Virtual Event Social Networks – The Next Evolution For Online Communities

Getting your target audience to repeatedly visit and engage in a niche online community running on Jive Software, Cisco Quad, Salesforce.com Chatter, Pathable, Drupal, Liferay, or other social software platform is challenging — even with great content and a terrific community manager. With some exceptions, unique visitors, repeat visits per user, and behavioral engagement metrics have a tendency to plateau or at best trend slightly upward within a band.

Now consider something disruptive — a complementary online experience that can penetrate and engage the same target audience as your social software platform but that periodically produces comparatively huge spikes of online audience for 1-2 days. I’m talking about virtual event platforms. These software platforms let organizations create large online gatherings – kind of like a Webex meeting on steroids – for internal meetings, conferences, exclusive briefings, product launches, lead generation, online learning/training, job fairs, and more. What if you could periodically drive spikes of online audience like this into your niche online community? You might wind up with site analytic reports that look kind of like the chart below, and that ramp audience penetration and engagement for your community much faster.

Additive, Synergistic Technologies
No matter which piece of the combined social-virtual solution you start from, integrating the technologies yields business benefits and improvements in audience penetration and engagement that are greater than the sum of the parts. Online communities running on social software are vivified by the energy and sense of “happening” of a virtual event. Streaming video presentations that contain unique, well-curated content, wrapped in persisting social activity streams may be the magic formula for increasing audience penetration and engagement, collaboration, learning, and loyalty to the community.

The synergy is just as strong when flipped to start from the virtual event side. Generating social activity streams that are based around the participants, presentations, documents, chats and virtual spaces of a virtual event environment would not only increase participant engagement during the live days of the virtual event, but provide a more viable platform for building 365-day virtual business communities. In general, the confluence of the technologies makes sense because communities naturally coalesce into events, and events naturally disperse into communities. Events are simply the Super Bowl culminations of communities where audience spikes.

Today’s Loosely-Coupled Social-Virtual Integration – A Starting PlaceFirst steps toward social-virtual integration already have been taken by both social software and virtual event vendors.

On the virtual side, features like real-time chat, messaging, buddy lists, vCard exchange, attendee roster, and people search arguably represent social functionality. But they lack the activity-stream-based view of Enterprise 2.0 social software — follower/following capability and real-time streams of activity by people and entities you are following.

Virtual event platforms rode the wave of social API integration, and many now incorporate Twitter hashtag widgets, the Facebook Livestream social plugin, and elements of the LinkedIn Platform API into the virtual environment. Industry leader INXPO was among the first to market with an integrated “social suite” offering these features thanks to the insight of product marketing director Dennis Shaio. Intefy and Ustream both provide similar, less feature-rich, ways to mashup live streaming presentations and Twitter hashtags. A great example of one such Intefy-powered hybrid live-virtual event was Event Camp Twin Cities. Cisco Systems’ CiscoLive is a 365-day hybrid-virtual-social community for Cisco engineers that runs on the INXPO platform. Although it lacks the Enterprise 2.0 social software UX of, say, Cisco Quad or Jive, it pulls its audience back in via regularly scheduled pulse virtual events containing freshly curated content. Q&A sessions integrated within the webcast presentations, real-time chats and Twitter hashtags provide the collaborative interaction between attendees and subject matter experts and between attendees and other attendees.

One startup deserves credit on the virtual event side for taking the convergence of virtual and social software to the next level — Bellevue, WA-based startup Social27. With Social27 it’s possible to follow attendees in the virtual environment and view social activity streams on their updates. Social27 is a startup social CRM agency that has developed and shipped a cloud-based SaaS virtual event product. The company’s founder and CEO, Ike Singh Kehal, positions Social27 in the “enterprise social computing” space. The company offers both a virtual event product and an Enterprise 2.0 collaboration platform, and appears to have fused elements of the two. It looks like a harbinger of things to come.

The Social Software Side
On the social software side, first steps toward social-virtual integration have been taken by Cisco Quad, which integrates Webex online conferencing into the Enterprise 2.0 environment, and by the Brainshark app in the Jive Apps Market, which lets participants create, manage, deliver and track on-demand multimedia presentations from within the Jive social platform. Such online conferencing tools lack the feature functionality of a full virtual event platform, but they’re a step toward wrapping online meetings and gatherings in social software UX and activity streams.

Engage365.org, a niche online community running on the Pathable social platform, regularly launches live streaming webcasts with thought leaders via an embedded UStream player on its site. Participants can start a native discussion thread about the webcast by simply clicking the “start a conversation” button at the top of the page, and that threaded discussion will persist on the native Pathable platform. Alternately, participants can Tweet about the webcast using the webcast’s Twitter hashtag.

BrazenCareerist, a career social networking site for people in their 20s, has also injected a form of virtual event into its activity-feed-based social platform. To be sure, BrazenCareerist’s Network Roulette events which have been described as “an online speed-networking service that lets young professionals build their network” are a unique departure from the experience of the commercial virtual event platforms. But BrazenCareerist CEO Edward Barrientos credits these virtual events with driving new waves of audience penetration and engagement into the BrazenCareerist online community.

Where It Needs To Go
What’s the end game for engaging an online audience with a combined virtual-social experience?
The roadmap probably lies in tighter integration between the unique content of virtual events and the social activity streams of persisting online communities. To give users the maximum opportunity for engagement, they should be able to follow, share, comment on and rank any entity in the virtual environment – including other participants, webcasts, documents, chats, blogs, and user-generated content uploads like YouTube videos. Each participant, content entity and group in the virtual environment should generate its own feed which can be subscribed to by any member. Feed posts should link directly to the virtual event content asset or profile of the user that is mentioned. These features exist today in social software platforms like Saleforce.com Chatter. Extending such features to virtual event content would drive engagement during the live event days, catalyze a high volume of crowdsourced social discovery of that content, drive a wave of viral sharing, and launch true social-virtual platforms into the marketplace as a competitively differentiated 365-day collaboration solution. It would be particularly effective for driving audience penetration, loyalty and engagement in niche communities with relatively small numbers of unique visitors per day/week/month.

