10 Best Creative Apps of 2010
2010 has seen some really inspiring creative apps become available and here’s our round-up of some of the best. We’re not including expensive pro software here, just mobile and web apps that are either free or available for pocket money. Have your tried all of these?
iOS: While there was nothing new about adding cool filters to mobile photos in 2010, Instagram and the similar PicPlz did something a little different with the idea by attaching a social network to the concept.
Being able to view, ‘like’ and comment on other users’ photos in a newsfeed format has turned often throwaway mobile photos into a cult obsession for some, especially on Instagram. Matching a great photo with the perfect filter is a fine art. The ‘Popular’ board on Instagram is full of examples of that delicate balance and trying to match their efforts is truly a joy.
We said: “So why is Instagram so popular? I suspect its a combination of the app’s ease of use, simple design, and artsy filters that make crappy iPhone photos look beautiful, mysterious and engaging.”
Buildor
Browser: The idea that a browser could run a Web design application packed with pro-level features would have sounded insane but this year Buildor achieved it with its Buildor Pro app.
Currently in private beta, you’ll need an invite to try this or you can sign up for the waiting list from the website. For Web coders, the app allows you to start a new project from scratch or (most impressively) edit live sites just by pulling up the URL. You’ll need the FTP details for the site if you want to save the results though. For designers meanwhile, Buildor Pro is being pitched as a powerful way of creating HTML mock-ups with full interaction design and font rendering. All of that in a browser – impressive.
We said: “While it remains to be seen whether pro developers will take to browser-based development en masse, there’s a real chance of Buildor disrupting the market if it gains traction.”
Soundcloud
iOS and Android: Instant mobile podcasting apps like Audioboo and Cinch are a useful and fun way of recording interviews, speeches or random thoughts and sharing them online from wherever you are. Soundcloud took things a step further with the launch of its iPhone and Android apps this year.
Not only can you instantly record audio and share it to your social networks immediately, by uploading to Soundcloud you get the benefit of the service’s platform. This means that your mobile audio can instantly be used with the wide range of apps that are built to use the Soundcloud API, which opens up a world of possibilities. This is especially useful for musicians, as the service has primarily been music-focused to date. However, with mobile recording, there’s real potential for it to be adopted by a wider range of users.
We said: “SoundCloud has developed into what is now a highly flexible way of working online with any type of audio.”
Camera+
iOS: As great as the iPhone 4′s camera is, Camera+ does an excellent job of making it even better. Taking good-looking photos is made easier with the app’s stabilizer, timer and burst features and a fantastic array of image editing and effects tools are built right in.
While it may have been unavailable for much of its life (thanks to an Apple-displeasing ‘Easter egg’ feature that allowed you to use the phone’s volume rocker as a zoom control) that only added to the allure of this app which has been reaping healthy financial rewards for its creators since it returned to the App Store earlier this month.
We said: “The favorite camera app of many is back in the app store and ready to rock your photography world again.”
Whiteboard
iOS: Finger-drawing app Whiteboard became a universal iOS app this year, opening it up to use on the iPad and making collaborative drawing even more fun.
Yes, Whiteboard’s greatest appeal is drawing with friends, either via WiFi or by working together on the same screen – something that’s much easier on the large iPad screen. While you’re never going to paint a masterpiece of contemporary art with this app, it’s possible to lose yourself for hours while you scribble away creating cartoon characters or “improving” photos of friends by adding comedy moustaches and the like.
Air Harp
iOS: Plenty of musical instrument apps have been released for the iPad this year, but one that really caught our eye early on was Air Harp. Offering ample on-screen space for the harp’s fifteen strings, for the first time on a mobile device this really felt like a real instrument.
With its slightly melancholy sound, its can feel a little like a lone minstrel on a hillside at sunset while playing Air Harp. Unlike novelty instrument apps, Air Harp feels like something that you can take the time to learn properly before serenading a loved one with your musical skills. Easy-to-read sheet music makes it simple to play well-known tunes even if you’re far from being a virtuoso.
Nanostudio
iOS: Squeezing an entire music production studio into an iPhone app is a huge achievement, and that’s exactly what Blip Interactive has done with Nanostudio.
Unlike many of the apps on the list, it assumes a certain amount of prior knowledge of how music production works if you want to dive right into it. However, even if you’re a rookie you can get a lot out of this app – you’ll be creating fantastic sounding electronic music in no time.
We said: “The level of control on this app is amazing, every imaginable parameter can be easily edited and controlled – you can even easily move sound files from your PC or Mac via a wireless connection.”
Adobe Photoshop Express
iOS and Android: While a mobile photo editor isn’t going to rival a full desktop experience any time soon, Photoshop Express does a brilliant job of covering the basics of tweaking photos on the go, and for free.
Multitouch gestures let you rotate, crop, straighten or flip images and there are controls for adjusting the tint, saturation, contrast among its useful tools. As with many mobile apps on this list, the iPad version offers more space for controlling your edits while on iPhone and Android handsets it’s simply more convenient as that’s where most of the photos you’ll need it for will be created.
We said: “For a free app, it’s great.”
Soundation
Browser: If it looks like there are a lot of audio-related apps, it’s because there’s simply been so much happening in the space this year. Soundation is a cloud-based multitrack recording app and what really makes it stand out is that it offers audio recording right from the browser.
