Google gets better at flagging apps trying to fake their way into the Play Store’s top charts

Google on 31st October 2016 announced it’s rolling out a new detection and filtering system on the Play Store to crack down on those developers who use illegitimate means to boost their apps’ rankings in the store’s top charts. This will affect apps that use methods like fraudulent installs, fake reviews, and incentivized ratings, the company noted.

While Google already had the technology it used to detect these sorts of manipulation attempts, the new system is a step forward in terms of its accuracy. When it detects an app that has moved up the charts through ill-gotten means, the system will filter it. In addition, developers who continue to engage in these practices will have their apps taken down from Google Play.

As the company explains, not only do such manipulations violate the Google Play Developer Policy, they also harm the wider community. Other developers whose apps should otherwise be highly ranked would end up lower in the charts, as a result, and users would be pointed to apps in the top charts that didn’t deserve to be there.

Of course, monitoring its app store for fraud and spam isn’t something that’s unique to Google Play. Apple, too, has often faced this problem on its own iTunes App Store, as well. Often, app developers will buy downloads in order to juice their rankings, given how the top charts favor metrics like installs and download velocity combined.

Over the years, we’ve seen everything from automated download bots to spammy app install ads to outright scams to fake ratings and more – all attempts by shady developers to earn a better chart rank than their app naturally deserved.

This same problem affects Google Play, even though app discovery on the Play Store isn’t as driven by the Top Charts, as on iTunes. (Instead, Play Store users are directed first to personalized recommendations based on installs, while Top Charts are tucked away in another tab.)

Google says the new system is rolling out. The company suggests developers who use third-party marketing services to check to make sure they engage in legitimate practices.

Source : https://techcrunch.com/

7 hurdles in IoT mobile app development

For manufacturers interested in developing connected products for the Internet of Things (IoT), mobile app development represents entirely new and unknown territory. And even experienced mobile app developers find that the IoT poses all kinds of new challenges.

Before embarking on any connected-product project, it’s crucial to understand why IoT mobile apps are different, and how that difference will affect your IoT development process. Here are 7 hurdles that threaten to trip up any IoT mobile app development, and how to sidestep them in your projects.

#1: Misunderstanding the fundamental role of mobile apps in IoT products 

Here’s a simple but difficult truth for many manufacturers to accept: To the users of your IoT-connected products, the mobile app is your product. It’s what they interact with to control your connected products, so in their minds it becomes synonymous with the product itself.

This reality demands that manufacturers make a fundamental shift in perspective. You can’t view the mobile app as an add-on or afterthought to your IoT products - something that can be separated out and worked on independently. Instead, you must design connected products with a holistic, integrated approach. This means keeping mobile app considerations in mind from the outset of the design process through the entire lifetime of your IoT products.

#2: Treating mobile devices as a single, cohesive market

Have you thought about the huge variation in mobile device form factors and screen sizes, in both smartphones and tablets? What about the different operating systems and their many versions? How long will you continue to support particular OS versions? And how will your IoT mobile apps support future OS upgrades and new form factors?

Writing mobile apps that can work with all the possible mobile device variables out there requires skilled software developers - either in-house or outsourced. And when the mobile apps are for IoT products, those software developers will also have to consider factors such as wireless networking and cloud support.

#3: Neglecting cloud and connectivity issues

An IoT product does not exist as an isolated, discrete entity. Rather, its identity has three major parts the product itself, the cloud, and the mobile app interconnected by various networking and communications avenues.

For that reason, every IoT mobile app must be built to recognize and play well with all the cloud and connectivity aspects that are an inherent part of your connected products.

#4: Loading too many features onto your mobile app

If you’re like most manufacturers, you are justifiably proud of your products’ many capabilities. After all, you’ve spent considerable time and engineering budget creating features to differentiate your products and set them apart from your competitors’ offerings. Even a product like a connected water heater, not usually associated with an abundance of whiz-bang features, might have a hundred or more properties in its data model.

