it. If you wanted to be really cynical, you could even say that this was a bit of fan service for journos, who take a lot of screenshots — and will probably write about this feature (hi!).
But the second slice of today’s announcement is the much bigger one, in my opinion. It’s an importer that allows you to upload your entire iPhoto library to Dropbox, organized by event, in one go.
Dropbox has previously announced products that automatically upload images shot on the iPhone, on Android devices and uploaded from cameras on your desktop Macs or Windows machines. This is different because it reaches into your photo past and copies over everything you’ve shot even before Dropbox.
This is where you start to think about the roadmap of Dropbox’ commercial products. If the endgame of this current push is to be the default place where people store photos — and I believe that it is — what does that enable? If you can count on every photo you’ve ever shot and every one you will shoot being uploaded automatically from your smartphone, your digital camera and more, then the answer is: a lot.
First of all you have incredibly powerful system lock-in. Yes, they’re your files and they can do whatever you want to the, including downloading them and placing them in some other cloud repository. But the lock-in is more than just ‘data’. It’s ‘memories’ that Dropbox is ‘keeping safe’. Even if you moved to another platform, why would you feel the urge to move away from Dropbox as your primary repository? If you’re set up with auto-upload on all of your platforms, my gut feeling is that ‘once you’re in you’re in’.
All of this chat makes you think hard about what companies like Apple and Google are doing with photos. Apple enables iCloud to snag first dibs on all of you photos shot on iPhones (which many people are using as their primary cameras). Google does the same with Google+ photos. And Dropbox, the third party, is attempting to undercut both of them with automated tools and at least the appearance of impartiality. Going with Dropbox means that you can swap between iOS and Android at will and still have full cloud access to your photos. Google allows you access to them via its G+ app on iOS, but that’s a relative one-way ticket.
And it also makes one think back to that reported meeting between Steve Jobs and Dropbox partners Arash Ferdowsy and Drew Huston. Jobs told Huston that he had a feature, not a product on his hands, and that he was about to go after their ‘cloud storage’ market. Back then I’m not sure that Dropbox had it in mind to focus on photos in the consumer space — that came after a lot of user behavior examination.
But in the end, it might actually be better that Dropbox exists as a standalone feature, rather than as an interchangeable cog in one of the other major ecosystems. After all, iCloud isn’t exactly reliable and Google has yet to create a relationship with its customers that doesn’t rely on leveraging their data for advertising. A neutral third-party ‘feature’ might actually be the best way to keep your photos safe. Provided it can find a way to stick around, of course.
Image Credit: Frédéric BISSON/ Flickr CC
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