tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-83744782845428376002024-03-13T22:28:05.213-07:00Bomilight - Responsive Blogger TemplateRubelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00098151726928636326noreply@blogger.comBlogger19125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8374478284542837600.post-12270773354939370842016-10-04T06:14:00.000-07:002016-11-18T01:27:01.918-08:00Why Android Takes Forever to Get Cool Apps<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-cBPcD8GEnxw/WCszUbFoHuI/AAAAAAAACYU/bbTNoBUiMLQjeiCLBt5lnkXKV8BMs55TQCLcB/s1600/why.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Why Android Takes Forever to Get Cool Apps" border="0" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-cBPcD8GEnxw/WCszUbFoHuI/AAAAAAAACYU/bbTNoBUiMLQjeiCLBt5lnkXKV8BMs55TQCLcB/s1600/why.jpg" title="Why Android Takes Forever to Get Cool Apps" /></a></div>
Even though there are more Android phones than iPhones in the United States, the number and variety of Android apps lags compared to Apple’s offerings. For instance, Android users had to wait a year before they got Instagram or Pinterest apps. New research helps explain why.<br />
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There’s got to be more to the story than the number of phones. Flurry, a mobile-app analytics firm, released a report this week that helps explain the problem, laying out the challenges app developers face. It also shows that Android apps are unlikely to catch up and that small developers coding for either device will get squeezed out of the market.<br />
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For app developers to make a decent living, they have to sell 50 apps an hour, 24 hours a day, for $1 each, Johan Emil Johansson, a developer in Sweden, said in a blog post outlining the difficult conditions facing today’s app developers. New app versions are expensive to make, especially in light of the proliferation of devices.<br />
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App developers have long had to grapple with an overwhelming number of connected devices. Flurry counted 331 different models of smartphones and tablets that developers would have to code for if they wanted make their apps available on about 90% of devices.<br />
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Too ambitious? If developers can content themselves with only 50% of devices in use, the programmers would still have to make versions for 18 different models. And the complexity doesn’t stop there; developers must also adjust apps for different operating systems. For instance, any <a href="http://democodiblog.blogspot.com/2013/12/why-android-takes-forever-to-get-cool.html" rel="nofollow" target="">iPhone 4</a> user could be running iOS 4, iOS 5 or iOS 6.<br />
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But iOS still represents fewer phone and operating system combinations than does <a href="http://democodiblog.blogspot.com/2013/12/why-android-takes-forever-to-get-cool.html" rel="nofollow" target="">Android</a> . And fewer combinations means less development work and testing for cash-strapped programmers.<br />
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Flurry also found an even bigger incentive to make an iOS app rather than one for Android: More people will use the apps, and more often.<br />
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“Device models running on the iOS platform average 14 times the number of active users compared to device models running on other platforms,” Mary Ellen Gordon, a Flurry analyst, said in a blog post.<br />
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In other words, one iPhone user is worth 14 <a href="http://democodiblog.blogspot.com/2013/12/why-android-takes-forever-to-get-cool.html" rel="nofollow" target="">Android users</a> , based on how frequently the apps get used.<br />
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And even when Flurry isolated Samsung, the most popular Android device maker, one iOS user was still worth seven Samsung users.<br />
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Manufacturers will continue to make new devices in the hopes of standing out from competitors. The last year alone has seen the explosion of the “<a href="http://democodiblog.blogspot.com/2013/12/why-android-takes-forever-to-get-cool.html" rel="nofollow" target="">phablet</a> ,” a phone the size of a small tablet. And the operating system mix of old and new will grow even more complex.<br />
So much for the <a href="http://democodiblog.blogspot.com/2013/12/why-android-takes-forever-to-get-cool.html" rel="nofollow" target="">whiz kid</a> with a quirky, brilliant app idea, like 14-year-old Robert Nay who created Bubble Ball.<br />
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“Putting all of this together, we expect a future in which app developers are less frequently individuals with a creative idea and a laptop, and more frequently companies designed to develop, produce and distribute apps at scale,” Flurry said.</div>
Rubelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00098151726928636326noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8374478284542837600.post-29511531270951980232013-12-13T06:28:00.000-08:002016-11-18T00:19:46.312-08:00Yahoo Killing Message Boards Site and Other Products<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-0Z-A4tibgLE/WCs0dAwfqQI/AAAAAAAACYg/WRnmGH9CfT0vhPYSIcuHFLzv69IYuT_mwCLcB/s1600/yahoo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Yahoo Killing Message Boards Site and Other Products" border="0" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-0Z-A4tibgLE/WCs0dAwfqQI/AAAAAAAACYg/WRnmGH9CfT0vhPYSIcuHFLzv69IYuT_mwCLcB/s1600/yahoo.jpg" title="Yahoo Killing Message Boards Site and Other Products" /></a></div>
<a href="http://democodiblog.blogspot.com/2013/12/yahoo-announced-in-friday-afternoon.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Yahoo</a> announced in a Friday afternoon blog post that it’s killing seven products from its line of consumer offerings.<br />
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The doomed products include Yahoo’s <a href="http://democodiblog.blogspot.com/2013/12/yahoo-announced-in-friday-afternoon.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">BlackBerry</a> app and Sports IQ. The BlackBerry app will still be available to users who have already downloaded it, but support for it will cease. The Yahoo Message Boards website is also set for shuttering, although users will still be able to access message boards for individual properties such as Yahoo Sports and Yahoo Finance. Yahoo avatars will no longer be supported either, while the Yahoo Clues beta product, Yahoo App Search and Yahoo Updates API round out the list of casualties.<br />
