Instagram 3.5 adds the ability to tag other Instagrammers in the photos you take. Unlike Facebook, where photo tagging has been routine for years, Instagram devotees have relied on a bare-bones system of @tags in the comments section below photos to give other users the heads-up that a given image is relevant to them.

I asked an Instagram rep if the new tagging feature is a play for making more money off mobile use — a revenue stream Facebook has square in its crosshairs. The company denies it: "At this time Instagram isn’t focused on monetization. [Instagram] rolled out this new feature because it was a missing piece to let people tell their stories... and to make it easier to add people and things to photos."

According to Instagram's business blog:

Photos of You also gives people a new way to explore photos of your business or brand. People can now add their favorite band to their concert photos from last night, the clothing brand they’re currently wearing or the coffee roaster who brews their morning cup of coffee. As a business or brand, Photos of You gives you a new way to curate and share the photos that best showcase your brand your brand[sic] as documented by your biggest fans.

Instagram's Biggest Update In, Well, As Long As We Can Remember 

Instagram hasn't made many major overhauls to its winning formula since launching in October 2010. Over the course of the last year, the app has trickled in a few new photo filters, a map view and a web interface, but not too much has changed — even after the great Instagram ToS debacle of last December.

Considering the level of loyalty that the company enjoys — particularly when compared to peers like its oft-disdained parent company — not tinkering with its recipe is smart. But, happily, so is this update.

Since version 3.5 was a simultaneous launch across platforms, Android and iPhone users eager to get their tag on can download the new app now. Update 3.5 also boasts improvements to image quality for photos uploaded on Android 4.0 and above (a relief for any Instagrammers who wonder why those Android photos never look quite right). 

Once you've got it downloaded, a pop-up will point to the new section, which lives on the far-right profile button (click the little image that looks like a driver's license).

In the profile view, you'll be greeted with a very Facebook-like silhouette of a person, again on the far right. This "photos of you" section compiles exactly that, though it will remain private until May 16 to give you time to pick your best selfie angles and curate accordingly. 

Why Brands Should Be Taking Notes

While other recent feature tweaks haven't shaken things up too much for Instagram, version 3.5 has all the trappings of a game-changer. Users will be pleased to have photos taken of them heaped into one neat little memory pile, while brands should be thrilled with their higher visibility on the young advertising platform. With photo tagging enabled, Instagram's platform should provide some unique perspectives on brand reach and the demographics of who is engaging and why. 

Plenty of brands have launched heavy-handed hashtag campaigns in an effort to figure out what makes Instagram users — ahem, potential customers — tick. Now, with the tagging feature, Instagram users will have a natural incentive to tag not just the "who", but the "what" and "where," too. Which should, in turn, spur more businesses to rev up their Instagramming.

But just remember, brands: Keep it real. An awkward hashtag is a fate worse than a grainy, Hefe-filtered selfie.

Meet Kira Becker, Emily Moschella, Tara Abrishami and Anna Venetianer. Not one of them is older than 16, but they’re already accomplished programmers. 

The four have spent the past five months developing Navi Car. Since they attend Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, a magnet school that attracts gifted students from all over the Washington, DC, area, their commutes are often lengthy. The girls all have active after-school lives, including tennis, track & field and theater, but it’s not always easy to get where they need to be. 

So the girls decided to solve their commuting problem by building an Android app. Since January, the four friends have spent weekends and afternoons making their app a reality with the help of a free programming tool, MIT App Inventor. 

Building Apps To Solve Problems

Not everyone feels adept enough to build an app to solve his or her problems. But for the next generation of programmers, it’s second nature. 

“Technology is becoming more and more accessible. I definitely think people will be making their own apps in the future for exactly what they need them for,” said Venetianer. 

Encouraged by a teacher, the girls were spurred to enter their app in a programming contest specifically for high school girls, the Technovation Challenge. Under the name Team Round of APPlause, they’ve been selected as one of the top ten global finalists. On Thursday, they visited Twitter HQ in San Francisco to have their app judged. 

Although the very existence of a programming contest just for teenage female participants reveals the severity of the gender gap in computer science, the girls said they never felt like they were doing anything groundbreaking. 

Girls Coding: Not Unusual?

“Being in the community that we are in, everyone is so supportive. there are so many other girls [at Thomas Jefferson] interested in computer science and tech in general,” said Abrishami. “I guess a lot of people are impressed and proud of us, but nobody thinks it's unusual.”

As sophomores in high school, none of the girls have made a decision about whether or not they want to pursue computer science careers. But if app building appears as accessible to others of their generation as it does to them, the future of programming looks very bright.

Perhaps, eventually — but Microsoft is still treating the symptom rather than the disease. The problem is the PC itself, not the operating system that runs it. And that's what Microsoft (and, secondarily, its Wintel partner Intel) really needs to transform.

At this point, it seems clear that the tiled, touch friendly Start screen and the lack of a boot option to the familiar "desktop" interface scared off some people who might otherwise have upgraded to Windows 8. Instead, those PC users stuck with their familiar Windows 7 or Windows XP interface, or powered down their PCs altogether and turned to their phones or tablets.

Wintel Panic

All of which has the onetime Wintel duopoly in a bit of a panic. Microsoft needs an OS that will delight consumers. It's so far failed in that, so it's apparently retrofitting Windows 8 for folks who need more handholding to move to the new OS. Similarly, Microsoft needs a robust apps environment, so it's looking to entice developers to its Windows Store. That's not going so well, either.

Intel, meanwhile, continues to push down the cost of its microprocessors to a point where Windows tablets running on its Core microprocessors can compete with the Android and iOS markets. By the holiday season, Intel executives said, we should see Core-based laptops at between $499 to $599, with new, more powerful Atom options in the $200 price range.

Put those together, and here's what needs to happen.

1. Downplay The Start Screen

If Microsoft brings back the boot-to-desktop option, the company faces an interesting marketing dilemma: Should it still promote the tiled Start screen that turns off at least some of its customers? No. That doesn't mean that Microsoft should change the Windows 8 interface — the Start screen was designed as a tablet interface, and should remain so. But Microsoft should make the Start screen the face of the Surface tablet, and make the Windows desktop the face of its Windows 8 advertising for PCs.

2. Gently Push New Users To The Desktop 

Clearly, a portion of Microsoft's customer base has been traumatized by its initial reaction to Windows 8. There's a real risk that these users may never return to the Windows fold.

But gently managing a boot-to-desktop option may mitigate some of that. Boot-to-desktop should be presented as one of the first options in the Windows installation, perhaps accompanied by something like this: "Would you like Windows 8 to boot to the Windows Desktop? The Windows desktop provides a familiar environment for users of Windows XP and Windows 7."

From there, let them explore and do as they wish. If the Start Screen is as compelling as Microsoft seems to think, at least some users will eventually move over of their own volition.

3. Solve The Blah Windows Apps Problem

One of the bigger problems with the Start screen that Microsoft so far hasn't been able to address is that most of the applications featured there are basically uninspiring (Fresh Paint excluded). With Windows XP and Windows 7, those applications were tucked away behind the Start button, where users were free to ignore them. With the Windows 8 Start screen, they're out there for the world to see and grow disillusioned with. And it's not immediately clear how booting to the desktop's empty expanse will be much of an improvement.

