Google's long-awaited Google Drive launched last week, and it's incredibly similar to the reigning file-syncing app, Dropbox. So now that you've examined the differences between all the popular options, we want to know: Which service did you settle on? More »

SalesVu, the maker of a mobile payments service designed for business customers, is launching a major update with SalesVu 2.0, live now in the iTunes App Store. The company is somewhat similar to Square, in that it also includes a dongle that plugs into an iPhone or iPad and works alongside an accompanying mobile application. However, the company is focused on providing tools that address more complex business needs than simply taking credit cards via a mobile device. For example, SalesVu currently offers real-time analytics reporting and the ability for businesses to post offers directly to Facebook through social sharing mechanisms.

With the release of SalesVu 2.0, a number of improvements have been added for business users, including things like receipt printing, barcode scanning, employee timekeeping, and online order processing, to name a just few.

While competing in the same general space as Square, Austin-based SalesVu is different in that it has never gone after the market of individuals users who had always relied on cash-based transactions. Instead, its focus has been the business customer processing at least $1,500/month who was looking for a mobile payments solution with a specific emphasis on integration with other backend systems like order management, deals and discount management, and social marketing.

With the release of SalesVu 2.0, the goal is to better improve on the feature set these customers need. For retailers, the company has now added receipt printing and barcode scanning functionality, which customers demanded. They also asked for the newly added employee clock-in/clock-out function, which is now tied to SalesVu’s online timekeeping solution. Plus, SalesVu 2.0 has improved the close-out process with new cash drawer functionality also new in this release.

For restaurants, the company has added features like the ability to split checks, print orders to the kitchen, adjust tips at the end of shifts, and receive orders from the web. The online orders are also displayed in the SalesVu POS app for immediate processing, as opposed to being sent out as emails, as is typical with some online ordering integrations targeted towards the SMB market. This feature now also makes SalesVu a competitor to traditional POS systems, says SalesVu CEO Pascal Nicolas

“The online ordering feature is probably the most important one we’re adding in this release,” explains Nicolas, “because we’re going from a convenience app to a revenue-generating app. These are orders that they may not have received, if they had not received them online,” he says. The feature was heavily requested by restaurants, for obvious reasons, but the functionality is available to anyone, including retailers, Nicholas adds.

Finally, for service businesses (think salons, spas, plumbers, etc.), SalesVu 2.0 has added the ability to route appointments from a business website to the app on the iPhone or iPad, and now supports the ability for the business to take a deposit at the time of reservation. Invoicing and recurring billing have been added, too.

Despite these business-friendly features, SalesVu’s biggest challenge for now is brand recognition and awareness – even Square itself isn’t a household name yet. However,  one of Square’s bigger draws is that free dongle it hands out to any who ask. SalesVu, meanwhile, only gives out the first dongle per location for free and then requires businesses to pay $99 for each additional one. However, it has now dropped the monthly subscription fee ($9.95/month) for use of its cloud system to be more competitive.

SalesVu is also competing heavily on pricing, in terms of processing fees. To combat Square’s low 2.75%, SalesVu negotiated with its partner Mercury Payment Systems to take the risk and go even lower to a flat 2.7% in the U.S. In Canada, rates vary from 1.73% to 3.26% depending on card type, which means it’s (sometimes) lower than Intuit’s GoPayment. The company has a profit-sharing arrangement with Mercury which allows it to generate revenue from those fees.

Currently, SalesVu’s mobile apps have been downloaded 15,000 times, and now nearly 6,000 businesses have signed up and are actively using the system. The company is iOS-only for now, but plans to release an Android version this summer.

A new photography app for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch has launched, with the aim of revolutionising time-lapse photography on your DSLR camera.

The Triggertrap Mobile app for iOS follows the launch of the Kickstarter-funded physical unit and pairs up with your snapper through a dongle, and can be used to trigger the shutter through a host of innovative means.

The app, which will work with over 300 cameras, specialises in distance-lapse and time-lapse photography, allowing you to create beautiful videos of journeys or roadtrips, just by positioning the camera and letting the app to the rest.

Distance-Lapse mode uses the iPhone's GPS connectivity to take a photo ever a set distance, meaning when stitched together the whole journey appears to have taken place at the same speed, regardless of the traffic jam you were caught in.

Alternatively, Eased Timelapse creates sweet effects by using mathematical formulae to ensure stitched videos speed up at the beginning and slow down towards the end.

Not just time-lapse

Beyond those time-lapse features, there are 12 other trigger modes, including facial, sound and motion recognition.

The press release mentions "a load of other triggering modes built in, including facial recognition, a shock sensor, a motion sensor, a magnetometer, a sound sensor, automatic High Dynamic Range (HDR) bracketing with up to 19 exposures per set and configurable steps between each exposure, a HDR timelapse mode and Star Trail photography mode."

For advanced users, the app brings three different shutter channels that can be tailored to the photographers specific needs.

