Archive for December, 2011

Today we’re happy to introduce you to the first of many efforts geared towards improving our web application. We’ve spent a lot of time talking to customers and seeing what pain points they were hitting. We’re just getting started on this, so expect to see lots of improvements in the coming months.

The changes we’re rolling out today are primarily related to the navigation in our web application. In addition to visual updates, the new streamlined navigation is designed to get you around your applications and account details quickly and easily. The new application menu includes type-ahead searching so you can find applications based on their name, iOS bundle ID, Android package, or application key, regardless of how many you have in our system.

We’ve also introduced application icons into the mix. You can upload an image for your application and we’ll display it throughout the site. Use the same icon file that you include in your app. This great visual cue will help you ensure that you’re on the right app, or help you find the one you’re looking for.

With this update, we’re setting the stage for some really exciting changes that are coming soon – changes that address some long-standing feature requests and allow us to do some really amazing things with the dashboard. As our customer base grows, the needs of our users changes, and we’re really happy to begin addressing some of those today. We love feedback so let us know what you think.

Stay tuned!

It’s been a really busy year here at Urban Airship and we’ve got some even more exciting news to share as we get prepare for an even more exciting 2012. This week we welcomed Brent Hieggelke, who is joining as Urban Airship’s first Chief Marketing Officer. As our entire business expands, so must also our marketing strategy to support our rapid growth, and we believe we have found the right person to nail that. I first met Brent a few years ago as he was leading his own start-up Second Porch, and he brings more energy and perspective to the management team but he also has that special metabolism required for life aboard the Airship.

And while we here at Urban Airship met with a lot of people, we were the only company Brent considered joining. After Brent exited Second Porch, which was recently sold to HomeAway, Inc., he gained a keen interest in the mobile space, which led him to us.

Brent has a track record building both B2B and B2C brands, has led the creation and transformation of categories, and has built out some of the industry’s top teams. Urban can learn a lot from him and the experience he gained in leadership positions at Omniture and WebTrends, both defining companies at their peak.

We head into 2012 with deep commitments from our brand and developer customers, as well as the ecosystem of partners we’ve created. Together with our acquisition of SimpleGeo, investments from IntelCapital, salesforce.com and Verizon, and now the addition of Brent, things are really cooking here. Welcome aboard Brent!

At Urban Airship we are committed to making it easy for app developers to create engaging mobile experiences and we are always on the lookout for companies that share our vision.  We are excited to announce that Cabana and Kinvey have joined Appcelerater, PhoneGap and ShoutEm as Urban Airship strategic platform partners.  As strategic platform partners they offer Urban Airship products to the apps developed on their platforms.  Through these partnerships we will can offer developers our powerful engagement and monetization products through these app development platforms, working together to build a more successful mobile future.

Appcelerator is a mobile development platform for javascript developers.  Appcelerator Titanium lets you build native mobile, tablet and desktop application experiences using existing web skills like Javascript, HTML, CSS, Python, Ruby, and PHP.  Check out their video to learn more.

Cabana is a browser based mobile app development platform that changes the way apps are made.  They achieve this through the combination of a highly visual drag and drop development environment, an innovative graph based visual programming system, and the Cabana Exchange, a component marketplace that contains functionality from some of the top mobile app service providers. Check out their video to watch it in action.

Kinvey is the first Backend as a Service that makes it ridiculously easy for developers to setup, use and maintain a cloud backend for their mobile apps.  Check out their video to learn more.  Kinvey will make it easy for you model your data, drop in libraries, API’s and add your own code, and synch your data on an ongoing basis.

PhoneGap is an HTML5 app platform that allows you to author native applications with web technologies and get access to APIs and app stores.  PhoneGap leverages web technologies developers already know best including HTML and JavaScript, allowing you to build your app using web standards but still deploy it out across multiple mobile platforms.  Check out their video to learn more.

ShoutEm native mobile app maker.  Their platform allows you to build slick native apps for iPhone, Android and iPad. ShoutEm integrates with your website, your YouTube and Flickr channels and take all that content across mobile platforms.  Check out their website and learn more how easy and simple it is to build the app these days.

We are excited to partner with these powerful app development platforms and will keep working hard to create more opportunities to make it easy for developers to use Urban Airship’s app engagement, monetization and reporting platform. If you don’t already have an app, check out these platforms to see if any is right for you. If you already have an app and want to see your app audience more engaged with it, see how Urban Airship can help.

Amazon shipped their first Kindle Fires eight weeks ago and since then we’ve seen a lot of interest in the platform from our customers. Consumers are jumping in too, making the Kindle Fire the best-selling product across all of Amazon.com since it became available. We’re also excited about the Kindle Fire, and even more excited to let you know that Urban Airship’s Helium push notifications for Android are already deployed on tens of thousands of devices: it just works.

Over the weekend we had several customers go live on the Fire using our Helium push notifications. Glu Mobile is just one of our customers who are using our push notifications for Android in all of their games for the Fire. When we asked Glu if they did anything special to activate push in their games for the Kindle Fire, Mike DeLaet, VP of Sales & Marketing said, “We just integrated the Urban Airship SDK into these titles like we do for all of our titles, which allows us to utilize push notifications on the Kindle Fire.” Our customers depend on Push to drive engagement and provide the best user experience possible for their applications. With Helium they can do that for the Kindle Fire today.

A little background: the Fire is an Android device with a few key differences. It is missing Google’s Mobile Services (Android Market, C2DM, Google IAP, etc). Additionally, your app cannot require a gyroscope, camera, WAN module, Bluetooth, microphone, GPS, or micro-SD to function. Beyond that, it’s Android 2.3.4 with a new screen size and functions just like any WiFi-connected Android device.

We know that in the world of mobile phones, tablets, PC’s, and other IP connected devices, powerful engagement tools are a requirement for success. We’re continually working to extend our services to any device and as many platforms as possible. But device and platform support only gets you so far–and that’s where our tools come into play. Urban Airship enables you to effectively address and engage with your application audience. With our recent acquisition of SimpleGeo, the future holds many exciting additions to our products, like enabling audience segmentation on a local level for the Kindle Fire and beyond. These are exciting times and we’re just scratching the surface on what we can do.

For more details on setting up an app for the Kindle Fire and selling it in the Amazon App Store, see their Developer FAQ. If you are interested in using Helium to power push on a Kindle Fire or any other Android device, check out our Pro Plans. And finally, if you want to make addressing your Kindle Fire audience easier, take a look at our FAQ on setting tags for your Kindle Fire app installations.