Toshiba VP On Innovator's Dilemma: Apple's Disruption Is Uncomfortable But Good

At his 1998 Macworld keynote, Steve Jobs heralded Apple's then-newly simplified product strategy. The company would only market four basic verticals: a desktop and mobile computer line, each with consumer and pro versions.

Below The Surface

Around Microsoft's launch of Windows 8 and Surface, Fast Company asks hardware giants tough questions about innovation, disruption, and their future.

Previously:

• Why Steve Ballmer Still Hearts Microsoft's Hardware Partners
• HP Explains Why You Don't Want The iPad, Surface
• Dear Windows 8 Hardware Makers: Stop All The Horribly Named Products
• Dell, Samsung On Why They Didn't Invent The iPad
• 5 Ways Hardware Makers Are Hurting Windows 8
• Windows 8: The Boldest, Biggest Redesign In Microsoft's History
• Why Windows 8 And Apple's Tacky Philosophy Caused A Design Revolt

"When we got to the company a year ago, there were a lot of products--15 product platforms with a zillion variants on each one," Jobs said at the time. "I couldn't even figure this out myself … How are we going to explain this to others when we don't even know which products to recommend to our friends?"

Now, more than a decade later, PC makers are still following the confusing and antiquated product strategy that Jobs had banned at Apple. For the launch of Windows 8, Microsoft's new operating system, hardware makers have attacked the market with endless product lines and form factors: massive touch-screen desktops; notebooks of all shapes and sizes and names; hybrid PCs that detach and flip and swivel and swing; and tablets with attachable keyboards, pens, docking stations, and external battery packs. This see-what-sticks approach is all the more remarkable in an age when Apple, with just one simple product line--the iPad--now outsells the entire PC lineups of these hardware makers (or OEMs). Apple's success is a sign of just how out of touch some of these manufacturers are, and it serves as symbol of how much disruption they face in the market today, especially in mobile. "There's a lot of noise out there," says Jeff Barney, executive VP in charge of Toshiba's PC and TV business for the Americas. "I have a hard time tracking all of the models that are hitting the market right now."

Toshiba Satellite U925t

For Toshiba, the endless devices its competitors are selling represent an opportunity: The company has decided to limit the number of products it's pushing for the launch of Windows 8. The Satellite U925t, for example, a slide-out hybrid laptop-tablet, is one of the few gadgets the company is marketing this holiday season. And although I'm not terribly impressed with the device (here's a great review of the U925t), it's at least a sign that PC makers are learning traditional product strategies are no longer relevant. "We tried to take a more narrow approach in our product line instead of inundating the consumer with a bunch of different form factors," Barney says. "You're going to see a lot more clarity in form factor early next year. That's the nature of a big launch: Everyone hustles to get more of the halo products out there, and they become perfected in the months following. I think that you will start to see winners and losers in terms of Windows 8 designs early next year."

Still, despite a narrower product strategy, it's unclear whether these hardware makers can even catch up to Apple in the mobile market. On the day I chatted with Barney, for example, Apple had just unveiled the iPad Mini, its fifth-generation tablet, with CEO Tim Cook boasting on stage that the company had just sold its 100 millionth iPad. Its unprecedented success in the market signals its vertical model of controlling both the hardware and software may have significant advantages. Toshiba and other hardware makers must rely on third-party software from Microsoft and Google to keep up--that's the reason many of these OEMs are years late to the mobile market, because Windows 8, a mobile-centric operating system, has only now become available.

"Apple has done a tremendous job to exploit that market opportunity--we're not unaware of Apple's success in their model," Barney says. "What our next steps may be are things for us to consider down the line. Certainly Apple has shown a very strong business model on the tablet side. Obviously there is a huge tablet market out there, but many would argue it's very incremental to the laptop market. I think we have taken that position also."

When I ask whether Toshiba's reliance on Windows and Android has its downsides, Barney answers, "I wouldn't say it's a disadvantage, but certainly the landscape has changed."

And when I ask whether Toshiba is experiencing some form of the innovator's dilemma, Barney lets out a chuckle. "That's a very good question," he says. "I think we'll have to answer that question when we can look back on where we're at right now and decide whether or not that's really the issue."

Barney adds, "I think from our standpoint, disruption, although uncomfortable, is good. Because it's going to force Toshiba and others to step up and deliver new and innovative platforms. We're very happy with our relationship with Microsoft."

Source : fastcompany[dot]com

HP Explains Why You Don't Want the iPad, Surface

HP ElitePad 900

In August, a group of top HP reps and product directors gathered in New York to show off the company's newest devices: laptops, tablets, desktops, hybrid PCs. But its flagship product--or at least the device HP reps spent the most typing selling to attendees--was the HP ElitePad 900, a 10-inch Windows 8 tablet designed for business. With a slew of business-friendly accessories (keyboard, docking station, Stylus pen), HP believes its slate can finally compete with the iPad in the corporate world. But what about Microsoft's Surface tablet?

Surface

Like most hardware makers in the space, HP's interest in the enterprise space is indicative of its larger struggles to keep pace with Apple in the consumer tablet market. Long have hardware manufacturers (or OEMs) relied on corporate customers to boost sales: Not only did these customers value low-cost products over high-end design, but their employees depended on legacy applications, meaning programs built for older systems that required backward compatibility to function--programs that would be too costly to migrate over to a new platform like Apple's. In this environment, Windows-based PCs thrived. But that's all changing thanks to the iPad. Apple's best-selling tablet has dominated the enterprise space--one recent study suggested the iPad accounted for 97.3% of tablets activated by enterprise customers last quarter, a strong indication that even stodgy business clients value quality design and user experience.

Below The Surface

Around Microsoft's launch of Windows 8 and Surface, Fast Company asks hardware giants tough questions about innovation, disruption, and their future.

Previously:

• An Open Letter To Horribly Named Windows 8 Hardware Makers
• Dell, Samsung On Why They Didn't Invent The iPad
• 5 Ways Hardware Makers Are Hurting Windows 8
• Windows 8: The Boldest, Biggest Redesign In Microsoft's History
• Why Windows 8 And Apple's Tacky Philosophy Caused A Design Revolt

Apple now sells more iPads than HP does PCs. Mike Hockey, worldwide public relations manager for HP’s multi-billion-dollar personal systems group, describes this sea change: "Let's be honest, there's a certain expectation in the market--the iPad has set an expectation for what a tablet should be. We know that you have to design something that looks good. At the end of the day, nobody wants to be embarrassed to pull something out--it's got to have a consumer look and feel. If you pull out something butt-ugly these days, end users will revolt. It used to be, 'You take it; you're going to like it.' That's changed. It really has. You got the IT guys saying, 'I need X, Y, and Z.' But you have the end user going, 'Man, screw you, I'm going to bring in my own device.' So if you're not even close to the iPad, then why even bother?"

