WordPress.com creator Automattic buys WooCommerce plugin to power ecommerce

On Tuesday, Automattic (owner of WordPress.com) announced  that it is acquiring the team and company behind the popular WooCommerce WordPress plugin. 

According to a blog post by CEO and cofounder Matt Mullenweg :

The entire 55-person Woo team will join Automattic.  This will bring Automattic's total headcount to 370 people, distributed across 43 countries.  

Mullenweg also made a point to say that WooCommerce is an extremely profitable company. The core WooCommerce plugin is free but the company makes money selling plugin extensions, storefront themes and support. Sources close to the company said that WooCommerce's revenues are in the eight figures.

Mullenweg will also be hosting a Q&A on his blog regarding the acquisition, so users and developers can ask questions about what this means for them.

WooCommerce :

WooCommerce was Launched in 2011 by WooThemes. It  is a popular e-commerce platform built on WordPress with over $1 million in monthly recurring revenue. This allows site owners to  turn their self-hosted WordPress website into a bonafide online store. 

WooCommerce is huge when it comes to the online store space, powering at least 650,000 online store. 

Source : Mashable.com

Regards : Web Development 

WhatsApp new update : Introduces Material Design for All Android Users

Last few months have been quite good for WhatsApp. The Facebook owned company has been in limelight much more than ever before, for all the right reasons – they launched a desktop client, they launched voice calling feature on Android, then they brought it to other platforms like iOS and BB10, and most recently they launched a beta version  of WhatsApp on their official website with Material Design makeover. But as you know, it was a beta app made available only for testing purposes.

But finally the wait is over. WhatsApp Team has officially rolled out a new version of its app via Play Store, which finally makes WhatsApp with Material Design UI available to all Android users who use the service on a Lollipop based smartphone.

While new version released in Play Store (2.12.87) isn’t radically different in terms of UI from the beta version (2.12.38), it fixes several annoyances that were associated with the beta app. For example:

1. The default wallpaper has been updated to a decent one. It looks calmer and better to the eyes, and it also sits nicely with the overall new design of app.

2. The calling interface has been materialized completely.

3. UI of search bar has also been cleaned up.

4. Gingerbread icons that used to appear in More menu have finally been replaced, and so on…

If these small changes are kept aside, no other major change has been done to the app. Functionality remains almost same as that of beta app and you can still find all the options in same place. Major new additions done to the app are given below:

A. The very first thing that you’ll notice in new app is a whole lot of new icons, animations and a colorful emoji tray. For example, there’s an animation when you click on an image inside the app or try to share it. Attachment icons have also been made bigger and more colorful with this update. 

B. Second thing that you’ll notice after updating the app is its task bar. Calls bar, Chats and Contacts all have been merged together to create this dark green bar, which sits atop everything else inside the app. 

C. But the biggest and most visible change affects calling feature. In beta app a slightly more pronounced bright green WhatsApp Call bar used to appear below the name of caller. That is no longer the case. New app has been designed with company’s trademark dark green color in the background and focus has remained mainly on highlighting the name of caller with bigger font. To do so company decided to trash that bright green WhatsApp Call bar too. You can see the change below. On the left it’s old design and on the right it’s new material design :

There are several other subtle changes as well, but overall this new app looks great. Update it now and do let us know your thoughts about it in the comments section below.

Regards : Mobile App Development Company

Google : Android 5.1 Lollipop Memory Leak Issue Fixed Internally

It seems one of the bugs that plagued Android 5.0 Lollipop is still haunting some users who recently updated to Android 5.1 Lollipop, Some users have reported a memory leak issue in the Android 5.1 update that causes apps to crash and even fills device's memory.

The "Memory leak still present on Android 5.1" issue was reported last week on the Android Open Source Project (AOSP) issue tracker by some users.

One of the users wrote :

on the issue tracker, "I woke up this morning and noticed that Gmail was laggy. I checked the RAM and it reported 800MB used. I cleared all open apps and it still the same. Restart [fixed] it of course. This was the only fix that I was looking forward to in the 5.1 update. So disappointed."

Google in no time acknowledged the memory leak issue in Android 5.1 Lollipop, and a project member said :

 "This has been fixed internally. We do not currently have a timeline for public release." We can expect another incremental update to the Android 5.1 (possibly Android 5.1.1) to be released in the coming days or weeks."

 

Regards : Android application development company

Yahoo Launches Mobile App Development Suite

"Yahoo Mobile Developer" suite contains:
Yahoo on its first mobile developer conference in San Fransisco  launched a new mobile development suite that ties together with Flurry and Yahoo features. 

This development suite is a collection s of five products ...

1. Flurry Analytics - Get free insights from the industry's leading mobile app analytics tool.

2. Yahoo App Publishing - Monetize your app with native and video ads from Yahoo, Flurry, and BrightRoll advertisers.

3. Yahoo App Marketing - Reach your target audience with the Gemini native and video marketplace.

4. Flurry Pulse - Send your app data to partners of your choice with one SDK.

5. Yahoo Search in Apps - Keep your users in your app with Yahoo search and monetize those moments.

Apps like Snapchat, Shazam already use the Yahoo mobile developer suite and there are 200,000 other developers using it.
Quartz  wrote  :
 
"CEO of  Yahoo Marissa Mayer is banking on mobile to turn the company around. Since she joined, the company has increased its mobile team from 50 to 500 people and refreshed a number of its apps. 

Get Yahoo Mobile Developer Suite Here :  

Yahoo Mobile Developer Suite

 Regards : Custom mobile app development