Yes, in addition to importing audio and using the many thousands of loops available within the app, you can plug a microphone right into your computer and sing, play or speak whatever audio you like – another leap forward in what’s possible in the humble Web browser.
SumoPaint
Browser: There are plenty of browser-based image editing tools out there and SumoPaint is up there with the best of them.
Regularly updated with new features, this app is pure pleasure to use and you’ll have to keep reminding yourself that you’re not running a separate app. Layers, blending modes, drop shadows and a wide range of brushes are among the features you might not be used to seeing in browser-based image editors. While professional Photoshop users won’t be ready to switch to the cloud just yet, most beginner and intermediate users will find everything they need here.
Don’t miss our 10 Best Productivity Apps of 2010 and 10 Best Social Mobile Apps of 2010.
(Editor’s note: Serial entrepreneur Steve Blank is the author of Four Steps to the Epiphany. A longer version of this story originally appeared on his blog.)
As we wrap up 2010, things might seem bleak. The common wisdom says that the chickens have all come home to roost from a disastrous series of economic decisions including outsourcing the manufacture of America’s physical goods. The pundits say the American dream is dead and this next decade will see the further decline and fall of the West and in particular of the United States.
Personally, I think there’s a chance that the common wisdom is very, very wrong – and that the second decade of the 21st century may turn out to be the West’s – and in particular the United States’ – finest hour.
I believe that we will look back at this decade as the beginning of an economic revolution as important as the scientific revolution in the 16th century and the industrial revolution in the 18th century. We’re standing at the beginning of the entrepreneurial revolution.
This doesn’t mean just more technology stuff, though we’ll get that. This is a revolution that will permanently reshape business as we know it and, more importantly, change the quality of life across the entire planet for all who come after us.
You see, it’s only in the last few years that we’ve come to appreciate that past startups were constrained by:
- long technology development cycles (how long it takes from idea to product),
- the high cost of getting to first customers (how many dollars to build the product),
- the structure of the venture capital industry (a limited number of VC firms each needing to invest millions per startups),
- the expertise about how to build startups (clustered in specific regions like Silicon Valley, Boston, New York, etc.),
- the failure rate of new ventures (startups had no formal rules and were a hit or miss proposition),
- the slow adoption rate of new technologies by the government and large companies.
What’s happening now is something more profound than a change in technology. What’s happening is that all the things that have been limits to startups and innovation are being removed. At once. Starting now.
Compressing the Product Development Cycle
In the past, the time to build a first product release was measured in months or even years as startups executed the founder’s vision of what customers wanted. This meant building every possible feature the founding team envisioned into a monolithic “release” of the product.
Yet time after time, after the product shipped, startups would find that customers didn’t use or want most of the features. The founders were simply wrong about their assumptions about customer needs. The effort that went into making all those unused features was wasted.
Today startups have begun to build products differently. Instead of building the maximum number of features, they look to deliver a minimum feature set in the shortest period of time. This lets them deliver a first version of the product to customers in a fraction on the time.
For products that are simply “bits” delivered over the web, a first product can be shipped in weeks rather than years.
Startups Built For Thousands Rather than Millions of Dollars
Startups traditionally required millions of dollars of funding just to get their first product to customers. A company developing software would have to buy computers and license software from other companies and hire the staff to run and maintain it. A hardware startup had to spend money building prototypes and equipping a factory to manufacture the product.
Today, open source software has slashed the cost of software development from millions of dollars to thousands. For consumer hardware, no startup has to build their own factory as offshore manufacturers absorb the costs.
The cost of getting the first product out the door for an Internet commerce startup has dropped by a factor of a ten or more in the last decade.
The New Structure of the Venture Capital industry
The plummeting cost of getting a first product to market (particularly for Internet startups) has shaken up the venture capital industry. Venture capital used to be a tight club clustered around formal firms located in Silicon Valley, Boston, and New York. While those firms are still there (and getting larger), the pool of money that invests risk capital in startups has expanded, and a new class of investors has emerged.
New groups of VC’s, super angels, smaller than the traditional multi-hundred million dollar VC fund, can make small investments necessary to get a consumer internet startup launched. These angels make lots of early bets and double-down when early results appear. (And the results do appear years earlier then in a traditional startup.)
In addition to super angels, incubators like Y Combinator, TechStars and the 100+ plus others worldwide like them have begun to formalize seed-investing. They pay expenses in a formal 3-month program while a startup builds something impressive enough to raise money on a larger scale.
Finally, venture capital and angel investing is no longer a U.S. or Euro-centric phenomenon. Risk capital has emerged in China, India and other countries where risk taking, innovation and liquidity is encouraged, on a scale previously only seen in the U.S.
The emergence of incubators and super angels has dramatically expanded the sources of seed capital. The globalization of entrepreneurship means the worldwide pool of potential startups has increased at least ten fold since the turn of this century.
Entrepreneurship as Its Own Management Science
Over the last ten years, entrepreneurs began to understand that startups were not simply smaller versions of large companies. While companies execute business models, startups search for a business model. (Or more accurately, startups are a temporary organization designed to search for a scalable and repeatable business model.)
Instead of adopting the management techniques of large companies, which too often stifle innovation in a young start up, entrepreneurs began to develop their own management tools. U
sing the business model / customer development / agile development solution stack, entrepreneurs first map their assumptions (their business model) and then test these hypotheses with customers outside in the field (customer development) and use an iterative and incremental development methodology (agile development) to build the product.
