For long-time readers of Static, you might remember our old “App of the Week” column. While we’ve moved from profiling a weekly app that piques our interest, we do like to share ones that strike our fancy from time to time. Let’s rename the column “App Profile.” This week, we’ve found an app that will get you out of the house and enjoying live events with your friends.

Like many of you, the folks at BARS+TONE need a bit of inspiration from time to time. After all, no one wants to be a homebody, but sometimes it’s hard to find that perfect band to see or exhibition to visit. We recently discovered Eventseeker, an app that taps into your iPhone music library and your Facebook likes of artists, bands, sports teams and comedians. It organizes them in a way that makes sense and tells you when a band, team or artist are in town. Eventseeker actually encourages you to step away from your computer and get out into the real world to enjoy these bands and events live in-person with your friends. Brilliant!

After syncing with your phone and Facebook account, you can follow and like more artists through a manual search. Eventseeker suggests events and concerts to attend based on the artists you follow. It notifies you as soon as tickets go on sale and even suggests friends to invite. So you’ll be sure to get the tickets and enjoy the show with friends. Again, brilliant!

Developed by Wcities, a city and event guide provider, Eventseeker also has geo-loco capabilities. Next time you travel, Eventseeker easily allows you to plan events in your destination city, based upon your likes.

The Social TV bandwagon is leaving the station, and a flock of startups are experimenting with multiple features and strategies to see what gains traction. With 2 million users that checked-in over 100 million times in 2011, GetGlue appears to be the most popular social network for entertainment. It offers not only an online site, but also Apps for Android and iOS. Think of GetGlue as a Foursquare-like check-in to TV, movies and music with the addition of a Facebook-like feed where you can interact with your friends and other users. A unique feature of the site is that you can earn virtual stickers for the shows or movies you watch and, once a month, you can request a hard copy of those stickers, which get delivered to you via post mail.

GetGlue has partnered with entertainment networks to reward users with discounts or swag from their favorite shows and movies for sharing their check-in. But just how effective has GetGlue been in increasing viewership? The GRAMMYs partnered and launched an integrated marketing campaign with GetGlue, offering a sweepstakes to win a pair of tickets to the awards ceremony and customized GRAMMYs stickers for checking-in. Moreover, during the GRAMMYs  live broadcast, the “first screen” prompted people to check-in and join the social conversation online on GetGlue.com and on the GRAMMYs’ online hub. These different elements in tandem generated “the highest rating in over a decade” for the 54th Annual Grammy Awards. This level of viewership turnout is a huge opportunity for marketers and advertisers to promote their products before a massive audience that is highly engaged with their content.

Umami a New York-based startup has taken a different approach. The Umami TV for iPad app aims to provide users with a more engaging experience than GetGlue by providing TV networks with a “new platform to brand and customize those experiences”. Umami uses proprietary “audio fingerprinting technology” that recognizes what show or movie a user is watching on TV. Then, the app provides a customized range of content from gossip, news, and social chatter to bios based on the show a viewer is watching. Its beta trial generated significant buzz, Mashable called it, “The ultimate TV companion” and Digital Hollywood called it, “The Two Screen Revolution”. Umami has since ended its beta trial period and is expecting to launch pretty soon.

Miso has been stirring up a Social TV storm, fusing elements from both GetGlue and Umami. It delivers interactive and user-generated content, check-in options, and a news feed feature that is embedded in a single social network. Moreover, Miso offers a differentiating feature that it calls SideShows, where fans can create their own second-screen content.

For example, USA created a White Collar-themed game whereas Mad Men fans created a drinking game . Miso also offers a feature where customers of AT&T U-Verse and DirecTV can sync the Miso app with their cable boxes. This opens the possibilities for advertisers to place ads during SideShows, but possibilities don’t stop there. In our previous post, Social TV & The Revival of TV Advertising, we explored other marketing opportunities such as such as synchronized advertisements and explained in depth what social TV is.

Stay tuned to BARS+TONE Static blog to stay ahead of trends!

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By: Angela Romero, Marketing Associate

Angela@bars-tone.com

@AngelaLRomero

For almost 30 years, the Technology, Entertainment, Design (TED) Conference has been devoted to promoting “Ideas Worth Spreading”. Under the slogan, “Riveting talks by remarkable people, free to the world”, TED has hosted a variety of conferences, which have been released on video under the Creative Commons BY-NC-ND license, so they can be shared and reposted for free by anybody. Now, jaw-dropping and thought-provoking TEDTalk videos from thought leaders the likes of  Amazon.com C.E.O. Jeff Bezos, tech billionaire Bill Gates or acclaimed scientist Stephen Hawking are at your fingertips with a very sleek TED App. Think NPR Radio meets Discovery Channel packaged in a YouTube-esque interface that equals countless hours of enlightening entertainment.

