We thought it would be fun to make a shoutout to our favorite mobile applications that we didn't develop. They're listed in no particular order, but these are the apps that our team at Barefoot Solutions uses most often. We'll tell you what our favorite mobile apps (again, not including any that we've developed) do, and why they do it best. Enjoy! 1. Feedly It's our favorite way to get news, especially on what's going on in our industry. We can use it on our laptops or on our smartphones. We prefer Feedly over other news aggregator applications, because it's easy to navigate through articles quickly to find what we're interested in reading. 2. Waze Waze is our favorite mobile navigation application. Because it's crowdsourced, we're notified of accidents, traffic, and even the location of police officers as soon as someone else sees them. So not only does the app save us time when driving by routing us around traffic, it also helps us avoid tickets when we're in a hurry! 3. Mint Mint is our favorite mobile application for managing our finances. After initial setup, it's really easy to check account balances, and it notifies us of upcoming bills. Oh, and it also helps us save money, since it's free! 4. Safari To Go This mobile application gives up access to over a thousand ebooks and videos that we can reference at anytime from anywhere. 5. Alarmed We love Alarmed, because it keeps us organized and punctual. We use it to remind us about recurring tasks, such as oil changes, dog grooming, or bills, as well as one-time only tasks, like doctors appointments, when concert tickets go on sale, and even when our laundry is done. 6. Clear Clear is the best mobile to-do list app ever. It lets us easily create tasks and lists. When we've completed a task, we erase it from our to-do lists with a simple swipe. And the application's beautiful and intuitive design makes us want to use it more often. 7. Bandsintown Bandsintown makes sure that we never miss a good concert. This application scans our smartphones' stored music and Spotify for musicians that we listen to and lets us know when they're performing nearby. It even gives us suggestions for other bands' concerts that we might enjoy. 8. Buffer Buffer makes it ridiculously easy to share whatever we find interesting on websites like Feedly to our social media pages (LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Google+, etc). The best part is that this app automatically schedules our posts to be spaced out, so we don't spam our followers and friends. Buffer also offers insights, so we can see the number of clicks and the reach of each post. We hope you take the time to check out these awesome applications and enjoy them as much as we do!

Finding a non-detestable person to share a meal or a life with can be tough. The montage of small talk and awkward pauses lead many a dater to both dating fatigue and cat-buying tendencies. In other words - dating is awful. Finding partners seemed easier in the years of forced socializing, such as primary school and college, wherein meeting new people was a required way of life. Adulthood on the other hand presents the weighty challenge of forcing oneself to swim in whichever sea of strangers one feels tolerable that day. Social clubs, churches, and gyms are popular places - but adding extracurricular social activity can be a struggle for the busy working professional. Enter online dating - the only way to meet people on the comfort of your couch or the solace of the toilet. Scores of singles’ portfolios scatter the myriad of paid or unpaid dating apps, some intended for casual hookups, others for serious commitment. Popular dating apps like OKCupid or Match are based on the idea of entering partner preferences and personal information, then allowing the app to select matches based on your personality and ideal partner traits. Some apps use this same idea but are more selective, such as E-harmony. E-harmony is an app so committed to assisting users in long-term relationships that persons who do not meet a certain set of requirements can be expelled from the app entirely. Further still is Tinder, a newer app popular with young daters. Tinder helps users find individuals they perceive as visually attractive as a primary means of connection. Secondarily are personality traits such as hobbies or personal preferences, which has since caused the app to earn a reputation as a means for finding short-term relationships or one night stands. The great challenge these and most other online dating apps is this - it’s strangers trying to find love among strangers. As popular online dating blogger Single Steve laments, “I’ve always hated online dating. But I’ve always done it….[and am] going to keep doing it, because that’s just what you do. And you know what I hate most about it? It’s the philosophy of online dating. It’s the process of going on dates with strangers.” Granted, getting to know anyone from a friend to a colleague to a romantic partner is always awkward - but there’s something extra special about the bumbling awkwardness surrounding online dating. Strangers looking to find the greatest commitments of humanity with strangers. Weird. Eliminating the Cyber Stranger The landscape of online dating is an expansive valley of self-written profiles, professing how interesting, charming, or hipster-geeky-chic one is. Daters tweak said profiles regularly in hopes of ensnaring a person with a pulse who will find the lie-laden profile convincing enough to give a real life meeting a shot. But people aren’t stupid - everyone knows everyone is lying. For example, shoppers are more likely to give business to a company referred by a friend over a company they learned about via advertisement. Through a similar vein, wouldn’t daters trust dating recommendations from friends instead of the self-advertised, falsified, often ridiculous portfolios that clutter the dating world online? That’s what Pear Friends is hoping. The Dating App Based on Real Friend Introductions In mid-December 2014, a new type of dating app was launched, aimed at getting rid of unwanted stranger danger. Pear Friends is a free mobile app available on Android and iOS connecting friends-of-friends for long-walks-on-the-beach dating purposes. Once downloaded, the app syncs with the user’s Facebook profile. As the largest and most used social network on the internet, Facebook profiles are usually complete with profile pictures, work history, age, and personal preferences...the essential elements of an online dating profile. All the user needs to do is allow the connection. From there, the app works in two ways: Find a Pear - Your Facebook friends have their own Facebook friends with whom you don’t share a direct connection with. Once friends allow Pear Friends to access their contacts, the user can browse through friends of friends to find a person dateable. Find someone intriguing? Tap the profile and the app will ask your Facebook friend to introduce you.   