It's a radical change in thinking for HP. Only last year, the company was trying to sell me on the HP Slate 2, a super-thick, Windows 7-based tablet that had barely any of the functionality of the iPad yet sold at an alarmingly high price of $699. At the time, Hockey and his colleague Kyle Thornton, category manager for emerging products at HP, argued that due to the reliance of the enterprise on Windows and legacy applications, the HP Slate 2 would be a huge hit in the market, despite its deficiencies and appalling design. "To be honest with you, we've had many customers look at [the iPad], but they're not necessarily looking for that whiz-bang experience," Thornton said then. "Let me tell you, for a lot of customers, the Windows 7-based [Slate] performance is more than enough for what they're looking for… Now, the CEO might get the iPad, but for the 500 or 2,000 [employee] deployment? They're not going to get iPads. They're going to get something like this [Slate 2]."

Slate 2

In other words, the CEO gets the good device, while the employees get the cheap device. Look how much has changed: "I agree with you: Windows 7 was not the answer," Hockey told me over the summer. "I'm not going to argue with you. I'd be the first to tell you that Windows 7 on a tablet was not a very strong product. But we think that with this new generation of Windows 8, touch-enabled devices, there's an opportunity now."

All told, the ElitePad 900 is a pretty sleek device on its own. At 9.2mm and 1.5 pounds, the ElitePad is actually more appealing than many of HP's consumer offerings. The company hopes the tablet's accessories will set it apart: a two-piece Smart Jacket system provides extra battery life and ports; a docking station provides additional features such as USB and HDMI connectivity; and the company is also offering an external keyboard and Stylus pen.

However, these accessories are also the ElitePad's downfall: the thick and heavy jacket system is anything but Smart; the docking station provides little differentiation; and the external keyboard is a bulky slab of hardware that doesn't match the device's light-weight design, while the Stylus pen doesn't even attach intuitively the tablet itself when not needed. (Because the Stylus pen was foolishly designed thicker than the tablet itself, you actually need an external cover just to store the pen.) Compare that to Microsoft's Surface tablet, which features a sturdy, built-in kickstand as well as a super-thin attachable keyboard that doubles as a cover. Why would corporate customers want all the additional clutter of accessories if Microsoft's offering eliminates the baggage?

"Because you may have a situation where you may need more options--the [Surface] might not be enough for you," Hockey says. "If all I'm looking for is a notebook, well I might as well buy a notebook. If I'm just going to carry the Surface with a kickstand, what's the point? We've got notebooks that are down to 2.5 pounds now. I don't know what the Surface is with the kickstand--it's right at 2 pounds I think. If i'm going to have the kickstand and keyboard all the time, and that's really all I'm using it for, then why not just go buy a light-weight notebook or ultrabook?"

HP ElitePad 900

It's a talking point HP was clearly prepared to deliver. Only several weeks ago, HP CEO Meg Whitman knocked the Surface, which she said "doesn't function like a laptop," adding that "it lacks a keyboard you can do real work on." Whitman argued the Surface is more so geared toward the consumer space, while HP's offering will compete in the enterprise market.

One thing is for sure: HP can no longer rely on the same formula and advantages it has for decades. High-end design and user experience are now incredibly important, even in the corporate world. And with Apple's rocketing success in the enterprise space, HP and other hardware makers can't depend on Windows forever to sell its products.

Source : fastcompany[dot]com

Socialbakers Jan Rezab on the Road from Traditional to Social Marketing

Remember the good old days when customer interactions were between you and the customer?

Those days are over. It used to be easy. They bought your product, took it home and liked it or they didn't. Sometimes they'd call to complain, but that was between the customer service rep and the customer. Now dissatisfaction or appreciation of a product or service is between the customer, the business and all of their friends and followers. Competition is high, choices are plentiful and the end product is only part of the package.

So why do businesses think they can still ignore what their customers say on social media?

Jan Rezab is out to change that. 

Jan is CEO of Socialbakers, a social media analytics firm that tracks the level of customer engagement on social media platforms. He believes that social media is the marketing game in today's world, saying "it is cheaper, more targeted, more engaging and more effective than traditional channels." 

From Liking to Engagement

But it isn't just about listening to your customers or gathering followers. Those are just continuations of the one way method of communications used in the past. The key to the game in Jan's mind is engagement. He defines engagement as "communicating effectively so that your audience (your customers) becomes involved enough to interact with you and your brand," or as Socialbakers terms it, being "socially devoted" to your customers.

Content plays a key role in this engagement. By providing customers with unique, compelling content and sending it out on the proper channels in a timely way, businesses differentiate themselves from competitors and start conversations. This is the evolution of traditional marketing in Jan's eyes, "Similar goals, different channels, more interactive customer behavior with a greater willingness to participate." 

It Doesn't End When You Get the Customer in the Door

Engagement doesn't end at the point of sale. It is a conversation that needs to be continued throughout the customer journey. We've all heard the statistics of the higher rate of return from retaining customers than acquiring. Jan agrees with this strategy:

Social media is a key customer service channel; if handled correctly, social media can become one of the key drivers for companies' positive reputation growth or product advocacy and savings on call center costs. Social media can and in many instances already do play a role in acquiring new customers. However, before any brand goes down the route of acquisition, we'd recommend to get the basics right and ensure current customers are being attended to at least as much as new ones."

As for the future, it is just becoming clearer that businesses who ignore social channels are doing it at their own risk. If you want to be where your customers are, you will develop a social media strategy (if you don't already have one) right quick. I'll give Jan the final word:

Given that social media channels are still growing and more and more people are connecting, it's only logical that these channels will be more and more interesting for brands. Any successful marketer or communications professional has to have social media skills simply because the vast majority of their target audience spends a significant amount of time on social networks."

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

Built-In Customer Support Turns Feedback into Conversations

Modern businesses need to do more than just provide customers with a way to provide feedback, they need to drive their customers to engage in a conversation about their product.

In March 2012, Apple announced the 25 billionth download from their App Store, giving away a cool US$ 10,000 iTunes gift card. Apple reported approximately US$ 5.7 billion revenue on those 25 billion downloads, so it is easy to do the math: the mobile app landscape is dominated by free and low-cost downloads. Mobile App analytics firm App Annie reports that the average revenue per download for iOS games in the US is just 67 cents.

Changing Dynamics

For mobile apps, having such a low price point changes the purchase dynamic. Users are skeptical of apps that charge too much up front, which has given rise to “freemium” services and in-app purchases. These sort of models lower the threshold for downloads, making it easier for customers to try before they buy. And while there are avenues to request refunds, many consumers may find it is not worth the hassle to get their US$ .99 back. Instead, they might just write a spiteful review and give the app a low rating.

