Apple's iCloud redefines the mobile -- and cloud -- experience | Mobile Technology - InfoWorld
Excerpt:
Don't be surprised if by 2012 the cloud to most people will be Apple's iCloud, and the passport to enter that "magical" land will be an iOS device. Will this reverse the Android trend? Perhaps not, but it will slow it down. More important to IT, iCloud will be a key venue for your productivity users. For developers, it'll be where the profitable customers reside.
If any company has a hope of figuring out a compelling alternative, it's Google. But the company's fixation on Web apps misses the key realization Apple has made: If the apps aren't in a supportive ecosystem, those apps' positives are undone by the difficult maneuvering through the surrounding terrain. Certainly Apple's iCloud, iOS, and Mac OS X Lion ecosystem won't be perfect, but it will be the destination of choice -- the Canada of computing, whereas Google is more like Mexico, a mix of grace and misery.
A few weeks ago, I asked in part jest whether mobile could rescue the cloud. It's now clear that Apple intends to redefine the consumer cloud in its own image, as an invisible helper rather than a destination. People will very likely be happy with the result.
HTML5 could make the Web the new iPad app store - Jun. 28, 2011
Excerpt:
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Earlier this month, the Financial Times and ESPN debuted slick new applications for smartphones and tablets. But you won't find them in the iTunes App Store or Android Market. These apps run in your browser window.
That's a sea change that could reshape the app landscape.
Right now, all roads to the iPhone and iPad run through Apple. The only straightforward way for users to load apps onto their Apple devices is to download the software from Apple's curated and tightly controlled app store. Things are a little looser in the Android ecosystem, where Google lets almost anything into its Android Market and Amazon runs a rival Android Appstore, but gatekeepers still stand between app developers and their customers.
That's about to change, thanks to an emerging Web standard called HTML5. The new standard supports video, offline reading, touch and gestural interaction -- all functions that, until recently, were only available for mobile devices on native apps.
"We actively tried to replicate what we had in our native app into our HTML5 app," says Rob Grimshaw, managing director of FT.com. "There's not a single thing we couldn't do in HTML5 that we could do in our native app."
When the FT Web app went live a few weeks ago, the company stopped offering its app in Apple's store. The new FT site is so similar to the old native app that many focus group testers refused to believe they were on the Web.
Should HP License WebOS to Third-Party Handset Manufacturers? - John Paczkowski - Mobile - AllThingsD
Excerpt:
Hewlett-Packard CEO Léo Apotheker sayslicensing webOS to third-party handset manufacturers is something the company would certainly entertain.
But should it? And under what conditions?
In a client note this week, Global Equities Research analyst Trip Chowdhry makes the case that it should, and comes up with some interesting scenarios to support that argument. He says that Sony, Motorola and Samsung are growing disillusioned with Google’s Android OS. They feel there’s too much fragmentation and too little differentiation among Android devices and that companies producing low-end handsets are collapsing the premium market they’d most like to play in.
“They’re starting to realize that their Android devices [are no different] in the eyes of the customer [than a] $20 Android Phone from Huawei,” Chowdhry says. “They’re worried that Android may dilute their global brand as customers put them in the same bucket with Acer, Asus, ZTE, Huawei, and MediaTek.”
And if that’s the case, Sony, Motorola and Samsung might be interested in another mobile OS, one that would preserve their premium brand.
Which is where HP’s webOS comes in.
It’s a widely acclaimed platform and it’s not fragmented at all. If the company were to license it to a few select partners, under the right conditions it could extend the operating system’s reach and bolster HP’s revenues. HP could also define a handful of well-conceived reference designs to which OEM partners must adhere and charge them $50 to $75 per device.
By doing that, HP could keep hardware quality high and position webOS as a premium alternative to Android. Which may be just what companies like Sony, Motorola and Samsung are looking for.
Google's Marissa Mayer on "The Beauty of Simplicity"
“Google has the functionality of a really complicated Swiss Army knife, but the home page is our way of approaching it closed. It's simple, it's elegant, you can slip it in your pocket, but it's got the great doodad when you need it. A lot of our competitors are like a Swiss Army knife open--and that can be intimidating and occasionally harmful.” “It gives you what you want, when you want it, rather than everything you could ever want, even when you don’t.”--Marissa Mayer, Google
Bubble to pop on deal sites?
Excerpt:
A happy Groupon customer; but will she return? (Photo: Flickr)
People may love online deals. But a Rice University study finds that bargain-hunters rarely turn into regulars.
FORTUNE -- The growing backlash against daily-deals services got some fresh support this week from an academic study finding that fewer than half of the companies that use such services once are unlikely to do so a second time.
The study, by Utpal Dholakia, professor of management at Rice University, also found that nearly 80% of coupon users are first-timers, and only 20% of them become repeat customers of businesses offering deals through services like Groupon, LivingSocial and OpenTable (OPEN). Other companies like Google (GOOG) are actively eyeing the space.