Pear Friends - Here’s the big difference with Pear Friends. Not only does the app allow users to actively search for a date, but people who aren’t even interested in dating can use the app as well. If any friend truly is a friend, most of the time they are interested in matching together people they like, connecting their own network and helping people they care about find people to care about. By tapping into innate human desires to 1) find a romantic partner and 2) help friends, our prediction is Pear Friends is going to change online dating significantly. The reason is the app moves online dating strategy away from the proactive profile hunt done alone, but into a space that includes friends in the match-making experience. Social opportunities in the real world tend to revolve around who knows and introduces who, meaning Pear Friends is moving the online dating game much closer to the real life dating game.   What do you think? Will Pear Friends change online dating? Let us know what you think in the comments below.

Lots of apps suck. Just plain, bad products that should fall into the undesirable pits of failure and leave us alone. Don’t let that happen to your idea or your app. There are plenty of ways to ensure your app is used, loved, and could even be the next big thing. Here are some tricks we’ve learned along the way from clients whose ideas went from concept to Steve-Jobs-like success story. 1) Make it stupidly simple. No no, don’t make your app stupid, make it stupidly simple to use. There is nothing more frustrating than taking the time to download an app, only to struggle with understanding how to use it. Provide a simple walk-through guide for first-time users so they understand what they are supposed to be doing with your awesome app. From there, remove complexity in every way possible. Your app should be a tool to make their lives easier or a game to bring joy. Therefore make sure yours is an asset to their app collection, not the complicated monstrosity they will be complaining to their friends about. 2) Avoid a bunch of advertisements. How many times have you downloaded a free or freemium app, and to use it you’re barraged with an unending amount of advertisement pop-ups? Or worse, ads over your listening experience. Take Spotify’s advertising model for example - while we appreciate the freemium version they put out there, users are pretty much bullied into subscribing monthly for the app due to the constant stream of music montage ruining commercials that keep screwing up your workout, especially that one time you were about to PR (personal record). Yes advertising can help fund your app, but remember there are lots of ways to monetize your app. If you choose to go the ad route, try not to overwhelm your user - because that sucks. 3) Keep your target audience in mind - and make them happy. As much as you’d like it to be, your app can’t be everyone’s best friend. Understand the person you are targeting and build your app with them in mind. If you try too hard to imagine every person who could ever possibly use your app, you’re just going to piss off everyone. Focus on the ideal user and make them giddy with your app experience. 4) Make it inexpensive or free. Everyone likes free stuff. That goes for your potential users too. Lower the barriers to entry and if you can, make your app free to download. If you do want to put a price on it, at least keep the cost down to maximize the people who will be willing to pay a buck or two for your app. 5) Learn from your audience. The Internet is filled with people with opinions. If they don’t like something you can be damned sure they are going to tell you about it. Listen to those who complain and yes, sometimes it stings a little. Just don’t forget the haters are always louder than the lovers. It’s therefore helpful to request feedback from your users to get the opinions of those who like your app and can tell you what cool things you’re doing right. You’ll probably need some positive feedback anyway as listening to the complainers and trolls can get downright taxing. 6) Study your competition. It’s helpful to understand your competition because you don’t want to reinvent an already working wheel by making a lamer version of something users know and love. Check out their model to verify that you have something unique that users can gravitate to. Sure, it can be a solution to the same problem the competition is looking to solve, but what’s going to make you successful is having taken a different angle and mastering your own competitive advantage. 7) Do one thing and do it better than anyone else. Sometimes people think their mobile app should be a mobile version of their web app, with all the functionality of the web app on the mobile app. This is typically the wrong approach - your app can’t be everything to everyone. Facebook recently realized this and is actually removing functionality and spinning them out (e.g. Messenger) into separate apps. Do yourself a favor and realize this early and focus on being an expert at that one thing. The point is, your app idea could be great in your head but flop on execution. The last thing we want for you is for that to happen. So don’t be a stranger, let us know how we can steer you in the right direction, whether it’s with us or another team who will help make sure your app isn’t awful.