This creates quite a predicament for mobile app developers, who have no way to reach out to the users behind those arbitrary star ratings and three-word reviews like, “this doesn’t work.” How can they intervene with a user who sees no other avenue for venting frustration than a one-star rating and a spiteful review?

Consider also that we are rapidly entering a world where, for many young people, talking to people is not the primary use of their phone. Even if they reach out for customer service, they might prefer Twitter or Facebook to calling in or sending email. Yet they expect all of those options to be available.

Built-In Customer Service

To succeed in the mobile app marketplace, businesses need the half-inch square icon on a customer’s mobile device to stand for a great customer experience. Which means, in part, exceeding expectations around service and support. Move beyond the baseline of Facebook, Twitter, phone and email to create a positive customer experience, even when an app fails.

• Give customers the ability to express themselves from inside the app they are using. Create a seamless customer service experience.
• Use an in-app feedback mechanism to leverage contextual information and create a personalized customer service experience. Help your customer service agents understand who the customer is, their usage history and usage preferences.
• Aggregate usage and personalization data from your app for a data-driven customer service experience. Analytics can help developers understand how users interact with an app, and assist with debugging.

When an app provides ways to reach out for service and support, it can deflect some of those bad ratings and spiteful reviews. It can also help you identify potential advocates who love your app, but aren’t necessarily thinking, “I need to go write a review.”

Research into consumer behavior in app stores suggests that the number of reviews matter: more reviews encourage more sales. And analysis from NYU and the Georgia Institute of Technology suggests that reviews and ratings are of particular value for the types of things that are difficult for consumers to evaluate prior to purchase: books, movies and apps. The higher your rating, the more likely you are to pique the interest of potential customers.

Customer service strategies can be slow to evolve. A company that pays attention to app store feedback and reviews is one step down the path. But simply listening is not the same thing as engaging. That requires being open to feedback and responding.

Modern businesses that drive their customers to engage in a conversation about their product will have a competitive advantage. Techniques like in-app feedback and usage analytics will yield better ratings and more positive reviews, which in turn can result in more sales, and engaged customers who love your product and who want to talk about it.

About the Author

Joshua Ellis works in the marketing department for Apptentive. He is a strong advocate for customer service with a focus on improving the quality of mobile applications and creating connections between developers and customers.

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

Google Cancels NY Nexus Event as Social Media Tracks Hurricane Sandy

 It looks like Microsoft has the stage all to itself today with a west-coast launch of Windows Phone 8. Google has been forced to postpone its Fall product launch due to the impending hurricane, which is being recording in minute detail across the web. 

Not A Good Day

With the impending hurricane threatening a large part of the east coast and New York, Google had little choice but to cancel its launch of the new Nexus 4 smartphone and the expanded range of Nexus tablets. Since most of the information is already out there, a delay won't hurt the company, and with minds on more practical matters, focus and coverage would be limited. 

That leaves Microsoft with a free run across the tech press with its San Francisco Windows Phone 8 launch event, assuming they've cleared up from all the rioting last night over the Giant's World Series win. That will come hot on the heels of the Windows 8 launch, that Microsoft managed to pull off in Times Square before the weather closed in. 

Social Takes Over

With so much information about the hurricane needing to be dispersed over such a wide area, social media is leaping to the fore. Not only can those in the hurricane's track keep a detailed eye on its progress vita Twitter, but the world is watching on beach-front web-cams and every local news site is doing its best to keep readers informed. 

Google isn't abandoning its users though, a mash-ups of Google Maps and the storm track, or more practically, evacuation center information and other details are being put online to help. Those faraway, perhaps on one of the thousands of cancelled flights, are getting help and advice online wherever they are stuck. 

Decision makers and the general public are all getting direct data as the weather recon planes and sea buoys measure the surging tides and wave height, and the plummeting air pressure in the heart of the storm. As long as the power holds out, this will be the best recorded hurricane in history. 

On a local, state, national and global basis, everyone's actions are under scrutiny. From foolish weather presenters trying to get closest to the storm to the politicians and civil leaders who must manage the response, the next few hours and days won't be a good time to make a public mistake. Stay safe if you're in the direct path, under the threat of blizzards or flooding inland and we'll hope to see you on the other side. 

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

A Quick Sitecore Roadmap Looking at the Next Year #sitecoresym

Sitecore's Senior VP of Product Marketing, Darren Guarnaccia provided an updated Roadmap for Sitecore's stable of product offerings during the Sitecore Symposium 2012 North America in Las Vegas. There's quite a few interesting improvements and additions that will be of interest to both business and technical users.

Here's the highlights of the Roadmap Darren discussed. 

Near Term Additions for Q4 2012

• Version 6.6 of Sitecore CMS will be released
• Good news for Mobile developers as this will include Sitecore's Mobile SDK and a very sophisticated system for simulation of content on many mobile device classes
• Updates to Sitecore's DMS system, adding Engagement Intelligence features that will be of great use to business and marketing users
• A refresh to the Foundry product based on Sitecore CMS v6.6 and an update to their Social Connected tool

First Quarter 2013

• A big, much-anticipated update to Sitecore CMS with the release of Sitecore 7, which includes large scale item storage support
• For business users there's some new and very powerful additions to DMS with the Visual Path Analysis tool which allows marketing folks to dig deeply into how users are reaching (or not) various content
• Email Campaign Manager 2.0 will also be released

Second Quarter 2013

A lot of technical and infrastructure goodies come in Q2 2013, including:

• A refresh to the new SPEAK UI platform
• Updates to DMS to support the CRM Service Layer
• A refresh of the Sitecore Intranet Portal product based on Sitecore CMS v6.6
• Sitecore's DMS will integrate with Sitecore eCommerce, and DMS will become available on Microsoft's Azure Cloud Platform
• The Sitecore Adaptive Print Studio will gain ability to interact directly with files produced by Adobe InDesign

Second Half of 2013

• Some significant updates to the core CMS functionality with updates to Sitecore CMS workflow, new features for content reuse, and finally the beginnings of some usability improvements to the administrative interface which will accelerate in the future
• Launch of Big Data for Sitecore's DMS. With all the tracking and analytic requirements of Sitecore's Customer Engagement features, the ability to manage the data requirements of the system has been a concern from Day 1. With this update the DMS system should be able to handle many terabytes of analytic data with the option of storing that data in a variety of locations both locally and in the cloud

… and Beyond

• Significant enhancements to the existing Sitecore Personalization features, including the ability to personalize down to the field level within the CMS

About the Author

Ryan Bennett is a certified Sitecore developer and Principal Solutions Architect at San Francisco-based consulting firm Cylogy, Inc.

