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Posts Tagged ‘Advent’

HP attacks Apple iPad over Flash

Filed under: iPad

During CES 2010, HP gave the public a slight tease of its upcoming slate device. The touchscreen device, which runs Windows 7, sports a form factor similar to Apple’s iPad, as well as similar uses; it supports eBooks, music, videos, and of course, the Internet. But wait, there’s more. According to a post on HP’s Voodoo blog, the device will give you a “full Web browsing experience,” not a “watered-down Internet” with “sacrifices.” In other words, the HP slate device supports Flash and, well, the iPad doesn’t.

While the blog posting didn’t mention the iPad by name, it was fairly clear that the statement in question was an indirect jab at it. Accompanying the post is a short, 30 second clip. The highlight of the clip, which occurs toward the end, shows the user going to Hulu.com and watching a Flash-based video.

The reason that the clip is only 30 seconds long, and the Hulu portion is at the end of it, is that running Flash may have drained all of the device’s batteries before all footage could be shot. (Just kidding! I couldn’t help myself).

On a serious note, while the lack of Flash on the iPhone, and now the iPad, has its drawbacks, these drawbacks have been muted to a degree. The advent of the App Store created a non-Flash, potentially monetizable, playground for the creations of developers and content creators to play in. In addition, HTML 5 is emerging as a potential Flash development alternative.

via [AppleInsider]

TUAWHP attacks Apple iPad over Flash originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 10 Mar 2010 22:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Chevy Volt to get an iPhone app

Filed under: Odds and ends, iPhone, App Store

Want to check the charge on your electric car? There’s going to be an app for that — our friends at Engadget report that the upcoming Chevy Volt plug-in hybrid electric car will have an iPhone app that goes along with it. Features aren’t firmed up yet, but ideas being passed around after a demo at last week’s LA Auto Show include both setting up functions inside the car like scheduling when a charge happens (to take advantage of late-night power rates) and receiving notifications from the car, including when it’s charged and/or when you forgot to plug it in for the night or other worrying situations like that. I’d love to even see an app that can track mileage from the car, or give you diagnostic information when something is wrong.

Obviously, this is pretty pie-in-the-sky at this point (and implementation is obviously tougher than coming up with ideas for it), but I’m all for it. With the advent of the iPhone and all of the things it can do, it’s quickly becoming a one-stop shop for communication between all your various networks and appliances. Why not have your car text you when it needs something? Oh wait, I’ve got to go — my car just texted me that it’s lonely out there in the parking lot. Back in a bit.

TUAWChevy Volt to get an iPhone app originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Fri, 11 Dec 2009 07:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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How to build and maintain a tiered WSUS infrastructure

Windows updates have historically been a constant annoyance for IT staff. Manual updates were a huge pain, and, while the advent of the Automatic Update feature improved the situation, it brought with it problems of its own. Specifically, Automatic Updates are simply too automatic. Automatic Updates grabs the latest updates, no matter what type, and applies them according to a schedule you set. The feature has no information and makes no judgments about software license agreements (SLAs), buggy updates, or anything else; it simply downloads and applies. While this may be acceptable for most home users, it is woefully inadequate in an enterprise.

A secondary problem with Automatic Updates is that each PC must manually download the updates from Microsoft, which can be quite demanding on your Internet link. Luckily, Microsoft once again comes to the rescue with Windows Server Update Services, otherwise known as WSUS.

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Pixel Qi ramping production lines, multitouch (40-hour?) tablets at CES

We know you’re confused by the pronunciation of Pixel Qi (it’s Pixel chee, by the way). But really, does that matter? We’re just stoked to learn that its hybrid displays are hitting the assembly lines this month as the company ramps production in Q1. CEO, Mary Lou Jepsen, says that the first units will arrive in “specialized tablet devices with multi-touch,” the first of which will be on display at CES from what looks like multiple “customers.” They’ll also be available to DIYers sometime in the future. Jepsen, you’ll recall, was the original Chief Technology Officer on the OLPC project, but left to commercialize these 10-inch color 3Qi LCD displays that are readable in either direct tropical sunlight or no light at all thanks to a switchable backlight. As such, Pixel Qi is set to carve out a nice middle-ground between epaper displays and traditional LCDs that could see the advent of the 40-hour netbook / tablet. No, really.

Pixel Qi ramping production lines, multitouch (40-hour?) tablets at CES originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 07 Dec 2009 05:50:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Laying down tracks on the go with an iPhone and a browser

Back in the day, the multitrack tool of choice for bedroom Springsteens was an analog four-track recorder from companies like Tascam. But with the advent of cheap laptops and powerful digital tools like ProTools, Logic, and Garageband, even the cheapest guitar slinger moved his workstation to the computer.

