Android Boom in China Means Little to Google
January 1, 2013
Android is booming on mobile devices, and finding a huge new market in Asia, particularly China. More than 75% of all new Android devices run Google’s operating system, but not in China. The business side, or downside, of open source is explored in the ExtremeTech.com article, “Android is Failing by Succeeding in China.”
The article explains the pickle that Google found itself in regarding China:
“Google’s business decisions over the last few years could be coming back to bite Android as China becomes the world’s largest mobile market. Even though Android is big in China, its benefit to Google is minimal. Google’s Chinese Android problem is multifaceted, but most of the concerns stem from the search giant’s avoidance of mainland China. It was three years ago that Google surprised everyone by closing down its Beijing offices and discontinuing its .cn search domain. This was seen as a principled stand — Google didn’t like the way China filtered content and regularly interfered with its services.”
Very few from the West would fault Google for its stand against Chinese filtering and regulating. However, this is an example of how technology, and specifically open source, can be quite political. Open source creators or committers put out their technology, not knowing how exactly it will be interpreted or adapted. Other companies, like LucidWorks, count on open source software as their structure, and build a business around offering specific solutions as well as support and training, hoping to gain an international appeal. LucidWorks has succeeded in this regard. There is always a political side to technology, as Google is currently learning.
Emily Rae Aldridge, January 01, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
EasyAsk Embraces SAP to Deliver Enterprise Voice Technology
December 20, 2012
iPhone users have rejoiced because of the ease and efficiency Siri technology has brought to their personal lives and ability to access information in an agile manner. Now, the workplace wants a similar version. Easy Ask sent out the press release, “EasyAsk Teams with SAP HANA to Deliver Quiri for SAP CRM, The World’s First Siri-Like Mobile Solution for CRM” discussing the partnership making it possible.
EasyAsk provides natural language technologies and solutions and with their new offering called Quiri, enterprise employees will be able to access CRM data using voice technology similar to that of Siri.
Craig Bassin, CEO of EasyAsk was quoted saying:
“The premise behind Quiri is to significantly increase adoption of CRM by mobile field sales forces that today don’t benefit from CRM solutions. Most are cumbersome, at best, in their deployment on a smartphone. Guiding, navigating, inputting data is frustrating on a 3 by 2 inch screen. Quiri works similar to Siri, but is optimized for your CRM system and far more accurate.”
This is clearly another case where consumer technology succeeds in its sector and has now been picked up by the enterprise world. This time, the basic voice technology was boxed up by a different company, EasyAsk.
Megan Feil, December 20, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Mobile Enterprise Traffic Needs a Reliable Knowledge Road Map
December 7, 2012
Big Data and mobile devices are having a profound impact on the way today’s businesses function. This increase in mobility over the past decade has brought about a major transition for the IT industry, and there is no question that the mobile revolution will continue into the future.
The Mobile Enterprise’s article “IT’s “Third Platform”: Mobile, Cloud, Social and Big Data” talks about how IT that remains stationary and refuses to embrace the mobile movement will end up becoming stagnant within the next year:
“The IT industry as a whole is moving toward the mobile/social/cloud/big data world of the third platform much more quickly than many realize: from 2013 through 2020, these technologies will drive around 90% of all the growth in the IT market. Companies that are not putting 80% or more of their competitive energy into this new market will be trapped in the legacy portion of the market, growing even slower than global GDP. IDC expects predictive analytics will be a particular hot spot in the months to come.”
Mobile, cloud and social along with a grain or so of Big Data means an ever increasingly complex enterprise information environment. Companies wishing to keep up with the ‘enterprise mobility’ traffic will need a reliable knowledge road map. Working with solution providers like Intrafind that understand the full scope of enterprise information access needs can take a bit of the pain out of finding the right solutions.
Jennifer Shockley, December 7, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Real Journalists and the Daily iPad App
December 3, 2012
Short honk: Publishing companies are good at selling ads, working distribution systems, and creating content for a known audience. I want to ad that these three capabilities work best in the world of paper, educated readers, and business processes set up around the time of Gutenberg.
Creating online success stories is a different kettle of fish. One can’t even wrap the old fish in newsprint any longer. That tells me something.