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

DtSearch 7.70 Adds Document Filters, Increased Multi-Level Search

Enterprise-based searching always wants more. And dtSearch, a supplier of enterprise and developer text retrieval software, is offering more — with the recently announced version 7.70 of its product line.

The new release features enhanced document filters, and APIs for OEMs that provide data parsing, conversion and extraction.

Indexed Search In Under a Second

DtSearch, which began providing text retrieval in 1991, offers a product line of enterprise search and developer text search products.

The search products’ spider can search local/remote content and static/dynamic web content, and it can reach across public/private sites, including support for log-ins and forms-based authentication. More than a terabyte of text can be covered in a single index, including directories, databases, online data and emails, and an unlimited number of indexes can be created and searched. According to dtSearch, that indexed search time is under a second, even across terabytes.

The document filters have supported a wide range of file formats and data types. In addition to all office productivity documents (Microsoft Office, OpenOffice, RTF, PDF and others), major email formats, compression formats such as ZIP and RAR, and Web-ready data such as HTML and XML/XSL, the filters are also built for dynamic data, including PHP, ASP.NET and all major databases.

Increased Search Support for Multi-Level Documents

Version 7.70 extends that support to images in Word (.doc/.docx), Powerpoint (.ppt/.pptx), Excel (.xls/.xlsx), Access (.mdb/accdb), RTF, and email files such as Thunderbird (mbox/.eml) and Outlook (.pst/.msg). These formats are shown as highlighted hits in context, and there’s also support for documents created by the Japanese word processor, Ichitaro.

The new release also increases the product’s support for documents and images that reside in multi-level nested configurations. This means it can find and display images in an email file, for instance. The company said that it can also find and display images in a PowerPoint file that has been embedded in a Word document attached as a zipped file to an email.

For developers, a new “object extraction” API allows for navigation through an embedded object’s structure, as if it were a hierarchy, and for extraction o09:31:00f any object.

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

Keeping Your Marketing Customer-Centric #rdm12

As the world moves from a product-centric economy to a customer-centric economy, marketers must move in tandem to ensure the customer experience is always at the heart of their efforts. Tim Gilbert, Chief Marketing Officer of Campus Management, a provider of enterprise software for the higher education industry, addressed this issue during a session at today’s Revenue-Driven Marketing Summit
held by Aberdeen Group in Boston, MA.

Appropriate for a presentation involving college, Gilbert took the stage to the strains of hard rock superstars AC/DC and began his explanation of customer-centric marketing by using Apple as an example. “Apple used to be a product category for graphic designers in the art department,” he said. “Now I don’t know an executive who doesn’t check their iPhone regularly.”

Gilbert said Apple made this marketing breakthrough with an iterative process that kept the needs of customers at its core, developing services such as iTunes as well as devices such as the iPhone to provide a complete branded experience.

Marketing in the Age of Self-Advocacy

In the customer-centric economy, Gilbert said the entire experience from seller to buyer has changed. “There must be a meaningful interaction,” he advised. “We’re in an age of self-advocacy. Complaints go on Facebook. And our customers must compel college students. It’s a strange relationship where the customer pays a lot of money, gets judged every term, and incurs a lot of debt when they’re done. Colleges are having trouble maintaining that relationship.” (also read: Customer Experience: Serving the Customer, Building the Brand)

To help higher education clients place their customers (students and parents who often foot part or all of the bill), Gilbert said Campus Management helps them create a single, unified view of a student across all channels of interaction. In addition, since rejecting applicants is not good for the school’s brand (although necessary), Gilbert said Campus Management software helps colleges locate, attract and maintain relationships with the “right” students who possess the “right” qualifications, such as SAT scores in a specific range.

In a specific example of how colleges can put the customer at the center of their marketing efforts, Gilbert said the University of Ottawa collects testimonials from current students in the local area of a prospective student and compiles them in a personalized e-book.

CRM Case Study: Ball State University

Gilbert concluded his remarks by reviewing the CRM objectives of Campus Management client Ball State University in Indiana, perhaps best known as the alma mater of late night talk show host David Letterman:

• Enhance recruitment/admissions efficiency by X, Y and Z within 12 months.
• Improve student experience by A,B,C.
• Train and empower non-IT users to do segmenting, prospecting and targeting of prospective students via automated and integrated marketing communications programs.

“Job number one is buy-in from C-level executives,” stated Gilbert. “Dream big, then write it, When you budget it, get real. Know the risks and prepare for the ‘domino effect.’ Use small steps rather than a ‘Big Bang’ approach. Set milestones and celebrate success. And always be transparent, whether good, bad or ugly."

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

AOL's Alto Reimagines The Email Experience With A Twitter, Pinterest, Gmail Mashup

Working on the hush-hush, a team of AOL developers has reconceived the way email is experienced.

Photograph by Thomas Hannich

How does it feel to throw a product launch and have nobody come? Just ask AOL. In November 2010, the company unveiled Project Phoenix, a platform intended to rev up its doddering email business. Once synonymous with email--and mailbox-cluttering installation CDs/drink coasters--AOL had been lapped by free-mail rivals Yahoo, Microsoft, and Google, and an @aol.com email address had become the tech equivalent of an AARP membership card. The goal with Phoenix was to turn that around by offering Gmailesque features such as threaded emails and built-in chat, plus new functions like the ability to update your Facebook and Twitter statuses. The company even offered alternatives to the unhip AOL domain name: @ygm.com ("you've got mail"), @games, @wow, and @love. And to maximize its usefulness, Phoenix let users aggregate any external email accounts into their AOL inbox.

Phoenix landed with a thud. Existing AOL Mail users didn't see a compelling reason to switch to the platform, and--perhaps because it looked so much like Gmail--neither did many other people. (At its peak, Phoenix had 30,000 users; currently it's chugging along with 15,000 devotees despite the fact that AOL no longer officially supports the service.)

“Email hasn’t had a serious rethink really since Gmail came out. We wanted to take a swing at that.”

Now, with less fanfare, AOL is trying again with a platform called Alto, which launched on October 18. But unlike Phoenix, which merely tweaked the email experience, Alto is a complete reimagination of it. And here's a real shocker: AOL produced Alto through the kind of speedy, agile development process you'd associate with a startup, not a $3 billion corporation that defined web 1.0.

Alto is the product of a deliberate strategy change in the wake of the Phoenix fail. David Temkin, AOL's SVP of mobile and mail, split AOL's email operations into two tracks. One group continued to work on upgrading existing AOL users via incremental improvements that were unveiled this July. The other team, working under the radar even within the company, had license to create a truly disruptive product. "Email hasn't had a serious rethink really since Gmail came out," says Temkin. "We wanted to take a swing at that and not be tethered by the existing 20 million or so people using AOL Mail. The idea was to create without scrutiny and questioning."