The whole idea behind these services is that they act as loss leaders, getting customers through the door to take advantage of a bargain. Theoretically, many customers will either spend beyond the deal offer or return for more business. But Dholakia found that just 36% of customers buy goods or services beyond what was offered in the deal. Worse, less than 20% return to the business for full-price purchases.
The findings generally align with the data Groupon released earlier this month when it filed to go public. As competitors pile into the market – some of them huge, like Facebook and Amazon (AMZN) – the business will only get tougher, especially if perception grows among small companies that daily deals don't generate much new business.
"Over the next few years," Dholakia wrote, "it is likely that daily deal sites will have to settle for lower shares of revenues from businesses compared to their current levels, and it will be harder and more expensive for them to find viable candidates to fill their pipelines of daily deals."
Summer designs aim to boost soda, beer and tissue sales - USATODAY.com
Folks who sip a Coke, munch a Chips Ahoy or sneeze into a Kleenex this summer can't avoid noticing summer-theme package designs.
It's about sales. Marketers know shoppers can be swayed to buy a product not just because of what's inside the box or bottle, but what's on the outside. That's why package design has become a $1 trillion industry. Even a fraction of a percentage of increased sales can separate a successful selling season from a lousy one. So consumer product giants are adding a splash of summer to packaging.
"People look at brands and see a sea of sameness," says JoAnn Hines, a package design consultant. "But a unique shape, design or color that says summer can take them out of the me-too category."
Where summer designs are sprouting:
•Tissue boxes. Last year, Kimberly-Clark stuffed Kleenex into summer-designed boxes that looked almost like watermelon wedges. Nearly 100% of the sales of those fancy boxes — which sold for a premium — were incremental, says Christine Mau, brand manager. So they're doing it again this summer with boxes designed to look like waffle ice cream cones. She says the summer design can prod some consumers to put Kleenex in rooms they hadn't considered before, such as the kitchen.
On Simplicity & Complexity: Apple vs Windows
Apple’s radical notion is that touchscreen personal computers should make severely different tradeoffs than traditional computers — and that you can’t design one system that does it all. Windows 8 is trying to have it all, and I don’t think that can be done. You can’t make something conceptually lightweight if it’s carrying 25 years of Windows baggage.
Sent from Mobile
Digital Immigrants: The Terrifying Truth About New Technology
The fear of the never-ending onslaught of gizmos and gadgets is nothing new. The radio, the telephone, Facebook—each of these inventions changed the world. Each of them scared the heck out of an older generation. And each of them was invented by people who were in their 20s.
Mark Zuckerberg didn't create Facebook for people with kids and mortgages. Technology is created by the young, for the young. The young revel in new gadgets with small, deft thumbs. They beg for them in acronym-laden speeches because OMG, you need this stuff to be cool IRL. Then they use them to take lewd pictures of themselves, even though this is obviously a very bad idea. They are the fearless ones.
Why are the young able to thrive, tossing away instruction manuals and digging in with reckless abandon?
Thankfully, Jean Piaget, one of the first developmental psychologists, figured out part of this puzzle years ago.
Sent from Mobile
1B Smartphones forecast for 2015
Excerpt:
Four Steps For Beating Your Smartphone Addicition - CIO Central - CIO Network - Forbes
Sometimes smartphones are a little too smart. If you’re like many people, you probably love your smartphone, yet somehow over the course of time, you may have also become its slave. You may not be exactly sure when it happened, but you probably remember a moment when realized you had become more attuned to the presence of that little blinking red light, alerting you to a new message, than you were to whatever it was you were doing. Now, you can be in a meeting, talking with friends, watching TV or trying to finish a project on the computer, and the call of that smartphone wins every time. You haveto check or the thoughts, urges and anxiety running through your head won’t ever leave. And, truth be told, you probably like the small rush you get whenever that little light or chime goes off – somehow it feels like a reward no matter what the results are.
Sent from Mobile
How to Embed Just About Anything
How To Embed Practically Anything On Your Blog or Website
If you want the hands-down, easiest way to embed practically anything on your blog or website, have we got a tool for you!
The nature of the web is such that sharing and republishing content is common — and often even encouraged. The problem is, we increasingly store bits of our data on various services scattered across the web. Aggregating that content into one centralized personal hub can be time consuming — requiring user to manually copy text and links or upload files and photos — or fiddling with RSS feeds trying to make content automagically appear.
Mashable - The Social Media Guide
Note-taking platform Evernote has surpassed 10 million registered users. That number is up 67% from January when the startup reported 6 millionusers.
The nearly three-year-old startup now has 424,736 paying users — premium plans cost $5 per month. Seventy-five percent of its users are accessing Evernote on two or more platforms: 46% use Evernote on two devices, 18% use it on three devices, 7% use it on four devices and 4% are using the note-taking apps on five or more devices.