The new solutions were a huge step forward for home studio enthusiasts, but new digital recording tools are going beyond the computer—into the pocket and onto the Web. The increasing power of smartphones means that musicians can now carry a complete digital scratch pad in their pockets, while moving the recording application to the Web allows simple collaboration with anyone from around the world, lowers the cost of entry, and provides access to a mixing console from any computer on the planet.

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5 apps for the radio lover

Filed under: Audio, iPhone, App Store, iPod touch

Radio just isn’t the way it used to be. It’s not that “this ain’t your father’s radio.” This isn’t even the radio you knew five years ago. A loosening of media ownership rules (via the 1996 Telecommunications Act) has transformed what was once a local medium into more of a national one, one that put playing more “safe” mainstream material repeatedly in place of diverse content. And while Internet streaming has opened our ears to specific tastes that align with our listening palettes, it didn’t align with our increasingly mobile lifestyles. The advent of the App store, however, has created an ecosystem of apps that stream audio content while also aligning with our mobile lifestyles, and I’ll highlight a few of my essentials.

Continue reading 5 apps for the radio lover

TUAW5 apps for the radio lover originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Fri, 25 Sep 2009 09:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The Real-Time Web: A Primer, Part 2

This is part 2 of a three-part series on the fundamental characteristics of the real-time Web.

In part 1 we looked at how the real-time Web is a new form of communication and creates a new body of content. The immediacy of the Twitter channel is a third fundamental characteristic of the real-time Web and one of its prime currencies, not surprising given the name of the space. Because of demand within the eco-system, quite a bit of effort is being made on storing, slicing, dicing, and disseminating information as quickly as possible. The fundamental implication of this activity (without any explicit markers being laid down) is that the velocity of information within the Web data system has just increased by an order of magnitude.

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The pipes are moving data at the same rate: the speed of your data connection has not changed (although it is getting faster because of an independent effort by cable companies, telcos, and the like). What has changed is the flow of data from machine to machine on the Web and the processing that happens as information makes its way to users. Companies are making use of data that takes seconds to be published to the Web, as opposed to hours or minutes. Years ago, pages might have been crawled by search engines daily. With the advent of RSS, new posts would flow through the system within hours. With Twitter, the flow is propagated from company to company to user in real time.

As Eric Marcoullier of Gnip Central points out, this is not unlike how stock and options trading has been conducted for years, where micro-seconds in receiving and processing data make a difference in gaining competitive advantage. The difference here is that, instead of real-time trading data, we have real-time social Web data: data from individuals and companies about events, theories, products, people, articles, videos, and other things and ideas, all getting passed around and publicly available.

This facet of the real-time stream is having a profound impact on the infrastructure of the Web. New storage and retrieval methods are being developed to overcome the time lags of writing not just to disks but to traditional databases. Adaptations to traditional structured query languages are being made to index items directly from the stream. Search engines and search capabilities are being modified to make use of real-time inputs to influence the search results. This isn’t just a Twitter effect. This is an effect across all uses of the Web, because the expectation of access to real-time information is now permeating all websites and the infrastructure of the Web itself.

Unintended Consequences

The use of and overlay of real-time commentary and reaction with news and events is bound to have many useful benefits, as well as interesting and perhaps adverse side effects. Several news outlets have been quick to point out how a mob mentality can take hold when opinions on emotionally charged topics are instantly disseminated. Additionally, many attribute the severity of the 1987 stock crash to the lack of regulators that prevented automated systems from reacting to ongoing market conditions through an integrated loop of feedback. Even now, 20+ years later, unintended and unforeseen events continue to happen when derivatives and automation come into play.

For those prone to theorize, there are many fascinating questions to ponder. For example, the uncertainty principles states that the position and velocity of an atomic particle becomes less certain as that of another becomes more certain. If the analogy holds true, then does the veracity or truthfulness of news become less certain as the velocity of interest becomes more measurable. Likewise, what effects will the integration of the real-time stream have on the outcome of events, and how can conditions be influenced to ensure specific outcomes.

Public Conversations with Explicit Social Graphs Attached

Another characteristic of the real-time Web is that, unlike other real-time communication streams such as instant messaging, email, and the telephone, it is largely public. Also unlike these other channels, conversations within the real-time stream carry with them an explicit social graph. The audience of someone who publishes information on the real-time Web is not unknown, as might be the case in the blogging world. Each person (or company or organization) communicating on Twitter has followers, who in turn themselves have followers. Each message thus has a social graph attached to it, as does each echo or retweet of that message. Messages and message flow are for public consumption.