David Temkin, right, AOL’s SVP of mobile and mail, gave Alto director Joshua Ramirez, left, and his team free rein to create an email product that looks and functions unlike any other platform. | Photo by Kevin Kunishi

Temkin assembled a cross-functional team of about a dozen developers, designers, and product managers, led by Joshua Ramirez, a senior director for product management of AOL Mail and Alto. Both Ramirez, a 37-year-old who had previously logged time at Apple, eBay, and Yahoo, and Temkin, 45, a veteran of Apple and Palm, brought fresh eyes to the project, having joined the company after the Phoenix launch. Drawing on insights gleaned from ethnographic studies of Phoenix users, they aimed to keep what people liked (aggregating multiple email accounts, for instance) and remedy what they didn't (multiple accounts also multiplied inbox clutter and email anxiety).

First proposed in April 2011, Alto was slated for a beta launch the following October. "What allowed us to move so quickly was having design, development, and product constantly talk in real time," says Ramirez. "It wasn't your typical waterfall process, where you define requirements, the developers build it, hand it off to QA, and 12 months later you have a product. This was continuous development." Key details were ironed out during an off-site hackathon, in August, at a rustic retreat near Monterey, California. Says Ramirez, "We packed three weeks into six days."

Visually, Alto won't be mistaken for its competition. "We wanted a product that could attract people from across a coffee shop," says Temkin, who relied on design director Bill Wetherell to create a user interface that passed "the 15-foot test." Alto is a web-based client that looks like a mashup of Twitter and Pinterest, with incoming mail showing up in a vertical feed along the left side of the page. Abutting it is a thin column of icons for basic functions (compose a message, find a contact). The right two-thirds of the window is dominated by rows of tiles called "stacks." These are the source of the platform's unique look, as well as its innovative functionality. "We wanted to provide a post-foldering approach to organization," says Ramirez. (You can create folders in Alto, but AOL's studies show that few consumers actually use them.) The stacks update dynamically and work continuously, automatically sorting incoming messages, which also appear in your main feed, into five default groupings: daily deals, social notifications, retail, photos, and attachments.

These piles reflect the most common categories of email received by AOL accounts--and the fact is that even in the Facebook era, email remains the de facto beast of burden for photos and attachments. Notes Temkin, "No one's going to send bills to your Facebook account, and you're not going to get financial statements sent over text messages."

Alto uses a visual search to display the content being delivered: Click on the photos or attachments stack and you get an instant array of thumbnails displaying its contents--no searching or opening of messages required. Users can also create custom stacks for subjects like travel, work projects, or family by setting simple rules for sorting by sender, domain, or keywords. There's even an option to have certain types of messages bypass the inbox altogether, instead sending them right to a stack for periodic checking. Explains Temkin, "By sifting through bulk mail, you end up with the things that really matter in your inbox."

From studying Phoenix, the Alto team knew that while people like to aggregate multiple accounts, they didn't want to set up a new account in order to do so. With Alto, users can simply log in with an existing Gmail, Yahoo, .mac, or AOL account. (At least initially, Alto won't support POP3 email.) This is a platform meant to streamline your routine, not add to it.

And Now To Get The Domain Name...

There were a lot of good reasons for AOL to go with Alto as the name of its new email platform. “We wanted something abstract and easy to spell that can expand beyond mail,” says AOL’s David Temkin. “It suggests a high-level view of email and has a good history in the tech industry.” (The Xerox Alto, developed in the ’70s, was one of the first personal computers.)

But there was a downside to the product name, too: namely, Franck Joly, a Frenchman who bought the alto.com domain back in 1995. Though he isn’t using the URL, he is still the admin of it, and as of press time, hasn’t responded to AOL’s overtures. “It’s not like we’re offering five bucks,” says Ramirez. Contacted via email, Joly writes only that there has been “some strange proposition but not serious contact at this time.” Translation: Before it can bring stacks of Alto email to the world, AOL may have to bring stacks of cash to France.

Still in development is Alto's business model. Mail is a key driver for AOL's media properties--the default entry point for AOL Mail users is the AOL Today page, which links to top stories from the Huffington Post, Patch, and other AOL brands. Temkin insists that connecting users to content won't be as central to Alto, though there will eventually be a "top stories" stack containing news clippings that link to, say, HuffPo articles. "We're looking at ways of monetizing this product," he says. "Unlike AOL Mail, we'll likely implement premium features that you pay for on a subscription basis. AOL Mail is a purely advertising-supported product. Alto is optimized for acquiring email users who are open to a new experience."

Even if Alto grabs those users, Macquarie Capital analyst Ben Schachter says it's not likely to elevate AOL's fortunes in the short term. Although its stock price has more than doubled in 2012 and the company posted its smallest revenue decline in seven years in the second quarter--thanks largely to a $1 billion patent sale to Microsoft--AOL's revenue from display advertising on its media properties was basically flat, and its subscription-access business continued free-falling, dropping another 13%. "Efforts like new mail or video are interesting," says Schachter, "but AOL hasn't proved it can make them into meaningful businesses. Changing people's email habits is a tough thing to do."

Six weeks before launch, a calm and confident-seeming Ramirez and Temkin are focused on software bugs, not business plans, making sure that the "minimal viable product" that early adopters see this fall "works well, is beautiful, and addresses the main case uses of email," says Temkin. "We're a big company and we want to rebuild a reputation for innovation. I feel we have an infinitely stronger product than we did with Phoenix--but it's best to speak softly and carry a big demo."

The Assorted Looks Of Alto

Weary of trying to keep your email organized? AOL’s new platform fights fatigue with a dynamic visual solution.

SORTED FROM THE START
Alto scans messages arriving in a user’s inbox (top) and organizes them into customizable “stacks” (bottom).

PHOTOS AT A GLANCE
A “photos” stack is included as a default. Click it and you instantly get thumbnails of every image in your inbox.

Source : fastcompany[dot]com

Unison Releases 'Room'-Based Enterprise Social Network

There’s a new enterprise social collaboration product out. The New York City-based Unison Technologies has unveiled a new version of its service, a quick-to-launch social network based around virtual rooms. 

The company, which also has an office in St. Petersburg, Russia, is led by CEO Manlio Carrelli and CMO Rurik Bradbury, who founded and sold corporate email hosting company Intermedia. They’ve told news media that their goal is to “fix how people communicate at work, in a way that email can’t.”

Focused Around Rooms

Unison's service is aimed at small- and medium-sized businesses, runs on Windows and Mac computers, Android devices and the iPhone, and is also available as a Web app.

