ViziApps makes it Easy to add Social Logins to your mobile apps. Quickly enable your mobile app users to register and/or login with their Facebook, Google or LinkedIn user credentials!

Social Logins are an easy way for end users to register and login to mobile apps. Instead of adding a username and password fields to your app, just add a button with the action of social login and you can get the name, email and profile picture of the end user to use in your app. Then, you can store the credentials for future logins.

To add Social Login to an app's Button, just open the Button Property sheet and enter the properties for your choice of Facebook, Google or LinkedIn. That's it! Social Logins in your mobile app in about a minute!

The Real-time Electronic Access for Caregivers and the Homeless (REACH) Challenge will award a $25,000 grand prize for a mobile app for smartphones and tablets that can help the homeless, as well as caregivers and caseworkers who serve them, locate resources in their communities. In addition, the top five finalists will each receive $10,000. The contest is sponsored by the U.S., Department of Veteran Affairs, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and Jon Bon Jovi’s Soul Foundation.

According to Veterans Affairs, 636,017 people in the United States were homeless in 2011, and about 14% of homeless adults were veterans. To address problems the homeless face, the winning app will help outreach workers and volunteers track down information on resources such as health clinics, shelters, food kitchens, legal assistance and other social service resources and share it with the homeless in their communities.

To assist contestants in developing robust applications, the Department of Housing and Urban Development is making available applications and data in its Homeless Management Information System. With easy access to information on local resources, caregivers and social workers will be better able to serve the large numbers of homeless who need assistance.

Non-programmers looking to enter the contest could use the ViziApps mobile app development tool to design and test their application free. The tool’s drag-and-drop approach requires no coding, making it easy to build mobile apps that provide data access on iOS and Android devices.

ViziApps now supports direct integration of RSS Feeds from your app with no coding. RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is a web standard for publishing frequently updated information in a standardized format using links. For example, you can use RSS to display a list of news items with links to web pages.

RSS is now a new ViziApps field that you can add to any page. In the property sheet, give it a name, RSS title, the feed URL and one of two ways to display the RSS items:

RSS Display with Title and Date

RSS Display with Image, Title, Date

Then, when your app runs and the RSS feed is displayed, the user can tap on one of the rows, and the associated link in the RSS feed is used to popup a web page.

Neil Perlin, Hyper/Word Services

Many mobile apps let users add material to the app’s database. Think notes apps, reminder apps, or photo albums, for example. Can you do this with ViziApps? Yes.

I took advantage of this capability for an app that listed BBQ restaurants around Austin, TX, which I created for a conference in the Texas capital. I started with a list of restaurants in the database, in a Google Docs spreadsheet. Conference attendees could list the restaurants by name or city by tapping the appropriate button on the app page. Then, assuming that no Texan would trust a Yankee’s assessment of BBQ restaurants, I added a social media element that let attendees add their own listings. How did it work?

Tapping an “Add Your Own” button opened a page where users could insert a restaurant’s name, city, and web page. (I could have added additional entry fields like address or rating but wanted to keep the app simple.) Users could fill out some or all of the fields and tap a Submit button to send the entry to a “restaurants” worksheet in the Google Docs spreadsheet and get a “thanks for your entry” response in return.

Any user could then tap one of the “list…” buttons to see the new entry, and all the entries, in the list – a two-column table. Tapping any entry in the table opened a Details page listing all the information for the restaurant. (For your mobile app, you could narrow the choices by requiring users to log in and then only show their specific listings, but that could losethe social media benefit.)

Several thoughts about designing an app this way…

• This social media component is generalizable to almost any category of thing – BBQ restaurants, museums, golf courses, etc.
• Social media lets you tap into the “wisdom of the crowd.” For example, residents of Austin knew more about the local BBQ scene than I did. I took advantage of that knowledge by letting them add to the database.
• The social media capability lets contributors show off by adding a “Referred by” field that includes the contributor’s name on the details page. It may seem silly but it can be very appealing to contributors.

Some thoughts about design…

• Typing on a virtual keyboard isn’t easy. Try to offer alternatives to text entry, like a tappable table, picker, or wheel (for mobile business apps for iPhone or Android smartphones).
• Using a table, picker/wheel also has the benefit of “bounding” user entries. For example, ask users to type a city name and you may get the right name, the wrong name, a misspelled name, or no name. But giving users a preset list in a picker, for example, helps focus their entries.
• On the downside, these features use a lot of screen space that you may not want to spare. You could split data entry across several pages, but users might view the app as more complex than it really is and not use it. You’ll need to strike a balance among ease of use, comprehensiveness of data, and screen space.
• The app’s owner will have to periodically remove junk entries like “xxx” or MyTest” from the database, but this is pretty simple.

