The City of Toronto announced an app today to help citizens reach its “311″ information service, and it’s being promoted as an easy way to take a picture graffiti and send it to the government so it can be cleaned up.

The app costs $1.99.

While a portion of the money will go to support the library, you may ask yourself “why on earth would I pay $2 to download an app when I can do it for free?”

Exactly.

The most important thing to ask yourself with any digital endeavour is WHY. If you cannot answer the WHY, the product should not be made.

Why would someone download this app when your Apple iPhone will easily take pictures and attach them to outgoing email?

Why would someone download this app over calling Toronto’s information line: 311?

Why release this app only on iPhone?

Why would a citizen report graffiti on their iPhone when the average person who may complain is elderly and may not feel comfortable sending information via their mobile?

Etc.

At least it’s not a QR code campaign.

The most popular new app technology that syncs a handheld with a TV show is Nielsen’s Media Sync. This technology created buzz last February when ABC launched its Grey’s Anatomy app, where users were encouraged to open the app while watching the episode.

How it works

Using Nielsen’ audio watermark, which embeds audio triggers throughout a TV show to gather Nielsen television ratings, show content can be picked up by the microphones on smartphones to launch episode-specific activities, such as behind the scene footage, polls, and other additional content.

The video above shows two different examples of the application, and it does present a lot of opportunities to allow your audience to easily interact with the content, which is important because Yahoo! reported in January 2011 that 86% use their mobile while watching television.

How to Make this Work for Your TV Show

To make an app like this work with your TV show means considering the user experience and providing value for the interactivity.

This type of application seems like a natural fit for sporting events or live reality shows, but what can be accomplished to engage the user of a dramatic series like Grey’s Anatomy beyond providing trivia and poll questions?

As this technology grows, content creators and TV producers need to understand how the content they put into this application will be used by the user, and identify what will make their viewers want to participate each time the show is broadcast.

Producers and broadcasters must also be willing to admit when this type of interactivity may not be a natural fit for their TV program. To maximize this potential (or recognize its usefulness early), it’s important to consider the content implications during the development and scriptwriting phase, in order to properly exploit its opportunities. By engaging in this technology at the earliest stage, there are opportunities to create your own audio watermarks to make the audience do something with their iPad and create a truly interactive experience.

Their success comes from three key areas:

- Understanding their international audience, by bringing in local stories balanced with a global perspective

- Tailoring its editorial  and product offering to expand across multiple platforms, such as mobile and smart TV apps

- Building sales and marketing capability to lure in local clients. “We still had to assume that the medi buyer we were pitching to in, say Chicago had never heard of us before.”

In the coming weeks, stay tuned to this blog as I’ll show you how investing in Content Strategy can help you achieve revenue growth and a better understanding of BBC.com’s 3 key areas for success: audience; tailoring content; and marketing.

This will be a top question on content farms soon when kids lose the stylus for Crayola’s upcoming, very cool looking app – Colour Studio HD.

Group messaging apps are real-time ways to text people for free, no matter what kind of smart phone they have (in theory). It’s like MSN Messenger or iChat for your phone… or for those Blackberry users, it’s BBM but works across all phones. While the cost to text isn’t necessarily prohibitive to all smartphone users (unless you’re traveling, then it’s ridiculous), it’s worth trying out something free, right?

There are a few apps that have been around for a while – Meebo, Beejive, etc, which use your preexisting memberships to Instant Messagers such as Yahoo! or MSN, but here are a few that break out:

Kik launched in late 2010 and I’d love to love it because it’s created in Canada, but it’s restrictive because you can only communicate with other Kik members. The app asks to scan my address book to find other Kik members, but since my contacts include some old and new work related people, I wanted to add my friends manually. Unfortunately, I couldn’t do it because I could only search by Kik user name instead of pulling via predictive text from my address book, which is what I expected. Its creator, a former employee of RIM, is currently being sued by the maker of the Blackberry and the app has been pulled from its store.

Beluga was created by former Google employees and its app is available for iPhone and Android – but you can still access Beluga conversations, or “pods” from any mobile browser. You do need to sign in to use the service, but the process is really simple. While in the app, it uses predictive search using your address book to find who you want to start a conversation with (rather than automatically scanning for its members – great!).  You can turn on a map feature so people you text know where you are (very cool), though it’s not an exact science – I’m texting someone who is in the same room as me, but the map indicates I’m a few blocks away. I mean, really. In this snowstorm? No thank you. Another cool feature- it updates your conversation by scrolling down/release to refresh – just like in the Twitter app. I love that more apps are adopting this functionality.

GroupMe is another app, but it’s unfortunately not available in the Canadian iTunes store. I can’t test it.