But by making the Windows 8 Desktop the focus, Microsoft's advertising, at least, can encompass the broad expanse of Windows apps out there. Mix and match! Steal a page from Apple. Highlight the flashiest apps, whether they be from the Windows 8 world or even from Windows 7. Legacy OS support is a feature, too. And free advertising for Adobe, EA, or some other developer can only engender goodwill.

4. Make Windows Shine On Tablets — Cheaply

Microsoft also desperately needs a successful mobile strategy. And the only real way to to do that is to offer more for less.

In other words, if Microsoft wants to leverage Windows in the mobile space, it needs to really leverage Windows. The Windows RT version of Surface failed in part because it was a crippled version of Windows 8; it's time to retire it. The Surface with Windows Pro, by contrast, could be a hit if its price falls far enough. And if Microsoft pushes hard to convince buyers that they can accomplish a whole lot more with a full-fledged Windows tablet than they can with competing products.

Microsoft needs to show that a Windows tablet — derivative of the Surface, or one based on the new quad-core "Bay Trail" chips — can offer desktop PC-class performance at tablet prices. We know tablets are mobile. Microsoft Stores need to feature a Windows tablet or convertible running the flashiest piece of software it can, on a conventional desktop monitor, with the price tag prominently displayed. The message: all this for $299??!! Why would I ever want an Android tablet?

5. Find A Mobile Apps Tiger Team

Tucking your Android or iOS phone in your pocket is an unconscious decision. And as more game developers choosing to write for iOS and Android, fewer are around to focus on Windows. There's another key advantage for iOS and Android, too: chances are that you can play the same game on your iPad and iPhone, or your Android phone and tablet. You can't often say the same for Windows Phone and Surface.

If users can't share apps, files, and other documents between the PC, notebook, tablet and phone, they're going to start looking elsewhere. Microsoft's realized this with its core apps, including Office and the Xbox. Netflix traverses the range of Microsoft's platforms, but that's about it.

There is no easy fix here. If Microsoft can't develop the apps it needs itself, it's going to have to go out and buy them. This is the Nintendo problem, writ large. Without AAA third-party software, Microsoft will have to go it alone. 

Delaying The Inevitable

IDC's right; the PC is dying. It's inevitable, and Microsoft is merely rearranging desk chairs on the Titanic. But in this case, there's a chance the ship could make harbor before it sinks.

Notebooks will eventually give way to tablets, whether or not they have a keyboard attached to them. Microsoft won the desktop, and it won the notebook. Now it needs to win tablets. If it shows weakness now, it will be buried. 

Can Microsoft throw enough money at these problems to fix them? It may have to. It can patch Windows 8, and Intel can help keep prices falling. But the apps and mobile problems require more extensive surgery, and the time to act is now.

Image Source: Flickr/yoshimov

Why is it so easy to tell thousands of people, literally, how awful a coffee shop's service is, for example, but I can't as easily steer people away from a store whose values I deplore? 

It seems to me there should be an app - or maybe lots of apps - that make it easy for me to find, check-in, rate, review and recommend those businesses whose values align with mine. Forget pet friendly - are they gay friendly, Earth friendly? Do they seek a massive reduction in the size of government, do they refuse to buy from China, will they never cross a union picket line and can I count on them to support a strong national defense?

With the Yelp app, for example, I can easily set various parameters for a restaurant search: proximity, price range, type of food and customer ranking. But values is not one of the choices. This seems like a rather significant gap within the mobile-social-local nexus. 

Values Equal Profits

There does not yet exist a robust analog for finding and supporting businesses I want to promote because of their values, and not simply their price, location or customer service. Why is that? In today's connected world - when anyone can get anything from anywhere, and always at the best price - values can become a core differentiator.

I don't want my money going to a business that is opposed to gay marriage. Perhaps that's exactly what you do want. Why not incorporate a "values" layer into Foursquare, for example and discover and share those businesses that have the very best lattes - and the strongest support for the values most important to me.

Foursquare users, for example, can "discover and learn about great places nearby, search for what you’re craving, and get deals and tips along the way." The app's 30 million users have checked in to various establishments more than 3 billion times. Consider the potential social good Foursquare could foster if values were made into a searchable variable. 

The Trust Issue

Can people be trusted to not list a business as, say, homophobic, just because they were angry over the price or a long line to check out? Is it possible to know if a business legitimately supports climate-change improvements, for example, or is really working to limit poverty? It may be hard for a business to lie about its prices but all too easy to claim social and political stances that it doesn't back up with actions.

Fortunately, with more than a hundred million smartphones in use in America - more than 1 billion worldwide - the aggregate numbers and big data "smoothing" of billions of values-based check-ins and reviews should mitigate any lies or mistakes. For example, Amazon product reviews can generally be relied upon as a valid barometer of popular sentiment, even though they're completely subjective.

A few websites already provide a limited form of "values-based" recommendations for businesses. For example, OutGrade, launched earlier this year, lets users "rate places by gay friendliness or homophobia." Users rate establishments on a scale from -5 to +5, and the site color codes businesses based on their overall score: red is homophobic, green is " gay friendly." The OutGrade site accepts ratings for any business: restaurant, dentist office, pub, hotel, etc. and in three months has garnered reviews on more than 3,500 businesses. 

OutGrade plans to release a mobile app "in the coming weeks." This is vital as it allows users to simply pull out their smartphones and find acceptable places in their immediate vicinity. While a website may offer a more robust experience, only an app can provide real-time location-based ratings and reviews, while boosting the reliability of recommendations by letting users initiate reviews on the spot.

One More Step

Why not an app that alerts me to a store's values as I walk inside? Or that alerts me to a product whose maker I want to support? For example, when I stare at that massive beer selection in the grocery store, perhaps my "values app" can remind me that Bud Light used social media to support gay marriage.

Plenty of apps and sites focus on a specific value or set of values, or utilize a top-down approach, where those who create the app set the rankings. This is a good start, but does not fully empower smartphone user to personally rate businesses by the values that matter to them. 

For example, the Good Guide site rates an array of products that are "healthy, green and socially responsible." While useful, the information covers only selected products and is rated by a "team of scientific and technology experts," not actual users.

The FishPhone app offers a similar service and provides the seafood ratings system for Whole Foods. Of course, Whole Foods' CEO was famously opposed to Obamacare. The app would never tell me that. 

This is a critical problem with single-focus and those not maintained not by the end users. For example, Ceres, "a network of over 130 investment funds, environmental organizations, unions and interest groups" promotes major companies that are making significant progress on sustainability goals. Ford was a recent winner. That's great, unless you believe that a large automobile manufacturer should never be included on a list of sustainability leaders.

Getting Comfortable With Controversial Topics

The issue preventing a user-driven values based shopping app is not a technical one. The larger issue is that too many of us are not yet comfortable with the very idea of values-based recommendations.

When it comes to choosing goods and services, we have spent our whole lives focused on price, quality and convenience. Values are fuzzy, harder to quantify - and can lead to difficult decisions. What if your friendly, neighborhood grocer, for example, turns out be a climate change denier - and you live in area prone to flooding? Once you learn the values of a business and determine you are in opposition, would you continue to shop there? Will supporting only businesses whose values align with yours merely serve to divide society instead of promoting the values in question?

The technology to make this possible already exists, so it's likely we'll have the answers soon enough.

iPhone image courtesy of Apple.

