New version out there

Some weeks ago we published the current version of appazaar. If you have not updated or installed it in the meanwhile you should do now :-) One of the new features is about app statistics. On the details page of apps you can now look into when and where apps are used mostly. One interesting example is Foursquare:

You can see the peaks around lunch and dinner time. So people seem to check-in when they are out for having a meal at places where they have a meal. Furthermore, you can now share apps on Facebook and Twitter — just connect your accounts. So if you find any interesting curves, we will be happy if you share them with us and your social networks.

Behind the scenery, we are experimenting with new recommender engines. For instance, knowledge of when apps are mostly used during course of the day will be used to improve recommendations. From your feedback we know that we can further improve on the recommender quality. If you have any comments or feature request, we will be happy to know about it.

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appazaar 0.6 in the Market

The week since the official release in the Market Store was pretty interesting for us. We got a lot of different feedback and now we’re proud to release another update. As we implemented some major changes we increased the version number to 0.6 and hope that it’ll make appazaar even more useful and less buggy :)

beta 0.6

The changelog is pretty short but I can assure you that it was a lot of work:
* performance issues
* navigating with trackball

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appazaar Beta 2 released to the Market

Today is a big day for us as we just released the second beta to the Market Store. So from now on you guys will get every update directly and I guess there’ll be some during the next days ;)

We also would like you to give us detailed feedback if you feel like it. As this is still a beta feedback is important for us to be able to continue developping appazaar with respect to your ideas! So don’t hesitate if something is bothering you or you have an idea on your mind :)

appazaar WidgetContext tag editor

Since the first beta we improved appazaar a lot but the most significant changes for you will be these:

* context tags: You now have the possibility to describe your current situation with a few words like “home, lunch” or “working” to improve the quality of the recommendations.
* less traffic: We reduced the traffic a lot with zipping everything and scaling the icons down. So there is less data to commit!
* recommending: On the server side we’re now using different algorithms that still need to be trained more, but that already should recommend more interesting apps for you.

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Screenshots of beta

If you are curious about how appazaar looks like, check this screenshots of our beta version running on an HTC Magic. The first one shows the appazaar widget containing the recommended apps. If you click on one of them, they either start directly or get installed via the Market Store. I personally like the recommendation of Photoshop and Layar :-)

appazaar widget

appazaar widget

The second screen shows the settings, that you reach from the main menu. They are currently pretty rudimentary as you can just start or stop the service.

start or stop the appazaar service

start or stop the appazaar service

Check our beta version if you want to try appazaar on your mobile. If you have any ideas or feedback please let us know.

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First beta release

We got it! The first beta release of appazaar is ready for shipping. You can install the app on your Android mobile by simply following these steps:

  1. Open the browser on your phone and point it to http://www.appazaar.net/beta.apk
  2. A short download and installation process will start.
  3. After the installation, you will have a new entry in your menu. The icon brings you to the settings of appazaar, which are currently pretty rudimental as you can just start or stop the service.
  4. Start the appazaar service from these settings. Please be aware, that from this moment we log your application usage and your location. You find more information about that logging in the FAQ-Section of this page. In case you don’t want us to log, you can simply disable the service by stopping it but don’t forget that the base for our recommendation system is the analysis of the data we are logging.
    If you have further questions, please feel free to write a comment or contact us via mail!
  5. For the full experience, please add the appazaar widget to your desktop.

What is appazaar doing?
The short answer: appazaar is the last.fm for mobile apps ;)

Once the appazaar-widget is started it will recommend you apps from the Market Store. If you want to know how we know what to recommend, take a short look at the FAQ and the About appazaar page!

Please be aware, that this is a beta version. However, we really want to integrate your ideas and feedback into our appazaar. Please leave comments here in the blog, join our group on Facebook or send us mails to mail@appazaar.net.

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Become a beta tester

We are currently wrapping things up to release a first version of appazaar. If you are interested in testing this beta version and you want to be one of the first users, please use this form to register.

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