This was a heavy week for new product launches and major revisions of existing products.
After months of private beta, Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz launched Asana, a collaboration tool. From the blog post:
Asana is a modern web application that keeps teams in sync, a shared task list where everyone can capture, organize, track, and communicate what they are working on in service of their common goal. Rather than trying to stay organized through the tedious grind of emails and meetings, teams using Asana can move faster and do more — or even take on bigger and more interesting goals.
Milk (Kevin Rose’s new company) launched their new iPhone app called OINK. This app allows you to rate anything: a hamburger in a local restaurant, a TV show, your favorite tea, a salad, etc.
Massive Health, a mobile health startup that had been in stealth mode for several months, launched an app called The Eatery. Someone on Twitter described it as “Hot or Not for your Mac ‘N Cheese”. You post photos of your food and people rate the food on a scale of 1-10 with 10 being the healthiest. The Eatery keeps track of your food scores and gives you a rating of how you’ve been eating this week.
Ex-Engadet editor Joshua Topolsky launched a new gadget site from called The Verge.
Yahoo launched a couple of iPad apps: Livestand (Flipboard competitor) and IntoNow (video discovery).
Apple released GarageBand for the iPhone. ($4.99 on iTunes)
Jawbone started selling the Up – a $99 wristband that tracks your fitness and your sleeping habits. Up includes an iPhone app that tracks your eating habits by encouraging you to take photos of your food and asking you how you felt a couple of hours after eating.
Sphero, a robotic ball that you can control using a smartphone – is available for pre-order ($129).
The Ball. Evolved. from GoSphero on Vimeo.
And finally, Google made a couple of Gmail announcements. First, they rolled out a new, cleaned up version of Gmail. Overall, the new design was pretty well received, although some people complained that the spacing of messages was too wide. If you prefer the spacing from the old design, you can change it using the Display Density setting.
The other Gmail announcement was a mess. On November 2nd, Google announced their rumored Gmail app for iPhone. Within minutes of the announcement, people were complaining about an error message that shows up when you log in. There were also complaints that the app itself was underwhelming. Google ended up pulling the app from the App Store and almost a week later, the app still isn’t available, causing some people to wonder:
How long does it take to fix a Push Notification bug? /cc @gmail
— M.G. Siegler (@mgsiegler) November 8, 2011
Other news this week:
- GroupOn IPO’d and finished their opening day up 31%
- Internet Explorer’s market share dropped to below 50%
- Apple started rolling out iTunes Match to Apple TV owners
