Category: Connected Car

BINGHAM FARMS, MI – January 30, 2017 — As the mobile application space continues to grow, our team grows as well. We have recently brought in a few new employees to help strengthen our mobile solution abilities and reach beyond our current industry base. Dante Ciullo, Senior Android Developer, brings with him 20 years of software development and 5 years of mobile app development experience. Jacquelyn LaFrance, Marketing Manager, is on course to ramp up our Marketing efforts, define our mark in the business and attract diversity in the industry segments we pursue. Marty Watson, Business Development Manager, will help to expand our mobile solutions beyond the Detroit and media industries. We are very excited to have our newest employees on the jācapps team and anticipate valuable insights from each of them.

Along with our team expansion we are also in the process of expanding our office space! We have acquired the office space next door to house our Development and Production teams and give them space to grow their departments. This expansion would not be possible without the hard work put in by all of our employees, but our fantastic clients as well. Without you, none of this would have been possible.
We also want to highlight our entire team for their amazing volunteer work at the end of 2017. In honor of Thanksgiving, we adopted a family to provide them with a Thanksgiving dinner. To celebrate the holidays together, our team also volunteered for Project Remodel to help remodel the previous Durfee School in Detroit, which will open as the Community Innovation Center. We are so excited to watch our team grow and continue their work in the local community.
To learn more about how mobile apps can benefit your business, reach out to us at 248-353-9030 or marketing@jacapps.com we love talking mobile!

By: Bob Kernen
Among all the enormous city state-sized displays, and scrappy start-up booths, one of the things that caught my eye at this year’s CES2018 in Las Vegas was the presence of brands that have been around for a long time, but are hardly associated the cutting edge.
From Blackberry and Kodak to Polaroid and Sylvania, they were all there, some in better shape than others. What was clear is that while there is undoubtedly value in a recognizable name, consumers’ associations with that name are what really matter, and changing those associations is really difficult.
Some of these brands are truly “legacy” and their products have changed little from their pre-digital heydays, others are playing the “retro” card, while a few have truly reinvented themselves.
Companies like RCA and Sylvania are largely in that first category. While their products may be modernized, upon closer inspection they are haven’t really changed that much. RCA showed off a number of pretty standard-looking TVs, and even a portable media player that had a slot for a DVD (kinda retro, right?). Sylvania still makes lightbulbs, they’ve just gotten a little “smart”-er.
The “shake it like a Polaroid picture” guys had a colorful, brightly lit display. And while it had a number of interesting digital elements, the center of attention was the old school polaroid camera, now dubbed the OneStep 2. The camera is still the same boxy shape as it’s been since the 1970s, and it still spits out your picture (on actual photographic paper) from the front. Polaroid has embraced its retro, analog past with gusto, and is trying to make it relevant to a whole new generation of Millennial and GenZ hipsters as the new (old) way of enjoying instant photography. And it just might work: if you use Instagram, you’ve probably noticed that their icon on your phone borrows heavily from the original Polaroid camera. How it ultimately works out for Polaroid is hard to say, but people at CES were definitely enjoying taking their pictures, albeit digitally, sitting on the giant Polaroid camera at the entrance to the booth.
Some of those legacy brands, however, have transformed themselves into something entirely new. Rand McNally, the map people for those of you old enough to remember, has completely changed their business. As printed maps have been almost universally replaced by Google Maps, Rand McNally has morphed their business into one that could be described as a “data” business. They use their massive store of mapping data to drive a number of new products, most of them targeted at a very specific audience segment: truckers and trucking companies. Among their products are digital driver logs, and purpose-built tablets for helping truckers turn any truck into a connected vehicle.
Also in this category is Blackberry. Even though they were arguably among the first smartphones to market, they were overwhelmed by the innovations that came from Apple and Android to the point that their handsets went from being ubiquitous to punchlines. Their devices may have faded in popularity, but at heart Blackberry was always a software company. Now their software operating system QNX has become a popular OS for a variety of embedded systems, including dashboards, where real time processing and high security are important. The “crackberry” may be extinct, but Blackberry has successfully transformed itself into a robust software company.
I was most surprised by the Kodak booth, where I found not a single role of film, but instead drones, solar panels and smart lightbulbs. All of these new products were found beneath the familiar red and yellow “K.” The company even made an announcement about a new crypto-currency (think Bitcoin). Not exactly the Kodak of the flashbulbs and film era. But as a company that has always relied on technology, Kodak was perfectly positioned to put its legions of scientists and engineers to work on new problems. It may be a smaller, more focused company, but Kodak is still in the game, in new games, and it’s got a real shot at redefining this century old brand.
All of these established brands prove that while brands can be durable, the technology world never stands still. Brands must work hard to constantly evolve and redefine themselves for consumers, lest they be consigned to the attic of nostalgia.
To learn more about how mobile apps can benefit your business, reach out to us at 248-353-9030 or marketing@jacapps.com we love talking mobile!

Next week, jācapps will be at the Consumer Electronic Show 2018 in Las Vegas. CES 2018 is a must for anyone wanting a glimpse of the newest gadgets, toys, car tech and more. As you’d expect, AR (augmented reality) and VR (virtual reality) will be hot topics of conversation.
Smartphone technology, as always, will be at the center of much of the technology exhibited at the show. Smart speakers, the hot gift to give of this holiday season, and the voice control technology behind them will be another theme of the show.
Not only will we be exploring what the future of technology holds, our sister company, Jacobs Media, will be leading a select group of radio industry leaders on an exclusive tour of CES. We are looking forward to next week’s event and hope to see you there!
Our founder, Fred Jacobs, talked to the CEO of the Consumer Technology Association, Gary Shapiro, about this year’s show. Check that out here.
To learn more about how mobile apps can benefit your business, reach out to us at 248-353-9030 or marketing@jacapps.com we love talking mobile!