In summary, think about adding a social media component to your app. You’ll get user participation and engagement, and, with ViziApps, it’s pretty easy to do.

Neil Perlin is the president of Hyper/Word Services, a mobile and online help development, consulting, and training company. You can reach him at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., www.hyperword.com, @NeilEric.

According to a new IDC report, Worldwide Mobile Worker Population 2011-2015 Forecast, we can expect the global workforce to become increasingly mobile in the coming years.

“Our forecast shows that the worldwide mobile worker population will increase from just over 1 billion in 2010 to more than 1.3 billion by 2015,” said Stacy Crook, senior research analyst for IDC’s Mobile Enterprise Research program.

The report predicts that the region that includes the United States, Canada, and Latin America will have 212.1 million mobile workers in 2015. Asia/Pacific (excluding Japan) will see the largest increase in total number of mobile workers, with a jump from 601.7 million mobile workers in 2010 to 838.7 million in 2015. IDC attributes much of that increase to strong economic expansion in China and India, the two most populous nations in the world.

Although those numbers may be daunting, businesses cannot afford to ignore them. Instead they need to find ways to turn the increasingly flexible way the workforce operates into a business driver.

How? By assessing what their employees will need to take advantage of rapidly changing mobile technologies. Both enterprises and small businesses need to ensure that their mobile workers are not merely moving more than ever, but that they also have all the tools they need to access key business data and stay productive, wherever they are.

Some of the most important resources they will require to do that are mobile business apps, designed to provide the types of up-to-date data, reporting capabilities, and decision making tools they would use if they went into the same office every day.

ViziApps was launched to help businesses meet just that need. In significantly less time than it takes to build software applications using traditional methods, the ViziApps online tool enables non-programmers to develop custom, branded native apps for iOS and Android devices and web apps for any mobile device with a full browser. Because the tool provides a drag-and-drop approach that uses widgets and requires no coding, much of the technical expertise and time-consuming challenges of a software engineering project can be avoided.

Companies in a number of vertical markets are using ViziApps to develop innovative mobile apps. Employing a do-it-yourself approach that requires the same types of computer skills needed to convey information in a PowerPoint presentation or Excel spreadsheet, they are addressing the growing demand for apps that not only promote worker productivity but also engage customers and partners in new ways.

AT&T M2X (https://m2x.att.com/) provides time-series data storage, device management, message brokering, event triggering, alarming, geo-fencing, and data visualization for Industrial Internet of Things (IoT) products and services. ViziApps has worked with AT&T to integrate ViziApps with M2X to provide Visual Rapid Mobile App Development (RMAD) for industrial IoT.

Much has been written recently about the challenges of creating a mobile app that will get noticed.

In a world where it seems there’s already an app for just about everything, what are some of the ways to make a mobile app stand out, in a way that makes users want to download and use it?

Here are a few ideas. First, potential app creators should go into the different app markets and see what’s already available, taking note of what other comparable apps got right and where there’s room for improvement. That is the type of information that can be used to build a better app with a better user experience.

The large number of available apps shouldn’t discourage anyone who has an idea for a mobile business app. There is still considerable opportunity to create mobile applications that address unmet business needs. Large enterprises are struggling to keep up with the demand for mobile apps for use with customers, partners, employees and others. Small businesses are also looking for ways to leverage mobile apps, to expand their markets, for instance, or retain customers.

With the ViziApps platform, anyone with basic computing skills can create a robust mobile app – without coding – and provide the functionality business users need. Powerful business apps provide data, the type needed for making informed decisions, responding to customer queries, and generally keeping pace with volatile business conditions.

The ViziApps’ drag-and-drop approach enables access to back-end data in a way that can differentiate a mobile business app from less sophisticated ones. That data can be stored in Google Docs spreadsheets or SQL databases, or accessed via web services. This capability gives mobile app creators a way to provide a very rich user experience on an iPhone, iPad or Android smartphone or tablet.

Hybrid mobile apps provide the advantages of native and web technologies in a single application. And now, with ViziApps, you can build a hybrid mobile business app with robust data access using a drag-and-drop approach, without coding.

To users, hybrid apps are like native apps, in that they can take advantage of device features, such as the camera and GPS. And they are distributed through an app market, like the Apple App Store or Google Play, for installation on a mobile device.