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<blockquote class="quote center">
All the changes take effect April 1, except for the Yahoo Updates API, which will stick around until April 16.</blockquote>
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“Ultimately, we’re making these changes in an effort to sharpen our focus,” Jay Rossiter, Yahoo’s executive vice president for platforms, wrote in the <a href="http://democodiblog.blogspot.com/2013/12/yahoo-announced-in-friday-afternoon.html" target="">blog post announcing the changes</a>. “By continuing to hone in on our core products and experiences, we’ll be able to make our existing products the very best they can be.”</div>
Rubelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00098151726928636326noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8374478284542837600.post-22476474880747024832013-12-13T06:27:00.000-08:002016-11-18T00:19:46.305-08:00Twitter Outages = Snow Day On The Internet<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-mi8z-HW1qnM/WCs1d6YZ9FI/AAAAAAAACYk/xWxVfWlQaxAV0uUKlRSy6guZ6RaqgeQjwCLcB/s1600/phone.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Twitter Outages = Snow Day On The Internet" border="0" height="424" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-mi8z-HW1qnM/WCs1d6YZ9FI/AAAAAAAACYk/xWxVfWlQaxAV0uUKlRSy6guZ6RaqgeQjwCLcB/s640/phone.jpg" title="Twitter Outages = Snow Day On The Internet" width="640" /></a></div>
Why the schadenfreude, you might ask? Why take delight at the misfortune of others? Well, let me be clear. I have endless compassion for the brilliant engineers at Twitter. They’ve built something unbelievably powerful, and it’s a testament to their talents that it runs at all. But I think the human users who spin the wheels of that real-time interruption machine could use a break every once in a while.<br />
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When Twitter is down, it’s like a Snow Day on the Internet.<br />
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I understand that most people can and do use Twitter by choice. That’s a very good thing. As an intentional hobby, Twitter is immensely valuable. Just dipping into the stream can provide an hour’s or a day’s worth of news, humor and even friendship, if you keep your Twitter feed tidy enough. “Twitter is my rosary,” my word-hero Erin Kissane <a href="http://democodiblog.blogspot.com/2013/12/twitter-outages-snow-day-on-internet.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">once said</a>.</div>
Rubelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00098151726928636326noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8374478284542837600.post-40458181533386328382013-12-13T06:26:00.000-08:002016-11-18T00:19:46.316-08:00Haters As A Leading Indicator Of Success<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-AjEAPM0jyKA/UqvTb-r4ioI/AAAAAAAABms/vOCvfuyvfXI/s1600/1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Haters As A Leading Indicator Of Success" border="0" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-AjEAPM0jyKA/UqvTb-r4ioI/AAAAAAAABms/vOCvfuyvfXI/s1600/1.jpg" title="Haters As A Leading Indicator Of Success" /></a></div>
The only thing worse than dealing with haters of your company or product is not having any at all. The product without haters is destined for ignominy and failure. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that your product’s success is positively correlated with the volume of venom directed at it.<br />
But first, let’s define a “hater.”<br />
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There’s valid criticism, and then there’s hate. A hater, <a href="http://democodiblog.blogspot.com/2013/12/the-only-thing-worse-than-dealing-with.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">according to Urban Dictionary</a>, feasts upon <i><a href="http://democodiblog.blogspot.com/2013/12/the-only-thing-worse-than-dealing-with.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">schadenfreude</a>: “</i>A person that simply cannot be happy for another person’s success. So rather than be happy they make a point of exposing a flaw in that person.” Jealousy factors heavily into a hater’s temperament.<br />
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<ul class="correct">
<li>Quality </li>
<li>Entertainment</li>
<li>Interesting</li>
<li>Amazing</li>
<li>Twitter</li>
<li>Facebook</li>
</ul>
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Yes, jealousy. After all, no one hates a loser. That company with 1% market share? No one bothers to expend energy trashing it. Not seriously, anyway.</div>
Rubelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00098151726928636326noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8374478284542837600.post-60051281457589342812013-12-13T06:24:00.000-08:002016-11-18T00:19:46.352-08:00Brand Marketers Totally Miss Social Media Influencers<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ykVUHqfJfu8/Uqs2WUs1ZyI/AAAAAAAABlQ/Jlrie_yeX0o/s1600/1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Brand Marketers Totally Miss Social Media Influencers" border="0" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ykVUHqfJfu8/Uqs2WUs1ZyI/AAAAAAAABlQ/Jlrie_yeX0o/s1600/1.jpg" title="Brand Marketers Totally Miss Social Media Influencers" /></a></div>
Any illusions that marketers have gotten this whole social media thing down pat will be blown away by the latest findings from Technorati Media’s <a href="http://democodiblog.blogspot.com/2013/12/brand-marketers-totally-miss-social.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank" title="http://technoratimedia.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/tm2013DIR.pdf">2013 Digital Influence Report</a>, which suggests that for everything the media spends across social platforms, the most desired influencers aren’t even being reached.<br />
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The new report points out a huge disconnect: only 11% of corporate social media budgets are devoted to advertising on blogs and influencer sites. But fully 86% of the influencers these corporate brands are trying to reach are using blogs as their primary publishing platform.<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">Brands And Advertisers: It’s All About Facebook</span><br />