When founders discover their assumptions are wrong, as they inevitably will, the result isn’t a crisis, it’s a learning event called a pivot — and an opportunity to change the business model.
The result: Startups now have tools that speed up the search for customers, reduce time to market and slash the cost of development.
Consumer Internet Driving Innovation
Today, consumers – specifically consumer Internet companies – drive innovation. When the product and channel are bits, adoption by 10’s and 100’s of millions of users can happen in years versus decades.
The barriers to entrepreneurship are not just being removed, they’re being replaced by innovations that are speeding up each step, some by a factor of ten.
And while innovation is moving at Internet speed, this won’t be limited to just internet commerce startups. It will spread to the enterprise and ultimately every other business segment.
The economic downturn in the United States has had an unexpected consequence for startups – it has created more of them. Young and old, innovators who are unemployed or underemployed now face less risk in starting a company. They have a lot less to lose and a lot more to gain.
If we are at the cusp of a revolution as important as the scientific and industrial revolutions what does it mean? Revolutions are not obvious when they happen.
Yet it’s possible that we’ll look back to this decade as the beginning of our own revolution. We may remember this as the time when scientific discoveries and technological breakthroughs were integrated into the fabric of society faster than they had ever been before. When the speed of how businesses operated changed forever. As the time when we reinvented the American economy and our Gross Domestic Product began to take off and the U.S. and the world reached a level of wealth never seen before.
It may be the dawn of a new era for a new American economy built on entrepreneurship and innovation – one that our children will look back on and marvel that when it was the darkest, we saw the stars.
Next Story: Image Space Media raises extra $1M to turn photos into cold, hard cash Previous Story: The Cartographer app brings gorgeous custom and offline maps to your iPhone
Great <b>news</b>: New Obama chief of staff might be … William Daley <b>...</b>
On the one hand, centrist Democrats are being vilified by left-wing bloggers, pundits and partisan news outlets for not being sufficiently liberal, “true” Democrats. On the other, Republicans are pounding them for their association with ...
John Roberts switches to FOX <b>News</b> | Inside TV | EW.com
John Roberts, the veteran newsman who co-hosted CNN's American Morning for three years, is joining the competition. “We are excited to welcome Jo...
Mike Max's <b>News</b> And Notes « CBS Minnesota – <b>News</b>, Sports, Weather <b>...</b>
In this week's News and Notes, a celebrity spotting at a Timberwolves game and what's ahead for the Vikes during their off season.
robert shumake
Great <b>news</b>: New Obama chief of staff might be … William Daley <b>...</b>
On the one hand, centrist Democrats are being vilified by left-wing bloggers, pundits and partisan news outlets for not being sufficiently liberal, “true” Democrats. On the other, Republicans are pounding them for their association with ...
John Roberts switches to FOX <b>News</b> | Inside TV | EW.com
John Roberts, the veteran newsman who co-hosted CNN's American Morning for three years, is joining the competition. “We are excited to welcome Jo...
Mike Max's <b>News</b> And Notes « CBS Minnesota – <b>News</b>, Sports, Weather <b>...</b>
In this week's News and Notes, a celebrity spotting at a Timberwolves game and what's ahead for the Vikes during their off season.
robert shumake
10 Best Creative Apps of 2010
2010 has seen some really inspiring creative apps become available and here’s our round-up of some of the best. We’re not including expensive pro software here, just mobile and web apps that are either free or available for pocket money. Have your tried all of these?
iOS: While there was nothing new about adding cool filters to mobile photos in 2010, Instagram and the similar PicPlz did something a little different with the idea by attaching a social network to the concept.
Being able to view, ‘like’ and comment on other users’ photos in a newsfeed format has turned often throwaway mobile photos into a cult obsession for some, especially on Instagram. Matching a great photo with the perfect filter is a fine art. The ‘Popular’ board on Instagram is full of examples of that delicate balance and trying to match their efforts is truly a joy.
We said: “So why is Instagram so popular? I suspect its a combination of the app’s ease of use, simple design, and artsy filters that make crappy iPhone photos look beautiful, mysterious and engaging.”
Buildor
Browser: The idea that a browser could run a Web design application packed with pro-level features would have sounded insane but this year Buildor achieved it with its Buildor Pro app.
Currently in private beta, you’ll need an invite to try this or you can sign up for the waiting list from the website. For Web coders, the app allows you to start a new project from scratch or (most impressively) edit live sites just by pulling up the URL. You’ll need the FTP details for the site if you want to save the results though. For designers meanwhile, Buildor Pro is being pitched as a powerful way of creating HTML mock-ups with full interaction design and font rendering. All of that in a browser – impressive.
We said: “While it remains to be seen whether pro developers will take to browser-based development en masse, there’s a real chance of Buildor disrupting the market if it gains traction.”
Soundcloud
iOS and Android: Instant mobile podcasting apps like Audioboo and Cinch are a useful and fun way of recording interviews, speeches or random thoughts and sharing them online from wherever you are. Soundcloud took things a step further with the launch of its iPhone and Android apps this year.
