The latest from TechCrunch
- 955 Dreams Set To Rock The iPad Again With "On The Way To Woodstock"
- Boingo Wireless Prices IPO At $13.50 Per Share
- Qwiki iPad App Hits 250K Downloads In 11 Days
- Facebook's Social Widgetization Of The Web, In A Sweet, Sweet Infographic
| 955 Dreams Set To Rock The iPad Again With "On The Way To Woodstock" | Top |
| A couple months ago, we noted that a company called 955 Dreams was playing the iPad like jazz with their hot app, The History of Jazz. Now they’re back again with another musically-themed iPad app. And it’s far out, man. On The Way To Woodstock takes everything that 955 Dreams learned from the jazz app and expands upon it. I had a chance to sit down with the team a few days ago and play around with the app. It’s beautiful, fun, and engaging. And much like The History of Jazz, I suspect it’s exactly the type of app Apple likes seeing pop up from developers to showcase their device. Users who got a chance to use The History of Jazz should immediately feel right at home with On The Way To Woodstock, as the look and feel remains largely the same. But 955 Dreams has blown the doors off this new app when it comes to content. Specifically, while Jazz had a robust 55 hours or so of consumable content, Woodstock has roughly 100 hours, co-founder Kiran Bellubbi says. And the new app includes a lot of editorial work. It’s basically “a book designed and created for the iPad,” Bellubbi notes. It tells the story of Woodstock ranging from the 1950s (to set the political and social stage leading up to Woodstock) to the aftermath. The meat, of course, are the days of the festival itself which can be traversed in a truly immersive experience complete with videos and music. But the real key may be the photography included in the app. 955 Dreams worked with one photographer to get all of his best shots into the app, head of design TJ Zark notes. This includes a lot of photos that most people have never seen from Woodstock. And there are some amazing shots as the photographer was on the team that helped shoot the official documentary about the show — meaning he had access to a helicopter. The app, which has just gone live in the App Store will be available for a limited time at $6.99. After that, it will raise to the standard $9.99 price point that 955 Dreams likes to sell their apps at. And the pricing has worked well for them. They’ve been pulling in significant revenues since day one, they tell us. Of course, this revenue stream has been helped by the fact that Apple has featured Jazz a few times. And in fact, Apple selected the app to be included in the App Store “Hall of Fame” — they’re one of just 45 or so app to get this distinction out of the hundreds of thousands apps in the App Store. But that’s what happens when you make an app that seems perfect for the platform. And it also shows some big potential for the future of other content on these devices, like music. Bellubbi notes that more people are consuming music today than ever before, but they’re just not buying as much of it. Apps like Jazz and Woodstock hope to serve as a platform to get people back to investing in music. While they wouldn’t give actual numbers for how much music they sold through Jazz (each song has an iTunes preview button and link to buy the song), they note that sales have been very good. And they suspect they’ll be even better through the Woodstock app. And that speaks to where 955 Dreams is looking next. Music discovery is what interests them the most right now. And these first two apps just scratch the surface in a very packaged way, they note. In other words, expect even more coming out of these guys in the coming months. For now, enjoy On The Way To Woodstock here and The History of Jazz here . CrunchBase Information 955 Dreams Information provided by CrunchBase | |
| Boingo Wireless Prices IPO At $13.50 Per Share | Top |
| Boingo Wireless, a nationwide WiFi provider, has just issued a release stating that it is pricing its IPO tomorrow morning at $13.50 per share, which falls into the expected range. The shares will begin trading on the NASDAQ under the symbol “WIFI.” Boingo is looking to raise $75 million in its public offering. Boingo claims that it is one of the largest commercial Wi-Fi networks in the world, with 211,000 Wi-Fi locations in over 100 countries. The company installs, manages and operates wireless networks in locations like airports and restaurant chains, which Boing says had more than 800 million visitors in 2009. Boingo is offering 3,846,800 shares and selling stockholders are offering 1,923,200 shares. In addition, Boingo has granted the underwriters a 30-day option to purchase up to an additional 865,500 shares, on the same terms and conditions. Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank Securities, Pacific Crest Securities and William Blair & Company are underwriting the offering. According to the initial S-1 filing, Boingo had 1.3 million consumers who have purchased its mobile Internet services in the past year. The company’s primary source of revenue is from consumers who purchase month-to-month subscription plans or hotspot specific, single-use access to its network. Boingo also receives money from business partners that pay to allow their consumers to access the network. Other revenue channels include telecom operators and advertisers. CrunchBase Information Boingo Wireless Information provided by CrunchBase | |
| Qwiki iPad App Hits 250K Downloads In 11 Days | Top |
| TechCrunch Disrupt winner Qwiki launched its iPad app in the App Store a less than a week ago and after 11 days has hit the quarter of a million downloads milestone. This is notable for an iPad app, especially when compared to other highly publicized iOS app milestones; It took iPhone app Instagram six days to hit 100K, SoundTracking two weeks to hit 250K and FourSquare a whopping seven months to get to 60K users. Qwiki PR rep CeCe Cheng tells me that Qwiki.com has “millions of users” but that the Qwiki app, which lets users see notable Qwikis around them in map format, has already eclipsed pageview traffic on the Qwiki site by 5x. She estimates that by the end of the day tomorrow the app will hit 300K users after only two weeks. Individual user sessions on the app are averaging 24 minutes. Says founder Doug Imbruce, “The Qwiki experience was made for the iPad – an intimate, entertaining, (sexy!) new media format. It’s amazing to see the popularity of the app reinforce our original vision of Qwiki as a multi-platform experience.” The app has 2,170 total ratings, with an average of 4.5 stars per rating. The current build has an average 5 star rating at 688 ratings. Qwiki sees the future of its visual Wikipedia search product as resting on the mobile platform, and is currently focusing on releasing Qwiki for the Android and the iPhone. It also plans on eventually letting users create their own Qwikis about themselves and their businesses. CrunchBase Information Qwiki Information provided by CrunchBase | |
| Facebook's Social Widgetization Of The Web, In A Sweet, Sweet Infographic | Top |
| On April 21st, Facebook celebrated the 1st birthday of its now ubiquitous “Like” button, and promptly shared the news that 10,000 sites are, like, using the plugin every day. The social networking behemoth then continued its parade of social widgets last week , giving the Like button a new partner in crime with the “Send” button, which allows users to directly share content with their Facebook Groups, Facebook friends, or any standard email address. And gives site designers yet another widget to integrate into their code. Huzzah! With the “Send” button, Facebook seems to be continuing its quest to eventually replace email with some sort of Facebook-related social service. The button is already available on over 50 sites including The Washington Post, last.fm, 1-800 Flowers, Gilt Groupe, The Huffington Post and Orbitz. With more to come, I’m sure. So, to commemorate Facebook becoming the Big Brother of social widgets, JESS3 , a creative interactive agency specializing in UX and data visualization, has created a nifty retrospective — timeline of Facebook’s social widgets, beginning with the launch of Facebook Connect back in 2008. Warning: Infographics ahead. Oh, and by the way, you should totally “Like” us on Facebook. Sorry, I had to. CrunchBase Information Facebook JESS3 Information provided by CrunchBase | |
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