The App is available in many platforms, such as Android, iOS, as well as tablets and offers over 1200 TEDTalk videos for free. Recently selected as “Editor’s Choice” on Google Play, the TED App has had between 1,000,000 to 5,000,000 downloads in the last 30 days, while maintaining a rating of 4.5 stars. The TED app has several tabs to browse videos by, “Featured”, “My Talks”, “All Talks”, but my favorite by far is the “Inspire Me” tab, which has the slogan:  “Let serendipity guide you to a play list of undiscovered talks”.  With the “Inspire Me” tab, you can select the themes of the video you would like to see, such as “courageous”, “beautiful” or “ingenious”. Then you have the option of selecting the amount of time you have available. Taking your specifications into account, the App will select a collection of tailored videos for you.  This App is perfect to recharge your energy during a long commute or to get inspired by the wondrous universe of these amazing minds before going to sleep.  At BARS+TONE, we embrace creativity and innovative ideas, which is why we love this app!

Explore the TED app with these screenshots:

This week, we’re diggin’ flipboard.  Flipboard is a “social magazine” application for iOS and now on Android in Beta.  The app is pretty straightforward.  Connect all of your social accounts to quickly flip through content from all different social media accounts.  You can also add  News sources to your flipboard to get a ton of content organized on one app.  Think of this app as more of a consumer oriented social media management program with a few extra added perks.

There are many things you can do with flipboard.  Starting out, you can add a few tabs such as Cover Stories, All Timelines, All Photos and Inside Flipboard.  The cover stories board should give you some of the more popular content happening in your network.  The more you interact with different stories the smarter it will get about what you are interested in.  The All Timelines tab will show you all the content that is being shared across your networks in chronological order.  The “All Photos” section will show you all the different photos being shared across all of your networks.  The “Inside Flipboard” tab will show you news from the flipboard team themselves.  Along with all of the content you ever wanted, the app allows you to update your accounts as well.  Post on Facebook or write Tweets if you please.

Get flipboard from the app store today! What are some apps you’ve been into lately?

Socialcam has been getting a lot of press lately, so we thought we’d select the app for our favorite app of the week.  Think Instagram for video.  At 10 million users, it’s still not the number one social video app but it is in close competition with “viddy”.  After trying both viddy and socialcam, we liked socialcam more.  The app doesn’t have a 15 second time limit like viddy and is available on iOS  and Android.  Online video is here to stay, but socialcam is making it social, where YouTube couldn’t quite do it.  What makes this app awesome is that it brings mobile video to the social community without any video editing training or skills.  Much like Instagram and Hipstamatic created a class of still frame “iPhoneographers”, socialcam is bringing that trend to video as more and more smartphones are coming equipped with higher resolution video capabilities.

With this app installed, easily shoot video, add filters, and more to put together awesome user-generated video content.  It also works just like Twitter and Facebook with likes, comments, and tagging.  Sharing your video to other networks is a breeze as well.  On the popular tab, you can see popular videos on socialcam.  On the video tab, the user sees a feed of videos uploaded by friends similar to Instagram.

Download socialcam from the app store or android market and join the social video revolution!

This week’s App of the Week at BARS+TONE is “Uber”.  Here in San Francisco, we’ve all started walking from one place to another and then realized the next place is too far to walk.  But, then before you know it you’re conveniently on a street that doesn’t have a lot of cabs out.  Enter: Uber.  You’re private driver hailing application.  Call a private driver fast and pay for it on your phone too!  Use it to impress a client or friend and take them out to lunch, or just get out of a bad area fast because you made a wrong turn.  The app is currently operating in just a few major cities such as Boston, New York, Seattle, and Paris to name a few, but we’re excited to see what this awesome app has in store for the future!

The app is fairly straight-forward.  It uses location-based services to find your location and call a private driver with the press of a button.    Upload your credit card like Square and a few other payment accepting applications to easily pay for your trip.  The coolest feature of the app is the card scanning feature.  Just scan your card and all of the appropriate information will be automatically entered into Uber.  The current rates in San Francisco  are $8.00 base rate and $4.90 per mile over 11 miles per hour.