Between last September and March, security vendor Bitdefender analyzed 130,000 popular Android apps on Google Play and found that roughly 13% collected your phone number without explicit notification, 12% stored your location data and 8% sucked up your email address. Included in those numbers are apps that siphoned off one or more of the three.

Many apps don't stop there. Other data they glom onto includes your browsing activity, your contact list, the unique identification number of your device and even your call registry.

These apps took all that information legally. Android apps display their privacy policies in seeking permission to gather personal data, and many developers bank on the fact that most people will just click through to the app.

(See also: Hey! iOS Apps Play Faster And Looser With Your Data Than Android)

All that data gathering typically starts when an app developer download an ad framework provided by more than 400 companies listed on the Ad Network Directory. Such frameworks makes it easy for developers to display ads in the app, and thus to get paid every time someone clicks on them.

Since free apps only make money for developers from such clicks (and, it turns out, the distribution of associated user data), very few pay attention to exactly what kind of information ad frameworks are gathering.

"Because they copy-paste the code, they don't really debug it; they don't really look through it and see what data it collects," Bitdefender researcher Liviu Arsene told me. "I bet they don't even care."

And It Doesn't Stop There

App privacy policies often stake out even more aggressive data-collection goals, presumably to pave the way for future updates to vacuum up more info and further erode user privacy.

Take, for instance, Airpush, the second-largest ad network for Android developers with 40,000 apps. Its privacy policy reads, in part:

[I]n accordance with the permissions you have granted, we may collect your device ID, device make and model, device IP address, mobile web browser type and version, mobile carrier, real-time location information, email address, phone number and a list of the mobile applications on your device.

The policy goes on to explain that Airpush might supply that information to third-party advertisers who are part of its ad platform and third-party vendors, consultants and other service providers. Because the data is available to so many organizations, it's virtually impossible to know who is using your personal data, and how, once it leaves the device.

Obviously, the possibilities for abuse here are legion. Suppose one of those third-party organizations is acquired by an outfit that is, shall we say, less reputable. Or that a third party company's computers are hacked, spilling your data into the hands of cybercriminals.

The Feds Agree: It's A Huge Problem

Federal regulators acknowledge that a huge problem exists. "Mobile technology provides unique privacy challenges," Jon Leibowitz, departing chairman of the Federal Trade Commission, said in February, as reported by The Wall Street Journal. "Some would say it's a sort of Wild West."

The FTC wants the mobile industry to bolster privacy controls by allowing phone users to opt out of being tracked by ad networks. The commission also wants apps to prominently display the kind of data they're collecting, rather than burying it in fine print. Congress is also considering proposals to tighten privacy protections on mobile devices, though it's hard to say how such measures will fare given firm opposition from industry.

In the meantime, here's some free (!!) advice: Scrutinize your free mobile apps as if they're malware ready to wreak havoc on your personal information.

We're not going to build a phone.

Later this week, he is expected to announce a Facebook Phone.

But the rumored announcement of a Facebook Phone isn't just a repudiation of that plan, it's also another step on Zuckerberg's slow journey torward accepting the superiority of so-called "native apps" over the Mobile Web running on HTML5. 

For years, Zuckerberg has championed the Mobile Web's ability to deliver a consistent user experience across multiple devices with a single development effort. But last summer Zuckerberg admitted defeat and publicly changed course on HTML5. As ReadWrite noted at the time:

Facebook released a completely rebuilt version of its iOS app for iPhone and iPad today, changing a fundamental aspect of the company's mobile strategy. Gone is the Web-centric, HTML5 approach. In its place, Facebook has rebuilt the iOS app using Apple’s native framework. The result? A more streamlined, faster app for the iPhone and iPad.

And, in fact, the iOS native Facebook app has proven faster, smoother and quicker to load versus its Mobile Web counterpart.

Native Apps Heavily Preferred

Facebook seems to have learned its lesson, but what about the rest of the mobile industry? A new survey by Compuware APM confirms that users greatly prefer native apps to the mobile web. (Compuware APM summarizes the survey in this press release. The full survey is available here, though it requires fairly extensive registration.) For example, the survey's key takeaway:

85% of mobile device users prefer apps over mobile websites. 

The primary reasons users prefer native apps over mobile websites are:

1. Apps are considered more convenient
2. Apps are faster
3. Apps are "easier to browse"

Nonetheless, a slight majority (56%) said they have experienced issues recently with apps. App crashes and app launch problems were by far the biggest problems.

Ironically, the preference for apps over the Mobile Web places additional pressure on developers. It turns out that users demand more from a mobile app than they do from a mobile website. For example, 4 out of 5 app users expect an app to launch in three seconds or less. Other preferences include

The App Revolution

The scope of the "app revolution" is astounding. As Compuware notes, more than 30 billion iOS apps and 15 billion Android apps have been downloaded so far - and the total is now growing by more than 1 billion every month.

In the U.S., the average number of apps per smartphone user is 41. This is a 28% increase over the average from a year ago. Despite this increase, however, total time spent by users with apps has remained relatively flat: 39 minutes per day versus 37 minutes per day in 2011.

As most people know Apple's App Store and Google Play far outstrip competing platforms in the number of apps available. 

Facebook will reveal this Thursday exactly what its "new home on Android" really means. If the company wants anyone to actually live in that new home, though, it had better be fully optimized for the Android platform. Smartphone users can be an unforgiving lot.

(NOTE: According to Compuware, the survey involved 3,535 smartphone and tablet users (1,002 in the U.S., 509 in the U.K., 509 in France, 508 in Germany, 502 in India and 504 in Japan) over the past six months. The company claims it is a statistically projectable survey with a margin of error of +/- 1.6%.)

Facebook photo courtesy of Shutterstock. 

With Keep you can quickly jot ideas down when you think of them and even include checklists and photos to keep track of what’s important to you. Your notes are safely stored in Google Drive and synced to all your devices so you can always have them at hand. 

(See also: Google Wants To Drive Your Collaborative Apps Home - And Into Its Fold) 

Like Evernote, Keep presents notes in either a list view or a grid view, and syncs them to the cloud. They're then accessible over the Web and via an app. The Google Keep app, however, is currently available on Android only. Evernote is available on iOS, Android, Mac, the Web and other platforms.

With the app, users can add notes via text, speech, in list form, and via the smartphone's camera. The app also supports a screen widget (for Android 4.2+) so users can add notes without unlocking their device (see image below supplied by Google): 

Notes are synced and stored in the user's Google Drive. Google has said that users can now access, edit and create notes on the Web, although at press time, the web service repeatedly failed. According to today's announcement, "in the coming weeks" users will also be able to access and create their notes directly from within Google Drive. 

Google Keep is obviously similar to Evernote, the popular note-taking app. It will be interesting to monitor the popularity of the Google Keep service as it launches only days after Google killed its popular Google Reader service.

Will users trust Google to manage their notes and thoughts for as long as they want them? Danny Sullivan, writing at Marketing Land, suggests that Google Keep is more a threat to Apple than Evernote:

One thing the service does is immediately help bring Android up to the useful functionality that Apple offers with its own Notes service. With Apple, Notes work across iOS devices, as well as Macs and are available on the web. Android has lacked such a native feature, until now. 

