HedzUp

Keeping your finger on the pulse of your Web Empire: The Hard Way

Does this sound familiar? Open up your Google Analytics app. Navigate to the main page that shows all your web properties (apps and websites). Pull down to refresh. Navigate to each property and check today's usage to find out how many sessions happened and, more importantly, how many new users there are. New users equals app purchases, after all. Repeat this process for each property. Repeat the whole thing 2-3 hours laters when you remember that tracking your app and website usage is like keeping your finger on the pulse of your burgeoning web empire. Ok. Now. Repeat the exercise, but this time for your stock portfolio, because you need to keep your finger on that pulse too.

There's gotta be a better way!

We all do it. Keeping up with what's going on is a necessary to-do in our day-to-day internet existence. HedzUp makes it easier. This new app from Famously Simple gives you an always-on display of your information.

Using the app is dead simple. In the opening screen you get a list of available screens you can include in your HedzUp Display. You just toggle a switch for each screen you want to include and then click Go. The HedzUp display jumps to life, scrolling through screen after screen in a rotation that gives you about 10 seconds per screen to take in the information.

The app also has an always-on toggle swtich. In always-on mode, the app disables your iPhone or iPad from going to lock screen, so the display just goes all day long, continually updating.

What screens are available? The Famously Simple team says the variety of screens is increasing with each version. Version 1.0 includes a clock and Google Analytics. Version 1.01 is planned to include clock, weather, Google Analytics, and stock portfolio feeds.

Living InfoGraphics

The coolest part is that the screens are essentially living InfoGraphics, which summarize the information you'd normally have to check in multiple screens into a single and powerful intepretation. In the Google Analytics Feed, for example, the first screen lumps usage across your multiple web properties into two donut-stylye charts, one for sessions,and one for new users - ie. app purchases. The net effect is supremely useful. A single donut - the new users donut for instance - conveys the total new users for the day, and the break down of which apps those new users bought.

A new use case for Tablets

Famously Simple's Andrea Bourne explains that HedzUp is a powerful new use case for iPads. "So far, the iPad has been imagined with only one use case, as an in-your-lap device for web surfing or game playing. What if the iPad moves from the lap to the wall, or to a stand on the desk, and becomes a highly personalized feed of information? We're hoping to explore this use case with HedzUp, and bring some value to web entrepreneurs like us in the process."

Check out HedzUp in the app store for 99 cents.