But unlike native apps, hybrid apps also seamlessly integrate web content and add web features where needed with coded extensions. As a result, hybrid apps provide the flexibility for mobile business apps to access web content and integrate advanced functionality, such as that needed for mobile games and complex app logic.

Key advantages of ViziApps hybrid mobile apps include:

Standard drag-and-drop WYSIWYG design, plus advanced functionality that allows you to use JavaScript for apps that require more complex operations. Most mobile business apps only need ViziApps’ standard functionality, which can be used without coding. For those apps that need to include more complex features, adding “glue logic” with JavaScript enables more complex data operations. For example, glue logic could be used to get GPS data and then transform it into a URL for a map on another page.

The power of HTML5 across devices. Now, you can easily integrate rich HTML content with native feature access and control. Because HTML5 is supported on all major device browsers, ViziApps hybrid apps look the same on all supported devices. For instance, the picker function, which allows a user to select among different options, like times and dates, looks different using the native controls for Android and iOS. On Android the picker is a drop-down while on iOS the picker is a large spinner. With ViziApps hybrid apps, the picker works the same way on iOS and Android devices. On both tablets and smartphones, the picker functionality is provided in a drop-down menu. HTML5 also offers a wide range of design options and enables third-party web plug-ins, expanding the ways you can distinguish your apps’ appearance.

Faster Page Transitions. For very complex apps, with 10+ pages and 50+ fields, hybrid apps provide faster page transitions. Greater responsiveness means an enhanced user experience.

As with native apps and web apps, designing and building a hybrid mobile app with ViziApps is free. You can publish a ViziApps hybrid app for the same low pricing as a native app.

You can now use ViziApps to build both native and web apps for the iPad. Newly integrated functionality for native apps allows for use of the impressive iPad display in mobile business apps. Native apps allow apps to take advantage of iPad native functions like the camera and GPS.

Using the same drag-and-drop approach you’d take to build an app for an iPhone, iPad, or Android smartphones, you can now use ViziApps to produce apps that take advantage of 10-inch screens on tablets running Android 2.2 or later.

If you have already created an iPad app with ViziApps or have been considering one, you now have more choices: you can build an iPad app, an Android tablet app, or both.

Tablets offer a number of advantages for business apps. For sales presentations, they provide a way to display information in visually compelling ways. A 10-inch screen is ideal for displaying business data, product schematics, videos and other types of content that would overwhelm a smartphone screen.

Also, if you have designed an app with ViziApps for a smartphone, it will now look good on both iPads and Android tablets without any design changes. The design will scale up proportionally but keep the crisp edges of fonts in HD.

Enterprises and small-to-medium-size businesses tend to first think of smartphone apps when considering a new way to increase user productivity or strengthen customer bonds. And of course, smartphones apps can address those needs very effectively.But now it’s time to also provide apps for tablets, to accommodate business users who enjoy working on the iPad or an Android tablet.

Smartphone use for business is exploding. Users view them as essential personal devices that can easily handle work as well as personal tasks. As a result, smartphones often are selected and purchased by individual users and supported through their employer’s BYOD program. Tablets for business apps, on the other hand, are more likely to be selected and supplied by employers.

According to Gartner, the number of tablets sold in 2012 will hit the 119 million mark. That’s nearly twice the 2011 level of 60 million units. Tablet sales will continue to rise, the research firm predicts, with 450 million tablets sold annually by 2016. By then, enterprise purchases will account for 53 million units.

As the popularity of tablets in the enterprise skyrockets, employees, customers, partners and suppliers will need apps specifically created to run on tablets, taking advantage of those devices’ formats and superior presentation features. So businesses will have to find a way to build new custom tablet apps quickly and cost effectively. They will also need to be able to quickly update and maintain them throughout their life cycle at low cost.

The ViziApps mobile app development tool meets those requirements. With its drag and drop approach to design, ViziApps enables business people without coding experience to create apps for iOS and Android tablets. Moreover, the tool’s visual design capabilities allow app builders to create graphics once for use in a tablet app and deploy those graphics across multiple mobile platforms. As a result, business people can plan and implement tablet app development projects in days or weeks, rather than months, and use expense reports to handle app subscription fees.

So what databases can ViziApps mobile apps work with?

Databases including SQL Server, MySQL, 35 other SQL databases, Quickbase, and Google Sheets can all connect to your mobile apps built with ViziApps with no coding.

So, why this is important?