Lead image screencapped from Google Keep video

Creating a mobile strategy is a matter of both knowing your business and knowing your app options:

• If you're a Main Street shop like a restaurant, dry cleaner or hardware store, you don't really need an app in Apple’s App Store or Google Play. It's a waste of your time and money, and the mobile Web will work just fine.
• If you're a big brand with many different locations, a marketing and advertising team and a high degree of social engagement, an app might the way to go. Depending on your priorities and scale, sometimes both approaches can work.
• If you're a local business looking for sales lead generation, an app is not for you. You want to have your mobile presence easily found by Google’s search engine, access to Yelp and other directories, maps through the browser and so on. The goal is to make it easy for the customer to find you.
• If you're a national chain, you are going to want the same presence as a local business, just with more panache. You might want an app or mobile Website that gives customers directions to your closest, current prices and offer special deals. You might also consider marketing apps like games or contests; they might be tangentially tied to your business, but if they strike sparks with consumers, you've potentially made some inroads for your brand.

To help you make a decision on a mobile strategy, the folks at Mutual Mobile whipped up this fun “decision tree” to help you get from Point A to Point B. Note that Mutual Mobile is a development shop that specializes in the mobile Web and responsive design, so the tree does push in that direction. 

Check out the infographic below and let us know in the comments: What do you want to do with your mobile presence? How do you plan to get started?

About the size of a quarter, the Linquet Mini can be tagged to basically anything. It keeps tabs of items through a free app that uploads information to the cloud. Consumers can link multiple items to the app and set different items to a variety of profiles. For instance, if you want to link your dog, you could tag its collar with a Linquet Mini and set the range for “far.” If you are walking down the streets of Manhattan with your child, you might want to tag the kid as “near.” Each profile can be adjusted with different notification sounds. If you press a button from the app, the Linquet will make a sound to help you find what you are looking for.

The whereabouts of your items are uploaded to the cloud from the dongle. Linquet sells the cloud service for $29.99 a year while the dongle itself is free. The company calls this pricing model “hardware as a service.” The Linquet Mini is currently in a crowd-funding period with the goal of raising $75,000 to be able to ship the Minis by May 2013. 

Of course, Linquet is not the only company to provide tracking service. LoJack is perhaps the original popular commercial tracking device, tracking lost and stolen vehicles since 1986. The company’s name has become synonymous with placing a tracking device on an item. LoJack also now makes laptop tracking software and hardware. A variety of software apps exist to find lost smartphones and tablets, such as Lookout’s Android and iOS apps or Apple’s “Find My iPhone” feature through iCloud. 

For readers that want to reserve a Linquet Mini and a year of cloud service, visit the company’s website and use the code “linqrw” to reserve a dongle for $25. 

Lead image courtesy Shutterstock.

If you think there are too few apps in the Office App Store, a Microsoft executive begs to differ. And as Microsoft moves closer to Office 2013's business launch on Feb. 27, the company expects more apps to be added both by the company itself as well as third-party developers.

Following the consumer launch of Office 2013 in January, the App Store's cupboard might have been considered somewhat bare. In total, there are about 200 apps within the Office Store, according to Richard Riley, a director at Microsoft, whose responsibilities include both SharePoint as well as the Office App Store.

Riley won't commit to a number of apps that would be added to the Office App Store, but he promises that there will be "much more than the 200" that are there now. "In terms of momentum and as we go through, I think in the next six months or so we'll see that momentum pick up and carry forward," Riley says. "I don't feel bad where we are. I really don't."

(See also Microsoft: Buy Office 365, Not Office 2012. Or You'll Get Left Behind)

Last July, Microsoft outlined the development model for Office 2013, the current version of Office  - a subscription version, known as Office 365, is also available. Both Office 2013 and Office 365 replaced the familiar Microsoft Basic for Applications with a Web-based language model that essentially takes an XML file and combines it with a Web app, using familiar Web languages like CSS, HTM, and JavaScript. Since the app runs outside of Office, if it breaks, only it crashes - not Office.

While the reliance on Web languages might have made a bit difficult for traditional Office developers, the approach theoretically opened up Office to a vast number of Web developers who may have never developed for Office before.

Microsoft's Attempts To Jumpstart Office App Development

"Historically, if you wanted to build something for Office, like if you wanted to build an an add-in for Word, you would have to have all of the Visual Studio add-ins for that have to understand C++, have to understand .NET wrapper code - there was a learning curve there," Riley says. "Like most developers these days, if it was different; you had to go spend time and figure out how to use it. That barrier no longer exists. If you understand how to write for the cloud app model, if you understand how to write Javascript and HTML, you understand REST, you can pretty much get started immediately without having to go wade through a big reference book and how to get going." 

Riley says Microsoft has been bringing existing Office developers, as well as developers new to the platform, into "jumpstart events," where the company puts dives deep into the technology. Afterward, the developers go away, develop, and then return for an "acceleration day," where those developers receive assistance to push those apps into the store.

"We can now credibly talk to a ton of new developers that historically would have ignored us," Riley says. "And actually go to them with a very credible technology story, but also a really significant market opportunity... when you look at all of the Office and SharePoint licenses in existence today, there is an opportunity for a developer to make a difference, to make a ton of money off of the back of the Office or Sharepoint store."

Riley said that he considers Microsoft to essentially be in the middle of the Office launch, where the consumer edition was released first and then businesses will be encouraged to sign on at the end of the month. "We haven't finished launching from an app perspective," he says.

It might be reasonable to think that Microsoft would have launched the App Store with a number of launch partners, big-name software developers whose products would instantly have added cachet to Microsoft's rollout. Riley doesn't agree. 

No-Name Apps Are OK

"I think it depends on how you look at it," Riley explains. "You don't need big names to add value to a product. Would no-name graphics capability that you could get for free from the App Store, to make your Excel spreadsheet sing, and get a pat on the back from your boss, be more useful than a big-brand-name thing that wouldn't get you the same result? So we have the quality here, and in my experience, we don't need a laundry list of famous icons."

Fair enough. Unfortunately, when asked to highlight some of the "no-name" apps that could make Office "sing," Riley turns back toward the Bing apps that Microsoft had launched previously. 

The hope of Microsoft's Office 2013 model is that it can combine live data sources from the Web into Office documents, such as combining sales data from a customer relationship management database with the Bing maps web service to create a more effective sales report. Riley promises that here will be a growing number of apps within Excel that help users visualize data. And there are hopeful signs: the Microsoft Oscar plugin for Excel, an Olympics medal tracker, an ESPN fantasy-football app. Riley also makes the point that corporations will write and publish their own internal apps that general Office users will never see.

Still, Microsoft needs more. When asked, for example, if there is any app that could take advantage of the datasets hosted by the U.S. government on data.gov, Riley replies that isn't aware of any. He then adds he would make a note to see what would be needed to make those sources available.

Of course, there's a larger question: For all of its reach, is Microsoft's Office simply too small a platform for those developers used to the huge installed base of iOS, Android and all of the other Web platforms? For a small app developer like Gliffy, no. Others may not see it that way, though. Opening Office to the Web allows more developers to enter Office. Only time will tell if they see it as a lucratie marketplace, or as a closet.

The Exploratorium - a unique museum of science, art and human perception - is still two months away from its grand reopening. The lower floor is strewn with half-built exhibits and criss-crossed with caution tape. The upstairs is a buzzing office full of people planning for the big day and beyond. This vast new space on Pier 15 in San Francisco opens to the public on April 17.

