Posted on Thu, Feb 07, 2013
by Ron Miller
Ness Blogger
Back in the 80s when I was working for a small management consulting firm in Boston, the operations manager went shopping for these new-fangled devices called PCs. She ended up buying IBM-brand PCs and I remember her saying, "Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM."
Many people in IT today probably feel the same way about Microsoft, but is it still true or is Microsoft on a slippery slope toward irrelevancy caught in the middle of a changing computing landscape?
There are two key trends squeezing Microsoft as it gets attacked relentlessly on two fronts. The first is the iPad and the second is the Chromebook -- and by extension the broader trends of mobile and cloud computing.
Microsoft is not stupid. It has recognized these assailants and they have taken action to fend them off. On the user level, they developed a broad cloud computing plan that includes Office 365 and Sky Drive. On the enterprise side, they are making a push to the cloud with hosted versions of SharePoint and Exchange, and the Azure development platform among other steps.
Windows 8 is an attempt to capture a single screen view of the world with Windows 8 on the desktop, Windows 8 Phone and Windows RT and Windows 8 on tablets. They have developed their own tablets and made investments in Nokia and Dell to keep the PC and phone ecosystem oriented toward their products.
Make no mistake, Microsoft remains a formidable company with deep pockets and lots of smart people. It still maintains a powerful presence in the enterprise, but if you look at any company starting out today, how many are going to go with the Windows/Office model which has been the revenue bedrock of the company for so long? Not very many. That means as these newer businesses grow and develop, they are not going to be Microsoft shops as in the past.
It's like a company with an old demographic. The market is still strong, but the youngsters aren't buying into the vision.
And of course we have begun to witness the shift away from PCs. So far, the numbers have not been very kind to Windows 8 on the desktop or any device for that matter. comScore announced its latest figures and Microsoft phones are still langusihing at a dismal 2.9 percent of US market share, continuing a downward trend. Meanwhile, although Microsoft has not announced Surface RT sales, reports have them sitting at around the same 3 percent. The Surface Pro came out this week to mixed reviews. By contrast, Apple announced it sold 22.9 million iPads and 47 million iPhones last quarter.
Then there is the Chromebook, the cheap cloud-based notebooks running Google's Chrome OS. As Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols wrote on ZDNet, Chromebook is coming on much stronger and much more quickly than expected. As he reported, Acer, which just started manufacturing Chromebooks at the end of last year, now reports that these machines will account for between 5 and 10 percent of its US shipments this year.
Other PC manufacturers are noticing too. Recently Lenovo announced a new Chromebook offering and just this week HP jumped on board, albeit with what sounds like a very poor implementation. The key here though is that these traditional PC/Windows manufacturing companies are looking elsewhere and selling alternatives and that has to be cutting further into the Windows market.
I'm not suggesting, by the way, that Microsoft is going anywhere any time soon. I expect it will be around for years to come, but it is clear that Microsoft's key markets are being squeezed by devices that aren't running Windows -- and if you're placing your bets on Microsoft, you might want to at least think about that choice moving forward, and recognize that there are alternatives now.
Photo Credit I'm a PC: bytesrc on Flickr. Used under Creative Commons SA license.
Photo Credit iPad: Sean MacEntee on Flickr. Used under Creative Commons SA license.
Photo Credit Chromebook: Google
Posted on Fri, Feb 01, 2013
by Ron Miller
Ness Blogger
It's Friday and that means it's time for our weekly feature where we search the Web looking for 5 interesting, funny and poignant links for developers and IT Pros.
If you missed our most recent post, Can Microsoft or BlackBerry break the iOS/Android Developer Stronghold?, please check it out now. Microsoft and BlackBerry face a a quandary. They can't really attract developers in large numbers away from iOS and Android without a critical mass of phones -- and phone buyers tend to stay away from phones without a vibrant app store. It's a stalemate that's going to be tough to break.
Please consider subscribing if you like what you see here, and if you have something to say, please feel free to leave a comment and let us know what you think.