I read “News Corp. Shutters The Daily iPad App.” Launched with much fanfare a couple of years ago, another “real” journalism outfit has steered its high-tech digital speedboat into a reef. I learned from the article:
The app was initially hampered by technical problems, but the Daily’s key issue was a conceptual one. While the app boasted lots of digital bells and whistles, in the end it was very much a general interest newspaper that seemed to be geared toward people who didn’t really like newspapers. You can’t make that work no matter what kind of platform it uses. The real surprise would have been if News Corp. had found a way to keep the Daily around, since the tablet newspaper’s fate was essentially sealed this summer, when the corporate split was announced.
I think this is a gentle description of another real journalist goof. I am 68 and have worked at a couple of pretty good publishing outfits when paper was king. The ability to use an app and to talk about an app are different from delivering a winner. Paper is one world. Digital is another world. Different in my opinion. Dinosaurs don’t like snow but think the thaw is coming. Did not happen based on what I read.
Stephen E Arnold, December 3, 2012
The Importance of Wireframe Expertise
November 27, 2012
Employing a home-building metaphor, mobile software firm Zeus River laments about clients who insist, “‘I Already Have Wireframes, I Just Need You to Code It’.” Making that demand of a software engineer, writer Milan Gokhale says, is akin to a non-architect drawing up their own blueprints and telling the contractor, “I just need someone to lay the bricks.” The article explains:
“A house isn’t constructed until it has gone through a lengthy, rigorous architecture process. High-quality software operates the same way. If you want to maximize the value of your investment, you need an engineer to think through many long-term considerations. . . .
“Wireframes are sort of like interior design; they describe what the colour of the couch is, and where the couch should be located. These are not the concerns of your architect when you’re building a home, and they are not the concerns of your software developer when he/she is trying to build your app. If you didn’t involve a developer in your wire-framing process, you’re setting yourself up for a situation in which the couch looks gorgeous in a house that will crumble at any minute.”
Oh, you say, but picking colors is much more fun! That may be, but at least fork up the dough to bring your developer in on the party. Doing so is sure to save time, money, and frustration in the long run. The frustration, by the way, is also felt by developers; Gokhale says he and his partner now decline any projects with pre-drawn wireframes. It just isn’t worth the hassle.
Launched in September of 2011, Zeus River is located in Toronto, Ontario. The founding partners, both experienced enterprise software engineers, formed their own company in order to work in the more exciting, innovative arena of mobile technology. Good luck, guys.
Cynthia Murrell, November 27, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Hello Siri Google is Coming for You
November 14, 2012
Google has been trying to come out with a rival to Apple’s Siri for months now. While those who have new Android products are able to utilize Google Now, until now, there has not been a Google app to bring instant information to non-Google smartphones. LifeHacker.com recently published the article, “Chat with Google Guru to Get Google Now Style Answers on Any Device.”
According to the article, for those who want Google Now style data but do not have an Android product, there is now an easy solution. All you have to do is add guru@googlelabs.comto your contact list on your smartphone. Then ask Google Guru what you want to know and receive instant replies.
The article explains:
“Granted, this works best with Android devices, since Android has a built-in GTalk client. iOS users will have to use a third party app, like our favorite, Imo, to get the same features. Once Guru is in your contacts list, commands like “weather: city” will give you the current conditions in that location, and “score: team” will help you find the score of a game you’re interested in, or the last game your favorite team played. Here are all of the commands guru understands as far as we can tell:
- Score: team
- Weather: city
- Define: word
- Translate: word
- Web: query (performs a Google web search)
- Calculate: formula”
While it doesn’t have all of the features of Siri or Google Now, Google Guru could lead to some potential competition for Apple if more non-Android smartphones begin using it.
Jasmine Ashton, November 14, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
How Phone Records Correlate to Pace of Life
November 6, 2012
It has often been said that those who dwell in cities live a faster paced life than their country-living counterparts, the MIT Technology Review article, “Phone Call Data Reveals How Pace of Life Accelerates in Cities” is now able to prove it.
According to the article, Markus Schläpfer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge has figured out a way to prove that humans in cities interact more often and with a greater number of other people than those who live in smaller conurbations.
