purchase

How an increasingly fragmented mobile world helps Gameloft

The mobile world is getting crazier, and that suits Gameloft just fine.

The upcoming year should see an even greater diversity of mobile devices, including multiple designs, processors, and operating systems. Gameloft, with an army of developers devoted to mobile games, believes it is best suited to handle the different products, whether that means the iPhone or an Android tablet.

"We're structured to handle fragmentation," Baudouin Corman, vice president of publishing for the Americas region for Gameloft, says in an interview. "It's a dynamic market where different companies are bringing differentiation. We'll benefit." … Read more

Wanna make money on apps? Give them away

The app business is increasingly banking on the notion that virtual currency in a game could be worth real money--and a lot of it.

In-app purchases, which include virtual cash, weapons, levels, or extra features, are poised to dominate app revenue in the coming years, according to research firm IHS. In-app purchases already accounted for $970 million in sales last year, or 39 percent of the market. By 2015, that figure will grow to $5.6 billion, or 64 percent of the market.

"In 2012, it will become increasingly difficult for app stores and developers to justify charging an … Read more

Google Catalogs looks great, performs poorly

The Google Catalogs app for Android Honeycomb tablets aggregates shopping catalogs from over 100 popular retailers. It lets you search and mark items as favorites, gives you links to make purchases directly from retailers' sites, and even lets you create and share visually stunning collages made up of your favorite products. However, as great as the app sounds on paper, it unfortunately suffers from some annoying performance issues that just can't be ignored.

The interface of the Google Catalogs app is beautiful. It's easy to navigate, features high-resolution graphics, and flips through pages quite smoothly. Items on catalog … Read more

Flip through the catalog on your iPad

Nordstrom The Catalogs lets you view recent featured items from the store's catalogs. Though you won't get the full Nordstrom inventory, the thrust of this app seems to be giving you the catalog page-flipping experience on your iPad.

Upon launch, you're presented with the most recent issue on the upper half of the screen and previous issues you can scroll through at the bottom. Once a catalog is selected, you can simply swipe to the left or right to turn the pages. Touch a page to get all the listings on that page, and touch a listing … Read more

Shop Sears on your iPad

The Sears app for iPad works well for browsing through items and making purchases from Sears online, but you also can locate nearby stores if you need to see before you buy. The app layout upon launch gives you tons of big button icons and shopping categories to browse through by swiping your screen, but you also can hit the Products button in the upper left to search or drill down through categories. The app also has an Occasions button that lets you flip through event-appropriate gifts for categories such as Baby, College, Fitness, Moving, and Weddings.

Once you choose … Read more

Bring Wal-Mart to your iPad

The Wal-Mart app for iOS does a great job laying out shopping categories for its huge inventory, letting you browse to items quickly. The interface includes categories on the left navigation bar that let you drill down to specifics, and a bigger window on the right to view results.

The Wal-Mart app takes advantage of the iPad's screen real estate well, by keeping navigation and viewing windows all on the same screen. Once you've drilled down to a category, you can get more product viewing area by swiping the navigation bar to the side. Then you can swipe … Read more

Zappos is even great on the iPad

The Zappos app for iOS is a joy to use, featuring an easy-to-navigate interface and lightning-fast search results for your shopping needs. The app features categories running down the left side, a featured section in the upper right (with a rotating carousel of deals), and a few featured items on the bottom.

Zappos originally started out on the Web selling shoes, but since then it has added a few more categories, such as clothing, bags, beauty supplies, and housewares. Touching a category on your iPad brings up icons so you can drill down farther (touching shoes, for example, brings up … Read more

Target not quite on target

Target for iPad brings the giant shopping site to your iOS device, but its clunky interface might lead you to try a different shopping app. We were excited to see how Target handled its iOS app, but immediately after launching it became apparent it wasn't as good as competing apps.

To browse products in the Target app, you touch the Products button in the upper left. This brings up a pop-up-like window that lets you drill down through categories. Even when just trying to browse a category, the Target App took a long time to produce search results and … Read more

Zynga's CityVille arrives on Google+

CityVille, Zynga's hottest game on Facebook, is now on Google+.

Today Zynga announced CityVille's arrival on Google's new social-gaming platform. "Ultimately, we want to make our games accessible to everyone, everywhere--no matter where they play or what platform they play on."

This is really good news for Google. Getting into games in a big way with popular titles should help drive engagement on its fledgling social network. Launched as a "limited field test" in June, Google+ recently opened up publicly and has attracted 43.4 million members, AllThingsD is reporting. To really fly, … Read more

YouSendIt delivers unlimited cloud storage

The Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 4G will launch this Thursday, Apple forces developers to update their apps to remove external links to e-books and subscriptions, and YouSendIt offers unlimited cloud-based storage for less than you'd expect.

Links from Tuesday's episode of Loaded: