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NJ App Developers Take Awards at NJTC Event
Edison, NJ, June 22, 2011: At the New Jersey Technology Council (NJTC) Mobile Application Forum event Wednesday, several area companies and several Canadian companies received awards for their innovative apps.
ZSL, Inc. of Edison NJ, was honored with the prestigious Judges Award for its Wound Care Mobile Assistant, an app that replaces the manual process of taking measurements of wounds and lesions and updating the patient record. NJTC also recognized the company’s SmartPrise BI Mobile app, which brings enterprise business analytics to a mobile environment.
Other NY/NJ area companies honored:
- For content, Berkeley Varitronics, Metuchen, NJ, a private firm with 32 employees, for its WatchHound cell phone monitoring app aimed at unauthorized use of cell phones in prisons, companies, and other restricted environments.
- For location services, Transclick, a NY-based company, for its real-time language translation application.
- For M Health, MTBC, of Somerset, NJ.
- For Mobile Media, Bianor, Uniondale NY, for iMediaShare, an app that lets people connect mobile devices with home media center providing the user the opportunity to view or listen multimedia files on home TV screens.
- For Smart City Applications, Police Software.com, Manalapan,NJ for taking its applications for police into the police car.
The event was billed as a joint effort by the U.S. mid-Atlantic region and Canada to present the best mobile applications in development in both countries. In a discussion on app trends, Research in Motion, from Canada, asked NJ applications developers to write for the company’s Blackberry Playbook and Blackberry phones and explained the tools that were available to the developer community. RIM spokeswomen Lindsy Henderson and Arlene Setacci said that convergence on a single device was a trend and that the company already had developed structures for developers to keep company information separate and secure from personal information on the same device.
Speaking about trends, Newton PA-based Object Frontier’s Rich Napoli said that while in the beginning companies wanted to make their websites mobile on cellphones, most companies are quickly moving towards wanting to do real business on the phone. Napoli said the Geico Glovebox was a good example of an app that fills a need but doesn’t duplicate a website.
Representing Verizon Wireless, Jason Serotta, manager of the developer community in Bedminster, NJ said that “It’s very important for a company to know what it needs from mobile.” Developers should ask what the app is going to solve and what is the target market. That knowledge will help developers make good design decisions, he said.
In a panel discussion on Free vs. Paid apps, some panelists looked at free apps as a cost of doing business, while others found that they gained much from using those free apps to test the waters and get the bugs out of their systems, before they ask for money. If users pay for apps they want a stable environment. However, when a developer puts something out free, people don’t mind telling him how it could be made better or identifying bugs and hang-ups.
In a world of “me too” apps, developers also have to be careful that they are creating something unique, because it becomes very hard to differentiate the app and monetize it. One NJ developer in the audience asked the experts about support for apps, stating that he had a finished app but didn’t have the manpower to support it. Panelists warned that if the app is not rock solid, it could be doomed by lack of support, since reviewers can be brutal when they can’t get anyone on the phone.
Click here to read the news online at NYConvergence
Contact:
ZSL Inc.
85, Lincoln Highway,
Edison, NJ 08820.
Phone: 732-549-9770
Fax: 732-767-6644
Email: info@zslinc.com
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