Not only can you instantly record audio and share it to your social networks immediately, by uploading to Soundcloud you get the benefit of the service’s platform. This means that your mobile audio can instantly be used with the wide range of apps that are built to use the Soundcloud API, which opens up a world of possibilities. This is especially useful for musicians, as the service has primarily been music-focused to date. However, with mobile recording, there’s real potential for it to be adopted by a wider range of users.
We said: “SoundCloud has developed into what is now a highly flexible way of working online with any type of audio.”
Camera+
iOS: As great as the iPhone 4′s camera is, Camera+ does an excellent job of making it even better. Taking good-looking photos is made easier with the app’s stabilizer, timer and burst features and a fantastic array of image editing and effects tools are built right in.
While it may have been unavailable for much of its life (thanks to an Apple-displeasing ‘Easter egg’ feature that allowed you to use the phone’s volume rocker as a zoom control) that only added to the allure of this app which has been reaping healthy financial rewards for its creators since it returned to the App Store earlier this month.
We said: “The favorite camera app of many is back in the app store and ready to rock your photography world again.”
Whiteboard
iOS: Finger-drawing app Whiteboard became a universal iOS app this year, opening it up to use on the iPad and making collaborative drawing even more fun.
Yes, Whiteboard’s greatest appeal is drawing with friends, either via WiFi or by working together on the same screen – something that’s much easier on the large iPad screen. While you’re never going to paint a masterpiece of contemporary art with this app, it’s possible to lose yourself for hours while you scribble away creating cartoon characters or “improving” photos of friends by adding comedy moustaches and the like.
Air Harp
iOS: Plenty of musical instrument apps have been released for the iPad this year, but one that really caught our eye early on was Air Harp. Offering ample on-screen space for the harp’s fifteen strings, for the first time on a mobile device this really felt like a real instrument.
With its slightly melancholy sound, its can feel a little like a lone minstrel on a hillside at sunset while playing Air Harp. Unlike novelty instrument apps, Air Harp feels like something that you can take the time to learn properly before serenading a loved one with your musical skills. Easy-to-read sheet music makes it simple to play well-known tunes even if you’re far from being a virtuoso.
Nanostudio
iOS: Squeezing an entire music production studio into an iPhone app is a huge achievement, and that’s exactly what Blip Interactive has done with Nanostudio.
Unlike many of the apps on the list, it assumes a certain amount of prior knowledge of how music production works if you want to dive right into it. However, even if you’re a rookie you can get a lot out of this app – you’ll be creating fantastic sounding electronic music in no time.
We said: “The level of control on this app is amazing, every imaginable parameter can be easily edited and controlled – you can even easily move sound files from your PC or Mac via a wireless connection.”
Adobe Photoshop Express
iOS and Android: While a mobile photo editor isn’t going to rival a full desktop experience any time soon, Photoshop Express does a brilliant job of covering the basics of tweaking photos on the go, and for free.
Multitouch gestures let you rotate, crop, straighten or flip images and there are controls for adjusting the tint, saturation, contrast among its useful tools. As with many mobile apps on this list, the iPad version offers more space for controlling your edits while on iPhone and Android handsets it’s simply more convenient as that’s where most of the photos you’ll need it for will be created.
We said: “For a free app, it’s great.”
Soundation
Browser: If it looks like there are a lot of audio-related apps, it’s because there’s simply been so much happening in the space this year. Soundation is a cloud-based multitrack recording app and what really makes it stand out is that it offers audio recording right from the browser.
Yes, in addition to importing audio and using the many thousands of loops available within the app, you can plug a microphone right into your computer and sing, play or speak whatever audio you like – another leap forward in what’s possible in the humble Web browser.
SumoPaint
Browser: There are plenty of browser-based image editing tools out there and SumoPaint is up there with the best of them.
Regularly updated with new features, this app is pure pleasure to use and you’ll have to keep reminding yourself that you’re not running a separate app. Layers, blending modes, drop shadows and a wide range of brushes are among the features you might not be used to seeing in browser-based image editors. While professional Photoshop users won’t be ready to switch to the cloud just yet, most beginner and intermediate users will find everything they need here.
Don’t miss our 10 Best Productivity Apps of 2010 and 10 Best Social Mobile Apps of 2010.
(Editor’s note: Serial entrepreneur Steve Blank is the author of Four Steps to the Epiphany. A longer version of this story originally appeared on his blog.)
As we wrap up 2010, things might seem bleak. The common wisdom says that the chickens have all come home to roost from a disastrous series of economic decisions including outsourcing the manufacture of America’s physical goods. The pundits say the American dream is dead and this next decade will see the further decline and fall of the West and in particular of the United States.
Personally, I think there’s a chance that the common wisdom is very, very wrong – and that the second decade of the 21st century may turn out to be the West’s – and in particular the United States’ – finest hour.
I believe that we will look back at this decade as the beginning of an economic revolution as important as the scientific revolution in the 16th century and the industrial revolution in the 18th century. We’re standing at the beginning of the entrepreneurial revolution.
This doesn’t mean just more technology stuff, though we’ll get that. This is a revolution that will permanently reshape business as we know it and, more importantly, change the quality of life across the entire planet for all who come after us.