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The mismatch is pretty clear in Technorati Media’s report. Typically, just 10% of the total digital marketing budget is devoted to a social ad strategy. Of that slice of the pie, 57% gets tossed at Facebook ad buys, 13% at YouTube and another 13% at Twitter’s sponsored tweets. Just 6% is spent on influencers and 5% on blogs.</div>
Rubelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00098151726928636326noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8374478284542837600.post-68231797865196587602013-12-13T06:20:00.000-08:002016-11-18T00:19:46.361-08:00Why Can’t Johnny Write? Don’t Blame Social Media<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-hVdabNeS6bw/Uqs5TuRdX0I/AAAAAAAABlc/WS_mJXwRUoc/s1600/1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Why Can’t Johnny Write? Don’t Blame Social Media" border="0" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-hVdabNeS6bw/Uqs5TuRdX0I/AAAAAAAABlc/WS_mJXwRUoc/s1600/1.jpg" title="Why Can’t Johnny Write? Don’t Blame Social Media" /></a></div>
Books were my best friends, when I was growing up. I read all the time, but wrote little. It wasn’t until I hit my teens that I began to write regularly for fun. None of it was very good, but I had, thanks to countless hours between book covers, learned a little something about structure, grammar, even spelling. This made me a better-than-average writer for my age and someone who peppered his conversations with big words (mostly because I loved the sound of them).<br />
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My teenage children read less than I did when I was their age. The two of them spend hours on their phones, ingesting viral content or chatting on Facebook, while I spent my time with books and TV.<br />
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Despite the generational shift in reading habits, my children are above average writers (although this could be because their parents have writing backgrounds). I’m actually surprised their writing isn’t worse.</div>
Rubelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00098151726928636326noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8374478284542837600.post-50753830772271793652013-12-13T06:19:00.000-08:002016-11-18T00:19:46.335-08:00Mobile Apps In The Enterprise: 7 Essentials<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Mobile devices have become the world’s steady companions that we take anywhere and use everywhere. A recent forecast by <a href="http://democodiblog.blogspot.com/2013/12/mobile-apps-in-enterprise-7-essentials.html" rel="nofollow" target="">McKinsey & Company</a> estimates that by 2014, 1.7 billion mobile devices will be accessing the Internet – and a steady diet of online content. Widespread smartphone and tablet adoption is giving birth to a new ecosystem of mobile apps. Apple with its iTunes App Store is currently the gold-standard of the mobile experience, and it enables distribution to millions of users. In early 2013, Apple announced that users had downloaded an astounding 40 billion apps from its App Store, with almost half of that total logged in the last year.<br />
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The rollout of smart mobile apps yields numerous benefits not only to consumers but also for the enterprise. Mobile apps for business must offer the expected, Apple-easy download experience, but the enterprise requires quite a bit more for apps to be successful and risk-free. Many companies are struggling to manage the proliferation of mobile apps and connect to business content.<br />
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Here are seven critical areas for enterprises to address as apps multiply through the mobile enterprise ecosystem.<br />
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<h2>
<span style="font-size: x-large;">1. Not Point Products: Using An Enterprise Mobility Platform</span></h2>
The basic foundation of the mobile enterprise begins with deployment of the devices – employee and corporate-owned — along with a portfolio of productivity apps. The goal is simple: The user downloads an app and starts using it. All onboarding, app registration and bootstrapping is done by the enterprise mobility platform — the server strings, logon information or certificates are pushed to the user’s device automatically.<br />
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<h2>
<span style="font-size: x-large;">2. Configuration: Based On Roles And Responsibility</span></h2>
Deployment and configuration policies have to go hand-in-hand. Ultimately, enterprise workers want to be able to use any device and any app, accessing content without any roadblocks. Ideally, if an employee has an iPhone or Android phone provided to them, they will immediately have the secured content and correct business apps configured based on their roles and responsibilities (finance, HR, sales, etc.).<br />
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<h2>
<span style="font-size: x-large;">3. Deployment: Cloud vs. On Premise</span></h2>
Enterprises have a choice of where they get content and apps. They can come from the cloud, be stored on premise, or in some hybrid combination. This piece of the mobile equation doesn’t have a correct answer, but IT has to remain keenly aware where each component of mobile content resides and (most importantly) who has authorized access.<br />
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<h2>
<span style="font-size: x-large;">4. Beyond MDM: Managing Devices, Apps, Content And Things</span></h2>
IT must maintain control over how mobile devices access corporate information: At the very least, IT has to be able to turn off the device, content or app if the mobile hardware is lost or stolen. A key component of that is creating lockable configuration and security policies. Mobile Device Management (MDM) software helps IT centrally manage, secure and deploy mobile data, applications and devices, including tablets and phones. The journey continues beyond MDM to Mobile App Mgmt (MAM), Mobile Content Mgmt (MCM) and eventually takes you on the journey to securing not just devices but every machine in the <a href="http://democodiblog.blogspot.com/2013/12/mobile-apps-in-enterprise-7-essentials.html" rel="nofollow" target="">Internet of Things</a>.<br />
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<h2>
<span style="font-size: x-large;">5. Security: At Every Stage In The Lifecycle</span></h2>
A Symantec study calculated that the average annual cost of mobile breaches for an enterprise business was $429,000. Security has to be part of the fabric of mobile throughout the enterprise. It must be integrated into the initial mobile strategy – and into each subsequent stage in the mobile lifecycle. It must be nimble and designed for the post-PC era of mobile computing.<br />
