Apps « ACTonline

Archive for the ‘Apps’ Category

ACT Fly-In

Wednesday, May 9th, 2012

The Association for Competitive Technology welcomed forty of our app developer members to Washington, DC to meet with the White House, Congress, and the Federal Trade Commission. Our message is simple. The pace of innovation that is taking place right now in the app economy is remarkable. Washington should avoid taking steps that would unnecessarily hinder the continued growth of our industry.

ACT at the White House

Mobile app developers are part of a brand new marketplace that didn’t even exist four years ago. It is now a $20 billion industry. And the mobile app economy is primarily comprised of small businesses. Even the most successful apps are nimble small companies. The photo app Instagram that was recently acquired by Facebook for $1 billion has only twelve employees.

There are many other Instagrams out there waiting to succeed, but in order for the app economy to continue to grow we need more spectrum to meet the rising demand for mobile connectivity. Additionally, developers need make sure their apps aren’t stolen or copied in foreign app stores. And the big issue that is on everyone’s mind is privacy. We need to make sure we get privacy right so that users are secure in sharing what they are comfortable with in a way that doesn’t undermine the internet economy.

The administration is pursuing a Bill-of-Rights-style approach to privacy. As the association created by developers for developers, ACT ensures that the voices of app makers continue to be a part of this discussion. We are pleased that thirty of our Fly-In members were invited to the White House to meet with the Deputy Chief Technology Officer. In our meeting, he expressed the administration’s commitment to pursue a multistakeholder process to address privacy that requires the participation of the small business app developer community. As the administration tackles the issue of privacy, we pledge to work together to find solutions that protect consumer privacy and allow the app marketplace to grow.

These are issues that the federal government is facing. Having app developers come to Washington to educate lawmakers and regulators about the app industry can help them make the right decisions about our future. Hopefully, an informed Congress will help our developer members continue to flourish.

Posted in Apps, Featured, Tech Regulation | No Comments »

Privacy Boot Camp for Kids App Developers

Tuesday, May 1st, 2012

On Friday we kicked off ACT’s app privacy events with a special Privacy boot camp for kids apps. In cooperation with Moms with Apps and Silicon Valley Apps for Kids, the event was held at the offices of Creativity, Inc., an innovative company that builds the software that goes into toys. During four intense hours of discussion, workshops, and learning, participants learned the basics of privacy law and how to treat the data their apps collect about customers with the highest respect and safety.

We were honored to have California Deputy Attorney General Alexandra Robert Gordon kick off the event. In her opening remarks, she shared how her office had worked with the major app platform providers (Apple, Microsoft, Google, RIM, and HP) to move toward a privacy infrastructure for each store that would ensure every app has a privacy policy for customers to review. This historic agreement helps safeguard the private data of consumers while making life easier for app developers. We are thankful for her efforts and we look forward to continuing to work together in crafting policy that benefits all parties involved.

Privacy attorney Christina Gagnier gave an overview of the current lay of the land and shared how the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act applies to mobile apps. This session sparked many questions from the audience about practical issues. It’s clear that App developers care about privacy and want to make sure their apps are both compliant with all applicable laws and meet the expectations of parents.

Jason Beatty of PrivacyChoice walked us through their Privacy Policy Maker to help app developers build a comprehensive and easy to understand privacy policy . This walk through covered all the decisions and options involved in building a privacy policy, including your app’s use of location awareness, analytics, and ad networks. Jason also shared the world premier of a new feature – the ability to automatically create graphical privacy disclosures based on the work of Mom’s With Apps. The feature is fully integrated in the Policy Maker and help parents quickly understand how an app will work.

ACT’s Morgan Reed shared the tremendous opportunities that become available when you build apps that include privacy by design and Mike Sax of Sax.net shared his personal experiences as an app developer and a number of best practices for building apps that take privacy seriously.

Participants walked away with a clear understanding of the law and a set of tools to implement good privacy practices. Now they can go back to focus on what they do best: building awesome apps that engage and delight their customers. Our next app privacy event will be held in Seattle as part of the Privacy, Identity, and Innovation Conference on May 14, 2012.

To be continued.

Posted in Apps, Privacy, Tech Regulation, Uncategorized | No Comments »

ACT Kicks Off Series of App Developer Privacy Events

Tuesday, April 24th, 2012

This week, ACT kicks off a series of coast privacy education events for app developers. We will feature at a number of privacy conferences and host boot camps to help app makers identify best practices to meet consumers’ privacy expectations.

