We’ve recently helped a local company launch their iPhone app. If you are looking for a fun and free polling app, check out Pollate. This app was not developed by 14 Oranges but we provided testing and consultation services. The app is a great example of how mobile crowd sourcing can be used to create a very compelling service. Within minutes you can get quick results on any questions you may be wondering. Want to know how many cars/phones/TVs people have in their households? Want to know if people practice Yoga? Simply create the poll question and answers (multiple choice) and press submit and within minutes, you start to get answers. Couldn’t be simpler to use. We personally have been using the tool to get results on the overall mobile market. Here is an example of a poll we recently conducted:

As you can see, iPhones are here to stay. Anyway if that’s something that may interest you, you can get it from the app store.

Kudos to the Pollate team for a job well done.

We are excited to announce that mControl for iOS is going beta this week. The current beta is now full but keep posted as Embedded Automation may go ahead with a beta 2 and will likely need more folks to sign up.

Quick description on mControl:

mControl is software for managing your Digital Home. mControl manages interaction with devices within your home – providing mechanisms for energy management, security and surveillance, media management and other controllable devices.

Out of the box, mControl supports a broad range of technologies and protocols – allowing your digital home to take control of metering systems, lighting solutions, climate controls, security systems, cameras, audio/visual equipment and beyond.

mControl provides real-time information and status on each device, allows control of these devices and has a sophisticated logic and rules engine to automate operation of these devices.

mControl includes a variety of built-in user interfaces, allowing instant status and control of your digital home from your preferred location and platform. Whether you prefer a browser, a media center (TV) interface, a touchscreen or your mobile phone – your digital home is accessible to you.

What 14 Oranges has provided is the ability to access mControl from your iOS device using an app tailored specifically for each form factors (iPad and iPhone).

We are excited about this release. Stay tuned for more!

As reported here, Best Buy is offering iPad 2 to its employees. Now the article doesn’t go into details as to what the actual use will be for the employees but we’ve always thought that iPads would be the perfect help tool for salesmen. Imagine going to Home Depot, Wallmart, Best Buy, or any other large floor space store. You could walk to any sales person and without them having to walk anywhere to find a work station, they could get you all the details you needed about a product or the location of a product. The other use would be for sales folks to approach customers and provide answers right on the spot. Couple that with a credit card reader like from Square and you could close the sale right then and there. Even if the customers are “just looking”, the sales folks could capture a little bit of information which could be fed back to a database for further analysis and data mining providing help in finding what customers really want.