And without further delay, here we go with this week's links:
Is Google Chromebook Enterprise Ready?| Tom's IT Pro
The Google Chromebook appears to be taking the laptop market by storm. They are cheap, light-weight and cloud driven devices. Seems like the kind of hardware IT could love, but are they ready for the enterprise. Tom's IT Pro gives you the answer.
Why Enterprises Need Their Own App Store | Mendix Blog
While the big wide open app stores have lots of useful apps, they also contain ones that distract or even could be harmful. That's why veteran technology journalist Pam Baker argues that it's time for enterprises to open their own app stores with company sanctioned ones. Might not protect users from themselves, but at least it gives them a fighting chance.
The delusions that companies have about the cloud | GigaOm
This article from an industry pro who helped launch Google Apps explores the three levels of insanity that make up the anti-cloud arguments. They address the biggest concerns about the cloud, but this author turns those concerns on their head. Compelling reading.
How did SharePoint become the poster child for bad enterprise software? | CITEworld
SharePoint is probably the most popular enterprise content management software ever created, yet its detractors are many. How could such a popular piece of software become the embodiment of bad enterprise software? Hint: It's partly due to its complexity.
The world needs more smartphone operating systems? | FierceWireless
As we open the new year, we have a slew of new smartphone operating systems on the way, most of which are open source. These could prove attractive to handset makers looking for an alternative to the Google Android hegemony. It could also provide a way to expand beyond the desktop for these platforms. The question remains though whether these companies can make a dent in the dominant player's market share.
Photo by Ron Miller. Used under Creative Commons Share Alike/Attribution License.
Posted on Thu, Jan 31, 2013
by Ron Miller
Ness Blogger
BlackBerry and Microsoft's manufacturing partners have produced some compelling phones of late, but whether it will translate into phone sales is still unclear. One of the big driving success factors of any phone OS is how well developed the app ecosystem is and that requires an engaged developer community. So far at least, neither challenger has shown it can break the iOS/Android duopoly.
Graphic by Tsahi Levent-Levi on Flickr. Used under Creative Commons SA license.
Not surprisingly, there is a connection between market share and the level of developer interest. Developers aren't stupid. They follow the money.
A recent survey conducted by Vision Mobile really drove this home. For starters, Android, clearly the most popular phone OS, has drawn the most interest from developers with 72 percent now developing on the Android platform, up 4 percent from the 2012 survey.
While iOS dropped 5 points to 56 percent, Vision Mobile attributes the shift to an increase in mobile developers from Asia where Android has a strong market presence and a big population base. One interesting data point was HTML sitting at 50 percent.
As for Windows Phone OS and BlackBerry OS? BlackBerry was stuck at 16 percent and Windows at 21 percent, both unchanged from last year.
Meanwhile, 74 percent of developers reported developing apps for 2 or more platforms, but as you would expect, iOS and Android were the most likely candidates here. In case you're wondering when it comes to prioritizing which platform to develop for first, in this instance, iOS is the winner with 42 percent reporting they develop for iOS followed by Android, probably due to the fact that developers tend to make more money on iOS.
Chart courtesy Vision Mobile
When BlackBerry made its big phone announcement yesterday, it went out of its way to trumpet the list of apps available out of the gate including Box, Evernote, Dropbox, Webex and of course the obligatory Angry Birds; but these are the developers with resources who want to be on every platform out there. The real measure of the platform popularity will come over time -- and if the overall developer mindshare can shift from those hardened market share positions.
The same goes for Microsoft, which of course has a head start with Windows Phone OS, yet doesn't seem to be able to move the needle much either. It too has the big players on board, but when I talk to people about phone choices, the perception is that there are not enough apps. Vision Mobile believes developers are waiting for the market to develop before fulling embracing, the platform, yet phone buyers seem to be waiting for the apps. Such a stalemate doesn't bode well for Microsoft, although Vision Mobile believe they have potential to do so because of their Windows market share.