One of its key selling points is that it can be up and running in five minutes, with conversations focused in “rooms” instead of being sifted through streams of updates – a combination of a physical space metaphor with a virtual social network.

A user might create a room for a particular project or team, for instance, for posting documents, updates or comments.  

By entering a room, a user can see who’s there at the time and view the communications between individuals or among the group. Questions and documents can be posted inside the room, issues can be discussed in groups, room occupants can IM or use voice/video chat, and rooms can be open to anyone or closed to room members only. Conversations in each room update themselves, without page refreshes.

Users can easily create a room for a project or team.

External people, such as clients or suppliers, can come into a room, but they will only see content for which they’ve been given access. When you @mention someone, they get an alert about the referring comment. To find rooms where you were mentioned, click News in the side menu.

Room access controls allow users to determine how much content is shared within the group and with external people.

'Rooms' Reduce Clutter

Compared to other enterprise collaboration platforms, Unison said that it is the “only enterprise social network that is simple to set up and simple to use.” Its distinguishing characteristic, the rooms, is intended to create a communications workspace for each project or team, instead of the streams and groups that other business-focused social networking services offer.

By segregating teams and projects into analogues of the physical world’s use of meeting rooms, and by pushing a message directly to a non-room user, the idea is to avoid cluttering a user’s intake of information. 

The enterprise social collaboration space is booming with revived versions of established tools, such as Chatter, Salesforce's continuing social reinvention of its business platform, and a crop of new and newly-acquired companies, including Campfire, Convo, Socialcast (now owned by VMware) and Yammer (owned by Microsoft).

The Unison service uses a “freemium” business model, in that a simple social network is free, while a premium version, which adds administrator controls for adding and removing users or administering room ownership, will be available in fourth quarter at an as-yet-unannounced price.

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

Five Strategies to Increase Product Visibility in an Oversaturated Market

With another holiday shopping season upon us, maximizing product visibility in the e-Commerce market is one of retailers’ biggest hurdles. Keyword-rich product descriptions are important, but that alone won’t be enough to differentiate your product lists from your competition’s this holiday season.

It’s predicted this holiday season’s consumer online shopping spree will be US$ 54.47 billion. To capture a significant chunk of that, retailers must rethink their strategy for pushing their inventory through the digital static to the front of shoppers’ screens.

From ensuring your site is architecturally sound for top search engine rankings, to actively seeking out online customer reviews, retailers can make easy tweaks to their websites to ensure their inventory is in plain view.

Here are five defined strategies retailers can implement to boost their products’ visibility:

1. Have a Clear Website Blueprint

Before pouring time and money into search engine optimization efforts, make sure your website has an SEO-friendly foundation. Every website needs logical site architecture to ensure that search engine crawlers can index each page effectively. Consistency in your naming conventions, sitemaps, header tags, internal links and inbound links provides search engines with a clear blueprint of your site, allowing them to determine which keywords match your offerings.

Create clean informative page titles, metatags and spider friendly URLs. Without a thoughtful structure, search engines are forced to guess your specialty, resulting in unrelated, untargeted traffic onto your site.

2. Avoid Duplicate Content

Few pain points lower a website’s search ranking faster than duplicate content. Google and other search engines refrain from listing substantially similar web pages in search results, pushing websites loaded with redundant content further to the bottom, if not off the first page.

With many e-Commerce retailers battling holiday time constraints, repetitive content becomes a major issue. Too often, online merchants copy and paste manufacturer product descriptions onto their website to save time — that’s missing a unique opportunity to add SEO value. Always rewrite product descriptions to guarantee that they’re tailored to your site, that they speak to your specific audience’s needs and that they are rich with important keywords.

Be careful not to create duplicate content inadvertently by showing the same results on two separate URLs (for example, if the only shoes your website sold were Nike, but clicking on “shoes” or “Nike” yielded different pages with the same products). Avoid these SEO penalties by sketching out a logical taxonomy for your pages, using canonical URLs and having an easy-to-use redirect tool, so you don’t need to be a web programmer to correct the problem.

3. Quality Links Matter

It is no surprise that the Web churns out large amounts of spam; SEOmoz estimates around 60 percent of all web pages fall on the more questionable side of the trustworthy spectrum. In order to provide web users with the highest quality search results, search engines analyze links to gauge a website’s trust and popularity.

Collecting link-backs from popular and highly trusted domains boosts your own site’s credibility, resulting in a significant increase in your SERP ranking. Links from industry-specific websites versus links from general or irrelevant sites speak louder to your own reputation, and boost your site’s placement above the fold. Google also considers internal links when evaluating your page rank, so be sure to incorporate internal links in your overall linking strategy.

 

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Source : cmswire[dot]com

Rio SEO Launches Keyword Discovery Tool for Better Landing Pages

When consumers search for a need that could be met by your product or service, what keywords are they actually using? There are a variety of tools and techniques for discovering those magic words, and now Rio SEO has unveiled a new one. 

The company said that its new Keyword Discovery Automation platform is the first of its kind to identify the specific web landing pages that have the highest relevancy for the recommended keywords.

Identifying High-Opportunity Keywords

The idea is that, in addition to suggesting the highest-opportunity keywords for searching, the tool also points to the strongest landing pages on the existing website that correspond to the specific keyword — even if those pages need a complete content overhaul. In this way, the tool is designed to offer the best keyword-to-landing-page flow.

The San Diego, California-based Rio SEO is a provider of software-as-a-service SEO automation solutions. Its modules are designed for organic search and social media analysis, with functionality supporting:

• Content marketing
• Auditing
• Reporting
• Change tracking
• Keyword discovery
• Competitive analysis
• Mobile site optimization
• SEO execution
• Local SEO automation

Pete Dudchenko, Rio SEO’s senior director for product management, said in a statement that the new tool is a “powerful decision-making and workflow management resource that clearly shows what people are saying across the competitive landscape, in various social media conversations, and through traditional search marketing data sources.”

Easier Management and Reporting

To arrive at its keyword discovery, the tool analyzes the competitive landscape, drawing on both social media and traditional search data sources. The workflow guides the user through the steps needed to discover keywords and the most appropriate pages. The user can categorize keywords and pages in multiple categories for easier management and reporting, and can associate keyword and page combinations for analysis.

Keyword Discovery Automation utilizes the patented SEO Audit Score system of Rio SEO’s parent company, Covario, which describes itself as the “nation’s largest independent provider of global search marketing services and technology solutions.” Rio SEO was spun off from the privately-held firm in April 2012.
 

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

What's New in Project Management with SharePoint and Project Server 2013

The recent beta of SharePoint 2013 brought with it a new version of its sister product: Project Server 2013. Project Server is built on top of SharePoint, and is designed to extend the capabilities of Microsoft Project for large scale enterprise project management.