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<h2>
<span style="font-size: x-large;">6. Interoperability: Take A Cross-Platform Approach</span></h2>
In a mobile enterprise, all devices, apps and cloud services need to recognize each other and be able to share content. As we deal with a combination of HTML-based mobile-Web apps <i>and </i>device-native apps, three key factors contribute to interoperability.<br />
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First is cross-platform support. Most enterprises will have to cater to Apple’s iOS, Google’s Android, Microsoft’s Windows and BlackBerry.<br />
<br />
The second factor is backend connectivity: While all mobile users will run <a href="http://democodiblog.blogspot.com/2013/12/mobile-apps-in-enterprise-7-essentials.html" rel="nofollow" target="">Tripit</a>, for example, against the same hosted backend, your enterprise apps needs to run against <i>your </i>company’s backend systems. For example, a customer relationship management (CRM) app needs to access <i>your </i>customers in <i>your </i>CRM system. A Leave Request app has to run against your own enterprise resource planning (ERP) system.<br />
<br />
Third, enterprise apps must adhere to your company’s information technology security standards. Employees will access your corporate data from the open Internet, and you need to safeguard your business data.<br />
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<h2>
<span style="font-size: x-large;">7. Mobile Apps: Buy And/Or Develop Your Own</span></h2>
Mobility starts with the app creator, which could be an individual developer, a customer who wants to develop an app, a partner or an internal development team. Many larger organizations will benefit by designing their own apps for mobile-enabled business processes. These mobile solutions can tap into different applications and workflow tools using dashboards to monitor everything from sales to the health of the entire business in real time.</div>
Rubelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00098151726928636326noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8374478284542837600.post-48791723021565338092013-12-13T06:13:00.001-08:002016-11-18T00:19:46.331-08:00Facebook Gets More Simpler, More Complicated<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-loYHqc3LS1A/UqvRhbBF7JI/AAAAAAAABmg/lyq9815HOF8/s1600/1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Facebook Gets More Simpler, More Complicated" border="0" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-loYHqc3LS1A/UqvRhbBF7JI/AAAAAAAABmg/lyq9815HOF8/s1600/1.jpg" title="Facebook Gets More Simpler, More Complicated" /></a></div>
Here’s the first thing you may notice about the new Facebook — the word “Facebook” doesn’t appear anywhere on it. Just one blue-on-white, lowercase “f.”<br />
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It’s indicative of a couple of things — first of all, Facebook is so famous it doesn’t need to use its full name any more. Secondly, the company has a new religion: make the design as clean as possible. Remove all unnecessary pixels (and yes, the company talks about it in pixel-level terms). Get Facebook out of the way of your Facebook experience.<br />
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“We wanted to remove all the chrome from Facebook,” software engineer Chris Struhar told <i>Mashable</i> after the event. And he wasn’t talking about the Google browser. (Indeed, folks at Facebook were strenuously avoiding any usage of the G-word Thursday, possibly because of the design’s similarity to Google+.)<br />
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Struhar was using a web nerd term to describe the chrome fins on the Facebook car: the details, the frames, anything that wasn’t Facebook stories and pure, gorgeous white space.<br />
Of course, if you were paying attention to the details of the News Feed event, you’ll notice the paradox here: at the same time Facebook got simpler, it also got more complicated.<br />
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Instead of two options for how to sort your News Feed — “Top Stories” and “Most Recent” — Facebook now offers a dizzying seven options.<br />
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You get regular old News Feed (the equivalent of Top Stories, sorted by the Facebook algorithm), “All Friends” (headed up by a photo with a selection of friends in it), “Following” for the Pages and public figures you follow; “Photos,” “Groups,” “Games,” “Music” and your old friend “Most Recent.”<br />
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In fact, you get even more options than that. Click on “see all” and you’ll be able to view your News Feed by your location, or only people you follow at your work place, or only people in your high school, and so on.<br />
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All in all, I counted 20 ways to view my News Feed. Your mileage may vary.<br />
How much of this will you use? It’s a fair question. In talking to Facebook employees who’ve been playing around with the new design internally for months, I’ve heard much the same thing: their browsing habits didn’t change.<br />
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If they preferred the passive browsing of the “Top Stories” algorithm before, they’re not really drilling down into the multiplicity of News Feed options. If they were the kinds of Facebook users who set up dozens of Lists before, then those kinds of options are closer to their fingertips.</div>
Rubelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00098151726928636326noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8374478284542837600.post-28935009504671895342013-12-13T06:13:00.000-08:002016-11-18T00:19:46.308-08:00Internet, Keep Your Damn Hands Off My Rom Coms<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-3D9__omCEaY/UqvO5YvfxXI/AAAAAAAABmU/HUnMHtA0idA/s1600/1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Internet, Keep Your Damn Hands Off My Rom Coms" border="0" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-3D9__omCEaY/UqvO5YvfxXI/AAAAAAAABmU/HUnMHtA0idA/s1600/1.jpg" title="Internet, Keep Your Damn Hands Off My Rom Coms" /></a></div>
The tech world is often misunderstood as hard and cold. Movies about the internet have commonly fallen into the sci-fi and dramatic genres. Romantic comedies just don’t work for us web-dwellers because we’re all robots and we have no feelings, right?<br />
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Nope. There’s nothing Meg Ryan and a little soft focus can’t warm up. Take these tech-inspired romantic comedies (rom coms) and warm up your cold, bionic heart.</div>
Rubelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00098151726928636326noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8374478284542837600.post-11174529283948272652013-12-13T06:12:00.000-08:002016-11-18T00:19:46.285-08:0010 Actionable Trends For Mobile Marketers In 2013<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-uLSLinGddvQ/UqvVjyJu6fI/AAAAAAAABm4/Qp4-ho4KM50/s1600/1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="10 Actionable Trends For Mobile Marketers In 2013" border="0" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-uLSLinGddvQ/UqvVjyJu6fI/AAAAAAAABm4/Qp4-ho4KM50/s1600/1.jpg" title="10 Actionable Trends For Mobile Marketers In 2013" /></a></div>
It is almost silly to think that in 2013, many enterprises are still struggling with mobile strategies. The fact of the matter is that enterprises can sometimes be just as big, slow and bureaucratic as the Federal government. That can also be true for the enterprise marketing departments that are, ostensibly, supposed to be ahead of the curve of the rest of the organization.<br />
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Research firm Forrester has identified the top 10 trends that enterprise marketers need to know in 2013, and the actionable responses they should take to prepare a multi-year mobile strategy to push their companies into the future. The key takeaway? It’s time to invest resources in mobile – including time, money and people.<br />
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Among its points Forrester says that “the role of mobile marketing manager will emerge.” We are beginning see these types of roles crop up in companies across the world. Whether it is the “VP of Mobile” or the mobile-only IT guy, enterprises are starting to fraction certain parts of the workforce to specifically deal with mobile issues. Cost conscious enterprises may not like to see their workforces become even more fragmented and specialized, but the fact of the matter is that mobile is like a weevil, ingraining itself into the infrastructure of enterprise protocols. Ignore it at your peril.<br />
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“Mobile on the cheap is over. Implementing the complex technology to make the most of mobile opportunities requires a new vision of how to interact with customers, significant changes in culture and competencies across business and IT, and more investment,” <a href="http://democodiblog.blogspot.com/2013/12/10-actionable-trends-for-mobile.html" rel="nofollow" target="">wrote Forrester analyst Thomas Husson. </a><br />
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What it comes down to is this: enterprises and marketers need to address multi-year use cases for smartphones and tablets, hire and organize their workforce to take advantage of the opportunities and restructure the corporate organization chart to give those people the power to make actionable decisions. Ideally, these types of changes would have started two or three years ago or before. If your enterprise is just starting to figure out how mobile is changing your processes in 2013, you are well behind the ball.<br />
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See the chart from Forrester below. What is your enterprise doing to take advantage of the Mobile Era? Let us know in the comments.</div>
Rubelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00098151726928636326noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8374478284542837600.post-43483647614142472492013-12-13T06:10:00.000-08:002016-11-18T00:19:46.323-08:00BlackBerry Z10 review: a new life, or life support?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-xNip0QSF8MM/UqvXoTZzqJI/AAAAAAAABnE/BtlwJYPGILo/s1600/1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="BlackBerry Z10 review: a new life, or life support?" border="0" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-xNip0QSF8MM/UqvXoTZzqJI/AAAAAAAABnE/BtlwJYPGILo/s1600/1.jpg" title="BlackBerry Z10 review: a new life, or life support?" /></a></div>
BlackBerry is about to enter the battle of its life, and as you’ll see in my review of its new flagship phone, the Z10, it’s using everything in its arsenal to win. Maybe win is the wrong word; perhaps victory for BlackBerry right now is something more like not losing everything. Because if you’ve been <a href="http://democodiblog.blogspot.com/2013/12/blackberry-z10-review-new-life-or-life.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">following this story</a>, you know that everything is what’s at stake.<br />
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The company is coming back into the game with force, that much is clear. Its new touchscreen smartphone is the serious contender BlackBerry has been claiming it would be, packing in the specs, software prowess, and services to take on even the most entrenched players in the game. This isn’t a feint or a half-step, it’s a long bomb with all the blood, sweat, and tears behind it you would expect from a company that’s lost a significant piece of its value (to say nothing of its market power) over the last handful of years. But there are those entrenched players, and consumers as well as enterprise customers have proved fickle in the face of changing technology. The fans have gone or are going — can the Z10 win them back?<br />
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This isn’t just about a single phone or a single OS, it’s about BlackBerry’s fight to stay afloat. Can the new phone along with BlackBerry 10 put the company back in play, or is this too little, too late? Read on for my full review and find out.</div>
Rubelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00098151726928636326noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8374478284542837600.post-75926903587228217182013-12-13T06:09:00.001-08:002016-11-18T00:19:46.372-08:00Makerbot Digitizer Will Let Anyone Scan and Print<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-1muAjGlfdN0/UqvrUYgba8I/AAAAAAAABns/mY9phZ_5jMM/s1600/1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Makerbot Digitizer Will Let Anyone Scan and Print" border="0" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-1muAjGlfdN0/UqvrUYgba8I/AAAAAAAABns/mY9phZ_5jMM/s1600/1.jpg" title="Makerbot Digitizer Will Let Anyone Scan and Print" /></a></div>