Virtual-Social-Mobile
Needless to say, any evolutions of a virtual-social combined solution need to go mobile. Social software platforms like Jive and Salesforce.com Chatter, as well as virtual event platforms like Social27, already have mobile versions of their apps. Online conferencing apps from Cisco Webex and other vendors also have mobile app versions. Putting emerging virtual-social communities on smartphones and tablets is another essential in expanding their audience reach, engagement, and frequency of touch.

What You Can’t Measure You Can’t Improve

Leading commercial virtual event platforms have strong integrated metrics. Social software platforms are beefing up their reporting with social media monitoring tools, as Jive did when it acquired Filtrbox. A social-virtual combined solution needs to track and report on behaviors on a per-user basis across both the virtual event and social software user experiences. The aggregate metrics would give a more complete view of each participant and be more actionable than either social metrics or virtual metrics on their own.

Have you used or considered using platforms that combine virtual event and social software? What has been your experience? How do you see the fusion of the technologies evolving?

Choose The Right Mobile App Development Framework

If your business is looking to develop its first mobile app, deciding which mobile application development framework to build it in, and what skill set you’ll need from developers, can be tricky with so many types of development frameworks emerging. Here’s a breakdown of some basic types of frameworks, with a few leading examples of each, and a look at some of their strengths and drawbacks to help you make the right choice for your business’s app:

Native platform mobile app development frameworks. The iOS (Apple) platform and Android (Google) platform are the market leaders. Developers write code using the native tools of the platform. iOS developers use the iOS SDK, Xcode IDE, Objective-C, Core Animation, Core Graphics, Accelerometer and Cocoa Touch UI framework. Android developers use the Android SDK, Eclipse IDE with ADT plugin. Android apps are written in Java, or via plug-ins, can be written in a variety of languages including C,C++, Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby, Ruby On Rails, Scala and Scheme.


HTML5 and JQuery mobile application frameworks for multi-touch web apps that run in the mobile device browser. SproutCore, JQuery Mobile, and Sencha Touch are three of the leading tools. These frameworks create HTML5 browser-based (not-native) mobile apps that cleverly emulate the multi-touch UX of native apps on Apple and Android touchscreen devices. Since they’re HTML5 and browser-based, these mobile apps will run in the browser of Apple, Android, even Blackberry Torch devices. An HTML5 app is one of a couple of options you have to write once and run everywhere.

Cross-Platform native mobile app dev frameworks. PhoneGap and Appcelerator Titanium are two leaders. Also referred to as “wrappers” for creating hybrid web-apps, these open source frameworks essentially wrap a web application inside a native application that can be distributed via the native app stores for iPhone, iPad and Android. The hybrid web-mobile app approach is another alternative to let you target multiple platforms with a single codebase. A wrapper also makes it possible to build mobile apps for app store distribution using developers who haven’t mastered native platform languages and tools like Objective-C and Cocoa Touch. Developers use their existing web skills with JavaScript, HTML and CSS to code the application, and the framework compiles most of the code into a native iPhone, iPad or Android app.

Rapid mobile app development frameworks. AppMakr and Mobile Roadie are leading tools. AppMakr is a browser-based mobile app dev framework that makes it super-fast to create an iPhone app from existing content such as an organization’s YouTube channel, blog posts, and other social network feeds. Such apps can be created and submitted to the Apple App Store or Android Market in a matter of hours.

The Big Questions
Organizations are trying to figure out whether apps developed in write-once-run-everywhere frameworks can really hold their own next to native apps. When planning a mobile app strategy, having single codebase that reaches users on any platform is the end game – user base, cost savings, time-to-market, simplicity, and maintenance all would be optimized. No organization gets excited by the prospect of developing an app for iOS, building it again for Android, and then paying once more to code a web app. But for some app requirements doing all three can turn out to be the only viable route to market, for now. One thing is clear. When it’s launched, the app has to perform well enough to win a critical mass of user adoption.

In cases when it’s deemed necessary to write the app three times for Apple, Android and Web, organizations next turn to the question of which platform to target first, and where the web app should rank on the roadmap. No one wants to get the sequence wrong.


Strengths And Drawbacks
A friend involved in developing the beautiful PBS iPad app met me for lunch and we discussed the strengths and weaknesses of the various mobile app dev frameworks. Our talk echoed the conclusions of dozens of developers answering questions about mobile app dev frameworks on public forums like Quora.

The HTML5 and JQuery mobile app dev frameworks are on the right track, and they’re okay for building a simple browser-based multi-touch mobile app with a simple UI that doesn’t need to tap into the platform’s native features. However, for apps with more sophisticated requirements, or the need to deliver a flawless user experience to acquire users, many developers find that these platforms aren’t mature enough yet. To illustrate, my friend showed me a demo of a browser-based app developed in SproutCore for a television network rival of PBS. The emulation of native touch apps was pretty cool. Its buttons were touch activated; its menus loaded similarly to menus developed in Xcode and Cocoa Touch; it imitated iOS’s gestural page navigation; and it copied the bounce of a native iOS app when you scroll up at the top of a page.

