DSA Online | New Media Updates

Jacquie Anderson (Langley):

Right now I have to admit that my favourite app is Civilization Revolution. There’s a huge problem with it though – it takes forever to play a game and it’s so addictive you don’t want to stop between turns (I may have played 4 hours straight this past weekend)…AND it sucks up battery like no tomorrow. I probably will keep it around as a fav for a little while longer but I will get bored with it soon. I was also super into Zombie Farm because you grew Zombies and got to attack pirates and lawyers which was cool, but I lost interest when the 4.01 upgrade deleted all my save data (it wouldn’t load from my back up). It was just too frustrating to have to earn everything again so I moved on. For a quick fun mindless game, I like Toobz. It reminds me of this game I used to play when I was little and visiting my grandparents – I’d chill on the computer playing Pipes which is virtually the same thing. Maybe it’s nostalgia, maybe it’s that I’m so much better at it then my partner is and I like winning

Also, when the season was going, the CBC Hockey Night in Canada App was my friend. It likely will be again soon. Oh and non-game apps I like Easy Wake up. It’s this really cool (but sadly expensive) app that measures your sleep movement to determine when you should wake up in the morning. You give it a half hour time frame and based on your movement and previous data it’s collected it will determine which is the optimal point in that time frame to wake you without causing a disruption in your rem cycle.

Business-wise, I don’t have a specific app that I’ve downloaded and I love. As silly as it sounds, I really just like the clock app for business. I like that I can check the world clock to see the different time zones which was super convenient when I was trying to book a campaign in Germany. Always wondering the time zones. I guess the Easy Wake up could fit in here because it wakes me up for work Mail and in phone calendar attached to my outlook is very convenient as well.

Shannon Schafer (Victoria):

I’ll admit to being a bit slow to adapt to the world of Apps. The only application that I’ve really embraced for business is the Pointer app. It’s very basic, but very wonderful at the same time. It works as a clicker or pointer when doing presentations.

The majority of the other apps that I have on my phone are from conferences or for my daughter (who is 2). The current favorite is called Lunchbox. It consists of a jumping singing monkey who directs you through a number of learning games such as “which one is the smallest”, “touch the purple fruit” or “put together the puzzle”. Overall it’s not a bad game, and it has some great learning opportunities. Another big hit for her was the Bus app, which essentially sang wheels on the bus over and over again and had various actions for different parts of the song. I didn’t mind that one for the first 30 seconds, but after 5 minutes of it, I had a differing opinion.

I am fairly desperately looking for a recipe collecting/organizing app or website so that I can put all of my recipes in one place and have them easily accessible. I haven’t dedicated a ton of time to this search, but I do hope to find what I’m looking for soon.

Megan McConachie (Langley):

Backgammon is my #1 favourite right now. Maps, iAssociate and PingChat are also great and used a lot.

I have been very fortunate in the past few years with my phone choices (besides some mobile carrier headaches) and have been able to take part in the growing app revolution. The estimation that 2010 would be the year that mobile would become the primary browsing source for most North Americans was not so far fetched as more and more smart phones came to the market. No longer were Blackberries restricted to business professionals and the cost differences between a smart phone and a generic calls-only phone became irrelevant with 3-year contract deals. However, a few reports have stated that while Canadians are stepping up their technology purchases, the reality is that mobile use in Canada is still strongly skewed to primarily voice use.

While Comscore stated that 35% of Canadian mobile users (May 2009) are taking advantage of their phone’s features beyond voice (up from 30% in 2008), 65% of Canadians are still using their phone for voice and text only. More recently, a report from Delvinia Interactive called “Managing the Hype – The Reality of Mobile in Canada” stated that of total minutes of use – 89% of time spent was on voice calls and only 15% of time spent was browsing.

Then, to take the debate a little deeper, companies like Google (who have definitely learned their Netscape history lessons) predict that applications for the mobile are just a fad as web code catches up to allow easy mobile accessibility through browsers. Apps we’re currently depending on will be plugins in the future and will be contained within browsers (such as IE, Firefox, etc) on mobile. However, with all the proprietary fighting going on in mobile land, I don’t think that Google should hold their breaths – especially with their current decision in the land of net-neutrailty. And while the occasional hack gets through Apple’s restrictive browser offering, if you’re on an iPhone – you’re unlikely going to see much of that functionality built into Safari in the future.

These numbers made me a little wiggy as I am such a lite user of voice communication and an app addict. However, since I can rarely use my own habits to represent any demographic population, I decided to poll the DSA Network to ask them what their favourite app or phone use were in the past year. The answers back supported the research and while I am the first to proclaim that mobile is here to stay, it is no small wonder that Canadian advertisers are slow to pick up this emerging media. I’ll be posting the DSA poll results over the next 2 days.

Here are my favourite apps, what are yours?

Gowalla, Foursquare and Groupon for after,
Movies, Urban Spoon have the local answer,
Bump, I-Nigma Reader and Google Maps
These are a few of my favourite apps.

Games looks so groovy on the tiny screen,
Drop7, Sudoku, so good it’s obscene,
Secret of Monkey Island from my past.
Lightsaber Unleashed is a Jedi blast.

I prefer Twittie for my twitter addiction, Reddit‘s mobile app give  daily non-fiction,
Bump makes business cards all paper-waste traps, these are a few of my favourite apps.

When I don’t know, what the song is, I just launch Shazam.
But my all time favourite app is DropBox it’s a productivity grand-slam!

It’s not often that I learn something when I am sick. Usually, I try and recuperate as quickly as possible so I can get back on my feet again. Sometimes, that means depending on sleepy time meds, so it was while I was trying to temp my body to pass out that I noticed the QR code on the back of my NyQuil bottle.

QR codes, or Quick Response, are a multidimensional bar code which looks like a pixelated UPC and has layered data embedded that can be decoded via a program on your mobile. Usually, it’s as easy as taking a photo or scanning the code with a mobile app. Consider tallying your shopping items while you pick things up, only to have your order zapped to the cashier for quicker purchasing (or purchasing via a digital wallet). Scan a QR code in a movie poster and view the trailer on your mobile right away. For more on QR codes, read up on Wikipedia’s QR codes entry or Wired’s QR introduction from back in 2004.

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