For example, you can trigger just the camera or add a separate flash into the mix or even two flashes if that floats your boat. Shutter time and delay can also be programmed.

Free and premium

The free version of the app contains three of the above modes, but you'll need to fork out £6.99 for the fully-baked version. You'll also need a dongle and cable to connect the dots.

Without the cable and dongle, the app will simply make use of your iPhone's more-than-capable snapper.

Check out what Triggertrap mobile is capable of in the video below.

Introducing Triggertrap Mobile from Triggertrap on Vimeo.

Mac: Mac's have plenty of hidden files and for the most part you don't really need to see them there. However, when you're cleaning up old folders or USB drives it's handy to see those hidden files and get rid of them. ShowOrHide is a simple app that gives you an easy access toggle to show hidden files when you need to. More »

There’s an app for everything it seems…including telling you how you rank on the ugly-ometer.

Ugly Meter isn’t a new app, but it has been rising to prominence in recent times in the wake of coverage on shows such as Howard Stern and Jay Leno, and it now claims to have more than 5m users. But interestingly, as a paid app, it says it has now raked in more than $500,000 based on the $0.99 and $4.99 (pro) asking price, as reported in today’s Daily Mail.

The premise behind the app is pretty simple – it snaps your picture, scans it and then tells you how ugly you are on a scale of 1 to 10:

To add insult (literally) to emotional injury, it also qualifies the grade by telling you how ugly you are. For example ‘the doctors went on strike when your mother went into labor’, is one of the witty remarks.

Interesting, too, is that Ugly Meter is currently sitting at No. 26 in China’s App Store, and No. 25 in the US…but it isn’t even in the UK’s top 200. Does this mean that folk in the UK don’t care how ugly they are…or simply that the recent wave of publicity has yet to extend fully to British airwaves? We’ll likely find out soon…we’ll keep our eyes on the UK App Store.

At any rate, this is an interesting story for one reason. It has tapped into a fundamental human curiosity – namely, ‘how attractive am I?’, and relied on the fact that people will be happy to pay $0.99 (£0.69 GBP) to discover how ugly or not they are. And perhaps even pay for the pro version to get a full explanation of the results based on their facial structure.

Apparently, the app made $80,000 in just one day following a mention on Howard Stern’s US radio show. So, PR+ego+app=$$$$.

➤ Ugly Meter

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg just signed up to video sharing mobile app Viddy, and he has just posted his first video on the service too.

‘Zuck’, as his nickname on the service is, posted a video of his dog “Baby Beast” playing around in his house.

That first entry has already got more than 1,200 likes from other users of the service, though that number could increase massively if Zuck shared it publicly on his Facebook page. A recent photo of the dog got more than 250,000 likes, and Viddy could benefit massively from such exposure.

The Facebook founder recently splashed out $1 billion to buy up mobile photo app Instagram, a service that Viddy is often compared to, and that is sure to get people thinking about the startup and a possible future acquisition.

Viddy has just passed 15 million users, and Zuckerberg’s arrival is sure to help grow that number, and get tongues wagging in the process.

The news completes a busy recent period for Viddy after it raised a round of new funding from rockstar investors that included Twitter co-founder Biz Stone, Skull Candy’s Jeff Kearl, Jay-Z, soccer star Gerard Pique and his partner, popstar, Shakira.

The service isn’t the only one pioneering the mobile video app space, which is being looking at more intensely following the Instagram acquisition, as rival Socialcam is growing fast too.

Spun out of Justin.tv last year, Socialcam recently revealed it added 4 million users over one weekend alone. But with Zuck on board at Viddy, it could do with a superstar endorsement of its own in response – may we suggest Jack Dorsey?

Zillow, according to one report, may be closing in on a deal to buy rental marketing software maker RentJuice for $45 million, but in the meantime the online property portal is focusing on the rental market in another way: by launching its first dedicated rentals app — a free app for Android devices.

Zillow Rentals is the latest development in Zillow’s strategy for mobile, which — now numbering at 10 apps — has become a huge part of its business: on weekends, a full 40 percent of all of Zillow’s traffic — 32 million uniques in March — comes from mobile devices, and in the same month 155 million homes on Zillow were viewed from mobile devices: that works out to 57 homes per second, the company tells me.

And although users are able to view some rental information on the original app, the new, dedicated app gives a speedier and more streamlined experience for the fast, high-volume property viewing that characterizes the average would-be renter, says Jeremy Wacksman, VP of marketing at Zillow.

Wacksman says Zillow opted for Android first over iPhone for the launch because its Android users “tend to skew younger, and we felt this group of earlier adopters could benefit from an app developed specifically with renters in mind.” He says the company will extend it to other platforms in the “near future.” Other apps from Zillow work on iPhone, iPad, Kindle Fire, Windows Phone and BlackBerry platforms.

Zillow is partly launching this rental app — and in general getting more focused on the rental space because activity in that segment is on the rise. At the moment, some 70 percent of markets tracked in the Zillow Rental Index showed increases in annual home value. In contrast, only 14 percent of markets tracked in the Zillow Home Value Index (for house sale prices) went up in price.