Project Server 2013 brings with it several new features. Most obvious of all is adoption of the new Windows 8 UI, as seen in SharePoint 2013. One of the biggest functional changes is the integration with Office 365, now that Project Online is part of Microsoft’s cloud offering.

The new Azure Workflow Server, a big part of SharePoint 2013, also makes an appearance here. This does mean any existing workflows will be incompatible and need rebuilding. However it also means users now have the option of creating workflows directly in SharePoint Designer 2013 and deploying them to Project Server.

Reporting has also seen a raft of new features. Chief among them is support for oData feeds, meaning Project Server data can now be accessed via URL. This should provide a lot more flexibility for solutions in the future.

Smaller Scale Project Management

Project Server is a fully featured product, but one that can prove too much for some organizations. SharePoint 2013 features a brand new Project Site template that can be used for smaller scale project management activities. Site information, such as tasks, can be aggregated to a specific user's MySite, and the sites can be used in complete isolation of Project Server if required. If later Project Server integration is required, than tasks from the project sites can be pulled across.

Of course you could just use standard SharePoint features to manage your projects. SharePoint features task lists, Gannt views, site templates and custom lists — all of which can be used to create your own bespoke project management tool.

Third Party Add Ons

As you would expect with the SharePoint community, numerous third party products also exist that attempt to improve on SharePoint’s inherent usefulness as a project management tool.

Bamboo Solutions are well known as one of the biggest suppliers of web parts and add ins for SharePoint. As you would expect they have a number of products aimed at helping project managers. These range from simple web parts to fully featured "solution accelerators."

One of their most popular web parts is the "Task Master" (US$ 1495), a turbo charged replacement for the standard SharePoint task list. Those familiar with Microsoft Project will recognize the Gantt timeline display, task properties (start and end dates, resources, predecessors, etc.) and color coded views.

Task management is obviously a huge part of any project manager's day to day job. Task Master provides all the tools to manage tasks (and resources, and in fact whole project plans) directly with SharePoint. Whilst expensive for a single web part, it is a fully featured configurable component that many will find extremely useful.

Another useful tool, fulfilling a slightly different purpose, is the "RiskMatrix" webpart from TeamImprover (US$ 200). This lightweight tool focuses, as the name suggests, on managing and displaying risks. A risk log or matrix is now a recommended part of many modern project management methodologies, especially when dealing with larger/more expensive projects. The reason given is that highlighting risks as early as possible gives the best possible chance of dealing with them successfully.

RiskMatrix is a simple but effective tool, using standard SharePoint lists to enter risks, and assign them high/med/low Impact and Probability scores. A bright graphical, color-coded matrix is then created, clearly indicating areas for immediate concern — red risks being bad. The component’s simplicity makes it an ideal candidate to work alongside other similar products, or as part of a user's own Project Management dashboard.

Editor's Note: Chris has written before about what to expect with SharePoint 2013:

—  Microsoft Doesn't Advise You Customize SharePoint 2013 

About the Author

Chris Wright is the founder of the Scribble Agency, a technology copywriting agency based in London. He writes extensively on SharePoint, web trends, and general IT topics, both in print and on the web. He is also a feature writer for Web Designer magazine and SmartPhone Essentials, and a regular contributor to nothingbutSharePoint and CMSWire.

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

Salesforce Debuts Social Key for Data.com + Dreamforce 2012 Day 3 Recap #df12

Day 3 at Dreamforce 2012 showcased Salesforce's product keynotes for all its core systems, and the company has promised some key new features for Data.com and Chatter.

We heard from several Salesforce executives and a few vendors who pitched in to show Salesforce products in specific use cases, but we also checked in with Michael Lock, VP Google Enterprise, to hear his thoughts on the cloud.

Nobody Can Ignore the Cloud

Lock is a longtime Googler, and while he's surely biased about which cloud products are the best, his thoughts on the most important cloud trends a good to keep in mind. 

First, IT no longer gets the best tech hardware first. Witness the BYOD movement that has changed the role of IT. Second, the cloud (especially at Google) is about access to infinite computing power. Google has massive data centers, Hoover Dam sized, Lock said. 

Now cloud based systems can be rebuilt from the ground up. This is exactly why Salesforce has been so successful. Another good example of the massive power of the cloud, YouTube videos are now more expensive to delete then they are to simply leave alone. That is because of the huge amount of computing power the company has. Lastly, Lock stressed the importance of mobile. 

"Mobile cloud is growing faster than any technology in history."

50% of Americans now own a smartphone. Companies should think mobile first, he said, and noted that native apps are beating web apps.

Social Key for Data.com

Brett Queener, Salesforce EVP Data.com and Marketing Cloud, gave the Data.com keynote and he also debuted the Social Key tool for linking public social data to business data. Data.com is a handy sales tool that helps manage leads and keeps sales teams up to date on lead contacts and potential new customers.

Data.com Salesforce bought a company called Blue Tail in July, and Social Key partly came from that data mining company.

Social Key, is a new feature that helps correlate social data with the stores of business data so many sales teams already have. For example, if someone is posting complaints on Twitter, and that person doesn't have any info in their profile, Social Key may be able to figure out who that person is if they are already in the business data mix. Of course, it also works the other way, so business data can be set up in Data.com with those peoples' social personas right there with their other info. 

"Build social profiles of customers and help close more deals," Queener said. Data.com is also helping companies with CRM adoption and with better marketing productivity, he said. "This gets so much more leverage out of what people are already doing." Queener said. 

Customers are on social more than anywhere online, he said. Data has changed as a result because people are sharing more than ever. Social Key can help create new leads because it can harness what people are saying about a company, and then target those folks if they fill a need.

 

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Source : cmswire[dot]com

5 Things Not to Do with Your New SharePoint Intranet

As many of those who have used Microsoft SharePoint will know, it is a bit of a "kitchen sink" product. It offers the typical enterprise a bit of everything — a bit of workflow, lots of document management, social features, calendars, basic task management — this list goes on. As a result it can be difficult to know what bits to use and how best to use them. Intranet projects can quickly become bloated and the final product is met with a resounding whimper by end users.

To help with this issue, here is my list of five things you should not be doing with a SharePoint Intranet.

1. Implement Workflows

So many Intranet projects try to make use of SharePoint workflows. Some even plump for an add-on like Nintex, which provides a really powerful platform for building almost any custom workflow you can think off. But you should avoid workflows on your Intranet. Why? Because they are so very hard to get right.

Implementing a badly thought out workflow will kill your Intranet before it even has chance to get going. Workflows are often sold as a way to improve users working lives, to streamline, to save money. Instead users normally end up with a clunky process, that involves more steps or convoluted workarounds and turns users off SharePoint altogether.