You see, it’s only in the last few years that we’ve come to appreciate that past startups were constrained by:
- long technology development cycles (how long it takes from idea to product),
- the high cost of getting to first customers (how many dollars to build the product),
- the structure of the venture capital industry (a limited number of VC firms each needing to invest millions per startups),
- the expertise about how to build startups (clustered in specific regions like Silicon Valley, Boston, New York, etc.),
- the failure rate of new ventures (startups had no formal rules and were a hit or miss proposition),
- the slow adoption rate of new technologies by the government and large companies.
What’s happening now is something more profound than a change in technology. What’s happening is that all the things that have been limits to startups and innovation are being removed. At once. Starting now.
Compressing the Product Development Cycle
In the past, the time to build a first product release was measured in months or even years as startups executed the founder’s vision of what customers wanted. This meant building every possible feature the founding team envisioned into a monolithic “release” of the product.
Yet time after time, after the product shipped, startups would find that customers didn’t use or want most of the features. The founders were simply wrong about their assumptions about customer needs. The effort that went into making all those unused features was wasted.
Today startups have begun to build products differently. Instead of building the maximum number of features, they look to deliver a minimum feature set in the shortest period of time. This lets them deliver a first version of the product to customers in a fraction on the time.
For products that are simply “bits” delivered over the web, a first product can be shipped in weeks rather than years.
Startups Built For Thousands Rather than Millions of Dollars
Startups traditionally required millions of dollars of funding just to get their first product to customers. A company developing software would have to buy computers and license software from other companies and hire the staff to run and maintain it. A hardware startup had to spend money building prototypes and equipping a factory to manufacture the product.
Today, open source software has slashed the cost of software development from millions of dollars to thousands. For consumer hardware, no startup has to build their own factory as offshore manufacturers absorb the costs.
The cost of getting the first product out the door for an Internet commerce startup has dropped by a factor of a ten or more in the last decade.
The New Structure of the Venture Capital industry
The plummeting cost of getting a first product to market (particularly for Internet startups) has shaken up the venture capital industry. Venture capital used to be a tight club clustered around formal firms located in Silicon Valley, Boston, and New York. While those firms are still there (and getting larger), the pool of money that invests risk capital in startups has expanded, and a new class of investors has emerged.
New groups of VC’s, super angels, smaller than the traditional multi-hundred million dollar VC fund, can make small investments necessary to get a consumer internet startup launched. These angels make lots of early bets and double-down when early results appear. (And the results do appear years earlier then in a traditional startup.)
In addition to super angels, incubators like Y Combinator, TechStars and the 100+ plus others worldwide like them have begun to formalize seed-investing. They pay expenses in a formal 3-month program while a startup builds something impressive enough to raise money on a larger scale.
Finally, venture capital and angel investing is no longer a U.S. or Euro-centric phenomenon. Risk capital has emerged in China, India and other countries where risk taking, innovation and liquidity is encouraged, on a scale previously only seen in the U.S.
The emergence of incubators and super angels has dramatically expanded the sources of seed capital. The globalization of entrepreneurship means the worldwide pool of potential startups has increased at least ten fold since the turn of this century.
Entrepreneurship as Its Own Management Science
Over the last ten years, entrepreneurs began to understand that startups were not simply smaller versions of large companies. While companies execute business models, startups search for a business model. (Or more accurately, startups are a temporary organization designed to search for a scalable and repeatable business model.)
Instead of adopting the management techniques of large companies, which too often stifle innovation in a young start up, entrepreneurs began to develop their own management tools. U
sing the business model / customer development / agile development solution stack, entrepreneurs first map their assumptions (their business model) and then test these hypotheses with customers outside in the field (customer development) and use an iterative and incremental development methodology (agile development) to build the product.
When founders discover their assumptions are wrong, as they inevitably will, the result isn’t a crisis, it’s a learning event called a pivot — and an opportunity to change the business model.
The result: Startups now have tools that speed up the search for customers, reduce time to market and slash the cost of development.
Consumer Internet Driving Innovation
Today, consumers – specifically consumer Internet companies – drive innovation. When the product and channel are bits, adoption by 10’s and 100’s of millions of users can happen in years versus decades.
The barriers to entrepreneurship are not just being removed, they’re being replaced by innovations that are speeding up each step, some by a factor of ten.
And while innovation is moving at Internet speed, this won’t be limited to just internet commerce startups. It will spread to the enterprise and ultimately every other business segment.
The economic downturn in the United States has had an unexpected consequence for startups – it has created more of them. Young and old, innovators who are unemployed or underemployed now face less risk in starting a company. They have a lot less to lose and a lot more to gain.
If we are at the cusp of a revolution as important as the scientific and industrial revolutions what does it mean? Revolutions are not obvious when they happen.
Yet it’s possible that we’ll look back to this decade as the beginning of our own revolution. We may remember this as the time when scientific discoveries and technological breakthroughs were integrated into the fabric of society faster than they had ever been before. When the speed of how businesses operated changed forever. As the time when we reinvented the American economy and our Gross Domestic Product began to take off and the U.S. and the world reached a level of wealth never seen before.
It may be the dawn of a new era for a new American economy built on entrepreneurship and innovation – one that our children will look back on and marvel that when it was the darkest, we saw the stars.
Next Story: Image Space Media raises extra $1M to turn photos into cold, hard cash Previous Story: The Cartographer app brings gorgeous custom and offline maps to your iPhone
robert shumake
Great <b>news</b>: New Obama chief of staff might be … William Daley <b>...</b>
On the one hand, centrist Democrats are being vilified by left-wing bloggers, pundits and partisan news outlets for not being sufficiently liberal, “true” Democrats. On the other, Republicans are pounding them for their association with ...