These social graphs also contain a fair amount of information identifying each user within the graph. The majority of Twitter profiles include a name, website, and short description. Additionally, third-party directories contain self-tagged categories, roles, interests, and specialties. (Profiles are identifiable because followers need enough information to be able to identify users within the public space.)

So many people and companies are interested in developing on top of the Twitter platform (and for the real-time Web in general) because of these characteristics (i.e. the openness of the channel, the availability of rich meta data, and the explicitness of the social graph) as well as the value derived from the content and interactivity. The value they get is in being able to monitor these streams and produce derivative value for Twitter users and news organizations, brands, retailers, organizations, politicians, and others who have an interest in what’s being said, who hears it, what they do with it, and what others do with that.

In a strange twist, unlike the unregulated derivatives markets on Wall Street, which have run into skepticism and calls for greater regulation, the derivatives markets in technology and social Web circles operate freely and are booming.

Social Graphs, Reputation, and Trust

Social graphs provide mechanisms by which to infer reputation and trust. Because the graphs of followers on Twitter are public, Twitter and third parties can employ algorithms to identify which profiles are legitimate and which are spam or cons.

Algorithms based on the page-ranking algorithms that Google uses, for example, can be used to rate users not just on the number of their followers but also on the strength of their followers. It’s almost a given that Twitter and other players in this space will have serious challenges in dealing with spammers and other disreputable users, but public social graphs are a great advantage in defending against these threats.

Read part 1 of this series, and stay tuned for part 3.

Guest author: Ken Fromm is a serial entrepreneur who has been active during both the Internet and Web 2.0 innovation cycles. He co-founded two companies, Vivid Studios, one of the first interactive agencies, and Loomia, one of the top recommendation, discovery, and personalization companies. He has worked at the leading edge of recommendations and personalization, interactive development, e-commerce and online advertising, semantic technologies and information interoperability, digital publishing, and digital telephony. He is currently advising a number of startups and looking at the next big thing in Web 3.0. He can be found on Twitter at @frommww.

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Social Media CRM: What Are the Rules of Engagement?

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Whether you’re Microsoft or Mel’s Meat Market, the true power of social media and its impact on brands is really only beginning to be felt. As futurologist Ian Pearson stated in Gartner’s Customer Relationship Management Summit earlier this year, the rapid pace of change in technology means that companies need to focus on agility instead of just optimization when it comes to integrating social media and CRM applications.

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Both affordable and easy to use, tools for monitoring a brand or reputation are essential and keep getting better. Trackur, Nambu, and the social media discussion search engine backtype all come to mind. Creating and capturing market conversations with customers has also improved greatly with the advent of online branded communities such as Lotus Connections and Clearstep as well as Lithium’s emphasis on community and CRM. We have monitoring, communities, and collaboration: but something still seems to be missing.

We need rules of engagement for social CRM.

In other words, how do you effectively manage your dialogue with the market in terms of sharing information, fast-tracking problems, and responding to questions, both internally and externally, with customers, prospects, employees, other stakeholders, and the public? Web strategist Jeremiah Owyang agrees there’s a gap here.

Although social CRM platforms and tools continue to evolve and improve, more attention needs to be given to process, ideology and roles in social media engagement. Process could involve your listening strategy: is it enterprise-wide or centralized? For roles, how and when would online conversations get routed to customer service/support, and when would they get routed to your PR, marketing or sales department? Just as important is establishing responsibilities and guidelines for engagement. When does a complaint get routed to the CEO, or a product idea go to your R&D group?

Companies are beginning to figure out how to use social CRM more efficiently by adapting their applications and workflow and adding more “community managers.” These include Dell, Intuit, H&R Block, and certainly Comcast. Several community platforms are morphing as well and show promise for providing more robust social CRM capabilities. Neighborhood America’s ELAvate platform, for example, includes multiple components for generating ideas, collecting large-scale public comment, and creating a white-label social network. Likewise, Radian6 has introduced a social CRM solution to integrate with Salesforce.com’s service cloud; with this, sales and support teams can cross-reference social media content with customer and prospect information, streamline workflow, and manage real-time responses across the enterprise.

Still, it appears social CRM technology is well ahead of the day-to-day reality of actually managing online conversations. We need more thought given to strategy, process, and roles for engaging with customers and non-customers alike: the next new frontier of social media. Are you prepared? Please comment!

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