Technology for Christmas

Mobile Applications

Did you know that Christmas is also the unofficial Developers App Day?

According to Flurry, 328 million apps were downloaded on Christmas Day last year in the United States. This is not too surprising though. With mobile devices being one of the most popular gifts to give during the holiday season, it is only natural that people will be downloading apps, often sharing them with friends and family.

App developers work tirelessly leading up to the holiday season. This past September, developers were already hard at work polishing their apps for the Christmas rush. Some developers have even added exclusive seasonal content.

App Icon Festive Dress up

I’m sure you have noticed your mobile apps updating their icons to something festive for the Holidays. This is one way app developers celebrate the season.

Here are some popular apps showing off their holiday spirit with a festive new icon:

Photos from: itunes.apple.com/ and play.google.com/

Top Christmas Apps this Season

Websites and Blogs

Make your Website Festive

Use WordPress Plugins – Add things easily to your WordPress Site such as Advent Calendars, Countdowns, Holiday Popup Messages, and Christmas animated images to spruce up your website for the holidays.
Don’t have WordPress? Use these ideas to add extra flair to your site with some simple code.

Creating a Landing Page – Create a temporary landing page for your site as just a way to wish happy holidays or to highlight a promotion on your site. Make it easy to to dismiss so your visitors don’t get frustrated trying to bypass it.

Make a Festive Logo – Take your signature Logo and dress it up to make it festive. Use Photoshop, Gimp, or just hand it off to your graphic designer. It does not need to be a big change, just some extra flair your customers will notice.

Don’t Forget Your Social Media – Take all of what you have done and incorporate it into your social media. Change your profile picture to your the festive logo. Change your cover photo to a matching image. Then send out a post telling your followers to check out the changes you made to get more attention and clicks to your website.

Christmas Lighting

Technology Controls Christmas Lights

The new thing is to make a light show on your house with your Christmas Lights. Control when the lights turn on and off and even coordinate it with music. You can do this using computer software or even a smartphone app.

For the Advanced create a light show using Raspberry Pi
Check out the DIY instructions

How Google Celebrates the Holidays

This year Google has been showing off their holiday spirit with Christmas logos, a Santa Tracker app, and more.

• This holiday season, Google is celebrating with new, festive logos:

December 24	December 23
Winter Solstice December 22

• Google is also famous for hiding Easter eggs depending on what you search. To celebrate the holidays they created Easter eggs if you type “Christmas“, “Kwanzaa“, and “Hanukkah“

• Santa Tracker – You can play on your phone or on your desktop. Play Christmas related Games and Learn about Christmas too.

• Google Spotlight Stories Presents: Special Delivery

• A company named Boston Dynamics, with Google X, used their tech skills to create robotic reindeer to pull a sleigh.