Using two iPads, we literally set the SproutCore app on the table side-by-side with the PBS native iPad app to compare. Several UX differences became noticeable. Gestural transitions, smooth in the iOS app, were jumpy and exhibited a weird flutter in the browser app. Buttons, which changed state when touched in the iOS app, remained unchanged with no visual cue when tapped in the browser app. Menus, which loaded instantaneously in the iOS app, exhibited a performance delay before opening in the browser app. The bounce at the top of the page wasn’t quite the same. It can be frustrating, my friend said, for a UX perfectionist when the write-once-run-anywhere frameworks don’t give you access to the platform’s native UX capabilities. For an organization like PBS with a brand reputation for high-quality video content, launching with a flawless and beautiful UX was identifed as critical to maximize user acquisition. Despite the cost, hiring native iOS developers was the right strategy for getting the app onto the iPad. Now that it is released, the app has received stellar user ratings and reviews.

As for the wrappers (the cross-platform native mobile app dev frameworks like PhoneGap and Accelerator Titanium), the requirements of the PBS iPad app ruled them out as well. The app needed custom APIs (to access PBS’s streaming media content via the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud). The team wanted to utilize UI-Web-View to embed HTML in specific areas of the iOS native app to create server side views. Requirements like these aren’t easily accommodated via a wrapper, my friend said. You’re in a box with these frameworks and you’re stuck with their developer tools. Titanium boasts capabilities to access the camera and other hardware on the device, which is impressive. But again my friend’s team found it more flexible developing with Xcode to access the native hardware.

Obviously, rapid mobile application development frameworks like AppMakr didn’t make the cut for my friend’s project. Their focus on compiling mobile apps for App Store distribution quickly from existing YouTube channels, blog posts, and social media feeds disqualified them as tools for a more ambitious app. Still, you have to credit AppMakr. For something so simple, it has attracted customers including Whitehouse.gov, Newsweek, and social media guru Seth Godin. All launched AppMakr apps and got their social content “mobilized” and packaged for the App Store in a matter of hours.

Not every mobile app has the sophisticated requirements of the PBS iPad app. But looking at the different mobile app dev frameworks through the lens of its tough requirements is instructive in sorting out what kinds of apps they’re suited for.

Native Platforms And Web – Getting The Order Right In The Roadmap
Platform preference of your target users, budget, timeframe, business objectives, the coding skills of your existing developers, and special requirements for UX and API integration – all may drive the sequence of Apple, Android, and web development. But for organizations seeking mass adoption of their mobile app, the critical factors are: (i.) maximizing total addressable audience, and (ii.) launching with a UX that will engage users. The roadmap decision often results from an optimization exercise performed on these two factors.

HTML5 web apps represent the maximum total addressable audience. Even though discovery of web apps can be an issue because they lack the powerful distribution channels of the native app stores, in theory HTML5 web apps can be used by anyone with a mobile brower based on Webkit or Chrome. That means Apple, Android, even Blackberry Torch. What’s not maximized on web apps is UX. If an organization reasons that initial user satisfaction has to be optimized in order to drive user adoption, establish brand quality, or differentiate from competitors, it may choose to do its initial launch with a native platform app despite the smaller addressable audience compared to a web app. The platform they choose to make a big splash with UX more than likely will be Apple iOS. Compared to iOS native apps, my friend said, Android apps feel like Microsoft. Developer Ish Harshawat echoed this in a Quora discussion, calling out Google for doing a poor job of communicating to developers the best practices for user experience and design. The result is a lot of the apps that started with Android as the look and feel seem kind of haphazard in usability, he said. Android 3.0, codenamed Honeycomb, introduces a completely new user interface suitable for tablet devices, but it remains to be seen how much this shifts the UX equation.

Android’s burgeoning growth, which recently surpassed that of Apple, has made big headlines in recent months, but organizations need to distinguish between growth numbers versus the current installed base of the two platforms. Nielsen figures show in the past six months Android became the top choice of consumers buying smartphones. 40.8% of smartphone buyers chose Android devices, versus 26.9% who opted for an iOS smartphone or 19.2% who preferred a Blackberry. NPD Group research put Android at a sizzling 44% of U.S. smartphone sales in the third quarter of 2010. To date, 85 competitors have lined up against iPad, and most of them will run Android. However, in installed base the iPhone still leads with 28.6% of the market compared to Android’s 25.8%..

By the time my friend’s team started with PBS, the PBS organization already had launched an iPhone app, which all agreed was the right first move. The question was what the mobile roadmap should look like going forward. Following their own optimization exercise on UX and addressable audience, the team decided to do a native iOS app for iPad first, an HTML5 web app next, and native Android smartphone and tablet apps after that.

It was the right choice for their organization. What mobile strategy works best for you?

Squeeze pages – Are they beneficial to your website?

With the widespread of the trend of internet marketing, one of the best things the online entrepreneurs can do is to create a squeeze page and start building a list on it. A squeeze page may seem to be very unattractive to your eyes, but its role in the facilitation of your online business is critical. 

However, the role of squeeze pages in the growth your website is often overlooked by most online entrepreneurs and many of them are also totally unaware of the various benefits of a squeeze page. If you’re keen on maximizing your SEO and online marketing profits, have a look at the benefits so that you can get intrigued in creating a squeeze page and starting off.

What are the benefits of a squeeze page?
The primary goal of an online marketer is to increase the traffic to your website by compelling the visitors to stick to your page. In order to boost the visitors to your website most entrepreneurs spend time in operations that ensure better and profitable results. However, only luring the highest number of eyeballs to your website will not always work. It is even tougher to convert the visitors into customers and make them sign up with your company. This is where squeeze pages takes an important part. They act as a marketing tool and helps convince your prospective consumers. Have a look at their benefits.

* Collects valuable information easily: The primary aim of squeeze pages is to provide the visitors with something that is irresistible. Only compelling content that impresses the visitors is not enough. Squeeze pages provides them with a part of the article and also states that the visitor has to sign up with the website if he wants to read the remaining article. The visitors provides his personal contact information, e-mail address and the website owner gets the opportunity to contact the visitor in due time.