Databases are where all of your key business process information is updated and stored. But most databases (even SaaS databases) are not very mobile friendly. With mobile changing the way your workforce, partners, and customers do business, it is vital for you to connect to these databases in your business mobile apps.

In an interview with Information Week, ViziApps CEO George Adams recommended 5 steps SMBs can take to ensure that their mobile apps will get used.

“You need to have an immediate value or hook to the app,” Adams said. In other words, what’s going to make this app stand out from the dozens or even hundreds of others you’ve downloaded?

It’s critical that you “show a compelling reason to have that other app.”

This advice holds for SMBs, as well as enterprise business groups developing their own mobile apps.

Providing the ability to make in-app payments and geo-location services were just two of the features Adams suggested for engaging app users. He also advocated ways to take advantage of the versatility of tablets like the iPad to reduce paperwork and enhance customer presentations.

This is the same advice Adams offers users of the ViziApps online tool, which enables anyone with minimal computing skills to create a data-rich mobile app. Without doing any coding, ViziApps lets you create a mobile business app online, providing the type of functionality users – whether they are customers, employees, or partners – require to work productively or engage with a business. ViziApps allows non-programmers to build apps that are not only visually engaging, but also allow apps to access data from backend sources such as Google Docs spreadsheets and SQL databases to enable users to make timely, informed business decisions. ViziApps can be used to build apps that run on iOS and Android devices.

As you plan your next mobile business app, make sure that it offers a compelling user experience. According to research by Localytics, 26% of mobile apps are used just once after they are downloaded. So if you’re planning to build a mobile app for your business, getting users to download it will be just the beginning.

The importance of engaging your target users cannot be overstated. Localytics found that users who are highly engaged with an app are more likely to make in-app purchases. In fact, 44% of the study sample who made an on-app purchase only did so after interacting with the app at least ten times.

ViziApps allows mobile app builders to incorporate graphics such as photos, logos and icons in their mobile applications without tailoring those images for different platform screen sizes. For example, a business manager could create a logo for use in an iPhone 5 app and use it in ViziApps to build apps for that Apple platform, as well as the iPhone 4 and iPad. That logo could also be used undistorted in select Android smartphones and tablets, as well.

As a result, mobile business app creators can use ViziApps to quickly and easily use graphics in their app designs to brand their mobile apps for different devices and incorporate images in a way that enhances the user experience on several platforms. This capability is just another way that ViziApps eases and streamlines the mobile business app development process.

For help building mobile applications for smartphones or tablets, see our tutorial videos. They include tips on topics such as designing tables; incorporating HTML panels; using the camera, picker, and GPS field; and adding JavaScript.

ViziApps is pleased that the need and value of Rapid Mobile App Development (RMAD) platforms like the ViziApps Visual RMAD have been recognized in the fast paced mobile industry.

Chris Nerney is a technology writer who covers mobile technology, big data and analytics, Android, data centers and cloud computing. Here’s an excerpt from one of his posts in CSC Blogs:

Even the best of the best mobile apps development best practices may not be enough to enable enterprises to meet the expected demand for serious business apps, according to a new report by technology research and consulting firm Gartner:

By the end of 2017, market demand for mobile app development services will grow at least five times faster than internal IT organizations’ capacity to deliver them. Gartner forecasts mobile phone sales will reach 2.1 billion units by 2019, which will fuel demand for apps in the enterprise that meet the high performance and usability of consumer apps.

The driving force behind the growing demand for mobile apps by enterprise users is the increasing number of devices employees are expected to use in the workplace, including smartphones, tablets, smartwatches and other wearables. The Internet of Things also will generate more demand for mobile apps.

Gartner recommends four specific steps enterprises can take to offset mobile apps development challenges:

1. Prioritize app development

Rather than develop apps for whomever asks first or the loudest, “mobile development teams need to formulate a process of mobile app prioritization that involves understanding the needs of business stakeholders,” Gartner says.

2. Adopt a bimodal IT model

Gartner urges the scrapping of the “traditional IT development approach” with a bimodal approach that delivers apps more efficiently and quickly. Bimodal approaches consist of two modes: “Mode 1 drives the creation of stable infrastructure and APIs to allow apps to retrieve and deliver data to back-end systems without impacting those enterprise applications, while Mode 2 uses high-productivity, agile approaches to quickly deliver front-end app features required by the business.”

3. Deploy RMAD tools

Rapid mobile app development (RMAD) tools enable enterprises to turn out apps much faster. Examples include drag-and-drop codeless tools, model-driven development and other approaches that allow non-developers and people in business units to get involved in creating mobile apps.