The new app will have several features that are unique to it. Among them will be the ability to view Rent “Zestimates” — the company’s proprietary rental price estimates on some 100 million properties in the U.S.

The app also lets users compare selected rental properties on a side-by-side list and to narrow searches by geography by drawing boundaries around neighborhoods. It also integrates with Android voice search to find homes in a specific area. People can also browse based on the age of the rental posting, to find those that have just been listed versus those that have been on the market for longer or have already been viewed (and may therefore be a waste of time to visit). Users can also get push notifications for when homes that match their search criteria get posted. There is also the ability to contact owners or landlords through the app.

Zillow has added in a few elements to its property portal that have set it apart from many others in the same field: in addition to list prices, it compiles a list of data around price valuations and recent renovations among other things; and it has inked big deals with other portals like Yahoo and some 180 newspapers to extend its reach.

Wacksman says that Zillow is still seeing “tremendous” growth from its activities in the U.S. so it is continuing to stay focused here rather than expand internationally.

Photo apps are the hottest thing out there right now. Ever since Instagram was purchased by Facebook, people have been wondering if it the door is now closed for other players in the space to emerge. Similarly, video apps are also getting attention as the next space that’s ripe for big acquisition things, with Viddy in the driver’s seat.

One up-and-coming app does both photo and video and is seeing some impressive growth that is about to explode thanks to Facebook’s Open Graph and Timeline integration. That app is Israel-based Mobli, which has been available for about seven months.

When I met with the company, it told me that it just hit 2 million monthly active users, and has just launched its new Facebook features, so that number should go through the roof as we’ve seen with other apps that have done the same.

The company has some interesting investors and advisors, including Leonardo DiCaprio, Tobey Maguire, and Lance Armstrong. Mobli has raised 4M to date, and is set to expand its functionality for its iOS, Android, and BlackBerry app that lets you share and discover photos and videos based on topics that interest you.

Set to take on both video and photo apps

The thing that stands out to me about Mobli the most is that it is already on iOS, Android, BlackBerry mobile platforms with a plan to expand to Windows Phone soon. In addition, it has a really nice web version that’s fully functional. I truly believe that even mobile app networks need a Web destination, something that I always thought would have gotten Instagram even more traction.

The app itself is set up to let you follow people and discover content based on subject channels such as sports, pets, or music. This is a bit different from other apps too, which are entirely relying upon the fact that you’re following your friends or are interested in the most popular content. You can definitely lose yourself in Mobli for a few hours.

When you’re shooting a video or photo, you’ll be thrown into a feature called the “darkroom” which is Mobli’s editing suite. Much like you can alter photos with other popular apps, Mobli lets you do the same. The secret sauce the company tells me is that all of their filters are server-side, meaning they can add new filters on the fly without having to update any of its apps, which is brilliant.

You can also import photos from Facebook and Instagram and share it on the network as well. Adding those photos into channels is great way to repurpose content that you’ve already taken and shared on other networks.

By “watching” both channels as well as people on the Mobli network, you can pretty much guarantee that you’ll never run out of things to check out. I personally enjoy spending extra cycles looking at my Instagram feed, waiting for someone to post something.

While sometimes it’s ridiculous to call something “the next big thing” for the sake of doing so, Mobli has the functionality, features, backing, and user growth that will only make great things happen for the company. The people that use the service absolutely love it and enjoy sharing photos on Facebook and Twitter using it. That’s the magic that a lot of popular apps have seen, and I bet that even Instagram would attribute most of its success to its community.

If you’re looking to place bets on what the next popular video or photo app may be, it might be all wrapped up into one with Mobli.

➤ Mobli

Google TV, the company’s first serious foray into the living room, hasn’t exactly set the world on fire. That doesn’t mean Google has given up, though. Far from it. While there hasn’t been much news about Google TV itself lately, the YouTube app for Google TV is getting an update today. Google says that its developers have “been working like it’s a 24/7 hackathon over here to bring all of YouTube to your Google TV.” With this update, the developers have added recommendations, a Google+ button and the ability to search for channels. The new version now also handles suddenly drops in bandwidth more gracefully.

For users who previously had to suffer from constantly buffering video, this update should be a welcome relief. YouTube for Google TV now automatically detects when there is suddenly less bandwidth available for it and switched to a lower resolution instead of rebuffing.

Given that Google is building Google+ into each one of its products, it doesn’t come as a surprise that this app is getting some Google+ love, too. You can now +1 videos from the app, though it doesn’t look like you can actually share videos from the app (+1′s appear on your profile and in search results, but not in your main Google+ stream).

Adding recommendations and channel search to the app is a logical next step for Google. YouTube put a very strong emphasis on channels in the latest version of its desktop service, so making these channels easier to find on the TV makes sense.

The Daily App Deals post is a round-up of the best app discounts of the day, as well as some notable mentions for ones that are on sale. More »