* Greatest source of lead generation: The visitors who come to your website to read your content are perhaps the potential audiences and you can easily bank on the information provided by them to generate a huge number of leads. Those who have provided you with their personal information are the ones who can be certainly turned into your customers. This way squeeze pages play a vital role in generating leads.

* Powerful tool for advertising: The entire business of SEO not only depends on gaining the highest number of convertible visitors but also on good advertisements. As you can’t include the benefits of your products blatantly, squeeze pages helps you inform audiences in a tricky way how they’ll benefit from your products and services. If you can design a squeeze page properly, it can also play an important role in boosting the revenue circles of your website.

The value of a squeeze page is indisputable for your website. Besides implementing SEO efforts to your website to boost the page rank of your website, you can also use squeeze pages to reap the above mentioned benefits and generate more leads. Use it as a lucrative marketing tool that can enhance your profits and help you achieve success. 

Looking a Company who create your squeeze page then Contact VincentIT.

Microsoft bans GPL software from Windows Phone Marketplace

Microsoft has prohibited developers from using GPLv3-licensed open source software in any application distributed on the Windows Phone Marketplace. But Redmond is pushing mobile application developers to use packages based on an open source licence created by Microsoft.

The Windows Phone Marketplace Application Provider Agreement says applications "must not include software that... in whole or in part, are governed by or subject to an Excluded License," and says excluded licences "include, but are not limited to the GPLv3 Licenses."

But developers can use code approved by the Microsoft Public License, an open source licence created by Redmond. Microsoft has pushed developers to use so-called "Windows Phone recipes," which are open source projects that became available last month under the Microsoft Public License

The GPLv3 restriction in the Microsoft application provider agreement has been public since at least September, but resurfaced this week when Red Hat technology evangelist Jan Wildeboer blogged about the issue, saying he "was quite astonished."

"Note the full scope: in whole or in part," Wildeboer writes. "This means that you cannot use Libraries that are under this ominous 'Excluded License.' Or use documentation that is licensed under the ominous 'Excluded License.' You get the point. If you use whatever stuff that is under this ominous 'Excluded License' your app will not be added to the marketplace."

Microsoft defines GPLv3 licenses as including "GNU General Public License version 3, the GNU Affero General Public License version 3, the GNU Lesser General Public License version 3, and any equivalents to the foregoing," and also appears to ban further open source licenses, including any one that allows software to be redistributed for free.

Excluded licenses include anything "disclosed or distributed in source code form, licensed for the purpose of making derivative works or redistributable at no charge," Microsoft says.

Make Calls from iPad & iPod Touch Using Skype

Last night I was talking with programmers from India with my iPhone via Skype.

The clarity via Skype was impressive both with me talking (there wasn’t any echos) and on me hearing them talk (the sound came through perfectly.

Even more of a test was the fact that I was talking with two programmers who had me on a conference call (they had me on speaker) – and throughout the entire conversation there wasn’t any delays or lack of clarity while talking.

Needless to say, I’m now a big fan of the Skype iPhone app.

Which leads me to think that the Skype app can also be installed on an iPad and iPod Touch.

Since the iPad and iPod Touch are “app” capable, all you need to do is install the Skype app and start making calls – that’s my theory anyway.

I don’t have an iPad or an iPod Touch so I haven’t tested it out yet, but I known plenty of people who have both and I will be testing this out probably by the end of today.

If you have an iPad or iPod Touch, go ahead and install Skype and give me a call.

My Skype is “listyourdeals” (without quotes of course).

Hit me via Skype from an iPad or an iPod Touch.

Develop Iphone Application with VincentIT

Multi-platform development for iPhone and Android is the future

Mobile Application Development has gone Multi-platform, with Apple iPhone and Google Android, Blackberry, Window Phone  the top preferences by developers, according to a Forrester Research report released late in 2010.

To avoid being overwhelmed by Multi-platform complexity, Forrester recommends developers establish a multidevice strategy for both development and testing in 2011. Single device support is giving way to multidevice accommodation, Forrester said.

Multiple majority
Multidevice shops are now in the majority, with one in four IT shops supporting all types of personal mobile devices employees bring to work. Some employers let employees choose from a list of approved devices and OSes.

"The year 2010 was when mobile application development began crossing the chasm from early adopters to mainstream application development shops," said analyst Jeffrey Hammond in the report's executive summary, along with associates Mike Gilpin and Adam Knoll.

"But what started as 'we need an iPhone app!' has now progressed to a multiple device and operating system reality. Our data shows that mobile developers are already supporting native applications on multiple platforms and that it's likely to get more complicated as tablets join mobile phones as new development targets."

Survey data shows a growing tide of mobile application development that is evolving in a very different direction than what long-term industry watchers might have predicted, Forrester reports. Shops have typically shown a desire to limit the number of devices they support, such as BlackBerry and Windows Mobile, Forrester said.

"However, these shops are fighting a losing battle. Even companies that don't support a 'bring your own device to work' model are finding that they are getting more and more requests to support more than a single mobile operating system," said Forrester.
 

Welcome to the mobile web
Meanwhile, mobile web technologies, such as WAP (Wireless Application Protocol), XHTML-Mobile Profile and Java ME (Micro Edition), are "fading fast," Forrester said. "Even though billions of devices support these technologies, they just aren't that appealing to developers anymore, and as the average replacement cycle for mobile devices is two years, phones with richer development frameworks and more compelling capabilities are likely to replace them," Forrester said.

Developers, however, should be asked why they cannot build an application using web technologies like HTML5.

In conversations with clients, the "big three" devices preferred include Apple iOS (iPhone and iPad), Android, and BlackBerry. Forrester found that only 28 percent of firms offer employees no choice in mobile devices, while 51 percent let at least some choose any mobile device.