The study is based on 440 million anonymous mobile phone calls made in Portugal over a period of 15 months and almost 8 billion landline calls made in Britain during a single month. What they discovered was, people who live in larger cities not only have more contacts but they also accumulate them faster.
The article states:
“Schläpfer and colleagues say the results imply that during the 15-month observation period an average urban dweller in the Portuguese capital, Lisbon, accumulated about twice as many reciprocated contacts as an average resident of Lixa, a rural town.
‘The results presented here constitute the first extensive empirical evidence of the acceleration of human interactions in cities,’ they say.”
While this is not the first study to argue that people who live in larger cities have a more fast paced life, it is one of the first to have such a large sample size and connect data sets to human interactions. This could very well be the first of many studies.
Jasmine Ashton, November 06, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Motorola Restructuring Proves to be More Complex Than Anticipated
October 29, 2012
The Inquirer recently published a piece that leads us to believe Motorola is a stickier wicket than Google predicted, called “Google Revises Cost of Motorola Mobility Restructuring.”
According to the article, after Google’s initial acquisition of Motorola, the restructuring has proved to be more costly and difficult than initially anticipated. One example of this is the fact that the search giant planned to cut Motorola’s workforce by 20 percent. However, after examining figures for severance charges, the number has been changed to 9 percent.
The article states:
“Motorola was bought for its considerable patent portfolio, with Google hoping that the 16,000 or so patents will help it fend off potential patent lawsuits by other firms like Apple and Microsoft. However Google bought not only 16,000 patents but also a company that was far from being the mobile phone market leader, with financials to match its lacklustre products.
Google said in a statement to Reuters, ‘Motorola has continued to refine its planned restructuring actions and now expects to broaden those actions to include additional geographic regions outside of the US.’”
We are still unsure of Google’s true motivations for buying Motorola. Whether it was patent related or hardware, Google’s next Nexus design should bring some clarity to the issue.
Jasmine Ashton, October 29, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Smart Firms Look to Business Intelligence that Delivers Information
October 25, 2012
When there is more than enough new data types to warrant new methods of analysis, you know there must be a paradigm shift at play. SAP certainly is not the first to point out the juncture we currently sit at, but nonetheless they threw in their hat to the number of firms presenting research on the subject. CMS Wire reported on the matter in “Report: ‘New Paradigm’ of Data for the Social Enterprise.”
The report is titled Rethinking Analytics for the Social Enterprise and it makes the case that social businesses are in a new generation of analytics where data is collected, analyzed and often used socially. That is, the data is disseminated through mobile platforms in near real-time.
One of the characteristics of the new paradigm is the social collection of structured and unstructured data from sources both inside and outside a company, including interactions with customers and prospects. That data is analyzed socially in a collaborative fashion throughout enterprise, using mobile tools and generating results that are more visual, more current and immediately actionable.
The looming question is which vendors will pull through as the big players in shaping this new arena of software solutions and more. There is no doubt that keeping an eye on PolySpot‘s information delivering business intelligence solutions is a smart move.
Megan Feil, October 25, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Delivering Information Must Precede Presenting it in a Pretty Way
October 24, 2012
We have heard it before and CITE World will tell us again: mobile is the platform of the future. Mobile business intelligence vendor Roambi directed the conversation towards the new platform everyone wants a piece of in the article, “Roambi Lets You Visualize Enterprise Data On Your iPhone or iPad.”
The Roambi app is integrated with Roambi Analytics back-end. This allows for data to be drawn from existing sources and turns it into engaging and very useful visualizations on mobile devices. There are even ten different views possible to see enterprise data appear in.
We learned more about the app:
The functionality here is impressive: Roambi doesn’t just put a new coat of paint on your enterprise data—it fully commits to the mobile experience, with each visualization easily controlled by screen gestures like double-taps and swipes. Part of that laudable functionality comes from listening to customers: company reps say that enterprise buyers wanted access to their data anywhere. That’s why Roambi downloads data directly to your device. Even without an internet connection, you still have access to your latest reports.
If there is a gem of mobile business intelligence out there, it may be Roambi. However, in order to deal with the cross usage of mobile with traditional devices so that no data is left behind, another solution must be in place. We are talking about something in the vein of PolySpot solutions, they deliver information across multiple devices in a secure manner.
Megan Feil, October 24, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
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