On Wednesday, ACT chairman and iOS developer, Mike Sax, will speak in Palo Alto at the App Developer Summit on location privacy. The same day in Los Angeles, I will appear at the Digital Kids Conference alongside California Special Assistant Attorney General for Technology, Travis LeBlanc, and FTC Consumer Protection Bureau Counsel, Kenneth Abbe. Having testified before Congress five times over the past year on privacy while engaging the White House and FTC on this issue, ACT is uniquely qualified to inform the app developer community about the government’s intention to regulate this space.

As an association created by app developers for app developers, we travel around the country to share what we have learned about the federal government’s plans to regulate our industry. Importantly, we offer a plan of action in response. Overwhelmingly, app developers want to do the right thing on user privacy, and they are undertaking efforts to improve transparency and inform users about the use of their data. At our privacy boot camp events in Silicon Valley and Seattle, we will work directly with developers to create privacy policies, implement privacy by design, and provide guidance on existing regulations.

We are also bringing app developers from across the country to Washington, DC for over one hundred Congressional meetings to caution lawmakers about the negative impact that hasty regulatory action could have in the app industry. This marketplace is less than four years old and we are still discovering new business models. Attempts to restrict app makers would likely involve unintended consequences that could disrupt the growth of the app ecosystem, one of the fastest growing segments of our economy.

ACT will feature at the following events and will conduct its Washington, DC developer Fly-In May 6-8.

April 25: Digital Kids Conference (Los Angeles)
April 25: Application Developers Summit (Palo Alto)
April 27: Silicon Valley Apps for Kids: Hands On Privacy Workshop (Silicon Valley)
May 15-16: Privacy Identity Innovation Conference (Seattle)

Posted in Apps, Tech Regulation | No Comments »

DOJ Antitrust Action Against Apple to Harm Small Business App Developer Publishers

Wednesday, April 11th, 2012

iBooks

Many of our small business members are concerned by today’s Department of Justice antitrust action against Apple and book publishers for purported e-book price fixing. While it is curious that the government would consider an antitrust case against a competitor with a market share far below dominance, it is also alarming that the actions it takes may have a profoundly negative impact on smaller retailers.

The wrong result from DOJ action could harm small businesses on the iTunes store significantly. The convergence of app makers and publishers at iTunes and the App Store has allowed for the distribution of innovative interactive content that can only succeed when its creators have flexibility in choosing how to bring their works to market. Unfortunately, the Justice Department’s latest step reprises the old story of the small developer/publisher becoming the collateral damage in the battle of the giants. Author Scott Turow hit the nail on the head when he said, “our government may be on the verge of killing real competition in order to save the appearance of competition.”

Posted in Apps, Competition, Tech Regulation, iBooks | No Comments »

Morgan Reed on Kojo Nnamdi Tech Tuesday Show

Tuesday, April 10th, 2012

Morgan at Tech Tuesday Studio

ACT’s Morgan Reed was a guest today on the nationally syndicated public radio program, the Kojo Nnamdi Show. He appeared on the Tech Tuesday show on User Experience and Technology to feature member companies that are innovating in the UX space and to highlight the MoDevUX Conference April 19-21 that ACT is sponsoring.

One ACT member that is doing remarkable things is Interknowlogy which has created a Kinect Touchless Operating Room. The company has built custom controls for Kinect integration, which includes both gesture and voice recognition. Morgan described it during the show.

A doctor can be operating, move his hand up, pull up an image of, say, a sonogram or an image of a MRI, rotate it in space, never touching anything, and then go back to the surgery.

The MoDevUX conference occurring later this month will feature innovative apps like those created by Interknowlogy. Committed to identifying emerging technologies and helping startups grow, ACT is thrilled to sponsor and jointly organize the event. Morgan Reed will be a featured speaker helping developers and designers incorporate privacy protection elements into their mobile apps. Tickets are selling fast. Be sure to get yours before it’s sold out.

Posted in Apps, Entrepreneurship | No Comments »

Mobile Ads and Privacy Policies

Tuesday, April 3rd, 2012

TRUSTe has announced a unified, open solution for mobile advertising privacy management. App developers can use the solution to address the evolving privacy compliance standards, growing consumer privacy concerns, and complicated technology requirements unique to the mobile ecosystem.

The project is currently in beta and is expected to go live in the coming months. We hope that this effort will help to resolve the issues related to the use of UDIDs in apps.

Be sure to check out TRUSTe’s Free Mobile Privacy Policy Service to generate a privacy policy for your app. Not only does having a clear privacy policy increase customer confidence, privacy policies are widely expected to become mandator for all mobile apps in the near future.