If you are looking to Hire Mobile Application Developers then you are at right place Contact VincentIT for your all Mobile Apps Developments needs.

Does HTML5 make mobile app downfall inevitable?

An Adobe Mobile Study found that consumers prefer the mobile Web over smart phone applications, which has huge implications for mobile advertisers, retailers and content providers.

Within the consumer products, shopping, media and entertainment categories, 66 percent of respondents cited that they prefer the mobile Web for accessing content compared to 34 percent who cited a preference for down loadable applications.

“I am not a great proponent of apps as a commerce destination to drive reach and frequency with your shoppers,” said Gary Schwartz, president of Impact Mobile, New York. “There is tons of value for the shopper in certain apps but they do not necessarily drive your retail sales goals.

“The app can become lost on the phone top,” he said. “Phone fragmentation makes development costly. And your first sales job is selling the consumer on the app and not on your product.

“Finally, with Web you own the relationship with your shopper. With an app, Apple is managing this for you. Mobile Web functionality is improving with HTML5.”

Mobile advertising
Borrell Associates forecasts that spending for ads delivered via mobile applications in the United States will explode from $310 million this year to $8.4 billion by 2015.

Comparatively speaking, ads delivered via mobile browser are expected to reach $3.4 billion by year-end and will reach $10.9 billion in 2015.

This year advertising via the mobile Web will comprise 53.4 percent of total mobile ad spend, while in-app ads will be just 4.9 percent of total spend.

Total mobile advertising spend for 2010 is expected to reach $6.4 billion this year and $42.6 billion in 2015.

Sounds impressive. But if Americans prefer the mobile Web and marketers follow consumers’ eyeballs, then the future for mobile applications can not be too bright.

The argument for mobile applications rests on the fact that consumers who download them are thought to be engaging with that content regularly.

But having applications on one’s phone and actually using them are two different things, according to Pew Internet Project.

Pew found that although 35 percent of adults have mobile phones with applications downloaded onto them, only two-thirds of these consumers actually use the apps.

And, research from Pinch Media found that less than 5 percent of applications continue to be used 20 days after being downloaded.

This really changes things for mobile advertisers who are trying to reach consumers via advertisements in applications. It raises the question of whether the ads are being seen.

Mobile content providers too should question the opportunities within the application space. For example a big-name publisher such as The Weather Channel has a mobile presence across various properties: the mobile Web, apps, SMS and so on.

But a smaller publisher, trying to form the first steps of its mobile strategy should definitely go with a mobile Web site to start out, since reach is greater, maintenance is easier and the development cost is lower.

Retailers should go by the same rules.

Apps versus Web
Marketers will gain more via a mobile Web site for several reasons.

Development costs are lower for creating a mobile Web site than the price of developing a mobile application.
 
As mentioned before, the potential market size for impressions and clicks is higher on the mobile Web than within applications.

Additionally, with the mobile Web, marketers have the search opportunity, meaning consumers can find them easier just by searching on Google or Bing.

One of the most common challenges with applications is it is hard for them to get found in the cluttered application stores.

Also, applications actually need to be downloaded and can only run on specific devices.

Mobile Web sites can be optimized to render well on a plethora of devices, with no download or installation requirements.

Once an application is built, it is hard to support and maintain it since every time there is an upgrade or a fix, the application must go through an approval process.

Additionally, users have to reinstall to get the upgrade.

Mobile Web sites are easier to support and maintain because the owner of the site has complete access and control. And if changes are made, there is no need to upgrade because all users see the newest version.

The latest generation of mobile applications taught consumers that they can do more with their phones than just talk and text.

Mobile phones now offer a utility for us to better interact and transact.   

“Apps have proliferated primarily to address the shortcomings of device processing power and network bandwidth,” said Saj Cherian, principal at Valhalla Partners, Vienna, VA. “As faster smartphones gain mass adoption, 4G networks are stood up, and more processing is done in the cloud, we will go back to the Web.

“We will get the rich user experience we have come to know via apps by merely browsing the Web,” he said. “HTML5 will be a catalyst as well as a host of other enabling technologies, such as better browsers and cloud-based services.”

Benefits of apps
Of course, applications do have their bright side.

Developers can use all device capabilities within the various functionalists of the application such as GPS, the phone’s camera, voice, address book and the calendar.

With the mobile Web, there are some limitations of what can be done. It is possible to leverage GPS, the online data storage feature and video on mobile Internet sites that are built with HTML5.

But access to the phone’s native capabilities is a challenge because of security and privacy concerns.

"Although interaction with the mobile content varies across industries, delivering a positive user experience is paramount to growing the channel," said Sheila Dahlgren, senior director of product marketing at Adobe, San jose, CA.

LG unveils world's first 3-D smartphone

That's the potential of a smartphone from LG, which has a large 4.3-inch touchscreen capable of displaying three-dimensional images without the need for special glasses. A pair of cameras on the back allows users to take 3-D photographs and videos.

LG is hoping its groundbreaking phone, with the hottest entertainment-focused technology on the market, will ride the 3-D wave being pushed by Hollywood, TV networks and other creators of media content.

The method LG uses to accomplish this effect is called "switchable barrier," which is similar to how Nintendo's 3DS can do 3-D without requiring the player to wear glasses.

LG showed the phone, called the Optimus 3D, this week at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain. The company didn't provide a release date or price, though spokespeople have said it will be affordable.

Demonstration units on display at the conference let attendees watch 3-D movies. They also provided a few 3-D games to play. That could pose a threat to the temporary monopoly Nintendo was poised to get on portable 3-D gaming when its handheld game system launches in March.

With the proliferation of 3-D TVs in the market, the Optimus 3D could help people begin shooting and archiving cutting-edge family pictures and home videos. The phone can hook up to a 3-D TV with a cable to display media on the big screen.