But on Monday the museum released Sound Uncovered, its second free iPad app, which the creators showed me during a visit to the unfinished museum. As I explored the app's exhibits, the tablet disappeared in my hands. When you launch this app, you're in the museum, no matter where you are.

Everywhere Is A Laboratory

The design of physical Exploratoreum starts with the goal of creating an experience and builds up from there. An iPad is just as good as a room in the museum if it's the right place to focus the experience of an exhibit. "What makes the Exploratorium a unique place is that it's the combination of a museum, a laboratory, and a developmental studio," says Rob Semper, executive associate director of the museum.

Semper is a physicist whose tenure at the Exploratorium goes back to designing some of its original exhibits with founder Frank Oppenheimer (also a physicist, who worked on the Manhattan Project with his older brother Robert Oppenheimer). Semper took a little time off from the Exploratorium to run the collaboration between Apple and Lucasfilm. Now he's back creating museum exhibits again, both in San Francisco and at partner museums around the world.

Extending its exhibit design to the iPad is a natural move for the Exploratorium. This museum came online in 1993, making its website among the first 600 in the world. The Exploratorium is like a laboratory for turning things into laboratories. In the same way it is turning its new U-shaped port building and the walkways and docks outside into a delightful maze of science experiments, it can turn flat, pixellated spaces into exhibits as well. And on the iPad, these experiments come to life, gaining the inputs of touch, movement, light and sound.

It's All About Perception

The two Exploratorium iPad apps so far are both "buffet-style" collections of short, multi-sensory exhibits. You can select from a table of contents or swipe through like a magazine. The first was Color Uncovered, which uses properties of the tablet's display to demonstrate properties of light. The new app, Sound Uncovered, uses both the speakers and microphones, as well as text and video explanations, to show off some of the surprisingly bizarre properties of sound.

"Perception is a strong subject for us," says Sound Uncovered project director Jean Cheng. Designing a museum exhibit at the level of user experience comes right down to perception. "This app is about sound, but it's really about you." By causing you to notice weird things about your perception that you usually take for granted, the Exploratorium forces you to think more critically about your environment, and it does so purely through fun.

I'm not going to spoil the illusions for you. If you have access to an iPad, you should download Sound Uncovered for free and try it yourself. Right now.

But I will tell you about my favorites:

I love "Find the Highest Note," which presents a circular organ and demonstrates the mind-bending auditory Möbius strip known as the Shepard scale. As you move upward and downward in base pitch, the eerie Shepard tone's partials replace each other at the top and bottom range of hearing. As a result, even though you're moving up or down in pitch, it ultimately never sounds like it's getting higher or lower. It's the auditory version of the barber-pole illusion, where the corkscrewing shape seems to move upward or downward forever while remaining in the same place.

What's also cool about this exhibit in the app is that it doubles as a musical instrument.

Another great social exhibit is the "How Old Are Your Ears?" test, which lets you slide down from an inaudibly high frequency into the ranges that humans naturally lose the ability to hear over time. The younger people in the room will start to hear an ear-splitting whine, but the elders won't hear a thing until lower down.

As we ran through the illusions at the museum, the construction crews periodically tested the fire alarm in the building, which pierced through our conversation. It was uncomfortable for a second, disrupting this carefully arranged social situation, but then we realized the building itself was demonstrating the very kinds of sensory and cognitive tricks we were playing with on the iPad.

Simply Social

The Exploratorium is not afraid to take risks with its apps. One exercise in Color Uncovered asks the user — with plenty of caution — to put a drop of water on the screen, which creates a magnifying bubble in which one can clearly see how pixels work. The team laughs about some of the App Store reviews they got from people who didn't handle that part carefully.

But the apps are simple and magazine-like, going out of their way not to overwhelm people less used to figuring out how iPad apps work. "We don't want to further mystify people with this tech," director of online engagement Lowell Robinson says. "Frank [Oppenheimer]'s dream was to demystify people about how the world works." Accordingly, these apps are not about deep-down, immersive virtual experiences. "We're trying to give you physical ways to test," says Cheng. The apps ask you to try things, try them on others, and pass the tablet around.

The Exploratorium apps are social, but not in the Facebook way. "Social in the old-fashioned sense where you're sitting next to somebody," Robinson says. We had a good laugh about that.

Sound Uncovered for iPad is available for free on the iTunes App Store.

Photos by Amy Widdowson.

Simple Bracket, crafted by crowdfunding vets Studio Neat, looks like the perfect alternative to the horrible bracket-making tools that we end up returning to year after year. Rethought with an eye for design and a better scoring system, Simple Bracket ties into Twitter too, so you won't have to remember obscure logins for yet more obscure websites you'll never revisit. (Admittedly, the official March Madness app is awesome for watching games now, but the bracket tool is still pretty weak.)

Simple Bracket is for iOS only, but if it takes off, maybe by this time next year we'll have an Android version and a Web interface too. Watch the Wes Anderson-esque Kickstarter video below and toss a dollar their way if you don't want to end up on Yahoo! Sports again this March. 

Frequent, huh? Vine version 1.05 also adds the ability to report or block a user, which is a decidedly more useful tool for warding off a phalanx of auto-playing phalluses in your video feed. The age restriction itself is nominal at best. Rather than implementing any actual robust parental controls like those woven into the Kindle Fire ecosystem, Apple is content dotting its i's and crossing its t's. 

Apple has a long track record of moral policing and arbitrary, occasionally anti-competitive gestures toward the apps that make their way into its (supposedly) carefully curated stable. With its new 17+ rating, Twitter's Vine app joins the ranks of "Free Sex Positions Decision Maker," a 2-star App Store gem and a personal favorite for those times you're feeling indecisive and need to consult your iPhone. Meanwhile YouTube, Flickr and a host of other content-sharing apps remain friendly for those ages 12 and up. 

Vine update 1.05 also added the ability to share Vine videos on social networks after shooting them, resolving our main complaint from the time we got a little loopy with Vine on launch day. 

It was free, so of course I grabbed it, and I was shocked to see how perfect it was for my needs. How could the meditation apps on the store all be so bad except one, and that one happens to be free?

As it turns out, Mind was a simple labor of love with an atypical App Store story. It was built by Fred Oliveira, just @f on Twitter, a full-stack developer and designer. He's also an O'Reilly author and a mentor at 500 Startups. So I had to hear the rest of the Mind story.

"I built Mind mostly for myself," Oliveira says. "I looked around for a timer app (for meditation as well as a Pomodoro Technique tool) that was as simple as it could be. The App Store was packed with apps that looked bad, were poorly designed or were just too complex."

"So since building mobile and Web apps is what I do by trade, I just created my own."

Keep It Simple

Meditation apps are a funny category. App-making is a business. Meditation is a practice of letting go of busyness. These two drives come into conflict surprisingly often.

It's immediately obvious when a meditation app is just about making money; it costs too much for what it is (or it's free and full of distracting ads), and the design shows no care at all. There are plenty of apps in this category.

But even in the apps that are carefully designed, there's often a problem on the opposite extreme. In order to justify charging for such a simple app, many developers feel a need to pack in as many features as they can. These commonly include tons of configurable chime sounds; multiple presets for lengths of time; crazy, changing artwork; and even analytics of your meditation performance over time.