John Roberts switches to FOX <b>News</b> | Inside TV | EW.com
John Roberts, the veteran newsman who co-hosted CNN's American Morning for three years, is joining the competition. “We are excited to welcome Jo...
Mike Max's <b>News</b> And Notes « CBS Minnesota – <b>News</b>, Sports, Weather <b>...</b>
In this week's News and Notes, a celebrity spotting at a Timberwolves game and what's ahead for the Vikes during their off season.
robert shumake
Great <b>news</b>: New Obama chief of staff might be … William Daley <b>...</b>
On the one hand, centrist Democrats are being vilified by left-wing bloggers, pundits and partisan news outlets for not being sufficiently liberal, “true” Democrats. On the other, Republicans are pounding them for their association with ...
John Roberts switches to FOX <b>News</b> | Inside TV | EW.com
John Roberts, the veteran newsman who co-hosted CNN's American Morning for three years, is joining the competition. “We are excited to welcome Jo...
Mike Max's <b>News</b> And Notes « CBS Minnesota – <b>News</b>, Sports, Weather <b>...</b>
In this week's News and Notes, a celebrity spotting at a Timberwolves game and what's ahead for the Vikes during their off season.
robert shumake
If you are planning creating profit with articles, the the best thing about it is that you do not really need previous qualification or related experience and still you can learn the job as you go. That being said, there are some skills that you will need to teach yourself or pick up along the way to make your sites successful. You can not go in blindfolded, not learning anything, and still expect to make a profit (or any income at all).
Making money with articles can be fairly easy for anyone. If you are a quick learner and great reader, then you can learn everything you need to know right from the Internet without any previous training needed. This is probably the best fact about niche website Internet marketing.
You will have to get to know how to choose and research keywords that can help you get a good amount of traffic, and is not too competitive to get on the first or second page. The problem with choosing highly competitive keywords which are targeted by GURUS and SEO experts, mammoth websites, you do not have a chance to get up to the first two pages you are aiming for.
To achieve good rankings is essential essential in receiving free traffic to your site so that they will be able to click on your promotion links. If you cannot even gain targeted visitors, then will not be able to realize revenue. To set up the search engine optimization of your site so that you will eventually be high enough in the results to get customers, should be priority one.
A keyword is a phrase of word that you have to place d in your article multiple times, not only once or twice in order to get it recognized as a keyword. When a spider finds that you have placed a word several times in your article, it will think that your page can be useful to users who are searching for that particular keyword.
The best way to find keywords for your niche subject is to use a keyword research program and type in the word that is the subject of your niche. The software will a list of keywords or phrases that that will include what your niche is bring up the most popular searches of your niche and will also show you an approximate number how many searches does the keyword get a day. A couple of keyword tools can also tell you how many sites are out there to compete with for each word or phrase (this will help you know if those sites are worth competing with for the number of searches ). You have to decide which keywords can be most profitable, selecting which have the less advertisers as competitors, therefore you have a chance of ranking to the first but at least second page of search engine results, but that also gets a gets searched enough by people looking for that phrase monthly. By now you found the keywords or phrases on which you will write the pages of your niche site on. Good luck and see you with more resources on article marketing and keywords.
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10 Best Creative Apps of 2010
2010 has seen some really inspiring creative apps become available and here’s our round-up of some of the best. We’re not including expensive pro software here, just mobile and web apps that are either free or available for pocket money. Have your tried all of these?
iOS: While there was nothing new about adding cool filters to mobile photos in 2010, Instagram and the similar PicPlz did something a little different with the idea by attaching a social network to the concept.
Being able to view, ‘like’ and comment on other users’ photos in a newsfeed format has turned often throwaway mobile photos into a cult obsession for some, especially on Instagram. Matching a great photo with the perfect filter is a fine art. The ‘Popular’ board on Instagram is full of examples of that delicate balance and trying to match their efforts is truly a joy.
We said: “So why is Instagram so popular? I suspect its a combination of the app’s ease of use, simple design, and artsy filters that make crappy iPhone photos look beautiful, mysterious and engaging.”
Buildor
Browser: The idea that a browser could run a Web design application packed with pro-level features would have sounded insane but this year Buildor achieved it with its Buildor Pro app.
Currently in private beta, you’ll need an invite to try this or you can sign up for the waiting list from the website. For Web coders, the app allows you to start a new project from scratch or (most impressively) edit live sites just by pulling up the URL. You’ll need the FTP details for the site if you want to save the results though. For designers meanwhile, Buildor Pro is being pitched as a powerful way of creating HTML mock-ups with full interaction design and font rendering. All of that in a browser – impressive.
We said: “While it remains to be seen whether pro developers will take to browser-based development en masse, there’s a real chance of Buildor disrupting the market if it gains traction.”
Soundcloud
iOS and Android: Instant mobile podcasting apps like Audioboo and Cinch are a useful and fun way of recording interviews, speeches or random thoughts and sharing them online from wherever you are. Soundcloud took things a step further with the launch of its iPhone and Android apps this year.
