The lines between digital, mobile, technology and apps are blurring in today’s world. We at Robosoft are keen followers of developments in this arena. At the end of every week, we will share with you highlights of news items which caught our eye in this space.
IBM and Facebook in marketing partnership
IBM and Facebook are forming a marketing partnership, as they team up to offer marketers new integrations between the two platforms. To illustrate how the companies’ capabilities could be combined, IBM said “a retailer could identify Facebook users interested in long distance running, then deliver targeted deals based on the type of gear they’re interested in, as well as their location”. The announcement comes about a year after IBM announced its acquisition of cloud marketing company Silverpop. The IBM – Facebook partnership is the most recent pact IBM has created with consumer-focused technology companies.
Meerkat launches developer platform and API
Meerkat embraces developers by launching API & developer platform to assist third-party developers in building tools for the independent streaming video service. This move will differentiate them from Periscope, the competing service that Twitter launched in the wake of Meerkat’s high-profile debut. According to reports, in the 9 weeks since Meerkat launched, 37 developers have built add-ons to the app using the company’s API, including stream discovery, automatic uploads to YouTube and analytics tools. However with the Meerkat API, developers can pull current or scheduled streams as well as details, comments and watchers but there is no way to post a stream from outside the app at the moment.
Nintendo to release five ‘hit’ smartphone games by 2017
Gaming company Nintendo plans to release five smart phone games by 2017, with the first one coming by end of this year. Satoru Iwata, President of Kyoto-based firm said that they won’t be porting existing games to smart phones. “Even with highly popular IPs, the odds of success are quite low if consumers cannot appreciate the quality of a game,” he said. This initiative will be carried out with their partnership with the game publisher, DeNa. Super Mario and other characters are Nintendo’s precious assets so it will be interesting to see how they can capitalize on them.
No more numbers for Windows versions
Windows 10 will be the last version to be numbered. “There will be no Windows 11,” warned Steve Kleynhans, a research Vice-President at analyst firm Gartner who monitors Microsoft. The reason for this change is Microsoft reportedly plans to launch Windows as a service. So from now on, instead of releasing versions, Microsoft is going to provide us with the latest updates frequently.