4. Used a mixed-sourcing approach

While Gartner says enterprises eventually will upgrade their in-house mobile development, only 26% of organizations now use in-house-only development, while more than half (55%) are “successfully delivering apps using mixed sourcing.”

The bottom line, if Gartner’s forecast is accurate, is that enterprises need to ramp up mobile apps development in a strategic way. If they don’t, they may cede market opportunities to their competitors.

If you’re looking for a low-cost way to enhance the service you provide your customers, consider a mobile business app. With ViziApps, it’s free to design, build and test a mobile app. Then, for modest fees for cloud-based services to maintain your app, your company can provide a branded mobile app that provides customers valuable information wherever they need it.

And because many companies don’t yet have mobile apps tailored to meet their customers’ data needs, you have the opportunity to clearly differentiate your business.

That’s right. Today you can still make your business stand apart from your competitors with a data-rich mobile app. But that climate is changing. Offering a mobile app for the iPhone, iPad, and/or Android devices is rapidly becoming more than a nice-to-have option for companies. Soon mobile apps will be mandatory for a successful business.

Forbes contributor and CRM consultant Gene Marks makes a strong argument for the value of mobile apps for businesses of all sizes in his recent post titled “Your Business Checklist: A Website, A Phone Number, A Mobile App.”

“It’s time to stop playing games,” Marks writes. “Smart, boring, conservative companies are getting serious about mobile applications. Slowly but surely, they’re waking up to the potential..no, the need…to utilize these applications to develop more business and keep their customers coming back.”

A cornerstone of his argument is the fact that businesses can provide mobile apps that provide access to the types of data needed to do business – and with minimal investment.

“Think about it: we can all save whatever files, music, videos and photos, for next to nothing on Amazon, Dropbox, or other such services… [People are asking] Why can’t I view product specs, safety information and environmental releases about the products I’ve purchased” on my choice of mobile device?

It’s a fair question. But not every mobile app development platform provides easy robust data access. ViziApps does. With ViziApps, you can easily create a mobile app that provides the data your customers need. And it won’t require an expensive, months-long engineering project.

ViziApps provides a drag-and-drop approach to building a data-rich mobile app for free. (Ongoing maintenance starts at $29 per month for web apps and $49 per month for native apps. See pricing details here.)

What makes ViziApps different from other app development platforms is the way it allows the integration of databases, web services and Google Docs spreadsheets for mobile apps. Without doing any coding, people with minimal computer skills can create mobile apps that make use of backend data resources to provide a rich user experience. The online ViziApps tool can be used to create mobile apps for the iPhone, iPads, and Android phones and tablets, and to build web apps for any device with a full browser.

Start thinking about building a mobile app for your business now. Because, as Gene Marks says, “every business should be thinking about building mobile applications today. It’s not a fad or a passing trend. It’s customer service.”

ViziApps helps you enhance the user experience for your mobile apps with an easy to use Navigation Bar. By adding this feature to the mobile apps you create with ViziApps, you make it easier for users to move through your apps and access the features and data they need. No longer will you need to place a unique Home button, for example, on every page of your app.

With the Navigation Bar displayed at the top or bottom of each page, your mobile apps will provide a straightforward way for users to immediately find and use the features they need. ViziApps’ new Navigation Bar capability also streamlines the app building process, by allowing you to incorporate one consistent set of icons that will appear throughout your app.

A new video provides help with ViziApps functionality you may want to include when you build your mobile app.

Professional Investment Advisors are looking to mobile apps as a way to deepen connections with clients. They are also employing them to showcase their brands, with current clients, as well as prospects.

In a recent article in RIA Biz magazine (a publication for registered financial advisors), Bill Hayes, principal of Charles Carroll Financial Partners, described the ViziApps-built iPad application he uses to work more efficiently. Now, instead of carrying around lots of paper, Hayes uses the app to access the various types of documents that his clients need to complete or review and approve when he meets with them.

“I travel quite a bit to meet with clients, and it was getting more difficult to get the necessary information and this makes it much easier,” Hayes told the magazine. “This allows me to show prospects all of the necessary documents that will need to be filled out if they become my client.”

The app Hayes uses was created with ViziApps 2.0, which features powerful data management capabilities for accessing and managing information stored in Google Docs spreadsheets for use in both native mobile and web apps. ViziApps also supports accessing and managing information stored in SQL. ViziApps 2.0 is now available for download in Apple’s App Store and Google Play (formerly Android Market).