The wild card here though is the growing smartphone market. This is not a fixed pie, and that means if it can grow, the potential is there for any of these companies (or others like Mozilla and Ubuntu for example) to gain market share. In fact, Vision Mobile reports the handset industry is growing at 23 percent CAGR and 700 million smartphones shipped in 2012. There is no reason to believe this trend will change -- but neither is there reason to be truly optimistic that the competition can break the iOS-Android one-two punch.
Chart courtesy Vision Mobile
The survey was conducted over a 5 week period in October and November, 2012 and involved 3400 respondents from 95 countries, which is a fairly substantial and diverse sample.
You should have a look at all the results because it's an intriguing survey, but the bottom line is developers are business people, and are for the most part no different from any other business, motivated by money and success -- and unless BlackBerry and Microsoft can find a way to lure users in much larger numbers to use their phones, getting developers on board is going to continue to be a major challenge for both companies.
Posted on Tue, Jan 22, 2013
by Glenn Gruber
Ness AVP Travel Technologies and Mobile Solutions
It was almost three years ago that we all got first sight of what Apple might have in mind if it wanted to launch an assault on the travel industry.
After first being reported on the Patently Apple blog, iTravel (as it was labelled at the time) sent the travel industry atwitter (and on Twitter) about Apple’s imminent foray into the market.
It had already disrupted the music industry, the mobile carrier monopoly and re-imagined the entire way people viewed mobile devices.
So, travel was next. Why not?
As an industry that has changed relatively so little over so a long period of time, travel seemed ripe for disruption, right? Yet three years later, here we are and we got nothin’.
Zero. Zip. Nada. At least not yet.
Now you can see that we have Passbook . Sure, it has e-boarding passes. Many airlines have adopted Passbook. But Passbook doesn’t really impact the travel lifecycle very much. And it serves many masters in addition to travel – entertainment (MLB, Fandango), retail (Starbucks, Target).
In truth it’s as much about reducing the number of loyalty cards you have to keep in your wallet or your keyring than it does with actual commerce. But all that being said, it seems to be wildly successful , while wallets like ISIS and Google Wallet are struggling to get traction .
But I digress a bit on the mobile wallet.
But the story is far from complete. This past summer the US Patent and Trademark Office granted Apple a patent entitled “System and Method for Transportation Check-In”, which specifically calls out NFC technology.
Still, three years later. Zero. Zip. Nada. So, why is that?
To be or not to NFC
One of the key principles of the iTravel patents and mobile wallets seemed to be the integration of Near Field Communication technology, commonly referred to as NFC.
It was a technology to support very short distance, secure communication. It is a technology that has been around for a decade searching for a problem to solve. Wallets and checking in seemed to be that problem. I mean NFC was specifically called out in the patent.
But the iPhone4 was launched and no NFC. When the iPhone4S was to be launched people were saying it absolutely, positively had to have NFC in it. Nope.
Then before the iPhone5 launch, it was a virtual certainty. Android phones and even Windows Phones had NFC. It was time. And then it wasn’t.
Will we see it in the iPhone5S? At the launch of the iPhone5 Apple SVP, Marketing Phil Schiller said:
“It’s not clear that NFC is the solution to any current problem. Passbook does the kinds of things customers need today.”
In the end, I think pragmatism rules the day at Apple as its regards to NFC. Let me explain.
NFC has been integrated into many phones on the Android and Windows Phone platform. Though the primary use case seems to be sending sex videos to your spouse if you believe Samsung commercials…I mean sending content from one phone to another.
The problem with NFC as a reliable platform is infrastructure. The reason that Samsung has to focus on phone-to-phone transfers is that there is very little “receiving” infrastructure out there.
In the iTravel concept, NFC would be used at the check in counter, security screening, gate, car rental counter, the hotel. That’s a lot of different places in one trip.
For NFC to have real utility it needs to be in a very high percentage of these locations. It means that airports, airlines, car rental agencies and hotels – across many different brands – need to install NFC readers at their end.