Not only can you instantly record audio and share it to your social networks immediately, by uploading to Soundcloud you get the benefit of the service’s platform. This means that your mobile audio can instantly be used with the wide range of apps that are built to use the Soundcloud API, which opens up a world of possibilities. This is especially useful for musicians, as the service has primarily been music-focused to date. However, with mobile recording, there’s real potential for it to be adopted by a wider range of users.
We said: “SoundCloud has developed into what is now a highly flexible way of working online with any type of audio.”
Camera+
iOS: As great as the iPhone 4′s camera is, Camera+ does an excellent job of making it even better. Taking good-looking photos is made easier with the app’s stabilizer, timer and burst features and a fantastic array of image editing and effects tools are built right in.
While it may have been unavailable for much of its life (thanks to an Apple-displeasing ‘Easter egg’ feature that allowed you to use the phone’s volume rocker as a zoom control) that only added to the allure of this app which has been reaping healthy financial rewards for its creators since it returned to the App Store earlier this month.
We said: “The favorite camera app of many is back in the app store and ready to rock your photography world again.”
Whiteboard
iOS: Finger-drawing app Whiteboard became a universal iOS app this year, opening it up to use on the iPad and making collaborative drawing even more fun.
Yes, Whiteboard’s greatest appeal is drawing with friends, either via WiFi or by working together on the same screen – something that’s much easier on the large iPad screen. While you’re never going to paint a masterpiece of contemporary art with this app, it’s possible to lose yourself for hours while you scribble away creating cartoon characters or “improving” photos of friends by adding comedy moustaches and the like.
Air Harp
iOS: Plenty of musical instrument apps have been released for the iPad this year, but one that really caught our eye early on was Air Harp. Offering ample on-screen space for the harp’s fifteen strings, for the first time on a mobile device this really felt like a real instrument.
With its slightly melancholy sound, its can feel a little like a lone minstrel on a hillside at sunset while playing Air Harp. Unlike novelty instrument apps, Air Harp feels like something that you can take the time to learn properly before serenading a loved one with your musical skills. Easy-to-read sheet music makes it simple to play well-known tunes even if you’re far from being a virtuoso.
Nanostudio
iOS: Squeezing an entire music production studio into an iPhone app is a huge achievement, and that’s exactly what Blip Interactive has done with Nanostudio.
Unlike many of the apps on the list, it assumes a certain amount of prior knowledge of how music production works if you want to dive right into it. However, even if you’re a rookie you can get a lot out of this app – you’ll be creating fantastic sounding electronic music in no time.
We said: “The level of control on this app is amazing, every imaginable parameter can be easily edited and controlled – you can even easily move sound files from your PC or Mac via a wireless connection.”
Adobe Photoshop Express
iOS and Android: While a mobile photo editor isn’t going to rival a full desktop experience any time soon, Photoshop Express does a brilliant job of covering the basics of tweaking photos on the go, and for free.
Multitouch gestures let you rotate, crop, straighten or flip images and there are controls for adjusting the tint, saturation, contrast among its useful tools. As with many mobile apps on this list, the iPad version offers more space for controlling your edits while on iPhone and Android handsets it’s simply more convenient as that’s where most of the photos you’ll need it for will be created.
We said: “For a free app, it’s great.”
Soundation
Browser: If it looks like there are a lot of audio-related apps, it’s because there’s simply been so much happening in the space this year. Soundation is a cloud-based multitrack recording app and what really makes it stand out is that it offers audio recording right from the browser.
Yes, in addition to importing audio and using the many thousands of loops available within the app, you can plug a microphone right into your computer and sing, play or speak whatever audio you like – another leap forward in what’s possible in the humble Web browser.
SumoPaint
Browser: There are plenty of browser-based image editing tools out there and SumoPaint is up there with the best of them.
Regularly updated with new features, this app is pure pleasure to use and you’ll have to keep reminding yourself that you’re not running a separate app. Layers, blending modes, drop shadows and a wide range of brushes are among the features you might not be used to seeing in browser-based image editors. While professional Photoshop users won’t be ready to switch to the cloud just yet, most beginner and intermediate users will find everything they need here.
Don’t miss our 10 Best Productivity Apps of 2010 and 10 Best Social Mobile Apps of 2010.
(Editor’s note: Serial entrepreneur Steve Blank is the author of Four Steps to the Epiphany. A longer version of this story originally appeared on his blog.)
As we wrap up 2010, things might seem bleak. The common wisdom says that the chickens have all come home to roost from a disastrous series of economic decisions including outsourcing the manufacture of America’s physical goods. The pundits say the American dream is dead and this next decade will see the further decline and fall of the West and in particular of the United States.
Personally, I think there’s a chance that the common wisdom is very, very wrong – and that the second decade of the 21st century may turn out to be the West’s – and in particular the United States’ – finest hour.
I believe that we will look back at this decade as the beginning of an economic revolution as important as the scientific revolution in the 16th century and the industrial revolution in the 18th century. We’re standing at the beginning of the entrepreneurial revolution.
This doesn’t mean just more technology stuff, though we’ll get that. This is a revolution that will permanently reshape business as we know it and, more importantly, change the quality of life across the entire planet for all who come after us.