But these features actually detract from meditation apps even more than mere bad design does. The quality of the apps is higher, so it draws people in, but all the bells and whistles — especially the analytics — create pressure to do everything "properly," to make sure you don't miss your daily stats, to fiddle with the chime sounds, and otherwise be distracted from what should be the simplest of all activities.

"Meditation isn't about configuring a bunch of parameters. It's about sitting," Oliveira says. "I didn't need a complex UI, a number of buttons, to help me track how long I sit."

Mind Is A Tool

So Mind is the simplest meditation app it could possibly be, and that's why it works. It has one screen. You swipe the colored time slider left and right to set the duration anywhere between one minute and one hour. Then you hit the button, the app prompts you to relax and focus on your breathing, and when it's done, it chimes three times. It remembers your last session duration for next time. That's all there is to it.

My favorite thing about Mind is that even the imagery is minimal. Meditators come to the practice from different traditions and with different aesthetics, so apps that commit to a particular kind of Buddhist imagery — or worse, some kind of fake pastiche of New Age-y Zen/Hindu/Hippie fusion — are disturbing to me. Mind, from its name to its icon to its full-spectrum colors, is a simple foundation built for anyone.

"I never intended to make money from it," Oliveira says, "which is why it's free today and will probably stay that way forever. It was easy to build, and is easy to maintain. The emails and thanks I get from people who use it are payment enough, to be honest."

"I guess in the last few years I realized I'm a tool maker. Making tools is a calling. Mind is one of those tools. But I've built others before, and will continue building tools in the future. It makes me happy."

The Problem With App Rights

Two weeks ago, Rep. Hank Johnson (D-GA) released the APPS Rights Act, a bill pushing developers to implement self-regulatory practices that would improve the security and transparency of user data in mobile apps. "This bill would require that app developers maintain privacy policies, obtain consent from consumers before collecting data, and securely maintain the data that they collect," Johnson's office writes online.

There's not question that changes are needed. Mobile users must be able to make their information isn't transmitted and sold to third-party vendors. But like similar regulatory efforts, including the recent do-not-track mobile privacy guidelines laid out by the Federal Trade Commission last Friday, and last month's recommendations to the mobile industry from California Attorney General Kamala Harris, there's both good and bad aspects to the specific approach taken by the APPS Rights Act. And unfortunately, there's plenty of bad.

One problem with these guides is that they are penned by people outside of the industry — often in the dark about the best ways to reach their laudable goals. Harris' recommendation and the FTC's suggestions comprised a slew of unenforceable recommendations. The APPS bill, meanwhile, would become a mandate if adopted. A mandate likely to lead to unintended consequences to the mobile marketplace.

Developers Are Worried

Security expert Dan Kaminsky says the slow, muddled, legislative process can create frameworks bearing "no resemblance to the problems that need to be solved." Kaminsky thinks this could lead to applications having to show users exactly what they're doing in a hardware add-on -  akin to web cams having a light that goes on  insuring people are aware of exactly what they're doing.

"What I fear is you won't be able to write code without having to consult a lawyer," he says. And if that happens, Kaminsky adds, developers are likely move away from making mobile apps and return building websites. 

Beyond subjecting users to long, complex terms-of-use agreements, the doesn't do a good specifying what happens to collected data beyond the third parties, says Joe Santilli, the chief executive of the mobile app certification service SafeApp. This gray area is known as data retention. 

"It really doesn't make any provisions whatsoever for how third parties are going to share the data with so-called fourth or fifth parties," Santilli explains. "For example, a marketing partner of an ad network. These people are going to share the data that they cull from these apps... to fourth and fifth parties."

No one knows the length of time personal data will be stored, the rights of users and the process by which they exercise their rights when dealing with third and fourth parties. The APPS bill's withdrawal of consent form is a weak attempt at stemmin the data flow. The Opt Out of App Use function requires developers to delete all data if a user opts out. But that doesn't address the issue of fourth and fifth parties that may already have the data in question:

"By the time the app developer has seen this request from the user, this data has already been shared by the third party (to) the marketing partners, the ad networks, the ad analytics partners," Santilli says. "At this point you can't really put the genie back in the bottle, can you?"

At the same time, having to meet these requirements could kill the drive of young entrepreneurs, says developer Jad Meouchy. "This act will end up creating a barrier for new startups... by doubling development time and creating data management headaches," he predicts. "When you're an indie developer, there are simply not enough resources to address this kind of compliance."

Real-World Example

Benjamin Goering, the technical product manager at Livefyre Labs, manages more than 10 million comment threads and personal user accounts for customers. When those customers upgrade from freemium accounts to enterprise versions, they want their user data and accounts migrated. But if those people have not authorized that data to be shared, Livefyre can't make the transition for them.

But rather than stifle innovation, Goering worries that users won't take the rules seriously if they don't work. "It may be completely ignored if it's out of touch," Goering said. "If it's well legislated, it may be useful to have a framework for safe harbor" where developer can be confident they won't get sued

His team faced that issue when working on a Super Bowl product that aggregates tweets and Instagram photos. This raises the question of whether or not users know shared content is ripe for the plucking. Livefyre bet that users know their shared content may be re-used, and decided not to worry about legal red tape. 

Goering warns that if developers have to wait for lawmakers to resolve everything, "it would be impossible to make week-long projects."

"The nature of the Web is you're requesting a document and receiving it - at some level data is being taken," he says. "Where do you draw that line?"

Photo courtesy of Shutterstock

One of the features of the new Microsoft Office revision is the Office Store, where users can download plugins and other tools to supplement the core Office experience. Microsoft is rolling out its subscription service, Office 365, to consumers on Tuesday, January 29; business users should receive it a bit later.

To a small app developer like Gliffy, that means waves of curious customers will soon be searching the Office App Store for new tools. And Gliffy has worked to put itself at the top of the heap - even as Microsoft has removed one of the key tools for gauging its success. When Gliffy first published its diagram and flowcahrt app on the platform, Microsoft displayed the number of times users had downloaded its app, as well as its competitors. Now, Microsoft has removed that visibility; Gliffy knows how many times its app has been downloaded, but not its competitors, meaning that it's flying blind.

That doesn't mean Gliffy isn't pleased with its success. Users have downloaded the Gliffy plug-in more than 1,000 times. "We got where we wanted to be," said Ron Levi, director of marketing at Gliffy. "We wanted to be the number-one app downloaded in our space, and I think we are."

Come On In, Competition

What makes Gliffy's story especially interesting is that Microsoft invited the company to participate - even though Gliffy competes with Microsoft's own Visio software.

Chris Kohlhardt co-founded Gliffy in 2005 to provide an easy way to embed diagrams within wikis, and today users can create org charts, Venn diagrams, flowcharts, floorplans and other diagrams via its Web service, and embed them within Word 2013, Google Docs or Atlassian Confluence. Gliffy's free service allows up to 5 diagrams, with a $4.95 monthly/$49.50 annual tier allowing users to create up to 200 diagrams; a $9.95 monthly/$99.50 pro tier is also available.

Kohlhardt said he originally approached services like Jotspot and Socialtext about providing an add-on, but the most receptive partner was collaboration software maker Atlassian, where Gliffy has resided for several years and that provides the bulk of its revenue.

Although the company was always looking out for other platforms, Microsoft's offer came as a welcome surprise. “We didn’t even know that there was an opportunity,” Levi added.

