mobile applications - News, Features, and Slideshows

• Energy providers failing to deliver on digital

  Squeezed by falling profits and strong competition, energy providers are struggling to deliver the digital services that consumers want, according to new research.

• Will machine learning become part of our everyday lives?

  Machine learning, schmine learning – it’s just going to be a part of our everyday lives. That’s what Amazon professor of machine learning at University of Washington and Dato founder, Carlos Guestrin, says about this artificial intelligence subfield.

• Mozilla offers app to create Web pages on smartphones

  The Mozilla Foundation wants to make sure that the Web remains a platform where anyone can create content, rather than just a place to consume information and services created by others.

• Microsoft tests app that will read you the news

  Microsoft is quietly testing an app that seems designed for people who feel overwhelmed by the media's endless stream of news stories and who wish they had a helper app that reads them article summaries.

• Updates strengthen ties between Microsoft Outlook and other Office iOS apps

  Microsoft's Office apps for iOS were updated Wednesday to make it easier for people to work with files sent and received using Outlook for iOS.

• How to sort your Facebook feed by time on mobile

  Weddings. Job promotions. News articles. Facebook thinks it knows what the best stories are to drop in your news feed. But some users might want to see things their own way.

• Secure location sharing with smartphone app

  Running late for a meet up with friends or an appointment? Share a location securely and for a limited time period with smartphone application Glympse. It's a free download for Android, iOS, Windows Phone and BlackBerry.

• Control your TV with your smartphone, tablet

  Using your smartphone or tablet to control your Tivo box is easy and offers a lot of flexibility in recording shows and channel surfing.

• 5 things you need to know about Apple's Volume Purchase Program

  Apple hopes to bolster its position in the enterprise mobility management (EMM) market in September with its new iOS 9 software, which packs key features and overdue enhancements for IT administrators. Apple's Volume Purchase Program (VPP), a specialized App Store and service that lets businesses purchase software licenses in bulk and then distribute apps to multiple users, will soon give admins more options to install, update and remove business apps.

• Will hotel room keys and front-desk checkin soon be obsolete?

  After traveling all day, the last thing you want to do is wait in a long line to check into your hotel. And when you finally get to the front desk, it seems like the hotelier has to type a million keystrokes into the computer before finally handing you your room key.

• Two Snapchat features you probably don't know about

  Many social media apps have features that show up when you swipe in different directions, or functionality that isn't visible at first glance. But Snapchat might have ‘em all beat because it has a handful of hidden features and gestures that are only discovered through frequent usage or word of mouth. Frequent users of Snapchat may have noticed several places within the app that display numbers and emoticons, but most people either don't know these features exist or don't know what they mean.

• When it comes to mobile apps, IT is ‘slow, poor and weak'

  When 80 percent of employees say mobile technology is critical for getting their job done, but the same number say they haven't asked their IT department for the apps they need because they don't think they'd get what they need, that's a sure sign of trouble.

• How wearables will shape the future of mobile payments

  Last week, at the Wearable World Congress in San Francisco, executives from Capital One, MasterCard and PayPal participated in an animated discussion about the future of mobile payments and explained why wearable technology is an important part of their companies' game plans.

Whitepapers about mobile applications

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  The Forrester Wave - Mobile Development Platforms: The 12 Providers that matter the most and how they stack up

  The report evaluates mobile development platform (MDP) vendors, the 12 most significant ones were researched, analysed and scored. This report details the findings about how well each vendor fulfils the criteria and where they stand in relation to each other to help application development and delivery (AD&D) professionals select the right partner for their mobile development platform needs.

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  Return on Mobile: Capturing the value beneath the surface

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  Star qualities: What it takes for mobile development projects to succeed

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  Why good apps are not good enough?