You see, it’s only in the last few years that we’ve come to appreciate that past startups were constrained by:
- long technology development cycles (how long it takes from idea to product),
- the high cost of getting to first customers (how many dollars to build the product),
- the structure of the venture capital industry (a limited number of VC firms each needing to invest millions per startups),
- the expertise about how to build startups (clustered in specific regions like Silicon Valley, Boston, New York, etc.),
- the failure rate of new ventures (startups had no formal rules and were a hit or miss proposition),
- the slow adoption rate of new technologies by the government and large companies.
What’s happening now is something more profound than a change in technology. What’s happening is that all the things that have been limits to startups and innovation are being removed. At once. Starting now.
Compressing the Product Development Cycle
In the past, the time to build a first product release was measured in months or even years as startups executed the founder’s vision of what customers wanted. This meant building every possible feature the founding team envisioned into a monolithic “release” of the product.
Yet time after time, after the product shipped, startups would find that customers didn’t use or want most of the features. The founders were simply wrong about their assumptions about customer needs. The effort that went into making all those unused features was wasted.
Today startups have begun to build products differently. Instead of building the maximum number of features, they look to deliver a minimum feature set in the shortest period of time. This lets them deliver a first version of the product to customers in a fraction on the time.
For products that are simply “bits” delivered over the web, a first product can be shipped in weeks rather than years.
Startups Built For Thousands Rather than Millions of Dollars
Startups traditionally required millions of dollars of funding just to get their first product to customers. A company developing software would have to buy computers and license software from other companies and hire the staff to run and maintain it. A hardware startup had to spend money building prototypes and equipping a factory to manufacture the product.
Today, open source software has slashed the cost of software development from millions of dollars to thousands. For consumer hardware, no startup has to build their own factory as offshore manufacturers absorb the costs.
The cost of getting the first product out the door for an Internet commerce startup has dropped by a factor of a ten or more in the last decade.
The New Structure of the Venture Capital industry
The plummeting cost of getting a first product to market (particularly for Internet startups) has shaken up the venture capital industry. Venture capital used to be a tight club clustered around formal firms located in Silicon Valley, Boston, and New York. While those firms are still there (and getting larger), the pool of money that invests risk capital in startups has expanded, and a new class of investors has emerged.
New groups of VC’s, super angels, smaller than the traditional multi-hundred million dollar VC fund, can make small investments necessary to get a consumer internet startup launched. These angels make lots of early bets and double-down when early results appear. (And the results do appear years earlier then in a traditional startup.)
In addition to super angels, incubators like Y Combinator, TechStars and the 100+ plus others worldwide like them have begun to formalize seed-investing. They pay expenses in a formal 3-month program while a startup builds something impressive enough to raise money on a larger scale.
Finally, venture capital and angel investing is no longer a U.S. or Euro-centric phenomenon. Risk capital has emerged in China, India and other countries where risk taking, innovation and liquidity is encouraged, on a scale previously only seen in the U.S.
The emergence of incubators and super angels has dramatically expanded the sources of seed capital. The globalization of entrepreneurship means the worldwide pool of potential startups has increased at least ten fold since the turn of this century.
Entrepreneurship as Its Own Management Science
Over the last ten years, entrepreneurs began to understand that startups were not simply smaller versions of large companies. While companies execute business models, startups search for a business model. (Or more accurately, startups are a temporary organization designed to search for a scalable and repeatable business model.)
Instead of adopting the management techniques of large companies, which too often stifle innovation in a young start up, entrepreneurs began to develop their own management tools. U
sing the business model / customer development / agile development solution stack, entrepreneurs first map their assumptions (their business model) and then test these hypotheses with customers outside in the field (customer development) and use an iterative and incremental development methodology (agile development) to build the product.
When founders discover their assumptions are wrong, as they inevitably will, the result isn’t a crisis, it’s a learning event called a pivot — and an opportunity to change the business model.
The result: Startups now have tools that speed up the search for customers, reduce time to market and slash the cost of development.
Consumer Internet Driving Innovation
Today, consumers – specifically consumer Internet companies – drive innovation. When the product and channel are bits, adoption by 10’s and 100’s of millions of users can happen in years versus decades.
The barriers to entrepreneurship are not just being removed, they’re being replaced by innovations that are speeding up each step, some by a factor of ten.
And while innovation is moving at Internet speed, this won’t be limited to just internet commerce startups. It will spread to the enterprise and ultimately every other business segment.
The economic downturn in the United States has had an unexpected consequence for startups – it has created more of them. Young and old, innovators who are unemployed or underemployed now face less risk in starting a company. They have a lot less to lose and a lot more to gain.
If we are at the cusp of a revolution as important as the scientific and industrial revolutions what does it mean? Revolutions are not obvious when they happen.
Yet it’s possible that we’ll look back to this decade as the beginning of our own revolution. We may remember this as the time when scientific discoveries and technological breakthroughs were integrated into the fabric of society faster than they had ever been before. When the speed of how businesses operated changed forever. As the time when we reinvented the American economy and our Gross Domestic Product began to take off and the U.S. and the world reached a level of wealth never seen before.
It may be the dawn of a new era for a new American economy built on entrepreneurship and innovation – one that our children will look back on and marvel that when it was the darkest, we saw the stars.
Next Story: Image Space Media raises extra $1M to turn photos into cold, hard cash Previous Story: The Cartographer app brings gorgeous custom and offline maps to your iPhone
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robert shumake
robert shumake
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