Makerbot CEO Bre Pettis excitedly announced a new Makerbot Digitizer Desktop 3D scanner on stage Friday at <a href="http://democodiblog.blogspot.com/2013/12/makerbot-ceo-bre-pettis-excitedly.html" rel="nofollow" target="">SXSW</a> in Austin. Currently a prototype, the next-generation scanner will allow anyone to scan a physical item, digitize it, and then print it in 3D, regardless of whether or not they have any design experience.<br />
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Sort of like a copy/paste for real-world objects, the Digitizer works using two lasers and a webcam. The webcam sees where the lasers are shining off of an item, and wraps all those points up into a plan for a 3D model that can then be printed.<br />
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To make the magic happen the lasers spin around the object, a process Pettis describes as “like Tron.”<br />
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“This is something you would envision being a piece of fiction, but in fact, it is real — and it is so cool,” says Pettis.<br />
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Able to scan items in as little as three minutes, the Digitizer can create small to medium sized objects, 2” to 8” cylinders. The Digitizer works in indoor light, and prints watertight models that can be used for prototyping, or to replace broken items in your home.<br />
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“The MakerBot Digitizer is a great tool for archiving, prototyping, replicating, and digitizing prototypes, models, parts, artifacts, artwork, sculptures, clay figures, jewelry, etc. If something gets broken, you can print it again.”<br />
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Makerbot is currently testing the scanner, with plans to release it to the general public in the fall. You can sign up to receive updates on the Digitizer on <a href="http://democodiblog.blogspot.com/2013/12/makerbot-ceo-bre-pettis-excitedly.html" rel="nofollow" target="">Makerbot’s website</a>.</div>
Rubelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00098151726928636326noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8374478284542837600.post-44629035707679470142013-12-13T06:09:00.000-08:002016-11-18T00:19:46.326-08:00Make Better Presentations With the Instagram for Pitch Decks<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ANaDFylhGE0/UqvZlHG19qI/AAAAAAAABnQ/oxMUoBW7zV8/s1600/1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Make Better Presentations With the Instagram for Pitch Decks" border="0" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ANaDFylhGE0/UqvZlHG19qI/AAAAAAAABnQ/oxMUoBW7zV8/s1600/1.jpg" title="Make Better Presentations With the Instagram for Pitch Decks" /></a></div>
“Hey, I really enjoyed making this <a href="http://democodiblog.blogspot.com/2013/12/make-better-presentations-with.html" rel="nofollow" target="">PowerPoint</a>,” is one of those things nobody says. Haiku Deck aims to change that with its iPad app for making and viewing presentations.<br />
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Before addressing the pain point of <a href="http://democodiblog.blogspot.com/2013/12/make-better-presentations-with.html" rel="nofollow" target="">bad PowerPoints</a>, the founders of Haiku Deck were part of <a href="http://democodiblog.blogspot.com/2013/12/make-better-presentations-with.html" rel="nofollow" target="">TechStars’ inaugural class</a> of entrepreneurs in Seattle. Their initial idea didn’t fly but it was their experience on the ground, pitching to various investors or partners, that led them to the idea for Haiku Deck.<br />
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“We were almost never finding ourselves [pitching] in a conference room,” says Haiku Deck co-founder Adam Tratt. The app now has been downloaded 250,000 times, with more than 100,000 decks made by users.<br />
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Despite the introduction of tools including <a href="http://democodiblog.blogspot.com/2013/12/make-better-presentations-with.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">SlideRocket</a> and <a href="http://democodiblog.blogspot.com/2013/12/make-better-presentations-with.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Prezi</a>, the process around creating and presenting slides hasn’t changed much in 20 years. It involves a lot of Google searching for images, resizing text and on occasion, adding animations that will make your audience chuckle, at least the first time. What you end up making is often nothing to boast about — it gets the point across, but can look jumbled or be hard to read for your audience.<br />
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Tratt looked to his past product experience at Microsoft (working on Office) where he became familiar with an important statistic about feature usage: 80% of people use 5% of product features. Often, full-featured software gives people “too much rope with which to hang themselves,” he explains.<br />
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That’s why Haiku Deck, much like the poetry format haiku, has a strict framework.<br />
“99% of the world is not a designer.” Tratt notes most people know something looks good when they see it, but cannot pick out a color palette.<br />
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The app comes with five “themes,” or templates (with 11 more for purchase). Finding images is a no-brainer — the app actually allows you to input relevant Creative Commons images, with attribution included, as soon as you type in a slide title or body text (you can also upload your own images).<br />
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The charts included in Haiku Deck are also unique. In a time when data turns heads, bring it into pitches is crucial, but the numbers themselves don’t always tell the story. Haiku Deck offers three types of charts: bar chart, pie chart and statistic chart. For example, in the bar chart, you would drag the bar to the correct number, say, 80 — and then add a label for each bar. It’s the kind of gesture action you expect when using a touchscreen.</div>
Rubelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00098151726928636326noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8374478284542837600.post-51200595411986432152013-12-13T06:01:00.000-08:002016-11-18T00:19:46.339-08:00Does Apple Ever Regret Making The iPad Mini?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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There are so many reasons to love this photo of Apple marketing boss Phil Schiller holding up an iPad Mini. For one thing, it captures the kind of hushed sanctimony and reverence with which Apple introduces things that are, essentially, little plastic gizmos. But mostly I love Phil’s weird off-camera gaze, which reminds me of <a href="http://democodiblog.blogspot.com/2013/12/there-are-so-many-reasons-to-love-this.html" rel="nofollow" target="">this photo from <i>Stepbrothers</i></a>. What is he looking at? What’s he thinking? Is he fearful, even then, on the day of the introduction, that this cool new device is going to kill sales of the bigger iPads and thus drag down Apple’s profit margins?<br />