Is it worth making NFC a lynchpin of your strategy until NFC readers are where you need it? One can say that it’s a bit chicken-and-the-egg, but I think there are a few other reasons why Apple isn’t in any rush.
Web services are hard
There is another big piece here – building a highly reliable platform that pieces all these elements together.
As we have seen over the past few years, Apple has tried to move into the web services business with features like Siri, Maps, iCloud, GameCenter and the Ping Music social network (the first two of these could play a big role in the iTravel system).
None of these have, shall we say, been overwhelmingly successful, to put it nicely.
Being able to offer highly resilient services is key if you are going to own your customer’s travel experience. Travel can be stressful enough on its own. If Apple had material failures of their application, the blowback would be huge.
To that end, All Things D’s John Paczkowski recently noted that Apple’s next battleground is web services . One more public failure after the previous ones might be crippling to Apple.
So I think Apple is in no rush to deliver iTravel. As I said earlier, the travel industry has been the same for so long, the time to market urgency isn’t quite so high.
It is true that Google is making many strides in travel, but even with the $700M acquisition of ITA Software , the pace of development hasn’t been as fast as many expected. And as we learned from Google Travel SVP Jeremy Wertheimer’s interview at PhoCusWright , “it’s a process."
Travel is nothing like the music industry
Now the third piece of delivering iTravel to market is the hardest and perhaps close to impossible. In order for Apple to provide the comprehensive solution that iTravel purports to be, it needs to have the cooperation of the different players in the ecosystem.
Travel is vastly different than the music industry which Apple disrupted with iTunes. To start with, selling music wasn’t really where the money was. Today artists and labels don’t make most of their money from albums, they make it from tours.
Music is not a perishable good. In fact, it has an endless shelf-life. Also the content can be digitized and distributing music over the Internet was a cost reduction opportunity for distribution.
The digitization of music also created an opportunity for new labels to spring up and artists to create, product and sell their music without the big labels.
The internet also significantly changed the process of consumers discovery of new artists. Things were changing and the labels needed a new approach anyway. They were open to a new deal. Almost none of these circumstances apply to travel.
Further not only do they need ascent to connect all the systems to manage through the entire traveler lifecycle, but the economics have to be agreed upon as well.
We all know that there isn’t a heck of a lot of margin to go around in the travel industry today. We also know that Apple likes to get 30% of all transactions made on iOS… and that is not likely to fly (pun intended).
If Apple can’t figure out way to make money on iTravel on their own terms, they’re not going to do it just to provide a free public good. Google might do it because they care more about learning consumer preferences so they can market their users to advertisers.
That’s how Google has approached Mail, Android, YouTube, Maps and all its apps. For all the successes in these web services, Google is still very much a one-trick-pony from a revenue and profit perspective.
Conclusion
In some ways, Apple is in the same place in travel as it is in TV. It does not have the content providers on board, so iTravel can afford to be a hobby, just like AppleTV. But they will be ready when the market is.
What are your thoughts?
Photo Credits: iPhone image by BritishAirways. Used under Creative Commons SA license. NFC image via Shutterstock. iPod photo courtesy of Apple.
Posted on Fri, Jan 18, 2013
by Ron Miller
Ness Blogger
It's Friday and that means it's time for our weekly feature where we search the Web looking for 5 interesting, funny and poignant links for developers and IT Pros.
If you missed our most recent post, Developer discusses challenges creating Conde Nast City Guide apps, please check it out now. A developer explains how he transformed travel magazine content into a dynamic iOS app that takes advantage of advanced device functions.
Please consider subscribing if you like what you see here, and if you have something to say, please feel free to leave a comment and let us know what you think.
And without further delay, here we go with this week's links:
The New Security: Hacking Back at a Hack Attack | Smartbear
If you want to prevent hackers from attacking your network, you might think about testing your system for vulnerabilities, or even assigning a group of internal hackers to have at your security, but when hackers do enter your system, you could do them one better -- and hack them back.
5 tips for developing successful mobile apps | CITEworld
Surely everyone wants to build a mobile app these days, but you can't just build it for the sake of checking it off your list. If you want to build a good one, you need to follow the simple guidelines in this post and you at least have a better shot at success.
