Today’s Startup: UserVOD

Today’s internet startup UserVOD is a mobile SDK that helps developers gain insights on how people use their app. It lets developers watch how people use your app by recording videos of user sessions and captures their actions and gestures. Although it’s a really great app for developers, it raises great privacy concerns.

As seen in the video above, when a developer installs the UserVOD SDK, they start getting videos recording each user session — showing where users tapped on each screen, where they got confused, and so on. UserVOD automatically hides camera windows and passwords from its recordings, and developers can specify other types of information that they don’t want to record.

The recording and uploading are performed automatically in the background. So the screen recording is done without impacting user experience. The videos are uploaded when users are idle and on WiFi only.

As a developer you can control which sessions are recorded remotely from your UserVOD dashboard and watch them online. You can also watch videos of sessions that crashed and improve your app’s stability by learning what went wrong.

Privacy
So all this is great from a developers point of view. But what about the users experience? As far as I can see now, the user doesn’t know they are being recorded and they can’t opt-out. On the website of UserVOD the makers state that it is just another form of anayltics. “Nowadays, almost every app contains some form of analytics SDK which tracks user actions. With the advanced analytics capbalities that exist, developers can track just about anything that is going on in their app. UserVOD is just another form of app analytics. It is up to the developer to decide what kind of information to collect and how to use it. Please make sure to inform your users that their session can be recorded in your app’s privacy policy.”

You can can UserVOD in action pretty easy. Just download its Draw Fast Demo App. Here you can play a Draw Something-style game, then watch a video of your session on the UserVOD site. UserVOD was founded in 2012 by Zahi Boussiba and Yoni Douek.

How do people really use their phones?

Today’s Startup: Card.io

Today’s internet startup Card.io provides a SDK for mobile developers to easily accept credit cards in their mobile apps. Typing on mobile phones is slow, and most consumers don’t have a separate hardware attachment to swipe a credit card. Card.io solves both of these problems: customers just hold a credit card up to the phone, and card.io reads the card information using the phone’s camera.

Is it secure?

Card.io never saves card numbers or payment information, all data is protected with 256-bit SSL encryption, and our servers are hosted in secure facilities.

How is this different from other payment solutions?

• There is no hardware needed. Customers don’t need any additional devices to make a credit card purchase, anyone with a credit card and an eligible smartphone can make a purchase.

• Card.io is built for mobile developers. While other solutions are meant for physical retailers, card.io is focused on developers building mobile applications.

• It’s very flexible. With card.io, there are no contracts or setup fees. We don’t force you to use a particular merchant account or payment gateway, so you can use the provider of your choice

Card.io holds office in San Francisco, USA.