LG's G-Slate, a tablet that runs Google's Android 3.0 software and is slated for a March release, can also capture 3-D pictures and video. The tablet can't display 3-D on its screen, but like the phone, the G-Slate can be connected to a 3-D TV set.

The Optimus 3D has caused quite a stir this week at Mobile World Congress. However, so far it offers no spinning 3-D text messages or eye-popping dial pads, meaning Android app developers have a new mission to fulfill.

Get ready for Windows 7 SP1 - Hits Windows Update on February 22nd

Microsoft has finished work on Windows 7 Service Pack 1 (SP1) and will begin pushing the update to systems on February 22nd via Windows Update.

Microsoft has today hit the RTM (Release to Manufacturing) stage for both Windows 7 SP1 and Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 and has started shipping the code to OEMs.

If you are a TechNet or MSDN subscriber you will be able to get your hands on the code from February 16th.

So what’s new:

For Windows 7, SP1 will help keep your PCs well supported by delivering ongoing updates, many of which have been made previously available through Windows Update. It also includes client-side support for Remote-FX and Dynamic Memory which are two new visualization features enabled in Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1. Read more about those updates here from the Windows Server Team.

In my experimenting with the beta and leaked versions of SP1 for Windows 7, there’s no new cool stuff to see, no UI tweaks and no performance boosts. This is primarily a bugfix release that brings together all the patches and updates released so far.

The visualization features however, are compelling and should help to reduce the system load and increase visualization density on servers. Good news all round.

Read More Click Here

BlackBerry PlayBook tablet PC coming in April for $500 for 16GB version

Unlike Motorola, which will apparently sell its new Xoom tablet for a whopping $800 starting in a couple of weeks, Research in Motion is taking a saner approach to pricing its forthcoming PlayBook tablet.

Crack Berry received a leaked internal document from Office Depot that shows that the PlayBook will be priced at $499.99 for the 16GB model, which puts it in line with the cost of the equivalent Apple iPad. The document also lists an on-sale date of late March/early April, which will precede the rollout of the HP TouchPad by a few months.

While RIM’s pricing is certainly more reasonable than Motorola’s, it still shows an unwillingness to undercut the price of the iPad. There are dirt-cheap tablets running Android from no-name vendors, but no major manufacturer is even trying to price its product at $399 to see if it bring a competitive advantage. (Granted, the Dell Streak can be had for $199.99, but only with a two-year mobile contract with T-Mobile.) It suggests that margins on these devices may be slim for other companies, with Apple able to keep costs down through its supply chain and profits high. Or that one company dropping its price will set off a pricing war that will leave no winners among the iPad competitors. What do you think?

Microsoft outlines new features coming to Windows Phone 7 in 2011

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, keynoting the Mobile World Congress conference on February 14, announced a set of features that Microsoft is promising it will bring to Windows Phone 7 in 2011.

Ballmer also confirmed, as expected, that the first Windows Phone 7 update, codenamed “NoDo,” will be out in early March 2011.

Microsoft’s press release outlining today’s announcements did not specify how many Windows Phone 7 updates Microsoft plans to release this year. Nor did it use the codename “Mango,” which is the first major update for Windows Phone 7, expected to be available on WP7 devices this fall/holiday season. Ballmer did mention “a significant release” due later this year during his remarks, which, presumably, is a reference to Mango.

But Microsoft did announce that the following updates will be added to WP7 in calendar 2011:

• Twitter integration directly into the People Hub
• Support for Office documents in the cloud (Skydrive Docs), going beyond the current OneNote integration
• Dramatically enhanced Web browser experience based on IE9  (IE Mobile 9)
• A “new wave of multitasking applications” (i.e., third-party applications get multitasking support)

Ballmer (and the Microsoft press release from today) also made no mention of when Microsoft plans to make available to carriers CDMA support. I’ve gotten lots of questions about when Sprint and Verizon will be launching Windows Phone 7 devices. Some had expected the NoDo update to provide CDMA support, but there was no word today whether this will be the case. I’ve noted previously that I have heard CDMA WP7 phones may not be out until this summer.

Update: Microsoft execs say that CDMA support will be part of NoDo. The first Windows Phone 7 devices are coming from Verizon and Sprint should be out in the first half of calendar 2011, a spokesperson reconfirmed today.

Joe Belfiore, the Corporate Vice President of Windows Phone Program Management, emphasized during his demonstrations of an early version of “the significant update” of the Windows Phone 7 code that the IE 9 code on the phone includes the same core IE 9 code that runs on the PC. That means apps and sites designed for IE 9 will run automatically on WP7, he said.

Belfiore also showed off the ability for Windows Phones to integrate with Kinect, allowing phone users to participate in games using their avatars (support for which will be coming at some point down the road).

Microsoft execs declined to comment when I asked whether there will be any WP7 updates between NoDo and Mango. (Not a good sign, I’d say. I’m thinking that means no.) Based on today’s keynote, it sounds to me like anything that isn’t part of NoDo will have to wait until Mango

Twitter, IE9 coming to Windows Phone 7

The Microsoft keynote at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona is still underway, but the company thoughtfully leaked the official press release detailing what will be shared by Steve Ballmer. Besides throwing out the 2 million licenses sold spiel we’ve heard previously, Microsoft is sharing the following features that will be added to Windows Phone 7 later this year:

• Copy and paste functionality via first major update, coming in the next month
• Twitter integration directly into the People Hub in 2011
• Support for Office documents in the cloud in 2011
• Dramatically enhanced Web browser experience based on IE9 in 2011
• A new wave of multitasking applications in 2011
• Targeting significant volume of Nokia Windows Phones in 2012

The browser update is the biggest news as it brings the WP7 mobile browser more inline with the desktop version of Internet Explorer. Mary Jo Foley recently published a preview of this update which is spot on, as usual.

