Top tien Android apps voor internetmarketeers

http://www.comscore.com/Press_Events/Press_Releases/2010/9/comScore_Reports_July_2010_U.S._Mobile_Subscriber_Market_Share

http://www.wdfm.com/publish/android_apps/index.htm

Top 10 Android Apps for Internet Marketers

According to research firm Gartner, Android’s market share will be twice as large as the iPhone’s by 2014.

As a digital marketer, you need to know which Android apps hold promise for customers and which apps serve you best as a marketing professional.

Note to reader: You must use your Android-powered phone to download any of the apps featured below. If you read this newsletter on your computer and visit the links in the reviews, you’ll usually see the landing page but you won’t be able to download the app onto your computer. This seems obvious to many, but we say it anyway.

Sr. Editor Janet Roberts combed through countless apps and then tested scores of the best ones for this issue. Below are the 10 worth your time and attention.

So, take it awaaay, JR…

Springpad

Springpad bundles ecommerce, marketing, social networking and productivity in a single application.

This app saves notes, tasks, reminders and anything else you create on your phone or computer or find while surfing. You can even scan in product information for reference or comparison shopping if your phone has a barcode scanner. Because the info gets saved in a single database, you can also access it via the Springpad website.

The app then tracks everything you’ve saved and sends email alerts whenever the information matches up with a special offer or message from one of Springpad’s partner companies. Marketing partners include Gannett, Knorr and Wine Library TV.

You can also opt to broadcast your “saves” to your friends and browse whatever information they’ve made public.

Layar

“Augmented Reality” is a new term for a service that overlays information on whatever you’re viewing through your phone’s camera. The app uses your GPS location and phone compass to establish where you are and matches up your view with whatever it has in its database: nearby attractions, locations and reviews of restaurants and stores or information about a building you might be viewing.

The information comes from “layers” that other users or corporate partners have created, everything from locations of earthquakes around the world to how to hail a taxi in Paris.

At present, Layar is more effective in larger cities where more people have created information layers, but its appeal and usefulness will spread as more companies begin to catch onto the marketing potential.

To download this app, open Android Market on your phone and search for “Layar” (note the “ar” at the end of the word, for “augmented reality”).

Enliven Color Blind Aid

The link above takes you to a landing page with screenshots (scroll down to view) showing what reality looks like to a color-blind person as simulated by this app. For best results, view this page on your Android phone. This way, you can download the app directly to your phone: either click on the URL provided, or, if you have a bar code reader, scan the coded information on the page to launch the download.

Why would you want to download this app? It’s a good tool for designing web pages or optimizing conversions because it simulates what color-blind people are seeing, or what they aren’t seeing, when they look at your web pages.

To use Enliven on a web page, for example, open the app and point your phone camera at the page. Press “menu” on the phone or screen and choose which color sensitivity you want to test, such as red or green.

ScanLife Barcode Reader

A code scanner is essential for a mobile phone because it can read and save information stored in bar codes and QR (quick-response) codes on products, in ads or store signs or anywhere a code is displayed. This app uses your phone’s camera to view and scan a code and to download the information.

ScanLife reads both bar codes and QR codes (black-and-white squares of what look like squiggly lines) and stores the URLs should you need to revisit a site later.

Unlike other scanner apps, ScanLife can save you several clicks when downloading applications. After reading the bar code or QR code, the phone launches the download automatically. Other bar code scanners force you to click to the website and launch the application download there.

Marketing Forecast for Android

This marketing-news app from market research firm Ad-ology packs a lot of information into a small space. Its ease of navigation makes it a must-have. Marketers will find a wealth of content organized by categories, including Advertising, Brand Marketing, Consumer Spending, Small Business and Digital.

Touch the category you want and then choose the channel (latest news, trends, forecasts, and tweets) and swipe the screen up or down to read the content.

Document Scanner

No scanner in your home or office? No problem with this app (complimentary trial, $3.98 to buy). Just open the app, point your phone’s camera at whatever you want to snap (document, web page or anything you want to capture), and take a picture. The app creates a PDF of your picture, which you can email anywhere or upload to Google Docs if you use that service. You can also save it to your phone’s secure digital (SD) card, which provides extra memory.

HootSuite Lite

We use HootSuite to manage our Twitter accounts because we can operate multiple accounts in one dashboard, schedule tweets and access a wealth of statistics. The HootSuite Lite app for Android is just as easy to use and delivers all the information we need.

Swipe across the screen to view the current tweetstream, swipe up or down to move between accounts, and use the menu key to reach statistics or user profiles and to change settings. Another click opens the keyboard (use landscape view for easier typing) to send a fresh tweet on the fly.

MobiQpons

This GPS-powered shopping app, first profiled in Web Digest For Marketers’ list of iPhone applications, retains all of its usability in the Android version. We chose it then because it was easy to use, offered more special deals than similar apps, and updated automatically whenever the user changed locations.

The Android app retains all of the functionality and now brings the service to an even wider audience. Use this app to see how other marketers are using location-based PPC marketing.

SEO Automatic Lite

Smartphones and tablets are taking over many of the functions we once used to perform on desktop and laptop computers. This application duplicates the big-computer experience by analyzing the coding, navigation and styles of any webpage and reporting on issues that either work well, pose potential problems or need to be corrected.

The resulting report can be long but is formatted for easy reading. If you prefer, you can request an email version of the report.

Foursquare

Until recently, you had to have an iPhone to use this app, which put location-based marketing on the map. Now Android users can “check in” to any location, let friends know where they are and receive special offers just for walking through the door. This Android app also opens the Foursquare frontier to a broader audience for marketers.

Starbucks was one of the first to launch offers either for new customers or to reward loyal ones, but others now include media companies (the Bravo and History cable channels and the Today show), universities, retailers and local restaurants.

Awards can include “real” products such as free drinks or meals, or “virtual” honors that award bragging rights visible to all users, such as becoming the “mayor” of McDonald’s because you check in there more often than anybody else.

Attention Twitterers and Bloggers: You can link to the above content here and know it will live there permanently.