Mobile Publishing — getting the word out

I don’t know if this formally qualifies as publishing, but when I went to MacWorld recently, I saw three mobile apps with strong personal appeal.

One was called SelfServeApps which allows anyone to build a high quality phone app from their web browser in less than an hour at a fraction of the cost of custom development, giving small business owners a footing in the mobile market. Think of now being able to provide a creative mobile service with a lot of functionality to customers at a comparatively low cost of entry ($99.00 for setup, $29.00-$99.00 monthly).  It integrates with mobile web pages so customers can place orders via their iphones (and only iphones) as well.  Although it’s not yet integrated, that is, not all functionality provided operates within the app itself suggesting there could be performance issues (slower access which can turn consumers off), they plan on a fuller integration in a future version. It’s a Canadian company, reachable at 1-250-940-9080.

Another was called Yapper, which is essentially a web-based tool that allows you to build an iphone app based on a RSS feed.  App creation here too is $99.00+, with the ability to simply stream the latest and greatest utility/service that your company can provide via an app.  If you have a stream of offerings (weekly customer specials, articles published that are helpful to your community, information that’s useful on-the-go), your content made accessible via this app could win some hearts. The company, SachManya, is from Santa Clara.  Their phone number is (408)782-4557.

And a third was QuickOffice, an app for $10.00 which simply makes it very easy to both review and edit MS Office software (Excel, Word, etc.).  Although more a general tool, than something special for publishing, I believe it will be possible to keep up a productive pace, doing publishing-oriented tasks, again, while on-the-go.  Nothing earth-shattering here; just a practical app for when you’re mobile.