I know a lot of people who love their Blackberries because of BBM, so the ability of apps to share this functionality across all different types of smartphones might be a text killer and save us all some money. I wonder if Beluga will ever make it into the Blackberry app store… hmm…

Are there other similar messenger apps to try out? Let me know.

(Click on the image for a larger version)
[Source: Online MBA]

It’s with this memory I look to the app store and acknowledge the increase number of ad-supported apps that are now available for download.

For free apps, it appears most people are willing to accept ads, such as lower thirds or sponsor pages. Some publishers, however, appear to be experimenting with advertising on slightly higher priced apps to either offset the cost of development or appease their internal sales teams. One random app I recently came across was from Real Simple magazine. Its $4.99 “No Time to Cook app was released on December 19 and looks great. However, of its 4 reviews on the iTunes app store, half complain about its use of advertising.

Commenter Jason Matte writes: “Are you kidding me? The unwritten rule in the app store is that if you pay for it, it should be ad free.”

Is that true? Is $5 considered a premium, ad-free price for an app? It costs about $25/year to subscribe to the Real Simple magazine, and that’s chock-full of advertising. So, what gives?

Some apps, rather than choosing the ad-based model, have offered a free app that sells premium content. Take, for example, Word Lens – an app that uses your phone’s camera to translate foreign languages into your mother tongue.  The free app provides a mirror image of the words, which gives users a good testing ground before purchasing language packs for $5 that translate English to Spanish.

This model seems to make sense, considering most people would pay more than $5 for a travel book with local phrases. Yet some vocal commenters angrily gave the app one star for using this model, stating the mirror image doesn’t show how the app works.

Are complaints about these business models examples of angry troll behaviour, or are users only reacting because the business model is uncontrollably changing from what they were taught was the norm?

Well, here’s an app that puts the fun in function. Yes, I just wrote that. Marco is technically a game of Marco Polo, except this time you access the app to find out where your friends are located. Say you’re waiting for your friend to arrive for dinner. You access the app and enter your friend’s name – it sends a text message (using your address book) that says “Marco! Show (the sendee) your location on a map” with a link. Click the link, and your friend is taken to the Marco website, where he/she taps a button to send an SMS “Polo” back. You don’t need to have the Marco app on his or her phone for this to work. From there, you receive the SMS “Polo,” which tells you how far away your friend is from arriving.

Similar apps already exist. The most popular one is Loopt, which has partnerships with most U.S. mobile carriers as a social mapping device, that also works as a loyalty service. Yet it isn’t yet available outside of the U.S.

Marco Polo is technically a game, sure – but the developers have created an app that can appeal to those users who dislike social gaming.  And those who do like gaming can redefine their usage of this game at their own leisure.

ARTS

- DJ Shadow launched an app not too long ago that has some fantastic community features and his latest music. This is a great example of what a band or any brand can do to generate mobile excitement with fans. The app encourages fans to take pictures from his tour and post them, chat about upcoming or current concerts, make comments about his uploaded music and see where his fans are across the globe. The only problem I found with it – and it appears to be a bug- is that it doesn’t turn off its locative services when you close out of the app.

- I downloaded the Amazon Kindle app for my iPhone. While the store doesn’t yet have the selection of Kobo, I appreciate Amazon’s approach to its userface. For example, I found this neato feature whereby it shows you the dictionary definition of a word if you press down on it with your finger.  And yes – this does mean I read books on my iPhone and no, it isn’t too small to read.

GAMES

- Cut the Rope is the new Angry Birds. Over 2000 5-star reviews in the app store and it’s now #1 in Canada.

- Singing Fingers lets you “finger paint with sound” and it comes from the MIT Media Lab. Drag your finger across the blank screen to create a colourful line, while also creating a sound. Play back this sound, create more sounds, harmonize with other parts of your drawing… it’s amazing.  This site explains it all.

LIFE

- Seth Godin’s app might make me look bad because he manages to update it everyday, but I can’t help but appreciate it for its simplicity AND the fact he manages to bestow something interesting each time I open it. I’m far too cynical for inspirational talk from “gurus,” but Godin somehow latches on to my brain and helps me rethink common approaches to everyday work.

- While I love the internet and my digital life, I cannot for the life of me use a calendar/to-do list online. I need to write my tasks in a Moleskine calendar or it’s too easy for me to click “dismiss.” Teux Deux, however, is the only app I’ve used that could potentially replace the pen and paper. It’s simple to use and clean.

Alright – tell me – what apps am I missing out on?

Sony seems to think it’ll work – they’re creating TV sets to accomodate GoogleTV’s business model- but I wonder if this attempt to bring the computer experience to the television screen is misguided because, well, the computer works already. If I’m watching a TV show and want some more information, I go onto my laptop to get it. Mobile phones, iPads and other tablet devices make this task even easier.

What am I missing? Are you excited by Google TV?