The High Cost of Poor Software Quality | WireHarbor
Sometimes software bugs are more than just a nuisance you need to track down. If they result in taking down a critical system, it could end up costing a lot of money. And that's why it quite literally pays to pay attention and find these mistakes before they blow up and cost you a fortune.
Top 5 reasons the Ubuntu Linux phone might make it | ZDNet
Sure, it's easy to look at the new Ubuntu Linux mobile phone OS and dismiss it out of hand with a curt, "been there, done that." But this author believes Ubuntu Linux has an honest shot and he explains why.
Internet 2012 in numbers | Royal Pingdom
If you want to understand the scope of the Internet -- yup, it's huge and getting huger -- you need to take a look at the numbers released by Royal Pingdom in their yearly State of the Internet report. If it was made of paper, I would say, but it's a real page turner, but perhaps, we can call it a real page scroller instead. Regardless, it's pretty darn interesting.
Photo by Tomma Henckel. Used under Creative Commons Share Alike/Attribution License.
Posted on Thu, Jan 17, 2013
by Ron Miller
Ness Blogger
Back in 2010, Mark Lister, managing director at Imano had a monumental challenge on his hands. He was working with Conde Nast Traveller and he needed to figure out a creative way to repurpose all of the good travel information locked inside their print magazine into a mobile travel guide-iOS app.
The end result was the Conde Nast Traveller City Guide apps for iOS. Today, you'll find ones for Barcelona, London, New York, Paris and Rome. The apps provide information about neighborhoods, attractions, restaurants, nightlife and more, all gleaned from the print publications, combined with purely social and mobile functionality and more advanced features like audio tours and augmented reality.
Lister explained that early on Conde Nast Traveller wanted to build an iPad app, but after the initial meeting, they decided to go with the iPhone to build a unique series of mobile pocket travel guides. "During the initial meetings we were able to detail the opportunity they had to almost redefine the travel sector on the App store. They had a readily available rich seam of fantastic content which is still the best starting point. We just helped create the vehicle - a pocket City guide for the discerning traveller. Once we'd all agreed it made sense, it was all systems go," he said.
In 2010, this was new territory for all concerned Lister explained, and a print publication and a digital agency specializing in mobile strategy had to figure out the best way to make this transformation. "Don't forget these were early days for transforming content from one format (a magazine) to another (an iPhone). They had a long form magazine with which to present their content and we were conscious that the medium of the phone is very different different. We needed to preserve the tone of voice and quality of the information, but acknowledge that the phone is a device of need where the City traveller has limited time to find and digest the content," he said.
Lister said, as the project developed the team looked for ways to bring the content to life. He didn't want it to consist simply of lists or it would have been rather boring and not taken advantage of the tools the iphone provided. So he came up with the idea to include a social component and augmented reality to really bring it to life. "We were the ones keen to push social which wasn't in every app at the time. Sharing seemed such a human thing to do. "I'm in New York doing something cool, and I'd like to easily tell my friends". It seemed an attitude and approach that was universal."
Since this was early days for iPhone developers, and there weren't as many options for developers as there are today, Lister said they relied on a native development approach, but he says he might do it differently if he were developing these apps from scratch today. "The App store was still a new distribution channel for discovery and they gave better coverage to apps that featured interesting use of the phone's sensors. These days there is much more open approach, at least to the notion of a hybrid. As apps have developed we all agree that real-time updated content is what brings you back to travel, sports, news apps so the use of a hosted web service to serve the updates is often inevitable. If we started again today it would be a hybrid," he explained.
Lister said it was definitely a challenge to create the first one, but since then they have added three more and these applications still feel modern and useful as they did back in 2010 when they were first developed. And the project proved, if you take good content and take advantage of the delivery platform's features and services, you can create something great.
Note: Imano is a Ness Technologies Company.
Photos courtesy of Conde Nast Traveller.