Posted in Apps, Privacy | No Comments »

ACT Files Comments for NTIA Multistakeholder Process to Develop Privacy Codes of Conduct

Monday, April 2nd, 2012

ACT filed comments today to offer guidance to the National Telecommunications and Information Administration’s efforts to initiate a multistakeholder process to develop privacy codes of conduct. Initial indications by the agency that it would target apps before addressing industry-wide issues is of great concern to our organization. Targeting technology instead of behavior is the cardinal sin of regulation. The key issue is not apps or the devices that run them, but consumer data. Users are concerned about their personal information and how it is collected, retained, and shared. ACT believes the NTIA should adopt a broad framework that focuses on these key elements. Ultimately, the goal is to ensure that industry practices meet consumer expectation.

The full text of our submission is here.

Posted in Apps, Privacy | No Comments »

ACT Mobile Privacy Panel at SXSW

Monday, March 12th, 2012

ACT’s Jonathan Godfrey is moderating a panel today at the Austin tech convention, South by Southwest. Selected from thousands of applicants, the panel “Can Washington Make Your App Illegal” addresses widespread concern about potential future regulation of the app industry. Godfrey is joined by Mike Sax of Asigo and Ahmed Siddiqui of Go Go Mongo and Startup Week. A number of presentations in Austin have focused on the unintended negative impact that government intervention may have on the app industry.

Pose your questions to the panelists through twitter using the hashtag, #sxillegalapp

Posted in Apps, Tech Regulation | No Comments »

The New iPad’s Pros and Cons for App Developers

Wednesday, March 7th, 2012

App developers are excited about the latest tablet release from Apple. We have created over two hundred thousand apps for the iPad which has proved to be an exceptional tool for entertainment, productivity, personal health, and early education. With 55 million iPads sold, and 25 billion iOS apps downloaded, it is a great platform for developers. Providing over $4 billion in revenues for developers, Apple’s continued development of hardware to support iOS is incredibly valuable to app makers.

Incorporating quad-core video processing combined with LTE connectivity will improve the speed at which users can consume video and other data-intensive content. The improved integration of cloud services makes productivity applications more useful. And the new retina display provides much improved resolution to deliver high definition entertainment and gaming content to consumers.

However, the new iPad’s retina display could pose serious challenges for app developers. To update existing apps for the new iPad, graphics must be upconverted to a much higher resolution. This will result in larger graphic files, nearly doubling the overall size of many apps. Apps over 20MB in size can only be purchased through a WiFi connection, not through 3G or LTE networks. The increased resolution will make it more difficult for developers of feature-rich or graphic-intensive apps to stay under the 20MB threshold. Studies have shown that eliminating consumers’ ability to buy apps over 3G or LTE networks depresses sales by 40%.

This is a problem that finds its root in the scarcity of available spectrum. A shortage of licensed spectrum is leading carriers to impose limits on user access in order to prevent their networks from being overwhelmed. Congress recently approved voluntary auctions to free up a limited amount of spectrum, but demand for wireless data four years from now is expected to be 18 times greater than it is today. We need to free up the huge swaths of spectrum held unused by government agencies and the old, over-the-air television system in order to avoid wireless gridlock. Only government action can ‘shake the tree’ and get this spectrum into the marketplace where it belongs to relieve the congestion.

We hope that the FCC and other agencies take a hard look at where the tablet and smartphone marketplace is heading. They must recognize that innovation, and U.S. leadership in the $68 billion mobile apps economy, will be imperiled by a failure to meet the huge spectrum demand we face.

Posted in Apps, Spectrum | No Comments »

There’s an app developer for that

Saturday, March 3rd, 2012

Apple released figures yesterday touting its impact on the job market. Its study revealed that the tech giant has created 514,000 jobs, over 210,000 of those related directly to Apple’s mobile products. Curiously, Apple chose a late Friday for this release – a time less likely to receive attention outside of trade press since most reporters had already filed their stories for the weekend editions.

Despite Apple’s low-key announcement of this news, it is a very big deal for developers. The growth of the app industry has touched every area of society. Think of any hobby, task, or area of interest. Yes, there is an app for that. Along with it, there’s an app developer who built that app. With passion, some expertise, or an existing business, you can build an app to share your knowledge and experience with thousands of people.

Apple jumpstarted job creation among software developers by creating the mobile app economy. None of this existed four years ago until Apple opened iOS up to developers and created the App Store. More than 600,000 jobs have been created or supplemented by the app marketplace. Today, more than 200,000 people are working to build apps on iOS and many thousands of small business are reaching new customers through innovative apps. The app economy exemplifies the entrepreneurial spirit at its finest.

Here at ACT, as the app developers trade association, we are very proud of the success of our members. We also realize the responsibility we collectively have to be good corporate citizens. We will continue to be a resource for our members to implement best practices in privacy, security, and ethics. We strongly believe that helping app developers do what’s right for their customers is the best way to keep up the enormous momentum of the app economy.

Posted in Apps, Jobs, New Economy Competition | No Comments »