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If so, then Phil was right, because apparently that’s what’s happening, according to a <a href="http://democodiblog.blogspot.com/2013/12/there-are-so-many-reasons-to-love-this.html" rel="nofollow" target="">report from Digitimes</a>, which claims Apple is cutting back orders for components used in the big iPad and now expects to sell fewer of them than originally expected. Mostly because it’s selling so many of these goddamn iPad Minis.<br />
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Digitimes says Apple originally planned to sell 60 million big iPads and 40 million Minis, but that now Apple expects to sell 33 million big ones and 55 million little guys.<br />
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That’s great news if you’re the product manager in charge of the iPad Mini – you’re having a blowout year! But you’ll notice that the new sum total of all iPad sales for the year stands at 88 million, which is less than the previously expected 100 million. This is not good.<br />
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My Entire Premise Could Be False, In Which Case, Sorry<br />
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Then again this entire report could be bullshit, since it comes from Digitimes, and Digitimes is perhaps not the most reliable publication in the world, as reflected in the headline the story to which I linked, which mentions issues with Apple’s “supplpy” (sic) chains.<br />
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But if the report is true, this means Apple will sell fewer overall iPads (of all kinds) than originally expected. And more of what it does sell will be the less-expensive Mini model.<br />
That in turn means Apple is likely to make less profit margin, as the financial wizards at<a href="http://democodiblog.blogspot.com/2013/12/there-are-so-many-reasons-to-love-this.html" rel="nofollow" target=""> Business Insider point out.</a><br />
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Does Phil Schiller sometimes lie awake at night wishing Apple had never made that damn Mini? Does he lurk outside Apple stores and curse the cheap bastards who keep buying Minis just because they’re $170 cheaper than the big one?<br />
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Maybe not. Maybe Phil and his team figure they pulled off a pretty amazing coup. They milked ridiculous margins out of the original iPad for a long, long time. And now that big iPad serves a purpose – it makes the iPad Mini look cheap. Which it’s not, considering that <a href="http://democodiblog.blogspot.com/2013/12/there-are-so-many-reasons-to-love-this.html" rel="nofollow" target="">you can get roughly comparable Android tablets for a lot less.</a></div>
Rubelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00098151726928636326noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8374478284542837600.post-56283717055413330122013-12-12T07:26:00.000-08:002016-11-18T00:19:46.343-08:00The Madness of Guns and the Digital Cure<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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But what about mass shootings? The tragedy in Newton, Conn., the latest in a string of incidents, highlights the complexities of the problem. Law enforcement and legislators, community members and advocacy groups, are all debating legal remedies, but tech has yet to play a role in the conversation. Nobody expects innovation to curb the mass shootings. But it can help to prevent and solve some aspects of the problem.<br />
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President Obama, in his State of the Union address, touched on “common sense initiatives,” so we looked at some tech advances that offer a glimmer of promise to improving public safety, if not the way we think about it in the future.<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">The Future of Smart Guns</span><br />
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In mass shootings, shooters aren’t often the licensed owners of the guns they use. One solution would be to develop “smart guns” that only fire when literally in the hands of its owner. The idea dates back to 1994, when the Justice Department looked at developing a gun for the police that criminals can’t use during a struggle. That idea expanded to keep guns from firing in the hands of children.<br />
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Early prototypes used biometric measurements — like your fingerprints or grasp — to authenticate you. But models today embed Radio Frequency Identification, or RFID, chips that activate when a special ring or wristband is nearby.</div>
Rubelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00098151726928636326noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8374478284542837600.post-14820688528456225972013-12-12T07:08:00.000-08:002016-11-18T00:19:46.297-08:00Some Of The Important Tips Help Relieve Digital Eye<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-gK4jQXYLW-E/UoOLMy6UZTI/AAAAAAAABNM/Y4elRuElQfA/s1600/1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Some Of The Important Tips Help Relieve Digital Eye" border="0" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-gK4jQXYLW-E/UoOLMy6UZTI/AAAAAAAABNM/Y4elRuElQfA/s1600/1.jpg" title="Some Of The Important Tips Help Relieve Digital Eye" /></a></div>
You’ve likely heard of ergonomics, but do you know about “eyegonomics?” When you’re spending the day looking at a screen, whether it’s a tablet device or a smartphone, you can suffer from eye strain as well as neck pain. You know how it is; you start out sitting straight, but then find yourself slouched over sitting with your neck bent at an uncomfortable angle and before you know it, you have neck and back pain, not to mention red, irritated eyes.<br />
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Yes, you can get eye strain simply from using a digital device for more than two hours at a time. Think about how many screens you look at during the course of your day. Desktop and laptop computers, smartphones, e-readers, tablets, televisions and gaming systems. In fact, in a <a href="http://democodiblog.blogspot.com/2013/12/some-of-important-tips-help-relieve.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">survey</a> conducted by The Vision council, more than a third of U.S. adults reported spending four to six hours a day with digital devices.<br />
