By John Moore

Crowdfunding has taken off as a financing vehicle for a variety of projects, from music albums to software. Websites such as Kickstarter and IndieGoGo bring the funding appeal to the Internet public, and they sometimes even offer rewards to people who pledge support.

Crowdfunding may sound like an apps-to-riches story. But executing a crowdfunding campaign isn’t as simple as it may sound. Here, Scott Steinberg, CEO of strategic consulting and product testing firm TechSavvy Global and co-author of The Crowdfunding Bible, explains why.

What do you see as the most dangerous misconceptions regarding crowdfunding?

Scott Steinberg: The most common mistake is that people expect crowdfunding to be very straightforward, very easy and right for any type of project. It takes a tremendous amount of effort to run a campaign --  30 to 45 days is standard. We call it a marathon, not a sprint.

Crowdfunding tends to work best for projects that are easily communicable visually and can be summed up in a sentence. For a crowdfunding campaign to be effective, you need to capture the viewer’s attention very quickly and provide a strong call to action. You need to create a sense of urgency around the campaign and get people to dip into their pockets then and there.

By Tim Kridel

Later this month, five of the world’s largest mobile operators plan to launch a virtual app store that will let their customers buy apps from one another. For developers, one potential benefit is access to each operator’s APIs to enable operator-specific additional features without rewriting big chunks of the app for each operator.

We spoke with Heavy Reading analyst-at-large Caroline Chappell, who recently met with the new app store’s architect, Michel Burger, head of architecture at Vodafone's Technology Strategy and Products Group. Although many of the store’s details are still under wraps -- Vodafone declined our interview request with Burger -- Chappell was able to get an overview of how the store will work and what it could mean for the app marketplace.

 

Augmented reality and mobile apps have met before, but some developers contend that the next encounters will produce an even more sophisticated class of technology.

The field of augmented reality places a digital overlay on the real-world view through a mobile device’s camera. Over the past couple of years, developers have taken advantage of a mobile platform’s camera and GPS to provide apps that help users find particular stores, restaurants or other points of interest. Games such as ARDefender also employ augmented reality.

But app creators have begun to engage more of a mobile device’s sensors -- accelerometers and gyroscopes, for example. Augmented reality apps that use detailed animations are also in the works. The objective: inject augmented reality technology in a wider range of apps to boost the user experience.

By Tim Kridel

Just how quickly can a mobile operating system go from last to first? Between late 2009 and late 2010, Android’s market share grew 615 percent -- enough to leapfrog into first place.

Wireless history is filled with plenty of other examples, good and bad, including the webOS flash in the pan. Fast-changing fates make it challenging for developers to decide which OS to support. The research firm iGR has been tracking the mobile market for a dozen years, and I recently spoke with its vice president of wireless and mobile communications research, Matthew Vartabedian, about what developers need to consider.

Right now, it’s a race between Android and iOS in terms of global market share. Do you see that changing over the next year or two?

Matt Vartabedian: In terms of global market share, I expect Android will go down market into the lowest price points and widen the gap against iOS. Nokia’s already there with Symbian and their S40 devices, and their plan is to convert those users (and new ones) to Windows Phone. The clock’s ticking on that strategy since the other major players are already in place. RIM just launched a new phone in Indonesia targeted at that market.

By Tim Kridel

By next year, annual sales of smartphones that support HTML5 should hit 1 billion worldwide, says the research firm Strategy Analytics. Even today, there’s a healthy installed base of HTML5 phones: at least 336 million, based on 2011 sales.

That market momentum is one reason why HTML5 skills are increasingly important. We recently spoke with Mike Richmond, a technologist in Intel’s Open Source Technology Center who focuses on HTML5, about what to keep in mind when working with the language. [Disclosure: Intel is the sponsor of this content.]

Why should mobile app developers begin mastering HTML5 if they aren’t already proficient? Does HTML5 enable them to develop app features that they otherwise couldn’t, or target certain segments such as browser-based Web apps?

Mike Richmond: Applications developed in HTML5 are easier to move between target environments. And because HTML5 and CSS are so visual, it can be much easier to do user interfaces that are scalable between platforms rather than doing the same UI in native code. Web apps can also be delivered outside of an application store.

By Tim Kridel

One step forward, two steps back. That’s how Don Norman describes today’s gesture-based user interfaces (UIs) for smartphones, tablets and a growing assortment of other devices.

Named one of the world’s 27 most influential designers by Business Week, Norman laments the lack of standards, which have created a world where a finger-swipe on one device often doesn’t have the same effect on another. That inconsistency often makes using gesture-based UIs as much fun as folding a fitted sheet. Norman spoke to me about this and more from South Korea, where he was a distinguished visiting professor in the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology’s Department of Industrial Design.

 

By Tim Kridel

FourBros Studio created a buzz back in April when it blogged about its success with Windows Phone 7. Part of what made the post so interesting was the amount of metrics -- such as ad impressions and revenue -- that FourBros provided to illustrate their accomplishment. I recently spoke with Nathan Furtwangler, FourBros Studio member and developer, about what other developers can learn from their team and how their strategies might be applied to Windows Phone 8.

By John Moore

Mobile apps for tuning a variety of musical instruments are readily available, but a recently demonstrated iPad app expands the musician-helper category beyond those basic tools. The software, dubbed Celeste, helps configure pipe organs and was among the featured apps at the University of Utah’s Mobile Application Demo Day.

Celeste tackles the issue of setting up an organ’s stops, which the organist uses to manage -- allow or block -- the flow of air to certain pipes. Configuring organ stops for a particular piece of music can prove time consuming, but the iPad app lets musicians keep all the organ stop settings they need at the ready. It’s an insurance policy of sorts should someone inadvertently overwrite the preset stops in an organ’s memory bank before a performance. Rob Stefanussen, the University of Utah computer science student and organist who wrote the app, recently spoke about Celeste.