Microsoft invited a wide range of apps makers, from online dictionary developers like Merriam-Webster, to Hertz: developers with broad appeal, as well as those involved with highly specific functions. “They wanted to have a strong showing, so they reached out to a number of folks,” Kohlhardt explained. 

"Unquestionably, the Microsoft Office opportunity is potentially an enormous one," Levi said. 'We were thinking, is there any other software package that is larger, worldwide? No way. The fact that they've opened it up to other software developers - this interview started with Chris saying that we're looking to take on Vizio - is a really interesting expression of Microsoft's openness."

Microsoft "launched" the app store in mid-November. “All app stores are interesting to me at all times, but especially in their infancy,” Levi said. “Hardly anyone was there yet, and we were just working out the kinks... We all read about app stores measured in the millions of downloads, with sophisticated marketing applications, and here we are - this is the largest software company in the world, and we’re literally measuring [downloads] in the dozens.”

In early December, Microsoft began showing off the new Office software - and offering contracts - to subscribers of Microsoft’s early licensing programs, such as TechNet. So the Gliffy team faced an odd problem: should a small developer team spend money to promote itself within an app store for a product that was barely public? “Everyone was in something of the same boat, which is that they’re trying to build momentum, because they know that it’s easier to get momentum now than it would be in six months, or when it hits,” Levi said.

From a product perspective, Gliffy wanted to get out there early and get some feedback, so the company did a quick prototype internally and then worked with Microsoft to develop a Minimum Vable Product (MVP) that the company felt added enough value for people to see what Gliffy was all about and how well it would work, said Han Lee, Gliffy’s principal software engineer. Users could create a Gliffy diagram, insert it into their Word document, and then, if they updated the diagram, the Word document would be updated as well.

An Icon Is Worth A Thousand Downloads

From there, Gliffy turned to marketing. Microsoft handed each developer a blank page to describe its app; Levi said its strategy was to look at competitors who had more downloads, and try to figure out what they were doing right. 

"On the enticing people to download front - and I think this is true with all apps stores - everything starts with the name and the tiny little graphic," Levi said. "Ten years ago it was all about how much you could jam into a search result. Now, it's all about how much you can jam into a little 50 x 50 graphic."

When Gliffy launched, it added its standard Gliffy logo from the Atlassian system. "But we kind of realized, maybe we shouldn't go for the brand thing - we're not Merriam-Webster; we're not Hertz," Levi said. 

Originally, the Gliffy logo said "Gliffy," but the revised logo used a tiny model of a flow chart. "And you know what? We got a lot more downloads," Levi said. 

Gliffy reached out via blog, newsletter and its existing client list. To date, the number of ratings that Gliffy has accumulated has been small, but that hasn't been all bad. "I think Microsoft is really focused on more than downloads, and other app stores have been really focused on downloads," Han said, noting that Microsoft's algorithm that promotes apps takes a variety of factors into account. "And it makes the game really more interesting for an app developer. I think it's good because it allows incumbents more visibility than you would just on pure downloads."

The fact that Microsoft turned off the ability to view the number of downloads for each app disappointed Levi, as it now prevents Gliffy from measuring its progress against the competition. "But it's business," he said. "I understand."

In total, the Office Store currently has more than 200 apps, Microsoft said. "As it’s just getting under way, with the Office 365 consumer service launching [Tuesday], we don’t have numbers of downloads yet," a Microsoft spokesman said in an email.

But Gliffy is hoping for a surge of new customers and downloads as Microsoft opens the Office Store. "I'm really excited to see what will happen when the marketing machine turns on," Levi said. "I want to know the power of riding the wave."

On Thursday, Twitter introduced Vine, a New York startup that the company acquired last October. Vine, an app that allows users to create six second long animated GIF-like video loops, never launched on its own, but finally hit the iOS App Store under Twitter's wing. Unlike an Instagram picture, Vine videos are happy bedfellows with Twitter cards - you can view them in the Vine app itself or right in the midst of your Twitter stream.

Six Seconds, No Filler

Creating a video on Vine is actually pretty fun, even for someone averse to Web video content. To record a video, you hold your finger down on the screen. To cut to the next portion of your abbreviated masterpiece, lift your finger and hold it down to record again. The result is a playful little micro-video perfect for sharing - you don't even have to wait that interminable 26 seconds to get to the good part when the kitten snuggles up to the puppy. It's all snuggling, all the time. 

"Posts on Vine are about abbreviation — the shortened form of something larger," according to a post on Vine's blog. "They're little windows into the people, settings, ideas and objects that make up your life. They're quirky, and we think that's part of what makes them so special."

A Media-Rich Vision Of Twitter Cards

Interestingly, Twitter seems content to let the company live on as a standalone app, for now at least. After creating a video on the app, a prompt pops up to share to not just Vine's parent company, but Facebook too. 

Vine is an intriguing remix on the Twitter philosophy. In extending the concise essence of a tweet to video, Twitter could open up any number of new multimedia doors. And with hit services like Snapchat trading in ephemera, short is sweeter than ever. 

The Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) service, launched earlier for Canada, eschews traditional telecom carriers but will still count against your mobile data plan if you're not on Wi-Fi. The feature is now available on Facebook's dedicated Messenger iOS app, one of the single-purpose apps in the company's increasingly cluttered mobile utility belt.

Yahoo Syndrome?

Facebook's well-known "Move fast and break things" motto is well enough suited for the Web - but spewing out a flood of not quite fully baked ideas won't work for mobile. The voice calling update is just the most recent example.

Mobile updates are user-initiated and deliberate by design. Even on a platform like Android with automatic updating enabled, downloading a mobile update feels like unwrapping a new, slightly less buggy present. But apps that constantly push tiny new updates quickly get annoying, even if they don't require much more attention than a progress bar in a notification drop-down menu. 

And redundant apps like Messenger and the main Facebook app? That's just twice as many notifications to wrangle. Not to mention a confusing roadblock to the otherwise split-second choice of which app to open for a given task. Facebook's sheer scope can be an Achilles heel: Facebook is big - look at all the stuff it does! It's a Foursquare, and a Yelp and a Snapchat... and who knows what else. No wonder the company is struggling to define itself on mobile. It's suffering from mobile Yahoo syndrome. As in, nobody knows what kind of company Yahoo is - least of all Yahoo.

The Department Of Redundancy Department

On the Web, we mostly don't notice Facebook's weekly waves of teensy product tweaks. The company's hacker ethos shines in its perpetual tinkering and improvements. But on mobile the same approach can get messy - and it already has.

Facebook wants to have it both ways. It wants to mash stuff like search, messaging, photo sharing and check-ins up into a one-stop shop for its billion-plus members. But it also wants us to use its strange little umbrella of mobile apps and the main Facebook app - have your app and eat it too! The approach is confusing, the internal redundancies are piling up and Facebook's mobile product strategy is starting to feel like a junk drawer. Everything you need is in there somewhere, but it's a wreck and you can never seem to find the AAA batteries when you need them.

Do It Like Instagram

But you know who does mobile updates right?

Instagram.

When Instagram is primed for its tiny download progress bar to inch toward the right, users actually get excited. Updates are polished and cohesive, with just enough lag time between pushes to make Instagrammers water at the mouth while they wait for the bell to sound. If only Facebook would peer over the proverbial cubicle wall and steal a few notes from its billion-dollar baby.