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Rubelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00098151726928636326noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8374478284542837600.post-41400380635083103852013-12-12T06:26:00.000-08:002016-11-18T00:19:46.319-08:00Pebble Smartwatch Shipping To 500 Kickstarter<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-uopDkkApabI/UqnYxoQyMjI/AAAAAAAABj0/GEcB2YMHbwk/s1600/1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Pebble Smartwatch Shipping To 500 Kickstarter" border="0" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-uopDkkApabI/UqnYxoQyMjI/AAAAAAAABj0/GEcB2YMHbwk/s1600/1.jpg" title="Pebble Smartwatch Shipping To 500 Kickstarter" /></a></div>
The Pebble smartwatch will officially begun shipping today, at long last. After a record-shattering Kickstarter campaign, the tidal wave of demand for the device led to delays and production woes. Now, after<a href="http://democodiblog.blogspot.com/2013/12/pebble-smartwatch-shipping-to-500.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> announcing a hard shipping date at CES 2013</a> earlier this month, Pebble intends to deliver its little wonder timepiece.<br />
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Unfortunately, there are a few caveats.<br />
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According to a<a href="http://democodiblog.blogspot.com/2013/12/pebble-smartwatch-shipping-to-500.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> post on its blog</a>, Pebble Technology admits to a few enduring “kinks and issues”. First, it aims to manufacture 2,400 Pebbles per day, but in the mean time the ol’ Pebble factory will be cranking out somewhere between 800 and 1,000 units.<br />
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The blog post also notes that due to some quirks in its manufacturing process, the first production run will be the black version of the Pebble (there’s also a cherry red, arctic white and orange “voter’s choice” version). And while the Pebble app hasn’t passed go in Apple’s App Store yet, the Android app will be live on January 24. The app will be able to push software updates and nifty stuff like alternate digital watch faces to the device.<br />
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All told, fewer than 500 Pebbles will ship out today. It’s a drop in the bucket for the gadget’s 68,929 Kickstarter backers – but at least we’ll be able to see if this whole smartwatch thing has legs.</div>
Rubelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00098151726928636326noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8374478284542837600.post-16455011303633884192013-11-21T07:37:00.000-08:002016-11-18T00:19:46.301-08:00Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs - Trailer Debuts Online<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Ad82lObd9Q0/UoOIbCA6fmI/AAAAAAAABM4/LZd2HiYkHzo/s1600/1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs - Trailer Debuts Online" border="0" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Ad82lObd9Q0/UoOIbCA6fmI/AAAAAAAABM4/LZd2HiYkHzo/s1600/1.jpg" title="Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs - Trailer Debuts Online" /></a></div>
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In the original, hero Flint Lockwood invents and eventually destroys a machine that causes chaos in his hometown by turning water into food. Number two picks up shortly after, with Flint discovering that his machine is still operational — and now produces food-animal hybrids (such as the “Taco-dile Supreme”).<br />
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In the original, hero Flint Lockwood invents and eventually destroys a machine that causes chaos in his hometown by turning water into food. Number two picks up shortly after, with Flint discovering that his machine is still operational — and now produces food-animal hybrids (such as the “Taco-dile Supreme”).</div>
Rubelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00098151726928636326noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8374478284542837600.post-73634944570063015672013-10-04T08:49:00.000-07:002016-11-18T00:19:46.367-08:00Plotter Turns the Map on Your iPhone Into a Social Discovery Tool<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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For all the talk about how much better Google Maps is than Apple’s default maps app on the iPhone, the experience for both essentially boils down to the same thing: search for a place on a map and look up directions. <a href="http://democodiblog.blogspot.com/2013/10/plotter-turns-map-on-your-iphone-into.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Plotter</a> aims to take mapping on the iPhone to the next level by adding a social layer and some features that will appeal to your inner cartographer.</div>
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Plotter’s app users a simple way to create, share and discover maps with friends and the Plotter community. Rather than simply look up a bar on Google Maps, you can use Plotter to plot out all your favorite bars in a particular city and then share that map with friends. Likewise, if you’re new to an area, you could surf Plotter to search for maps from other users of things to do.<br />
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“Plotter was built out of necessity,” the company’s founder and CEO Tom Nolan told <i>Mashable</i>. “As a frequent traveler and constant user of my native maps app on the iPhone, I was always hoping for additional functionality with maps.”<br />
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In some ways, Plotter is reminiscent of <a href="http://democodiblog.blogspot.com/2013/10/plotter-turns-map-on-your-iphone-into.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Stamped,</a> an app <a data-crackerjax="#post-slider" href="http://democodiblog.blogspot.com/2013/10/plotter-turns-map-on-your-iphone-into.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">recently acquired by Yahoo</a> and subsequently shut down, which let users mark their favorite venues on a map. However, the map wasn’t the central feature of Stamped and users didn’t have the option to create and share multiple maps of recommendations like they do on Plotter.</div>
Rubelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00098151726928636326noreply@blogger.com0