Lenovo earns first Gold rating under new green IT certification system

Looks like there is a new certification that IT types can look to when it comes to ratings for green IT.

Well-known notebook maker Lenovo has earned the first Gold rating for Laptops under the UL Environment Sustainable Production Certification (SPC). The rating was granted for the upcoming ThinkPad420, a notebook computer that is slated to be launched later in February.

The video below provides some perspective, but some of the factors that helped Lenovo earn this distinction were a focus on the use of low-halogen and post-consumer recycled content in the product as well as its choice of a design that make this notebook easier than average to disassemble for recycling or reuse after its own life. Some of the ThinkPads slated for release this year contain more than 10 percent post-consumer recycled content, while some of Lenovo’s ThinkCentre desktops and ThinkVision monitors contain up to 65 percent of the stuff. Specific things that are examined during UL Environment’s review process include product documentation, Energy Star 5.0 compliance, and manufacturing facilities. The assessment program builds on the IEEE 1680 sustainability standard, which also guides the more familiar EPEAT green technology certification process.


As I reported earlier this month, UL Environment is also spearheading the development of a standard for green mobile phones.

Facebook SIMs, HTC/INQ Phones — Facebook’s Phone Project Lingers, But It’s None Of Those

Facebook wants to be everywhere. They’ve made this very clear. They want to be on your desktop, on your laptop, on your smartphone, on your tablet, and on your dumbphone. The latter, they directly addressed today with a new SIM card made in conjunction with Gemalto which magically gives basically every dumbphone — aka “feature phone” — a simple entry point to use the social network: SMS. It’s a great idea, and very cool for emerging markets. In fact, you could make a case for it sort of being a “Facebook Phone”. But it’s obviously not the mythical one which Facebook absolutely wants you to believe doesn’t exist.

 

Nor are the phones that HTC may be releasing tomorrow at Mobile World Congress. (Update: Yep.) PocketNow was apparently able to snag some images of these Android-powered HTC devices that carry a special Facebook button at the bottom. Again, potentially cool and useful, but not the Facebook Phone. And that INQ-built Facebook phone? Also cool, but also not the Facebook Phone.

Now, the only thing we know for absolute certain is that Facebook hates talking about the concept of a “Facebook Phone”. We’ve had this argument with them in the past. They seem to think that a Facebook Phone with a capital “P” would only be a device with both hardware and software designed and developed by them. Or, at the very least, an OS written by them from the ground up. They’ve stated time and time again that they’re not working on such a project. At least not yet. And we buy that. What we don’t buy is that they don’t have some sort of project to take Google’s open source Android OS and inject it with Facebook DNA. That’s what we believe the Facebook Phone is going to be. And from what we’re hearing, it’s still coming.

Ever since we wrote the first Facebook Phone story last September, whispers have not stopped about what Facebook is doing. In particular, we had heard that two key employees, Joe Hewitt and Matthew Papakipos, were working on the project. But we’ve since heard that Facebook’s head of mobile, Erick Tseng, has taken command of the project. And that yes, it continues to be a project to customize Android to make it, and the apps that run on it, more social at their cores. “Instant personalization” and all that. You may remember Tseng as the senior Android manager who jumped over to Facebook last May.

We’re also hearing that Tseng is pushing a team within Facebook, perhaps Platmobile, to be ready to have something to show off at Facebook’s f8 conference later this year. Judging from previous years, this should take place in April. You may recall that the Platmobile team is the one that was hard at work on eliminating the need for mobile password entry. Clearly, any Android Facebook Phone project would feature this as a hallmark.

You may recall the rumors that Facebook was working with Apple to bring this deep level of social to the iPhone last year. That project was apparently very real and may have been codenamed “Spork”. But apparently, that project was scrapped — perhaps after Facebook and Apple could not come to an agreement on terms for such features. Whatever the reason, work began on the Android project shortly thereafter (which was around the time we first heard about it).

So, Facebook apparently continues to not work on a phone in the same way that Google was not working on a phone for all those years. Will we see the fruits of such non-labor at f8 this year? Perhaps. Will it be a physical phone? Unlikely. A totally new OS made by Facebook? Probably not. But instead, we may see a version of Android with very deep Facebook integration. One that phone-makers would be welcome to use. A Trojan Horse for Facebook to make smartphones truly social.

IF you want to develop Facebook like Social Networking Application of your own then contact VincentIT

Roqbot Is A Jukebox On Your iPhone

Something unusual happened last Friday night at Bar Basic here in San Francisco. When I walked in, the entire room was fixated on on a screen above the bar, which displayed what looked like a musical game but wasn’t karaoke. The game? Roqbot, a unique iPhone app that allows you to yes, pick the music playing at a bar. Like a combination Pandora and traditional jukebox, Roqbot allows you to control the tunes without getting up from where you’re sitting.

The inspiration for Roqbot came when one of the co-founders got frustrated using the jukebox at a bowling alley — Every time he had to walk across the bowling alley he would miss his turn. Roqbot, which shares the space with jukebox networks TouchTunes and eCast, is the first startup that I’ve seen experimenting with bringing social music to real life businesses like bars and cafes. Up until now plenty of people have deployed this concept for private settings, but no one has touched public because of the many challenges involved.

Co-founder Garrett Dodge says Roqbot isn’t actually competing with jukeboxes, but with iPods. Playing an iPod at a cafe or a bar has its disadvantages, namely that the staff gets tired of listening to the same music day in and day out (anyone who has ever worked in a store knows how hellish this can be around Christmas-time) and that customer requests are never heard. There is also the legal issue of music licensing fees when playing personal music in a public setting.