Posted on Fri, Jan 04, 2013
I
t's Friday and that means it's time for our weekly feature where we search the Web looking for 5 interesting, funny and poignant links for developers and IT Pros.
If you missed our most recent post, Big data versus instinct fight likely to continue, please check it out now. The data versus intuition debate continues as we try to find the perfect balance between human instinct and data analysis
Please consider subscribing if you like what you see here, and if you have something to say, please feel free to leave a comment and let us know what you think.
And without further delay, here we go with this week's links:
NOOK Sharpens Focus on Education Market with Pearson Stake | Content Matters
It's clear the stand-alone eBook reader market is in decline under pressure from more feature-rich tablets, and the recent NOOK holiday sales figures bear this out, but one way eReaders can continue to flourish is in niche markets. Education is a perfect example and that's why the deal with Pearson announced this week makes so much sense.
The 5 things you need to know now about Ubuntu on phones | ZDNet
Just when you thought you had a grip on all the phone OS platforms you need to learn for development purposes, along comes a new one to keep you on your toes. This is particularly interesting because it offers an open source alternative for Android users. The good news for developers is you could have a year to learn how to create apps. It could take that long to see the first commercial handsets running it.
IT Service Providers Will Make Enterprise Cloud Users Think Global, Act Local in 2013: 10 Reasons Why | eWeek
It turns out, it really is a small world after all and as companies move to the cloud, and their operations spread further across the world, IT pros need to understand the implications of this and how to manage globalization in the context of their businesses.
How Royal Caribbean Cruises Manages IT on a Floating City | CIO.com
You think you've got challenges managing your IT infrastructure sitting firmly on the ground, imagine what's it like trying to manage 30 floating entities that are constantly on the move. What's more, it's not your typical IT management issues because you're dealing with a range of issues including passenger data management, reservations, navigation, all while providing consumer services for passengers.
Managing Log Files, or Drinking From The Fire Hose Without Drowning | Smartbear
Log files tend to be an embarrassment of riches for developers. While they yield all kinds of useful information, the good information can sometimes be buried under piles of data. This article gives strategies for surfacing the information that's most helpful.
Photo by Tomma Henckel. Used under Creative Commons Share Alike/Attribution License.
Posted on Thu, Dec 06, 2012
Whether your business is eCommerce or mobile app development, Mary Meeker's recent presentation on the state of the Internet had to please you. Mobile device use is up. Mobile monetization up. You're right where you want to be -- and if you're not, you should be.
That's because mobile is growing incredibly fast. Remember the talk about the Post PC revolution? It's happening and probably faster than anyone ever imagined.
For starters, according to numbers from Morgan Stanley, smartphone and tablet sales passed PC and laptop sales in 2011 and today they simply blow them away. (See p. 25 of the presentation for details.)
As for mobile phones, Morgan Stanley reported there were an estimated 5 billion mobile phones in the world this year and a billion smart phones. Now to be sure, that's not a one for one ratio when it comes to ownership because many people own more than one, but these are numbers simply too big to ignore, that is for sure, even if they are inflated a bit.
You want to hear about tablets? Pew estimates that between April 2009 and January of this year, the percentage of US adults who reported owning a tablet skyrocketed from just two percent in 2009 to 29 percent at the beginning of this year. And that number has probably increased again, especially with the release of the iPad mini, Google Nexus 7 and the new Kindle Fires stimulating even more sales.
And all of these devices are having a big impact on the percentage of Internet traffic in the world that comes from mobile. As recently as 2010, mobile accounted for just 4 percent of worldwide Internet traffic. As of last month, it was 13 percent of total traffic and it's just going to continue to go up with the continued proliferation of these devices, especially in places where it's much easier to afford a mobile phone than it it is a PC or laptop.
I'm sure this is all thrilling to you, but you want me to show you the money. You can't possibly have people purchasing mobile device in the kinds of numbers we're seeing without having an appreciable effect on income and Meeker reports that according to data from Gartner, eMarketer and Strategy Analytics, the income is indeed growing at a rapid rate growing from about $5 billion in 2010 to $19 billion this year.
