Tis the Season to be Jolly and show how festive technology can be. Technology sure does not ignore the fact billions of people are celebrating the Holidays. Christmas cheer is being spread within Mobile Apps, Websites and, Blogs. Even Christmas decorations are redesigned using technology. Also, Google has shared a lot to chow their Holiday cheer this year. Check out some of the ways you can enjoy the Christmas festive technology and how you can share some yourself.

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 as soon as you have that device you start downloading Apps. Then as you meet with you family and friends you begin to share what you have found and download what they have found.

Being a publisher and developer you use this statistic to your advantage. This past September developers have been hard at work perfecting their App then beta testing it in November. Pretty Soon it is perfected enough to become available 2 weeks before Christmas.

App Icon Festive Dress up

I’m sure you have notices your  mobile Apps and the Apps in the App store updating their icon to something festive for the Holidays. This is one of the main ways applications celebrate the season.

Some Examples of popular Apps that join in on the fun are:

Photos found at: 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? Still 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 the rest of your site to avoid a high bounce rate just because your users can not figure out how to get past your holiday landing page.

Make a Festive Logo – Take your signature Logo and dress it up to make it festive. Edit it in Photoshop or your preferred photo editor 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 to your social media. Change your profile picture to your new logo. Change your cover photo to a matching image you added to your site. 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 things 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 some music. The way to do this is to use a computer software or even your smartphone app.

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

How Google Celebrates the Holidays

This year Google has put out several festive things from their logos to an App called Santa Tracker.

• Google is famous for celebrating almost everyday with a enhanced logo. This holiday season was no different.

Google Doodle December 24	Google Doodle December 23
Google Doodle 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“

• Google’s 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, put out a video using their technology skills to create robotic reindeer to pull a sleigh.