But in the IoT, the mobile app not the physical product itself becomes the focal point of interaction for users of your products. As a result, you’ll have to rethink how many features you want to include in your IoT mobile app, to avoid forcing users to scroll through multiple menu layers to find what they need. In the case of a connected water heater, end customers might care about only a dozen or so of the more than 100 properties so those are the only features you should include in your IoT mobile app.

#5: Skimping on the user experience

People use mobile devices for more and more activities in their daily lives, and we’re all becoming savvy about what to expect when we use a smartphone or tablet. One of the things we expect is a great user experience.

Mobile app user experience includes everything from the aesthetics of the app its look and feel, its feedback mechanisms, its buttons and other controls -to how intuitive it is to navigate, how quickly users can do what they want to do, and how easy it is to install, register, and update the app. Cutting corners on any aspect of the IoT mobile app user experience will diminish the perceived value of your connected product and of your company’s precious brand. On the other hand, building IoT mobile apps that people really want to use will enhance your offerings in the eyes of your customers.

#6: Overlooking security

It’s obvious that everyone expects that their connected products, IoT mobile apps, and the data moving among products, clouds, and apps will be secure. Providing this security, however, is not at all obvious. In fact, it’s downright difficult.

Security is also a continuous and continuously evolving specialty. It’s not something you “do” once and you’re done. IoT security must encompass everything about the IoT product, IoT cloud, and IoT mobile app, as well as all the interactions and interconnections among them. At the mobile app level, security issues include access control, user authentication, wireless security, setting up and initiating secure sessions, and encryption of both user data and data generated by the connected device.

#7: Forgetting to consider future unknowns

The state of the art of mobile app development continues to expand, and you’ll want to be able to incorporate new features and capabilities that can enhance your connected products and their use. For example, in the future you might want to add things like geofencing or Bluetooth beacons or voice control or touch authentication to your IoT mobile app.

Providing this level of future flexibility begins with a fundamental application development question: Will you build your IoT mobile app using native code or hybrid code? Using native code requires higher-priced developers proficient in more advanced programming languages, but native code can get you to market faster and makes it easier to update your mobile app. Using hybrid code costs less for the initial programming, but every iteration becomes essentially a custom programming effort.

Putting it All Together

Building a great IoT mobile app is neither quick nor easy. But spending time planning the details of your IoT mobile app, and devoting sufficient budget and skilled resources to the process, can help you overcome the hurdles and earn you untold long-term value.


Source : https://appdevelopermagazine.com/

Twitter is predicted to get offers this week; Sales force CEO quite desperate to bag this one

Google, Sales force and even Walt Disney join the competitors to buy Twitter, the micro-blogging website is expected to receive offers this week, press revealed on Wed.

According to Wall Street Publication, Sales force CEO Marc Benioff is “building a case to Sales force.com Inc. traders and others that his organization should be the customer.”

Like LinkedIn which the Reasoning processing organization Sales force wanted to buy but lost to Microsof company, Twitter can bring Sales force key data to create ideas for its corporate clients, the WSJ review included.

The getting Tweets – having difficulties to add new customers amongst delayed growth – may cost over $20 billion dollars. It currently has 313 million monthly active customers.

Salesforce is also allegedly trying to prevent the $26.2 billion dollars Microsoft-LinkedIn deal, disagreeing that Microsoft’s getting the business online community LinkedIn will be anti-competitive.

According to a recent review in pcworld.com, Sales force Primary Legal Official Burke Norton will take the company’s discussion to the Western Union’s anti-trust regulators.

“Microsoft’s suggested getting LinkedIn intends the future of advancement and competitors,” Norton said in a declaration.

Sales force is competing for a public press system in its pet for long.

The organization, “which achieved $6 billion dollars in yearly income quicker than any other business application company”, offers customer support application, researching the market tools, marketing via email systems and other products and several of them already use public press.

Google, on the other hand, has tried public press but unsuccessful (remember Orkut, Google+?).

The organization can use its popular Android operating system smart phone os to enhance Twitter’s mobile app, earlier press reviews included.