If you want further proof look at the Black Friday shopping figures, which showed that according to IBM Data Analytics, mobile accounted for 24 percent of Internet shopping traffic up from 14 percent a year ago. And it's worth noting that of that, the vast majority of the shoppers used iOs devices.
So it's clear from Meeker's presentation that as more devices proliferate, it's having an impact on the amount of Internet traffic coming from mobile devices and the amount of business that is being conducted on them with more revenue being generated.
When you add the apps marketplace, which she didn't quantify directly to to this, you have a huge revenue generating machine and that means you need to be a part either as a way to make money or at least to provide your employees with access to enterprise repositories and resources from mobile devices.
One thing you can not afford to do is sit and wait because if Meeker's research is right, the future is now.
Photo credit: adactio.
Posted on Fri, Nov 09, 2012
I
t's Friday and that means it's time for our weekly feature where we search the Web looking for 5 interesting, funny and poignant links for developers and IT Pros.
If you missed our most recent post, Users Give Poorly Performing Mobile Apps Short Shrift (infographic), please check it out now. A recent survey of US mobile devices users found that they have little patience for underperforming apps. In the best case, they will blab about bad experiences online and in the worst case, they just delete them.
Please consider subscribing if you like what you see here, and if you have something to say, please feel free to leave a comment and let us know what you think.
And without further delay, here we go with this week's links:
What Hooters Can Teach You About E-Discovery | Yottabytes
Who would have thought we would ever put together Hooters and eDiscovery in the same sentence, but it turns out Hooters is at the center of a very key legal decision about use of predictive coding in electronic discovery work. Go figure.
We Need Data Democracy | Architects Zone
This opinion piece about Big Data is spot on. While we need more data scientists of course, what we really need is better tools to allow regular business users to process and understand huge amounts of data without having to have a Ph.D.
Remote desktop apps: The great tablet equalizer | ZDNet
It's easy to dismiss the iPad and other tablets as simply devices for consuming content, and while they are very good at that, this writer argues that you can create content too, and if you have remote desktop software, you actually turn your tablet into a full blown computer.
Step Away From the Screen | Develop in the Cloud
This designer offers developers a bit of advice and suggests stepping away from the screen and thinking about your design/development issue the old fashioned way. Maybe take pen to paper and storyboard your idea first before you ever write a line of code.
Cleaning Out The Turkey Coop: Life After Getting Rid of Incompetent Employee | HP I/O
When you let that incompetent employee go, it's easy to think your problems left when the door slammed against their butt on the way out, but an incompetent employee can leave behind issues that can linger long after you revoke their security credentials.
Photo by Tomma Henckel. Used under Creative Commons Share Alike/Attribution License.
Posted on Thu, Nov 01, 2012
A survey of mobile app users released today found users have little patience for under performing mobile apps. In fact, 98 percent said performance matters and a full 46 percent of respondents said they would delete the app immediately if it didn't perform as expected.
That doesn't give you a lot of time to make a good impression. Your only saving grace here is that 27 percent said they would give an app more time if they paid for it (although it's not clear just how much leeway that would be). Even if users don't eighty-six your app, chances are they'll give it a bad review or bad mouth it on social media. None of these are happy outcomes.
It's worth noting that it's not all hopeless. Eighty-nine percent of respondents said the top thing developers can do is fix the problem. If you can't fix the problem, 65 percent said you should provide a way to get easy refunds, which is not always the case with mobile apps.
The survey, which was conducted by Usamp and sponsored by Apigee, which makes API technology for developers, involved 500 US Americans and asked them their opinions on app usage on smartphones and tablets. The survey did not break down the results by operating system or manufacturer.
As always with a sponsored survey, it's important to note that the survey is usually designed to put the sponsor's product and services in the best possible light, but the results are telling nonetheless.
The following infographic summarizes the survey results and illustrates how impatient users tend to be if mobile apps don't perform as expected. Developers beware.