Download this one from the App Store today, and ride in style and convenience!  Got a cool app? Share it below!

This week, we wanted to highlight a few more apps from one of our Sprint video projects.  These apps are pretty popular. If you have time, download them from the Android market today!

Rhapsody – Build a virtual playlist and listen to all the music you want with Rhapsody.  This service is 10$ a month and streams music to an app that is downloaded on your phone.

Identify songs fast with SoundHound.  Read lyrics, watch videos, and share songs with this awesome app.

Use Foursquare to check into your favorite local spots and build a social network that revolves around exploring the world!  Compete for the ultimate title of “mayor” by checking in the most!

Twitter is great for getting a ton of updates all on one feed.  Download this app to your phone to keep up to date with trending topics and daily happenings.  If you haven’t joined this microblog service, you’re missing out on the fun!

What apps are you using? Share them below! 

Vimeo just launched a new version of their mobile app!  For those that aren’t familiar vimeo,  it is a niche web video platform that is focused on a positive community environment and creative video.  Moderators on Vimeo help keep it fun, positive, and creative by monitoring content and users closely.  Now, enter Vimeo…the iOS App.

• The Projects tab allows you to build videos from iPhone footage.  Add titles, audio, and cut clips to create your video right on your phone! When it’s finished you can share it with the vimeo community.
• The Camera tab is  where you will do your filming, plain and simple.
• The Featured tab has all the top videos on Vimeo.  Vimeo helps people find your content by creating categories such as “Vimeo Staff Picks” and “The Vimeo HD Channel”.  If you have the bandwidth we’d recommend check out a few of the top notch HD videos they have to offer.  Some of the colors and scenery are sure to blow your mind!.
• The My Videos tab is where you will keep your videos that you have produced.
• The Likes tab will store a list of videos that you have liked, in case you want to revisit them.
• Add videos to the Watch Later tab to watch them later if your short on time.
• Subscribe to your favorite channels on the Subscriptions tab.
• The Statistics tab will give you top stats on your personal uploads.
• The Help tab will answer every question you could ever have about  Vimeo and more.

Now you have the tools to unleash your video creativity with Vimeo.  Download it for free from the App store today!

Sure, your smartphone comes with a camera app, but you can always get a better version of anything when you look outside the confines of stock equipment, software, etc.  Everyone is a pro-sumer photographer now because of the iPhone and apps like Instagram.  This app adds a lot of cool features that you can’t get with Instagram and the likes.   It films video as well.  Camera Awesome by the photo geniuses over at Smug Mug,  is…well…awesome! What makes it awesome? Keep reading:

Go ahead and Snap your first picture.  You’ll notice the lag time is much shorter for starters.  Next take note of all the different options you have for taking the picture.  There is an image stabilizer, Slow Burst, Fast Burst, Timer, and Interval.  As you can see, you’ve already got options.  Lots of them…and lots of options are better than few options!

The options don’t stop there.  After you’ve taken your picture, the editing suite is sure to keep any photo enthusiast entertained.  See the picture to the right.  The Awesomize button is pretty much equivalent to an auto-corrector.  It just makes the picture better for those of us that don’t really get the Contrast, Vibrance, Temperature, and Sharpness features that are also included.

The Transform tab allows you to crop, transform, rotate, and otherwise change the shape and size of the image.  The app also comes with a variety of effects, filters, textures and frames of which you can buy more of.  $9.99 gets you all items awesome!

Of course, the app also connects with your favorite social media accounts.  Use it to feed pictures to Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, and more.  If you want faster uploading, set the Faster Sharing button to on for smaller files.  We’ll probably be using this one to capture future events and shoots.

What’s your favorite photo app? Share it in the comments below!

Two weeks ago we highlighted a few apps from our Sprint video: Apps for Productivity, Safety, and Security.  Here a few more from another Sprint video we did focusing on entertainment and communication.

Pulse news by Alphonso Labs is a news aggregation app that displays a mosaic of stories from your favorite news sources.  Now you can read a digest of what’s happening from a variety of sources.

Yahoo! Sportacular allows you to keep track of your favorite sports teams.  Customize alerts and share instantly to Facebook with this all sports app.

With Google Voice, get transcribed messages you can read.  This app also allows you to make cheap international calls and free text messages.  This app is great if you have a limit on your calling and text messaging plan.

Use Google Books to download your favorite books to your phone.  The app will remember where you left off and take you there every time you open the app!

Got a cool app? Share it!