With Roqbot you can check in at a participating venue as well as publish your checkins and music picks to Twitter, Foursquare, Last.fm and Facebook. You can select a song to play using Roqbot credits that you can buy with Amazon, Paypal or your Credit Card through your phone. The app offers you a comprehensive list of popular music to choose from, including some that will please the cranky indie music snob you’ve dragged along. If you’re having trouble deciding what to play you can pick from curated lists like “Highest Rated of all time,” “Most Played of All Time” and yes “Top 80s.”

Participating venues have their own dashboards within the app and aspiring DJs can navigate through “Now Playing” “Next Up” “DJs” and “Specials” homescreens. On the “Next Up” screen, a Digg-like interface allows you to thumb up and thumb down songs, increasing or decreasing people’s DJ ratings with each vote (and it gets heated). Likewise people can vote your picks up or down, which affects your own DJ rating as well as your position in line. For extra Roqbot credits you can set your musical picks to “Priority Pick” which moves them up in the queue.

“We’re going beyond checking into a venue,” says founder Garrett Dodge, “Now you can actually checkin and do something useful.” True. Roqbot also gives away all the equipment for free to venues, including the entire catalogue of five million fully-licensed songs (one of the co-founders has a background in IP law and one of their advisors used to be the CEO of Sony Music).

The Roqbot beta can be downloaded from the iPhone, but can only be used at Bar Basic in San Francisco which I highly suggest if you’re in the area. Dodge plans on launching the alpha for both the Android and iPhone platform in March, offering it for free to people planning parties at SXSW. Roqbot is currently bootstrapped.

if you're still looking for a iphone Application Developer, give us a call 713-510-8033 or email at info@VincentIT.com

Hire best Android Mobile Application Developers

Today office scenario has greatly changed. The traditional office-based work environment is giving way to one that’s mobile and decentralized. Your systems may not be flexible and efficient enough to handle this change. And your data that’s captured and stored everywhere is probably not being processed efficiently or securely and converted into the useful information that your company needs to maintain its competitive edge.

Android Mobiles arrive from the dwelling of Google that adds up to the choices that you have to select from in the market. Similarly, Android application development presents numerous choices for conceiving submissions that are certain to make an affirmative influence on your business. Android market is an open submission programming development circulation scheme that permits the vendors and developers to take their submissions exactly to their aimed at audience. This very structure makes Android submission development and plentiful choice as it slashes the alterations of loosing out on cash and clients somewhere in the mid way.

Best Android Application development has developed tremendously in the latest years, as it’s so straightforward and straightforward to use and implement. All you have to manage is Register, Upload and Publish. Further, the market is rather open and therefore the developers are free to release their apps as and when they desire and they can get timely revisions about how their apps are behaving in the market.

The android market furthermore permits you get instant response from those who use them. Best Android apps can be exactly downloaded from online to Android driven wireless and the users can give their remarks and rate the apps they have downloaded. These only permits the developers understand more about how the users are obtaining their submissions but furthermore assist them advance the android app development method on the entire by approaching to understand the desires and obligations of the users.

• Equal for all applications: There is no differentiation between applications; it’s endows developer with so straightforward get access to to all services and interfaces on wireless devices. Rich browser facility endows developer to increased service founded on exact clientele requirements.

• Overcome boundaries: It’s constructed to racing up the data accumulating method and consigns accurate client demanded information.

• Open source platform: As it’s founded on Linux, it presents get access to center wireless apparatus functionality and Rich Development Environment endows you to evolve mighty applications.

• Open circulation scheme like Android market assists publishers to encourage submissions exactly to the user.

• Simplifies development: It has decreases the submission development cycle, and so straightforward to use development devices to double-check very fast development.

Although, it is not a very mechanically oriented market, but for getting Android Programming/development finished in the most effective and expert kind one can believe of chartering a Google Android developer to get the best results. There are numerous accessible in the market and the chartering charges are rather inexpensive and you get value services

If you are looking to develop an Android app that individual consumers and professional users will really want, we can help. Whether you are thinking of building a location-based service, social networking application, or multimedia app, you need an Android application developer that understands how to get the most out of this market. At VincentIT we can help you successfully plan and execute your next project and meet your business objectives.

Through our career VincentIT successfully accomplished 100+ projects in year 2010 only and developed solutions for companies like Zapp Unlimited, EMS, Exodus Logistics, Tex cables , HumTumCity, PakTel , TalkCel , Geo Unlimited Calling and StarCash4Gold, NCD2.0 and many more. Contact us today

Mobile Application Development - A Revolutionary Mode to Promote Business on Mobile

In the present day world the furtive of superior business is lying in mobile applications. This innovative era applications and technologies can help your business a lot. The smart phones like blackberry and iPhone have changed the complete meaning of the mobile phone usage. The more number of people using mobile phones are rising exponentially every passing year, the more & new software companies have been coming to the mobile application development market. Mobile Application Development unlock a new door, which fetch your business, ideas & website to several more people further it also gives the speed, alertness by which one can raise the profit quickly.

Vincent IT provides you customized mobile application development solutions for various mobile handset platforms .We design, develop & deploy products based on next generation wireless technologies 2G (GSM), CDMA , 3G (UMTS), 3.5G ( HSDPA / HSUPA ) & 4G technologies (WiMAX / UMTS LTE) to enable high end mobile commerce applications.

VincentIT successfully accomplished 100+ projects in year 2010 only and developed solutions for companies like Zapp Unlimited, EMS, Exodus Logistics, Tex cables , HumTumCity, PakTel , TalkCel , Geo Unlimited Calling and StarCash4Gold, NCD2.0 and many more.

Take the example of mobile banking for case.

Today how simply one can access one's account or check balances or transfer funds between accounts, along with the flexibility of the banking services offered would decide the effectiveness of mobile application development.

Several platforms for mobile application development:

• iPhone
• Android
• Blackberry
• Windows mobile
• J2ME mobile
• Symbian
• iPad