California Attorney General Kamala Harris, writing in Privacy On The Go: Recommendations for the Mobile Ecosystem.

On Thursday, California Attorney General Kamala Harris released a 22-page report on mobile privacy intended to strengthen user protection and regulation. The document specifically calls for readable privacy policies, transparency when it comes to alerting users if third party vendors collect their personal information, and an end to unnecessary data collection unless it is critical for the app to function. 

"We are now offering this set of privacy practice recommendations to assist app developers, and others, in considering privacy early in the development process," Harris wrote in the report, which was completed after dialogue with mobile developers, carriers, manufacturers, advertisers and privacy experts. The report was prompted both by a recent directive from President Obama to define an online strategy to fight terrorism, and by Harris' own interest in how mobile apps collect user data.

In December 2012, Harris sued Delta Air Lines for violating California’s online privacy law and not informing people how their personal data is collected. Before that she was instrumental in getting Apple and Facebook to require that apps display privacy policies. 

Report Card

Harris' report recommends developers make clear to users the details of just what information they are collecting, how long they store it, and what third parties the data is shared with. It also asks ad networks to do away with tracking devices in favor of "using app-specific and/or temporary device identifiers," and create plain-language privacy policies that spell out all of the above in layman's terms. 

While having app makers follow these guidelines would clearly benefit consumers, the extra red tape probably won't sit well with most developers.

"In general that report is inline with common sense and I agree that apps should be more transparent.  However, with the average price of apps being so low, developers and companies are forced to explore other monetization strategies which almost always involve selling user information to advertisers," said Jad Meouchy, a developer and founder of Osurv, a custom mobile survey app. "While I agree with all the directives, I don't see any way to enforce them."

Enforcement Is The Issue

That's the key issue right now. Since Harris' report goes above and beyond existing law, these recommendations are just that - recommendations - and are not enforceable by law. Still, they're a step in the right direction, towards transparency and broader awareness of information. Over time, it's likely that more states will draft their own recommendations - and even bills that could become mandates. 

The Future of Privacy Forum's director and co-chair, Jules Polonetsky, says California's recommendations could be a guideline for app makers. "As a best practices guide, the document is very reasonable, and many app developers already comply with the key points the reports make," he said. 

Polonetsky also liked the fact that the recommendations' tone and direction mirror the President's National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), which calls for a push towards improved telecommunications and information policy. "The guide also supports the direction that the NTIA multi-stakeholder process has taken and will be a useful input into the national effort to come up with an enforceable code of conduct for developers," he said. 

Where These Recommendations Go, The Law Is Likely To Follow

With more than half of the U.S. accessing the Internet via mobile devices, more than a million mobile apps available and roughly 1,600 new ones added every day, it's only a matter of time until recommendations like these become regulations. That doesn't have to be a bad thing -- especially if there is full communication between legislators, developers and consumers. 

"Our hope is that privacy-respectful practices such as those we are recommending here will be adopted by app developers and others, enabling consumers to make informed choices from the vast array of mobile apps while maintaining the level of privacy control they desire," the report states. "Our recommendations, which in many places offer greater protection than afforded by existing law, are intended to encourage all players in the mobile marketplace to consider privacy implications at the outset of the design process. They are also intended to encourage the alignment of architectural and functional decisions with the widely accepted Fair Information Practice Principles."

Photo courtesy of Shutterstock.

Even as the Federal Trade Commission ends its two-year investigation of Google with a whimper, Microsoft is desperately hoping that the war isn't yet over. The latest battleground: the YouTube app for Windows Phone.

In a blog post on Thursday night, Dave Heiner, vice president and deputy general counsel from Microsoft, expressed his disappointment in the ruling, complaining that the FTC missed the boat on issues of data portability, standard-essential patents, and other issues that include search bias.

On the face of it, whether or not Google should be obligated to license Microsoft the API technology necessary to build a Windows Phone app to access Google's YouTube video service seems relatively trivial. In a blog post, Microsoft said that Google has unreasonably blocked access to the necessary APIs, preventing it from doing so. Google already supplies a YouTube "app," which is merely an HTML5 version of its website, which runs inside the Internet Explorer browser on the phone.

For its part, Google believes that's more than enough. “Contrary to Microsoft’s claims, it’s easy for consumers to view YouTube videos on Windows phones," a YouTube spokeswoman wrote in an email. "Windows phone users can access all the features of YouTube through our HTML5-based mobile website, including viewing high-quality video streams, finding favorite videos, seeing video ratings, and searching for video categories.  In fact, we’ve worked with Microsoft for several years to help build a great YouTube experience on Windows phones.”

The problem, according to Microsoft, is that Google's behavior with regard to Windows Phone YouTube app is emblematic of its behavior in general. Two years ago, Microsoft complained to the European Union about Google's tactics, as well as the U.S. Federal Trade Commission. (Longtime Microsoft watchers have long noted the irony of Microsoft complaining about anti-competitive actions, given the company's issues with the U.S. Department of Justice, and the possibility that the EU may impose fines or other sanctions after Microsoft ignored the browser choice restrictions from a previous EU settlement.)

But now the FTC has ended its Google investigation with a slap on the wrist, Microsoft can't seem to give up the fight: Dave Heiner, vice president and deputy general counsel from Microsoft said Wednesday that the YouTube app dispute is simply a representative example of the "misconduct" that Google has employed with respect to its practices on the Internet. "Just last month, we learned from YouTube that senior executives at Google told them not to enable a first-class YouTube experience on Windows Phones," Heiner wrote.

"Google often says that the antitrust offenses with which it has been charged cause no harm to consumers," Heiner added. "Google is wrong about that. In this instance, for example, Google’s refusal deprives consumers who use competing platforms of a comparable experience in accessing content that is generally available on the Web, almost all of which is created by users rather than by Google itself. And it’s inconsistent, to say the least, with Google’s public insistence that other competing services, such as Facebook, should offer Google complete access to their content so they can index and include it on their search site."

In his midnight post Thursday night, Heiner claimed that Google "inexplicably has not promised to allow all advertisers to port their campaign data to other ad platforms—only those with a primary billing address in the United States".

Microsoft also characterized the FTC's ruling on the so-called FRAND patent issues ineffective. Motorola Mobility, which was acquired by Google last year, has embroiled itself in a string of lawsuits, seeking to coerce royalties for patents used in developing standards like Wi-Fi. Heiner claimed that the FTC's lukewarm requirements, full of legal loopholes, would allow Google to continue its anti-competitive behavior.

"During patent licensing negotiations, Google can continue to threaten that it will sue for an injunction, knowing that many would-be licensees will not be in a position to engage in litigation or arbitration with Google and also meet all of the other procedural requirements set forth in the decree that are imposed on the licensee," Heiner wrote. "Google can even continue to use its standard essential patents to fend off patent infringement actions against it: the proposed decree gives Google leeway to sue for an injunction on its standard essential patents if it takes the position that injunctive relief sought against it is based on a patent that is standard essential."

Now that the FTC has made its ruling, those concerns may be moot. But Microsoft made several references to behavior overseas, an indication that it may be seeking to tacitly plead its case before the European Union - which some now see as the "hard man" of international antitrust law. Whatever the situation, it's clear that Microsoft has no intention of giving up its fight against Google.

See also Google Escapes Unscathed From FTC Settlement and Google's FTC Settlement Is An Epic Fail For Microsoft.