Appsfire: The Must-Have App Sharing App (iPhone)
I tell people about the Rachel Maddow iPhone app all the time; almost no one has heard of it, but it's great. From now on I won't just tell them about it - I'll share a link to it by email with just a few clicks in the new iPhone app from Appsfire, just approved by the App Store last night.
Appsfire is a handy little service that makes it easy to share collections of your favorite apps with other people. There are a variety of ways to use it, but using it on the iPhone is the most pleasing, straightforward and clearly useful. This app indexes all your other apps, makes it easy to share with anyone and shows off the most popular apps shared by all users and users in your geographic region. It's far from perfect, but it's so useful anyway that we recommend you get it.
That said, there are some things about the app that could use some improvement. Days after I first synced my phone up with Appsfire, it has still only indexed 37 of the 43 apps I have on my phone. It's a little embarrassing to show off your collection of apps if some of the coolest ones don't show up. ReadWriteWeb's Sarah Perez tested it as well and says that, "It only saw 79 of my 107 apps (and one was wrong). Bummer. Still way cool though."
Since there's no App Store API that can be used, Appsfire has to learn about the apps its users have by brute force pinging the Store's directory. The company told me my apps would be found within hours but it doesn't look like they are going to show up. That's a real shame because several of the missing ones are among my favorites. Some that it's missing are obscure, but others like the NYT app are not.
Several of us tested the service and found that it only captures about 70% of the apps on our phones. That's pretty disappointing, but hopefully it will be fixed in time. For now, being able to share from that 70% is much better than not being able to share at all. Here are my favorites, here are Frederick Lardinois' and here's Sarah Perez's massive collection of apps she loves.
When looking at the app leader boards by region and "VIP Selections" (disclosure: my favorite apps are highlighted on the service) it would be really nice if you could learn more about the apps from inside the Appsfire interface. Instead the app store launches and Appsfire closes. This transition can be quite slow, too.
Those problems notwithstanding, it's pretty awesome to be able to share links to your favorite apps with other people via email in just a few clicks. You'd be silly not to grab this app; you're likely to regret it later in conversations about your favorite other apps if you don't.
We'd love to see links to the Appsfire pages of readers! Please leave yours in the comments below so we can discover what apps you like.
Share
Facebook
Comments
Subscribe to comments for this post OR Subscribe to comments for all ReadWriteWeb posts
I have about twenty apps installed. Appsfire found one (Yahoo). Ridiculous! Using w/Windows.
Ouch. Maybe you have weird apps. If so, that's a shame because we'd love to see your weird apps.
There could be several reasons for apps not showing up
> if your iPhone is jailbroken
> if your backup is encrypted
> if those are apps that are in local app store we do not index yet
> if you have not synced recently your iPhone with iTunes
> if you are not above 2.2.1 (won't work at all)
Our indexing method will improve over time and since you pointed it rightly there is no easy way to do it better.
But soon it should be close to perfect and hopefully by then all your apps should display.
Hope this helps
Ouriel
AppsFire.com
Most are not in the least weird: NY Times, Google Mobile, Evernote and so on. The app or maybe the Windows client just isn't working correctly.
Oh by the way it's not jailbroken, backup is not encrypted, don't know what "local app store" is, have synced very recently w/iTunes, using 3.0.
Can they just make a jailbroken version that does this much more reliably? It would be handy.
Well Jeff, i am not sure then...we ll do our best to improve our still very young service.
Matthew this an idea..
I downloaded the app, but have balked at the whole idea after seeing I have to download and install the "appsfire desktop component."
Way too much work. For now, I'll just tell my friends which ones I like...like the good ol' days.
Todd, it's no more difficult than installing any other software you'd try out. It's pretty darned simple, in fact. Your loss if you don't try it!
"Appsfire is a handy little service that makes it easy to share collections of your favorite apps with other people."
Posted by: Corvida
|
August 19, 2009 11:10 AM
I agree installing the "appsfire desktop component" will cause many to use another app.
Thank you very much for this useful information.
Please keep on.
I am looking forward to read your next great article
Seo Services India
As long as you can forego listing the Apple supplied apps which everyone has, there is no external app needed ... A screensgot from iTunes will do the trick.
Nice article. Thank you sharing it.
Great post. Like it very much.
Have a look on appazaar for recommendations on android phones: http://www.appazaar.net
its possible that the iphone is jailbroken thats why you have that issue.
Really very nice and informative posting.Nowadays i-phone is becoming extremely popular especially who has lot of work on internet and this phone helps them to be connected all time.