I am using speech recognition software to write this article. It’s frustrating to say the least, but a surprisingly intuitive program. While I had a faint idea about the accessibility 
settings provided in windows, it never occurred to me that they could serve some practical use to un-impaired users. While searching frantically for free speech-to-text software (to save my hands another 15,000+ word transcription), I re-encountered the Window’s speech recognition function. Although it did not help in my original mission, it has provided an interesting experience in researching and writing this article. Similarly, I guess, Flurry is a re-purposed application, and developers are having a lot of fun with its new function 
. Unfortunately, also similarly there isn’t yet a ton of information to be found.
Flurry was developed in 2005 as an application to check e-mail for free from cell phones. This e-mail service was highly popular among “frugal” people, such as myself, but has since ended. The capabilities demonstrated by the service are now being put to use in an analytical device for mobile applications (Venture Beat). Flurry had over 300 developers using its program by January 26, 2009- Flurry Analytics Beta was just launched in October 2008.
Flurry is a venture capital-backed company with 10 employees. Venture Beat reported that Flurry had raised $3.5 million at reporting on March 8, 2007, and stopped fund-raising shortly thereafter. Flurry Analytics is free to developers. Maybe that point should be emphasized. Flurry is free software.
Essentially what flurry does is keep track of software usage. For every user of a program, it records the operating system and device that that phone is located on. This allows developers to better know their clientele without compromising the identities of the individual user or divulging personal information about said users.
Flurry provides reports like this:
The program will run on the following platforms: Android, iPhone, Blackberry, Symbian, Windows’ Mobile, and Java ME and uses under 10 kb of space (Flurry Home Page).
Flurry Analytics is a snippet of code that can be included with programs and provides developers real-time data about mobile application use. The program does not provide information as to who is using the application, nor does it pinpoint the exact location of the user.
Flurry.com provides a demonstration on its web site. Check it out.
