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Games Top the Charts in the iPhone and Android App Markets
November 03 2009
While it might be true that the number of Book apps is growing at a faster rate, Games continue to dominate the list of popular U.S. iTunes Apps. Games accounted for about a fifth of all iTunes apps over the past week†, but the category continued to have a disproportionate… read moreTwitter Users Most Followed by the Web 2.0 Summit Crowd
October 28 2009
I took the set of users† who posted tweets containing the hashtag #w2s and determined who those users followed. Unlike the list of the most followed users in all of Twitter, the list isn't dominated by celebrities. (A few coders landed in the top 50.) Regular Radar readers will be… read morePipelining and Real-time Analytics with MapReduce Online
October 20 2009
Most of the news related to the real-time web these days centers around the adoption of decentralized, push-oriented† protocols (pubsubhubbub, rsscloud) designed to reduce latency in web publishing. Less discussed are the analytic tools that can are capable of crunching through data in real-time. As more of the web moves… read moreMechanical Turk app on the iPhone Provides Work for Refugees
October 13 2009
Mechanical Turk service provider CrowdFlower† and microwork non-profit Samasource have teamed up to make their services available to iPhone users. Users of CrowdFlower's mechanical turk platform can now opt to send their tasks to iPhone users. Previously, CrowdFlower users could choose between Amazon mechanical turks or CrowdFlower's stable of turks.… read moreThe iPhone as a Gaming Platform: Share of Top Apps By Category
October 08 2009
As a follow-up to my recent post on the Top Grossing Apps list on iTunes, I examined three lists highlighted in the app store: the Top Paid, Top Free, and Top Grossing Apps. Believing that many users scan these lists, developers covet a spot on any of these Top 100… read moreThe Price of The Top Grossing iTunes Apps
October 06 2009
In response to developer complaints that more expensive apps were getting buried at the bottom of popularity rankings, Apple recently introduced a separate ranking based on revenue. (The Top 100 Paid apps ranks apps are based on number of downloads.) In this post, I'll validate that compared to downloads, the… read moreThere are Over a Million People Actively Using Facebook Right Now
September 24 2009
A little over a week ago Facebook reached a major milestone: 300 million active users. The fastest-growth region continues to be Asia, but growth in other overseas regions such as the Americas and Africa have also been strong. Currently reaching only 1% of potential users in Asia and Africa, Facebook… read moreMobile Banks in the Developing World Prove Simpler is Better
September 17 2009
Recent initiatives designed to make U.S. consumer financial products simpler and intelligible to customers, reminds me of a study we did on Mobile Banks† in the developing world. Designed to work on the simplest mobile devices and originally targeting the unbanked, mobile banks evolved from simple services (transfer of mobile… read moreResetting Expectations: Some Augmented Reality Links
September 09 2009
1. Mobile Devices and AR: Besides employing the location of users (Wikitude), there are generally two ways to overlay data onto the real world: through markers ( (2D) bar codes) or through automatic object/image recognition algorithms ("markerless"). The Economist gives a good overview of the different mobile applications that are… read moreThe Most Popular iTunes Apps Aren't Always The Cheapest
August 27 2009
While the most popular aren't always the cheapest, on average, the Top 10 Paid apps† tend to be cheaper than less popular ones (those ranked 45 to 55 or 91 to 100): The situation varies across categories and in this post I'll briefly examine a few of the larger ones.… read moreCompared to the US, Facebook is Younger in Asia and the Middle East
August 18 2009
Since my last post on the number of active Facebook users, the company once again doubled in Asia, adding more than 14 million active users over the last 12 weeks†. Through the latter part of last week, the company had over 266 million active users. As the company becomes more… read moreBig Data and Real-time Structured Data Analytics
August 13 2009
The emergence of sensors as sources of Big Data hightlights the need for real-time analytic tools. Popular web apps like Twitter, Facebook, and blogs are also faced with having to analyze (mostly unstructured) data in near real-time. But as Truviso founder and UC Berkeley CS Professor Michael Franklin recently noted,… read moreThe iTunes App Store Rolls with the Travel Season
August 10 2009
Sometime last week, the iTunes app store passed 70,000 unique apps (70K apps have appeared in the app store since it launched). One of the fastest-growing categories in the U.S. iTunes app store has been Travel, displacing Education to move into the top 5 largest categories. Welcome to summer vacation!… read moreInfographic of the Day: Who Came to the US in 2008
August 06 2009
From Good magazine's infographics team, a visual summary listing the 20 countries with the most number of immigrants to the U.S. in 2008: (This recent interview lists similar examples from the pages of Good, including graphics that compare (American) museums and major subway systems.)... read moreThe US Online Job Market Improved Slightly in July
August 05 2009
Measured in terms of online job postings, the U.S. job market† improved slightly in July. Here are two views of the number of job postings per day: note the slight uptick in July 2009 in both graphs. The worst year-over-year decline occurred in April, the online job market subsequently shed… read moreRecent Posts | All Posts