Why not try instead …

Keep your Intranet simple to begin with and launch with only a core set of features. Then spend some time and money investigating how people really work, and the processes they carry out. Only once the Intranet has seen some adoption and you truly understand a given workflow, should you try to build it. And again, keep it simple.

2. Build Infopath Forms

Infopath is similar to workflow, in that often people are sold on the idea that every form in the business can be put online, with all the advantages this supposedly brings. Instead they get complex forms that are harder to fill out than the paper versions and never end up being used. Infopath is a complex tool and producing usable forms with it is a real skill. People often see it as a close relation of Word and dive right in to build a "Sickness absence" or "Holiday" form. The results vary wildly.

Launching a new Intranet with substandard functionality will turn users off and they will never adopt the system long enough to see the benefits. Forms are an easy trap to fall into — easy to build and very difficult to get right.

Why not try instead …

Keep all forms as Word documents, but store the masters on the Intranet. That way people have to use the system to get a copy of the form in the first place (use content types if you are really doing it properly). Completed forms, in Word or scanned, can be saved in a document library.

Keep things simple to begin with (see a theme developing?) and once people are used to the system, you can expand with well thought out Infopath forms.

3. Implement a Custom Graphic Design

The issue of graphic design, SharePoint and Intranets, is something of a pet topic of mine. Basically don’t waste time skinning up SharePoint to match your website or corporate brand guidelines.

The time and money spent on this work can be much better spent on functionality, training or adoption activities. These things have a much greater return on investment than making sure your brand themes are interpreted accurately. This issue is even more pertinent for SharePoint 2010. Microsoft’s offical advice is not to touch the user interface — so don’t!

Why not try instead …

Put your logo on your SharePoint master page and create some themes that use your color palette. Then create some site templates that consider good layout and information architecture.

4. Replace All Existing Fileshares

SharePoint is great at document management, it really is. Check in and out, versioning, even the interface: all good features well implemented. Even SharePoint detractors can’t help but admit that it does documents well. But don’t do what many companies do and migrate all documents to the SharePoint Intranet and remove the existing fileshares.

 

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Source : cmswire[dot]com

Quest Leapfrogs Business - IT Gap with Toad Business Intelligence Suite

 Following on last week's unstructured data management product launch, Quest has just announced a new business intelligence tool that aims to build a bridge between business analysts who create data, and data consumers that use that data to make decisions.

Quest Toad

So maybe that’s a fancy way of saying Quest has launched a new suite of business intelligence tools that aim to take meaning from data, but it also highlights the huge gap that has emerged between those who are developing data and those that need to use it.

The new tools, which are built around Quest’s Toad suite, aim to provide enterprises with the ability to leapfrog the gap between IT and business users securely and without having to pay out a small fortune for it.

The Toad concept is not new. Toad has been around for a while in the shape of Toad for Oracle, for database administrators for Oracle products, and is available for Microsoft’s SQL Server, IBM’s DB2 and Sybase as well.

Toad Business Intelligence

According to Quest, the new BI Suite is a collection of three separate existing tools from Quest that, combined, will enable organizations to access, integrate, cleanse and distribute data across the enterprise. The three tools consist of:

• Toad Intelligence Central: This is the hub of the new suite providing a virtual data layer across existing BI and IT architectures. It enables users to share data and offers data views across the two desktop tools: Data Point, Decision Point.
• Data Point: Connects to traditional data sources like relational database management systems, or data warehouses, along with connections to non-traditional data sources including Salesforce.com, Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition, and other cloud data sources.
• Decision Point: Enables users to combine, explore, analyze and understand data in simple interactive views to speed data analytics without issues with compliance or governance.

The BI Suite also helps technical and non-technical users understand data by offering new interfaces. With it, technical users have all the tools needed to provision and deliver complex data, while non-technical business consumers can access this data through visualizations or existing business intelligence systems.

It also provides automated dataflow processes that enable self-service data integration with agile access to data located in different repositories across the enterprise. By enabling enterprises to connect all data sources and cutting out manual processes, Quest offers the ability to analyze data over longer timeframes that provide more accurate pictures of what’s happening.

Toad Business Intelligence Suite is available now, with North American pricing at US$ 1,295 per named user with a minimum of five seats. If you’re interested in more on this, check out the video below.

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

Looks Like the iPad Mini Name Will Stick, But What's the Hole For?

       Considering the product is unseen, unannounced and might still be a collective hallucination, everyone has been very keen on the "iPad Mini" name which has apparently been confirmed, but not by Apple, so a surprise could still be on the cards. Then there's that mysterious hole that cases and templates are being designed around. What could peeking into that reveal?

An Apple Rumor A Day

With iPad Mini case designs popping out all over the place, this thing has to be real right? Well that didn't work out so well for those first-generation iPhone 5 cases, that preceded the launch of the iPhone 4S, so hold the phone on that one. However, those pesky Asian sources seem to think the name will stick, so at least these companies can start doing their marketing. 

Western-based reports are also suggesting the Mini will get its own launch event for October, leaving the real iPhone 5 to bask in its own glory. But what's that hole in the cases we're seeing? The Asian reports suggest it might be part of a new IR remote control feature for interacting with your forthcoming (2014 maybe) Apple TV set. 

With Apple's recent court win over Samsung, almost any new addition to a device will be given immense scrutiny, so it'll be interesting to see who claims those patents, if that's what it is for. For the October event, Apple could still introduce a new level of iTunes content subscription to try to increase revenue from those buying the lower-priced iPad. 

Windows 8 Tablets Sexing It Up

To compete with the new iPad, new Kindle Fire, and Nexus 7 among others, the forthcoming Windows 8 tablet line up are adding all manner of attractive features to offer some differentiation and competition. Sony's Vaio 11 looks to be offering a fold-away keyboard while Samsung is teasing something sleek looking in a new video.

However, in a keenly price-sensitive environment, just how will these high-end sounding devices cope? No matter how many early Windows 8 adopters there are out there, it looks like there will be more casualties than winners in this particular battle. 

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

Does The Customer Hold All The Cards? #socialintel2012

Gone are the days when your product would sink or swim based on brilliant packaging, placement and promotion. Here are the times when you must provide something of distinct value to start with, then tackle the challenge of convincing the world that the value is real. Marketing practices no longer peddle a product that scratches an itch; they present a collaborative approach to meeting people's needs.

Talk About Idealistic …

Consider the impact of word-of-mouth on your company's reputation. Social media has, according to Sally Falkow of Meritus Media, increased the effect of it by tenfold, a statistic which is easy to believe.  The assertion is that doing otherwise would lead to imminent failure, because organizations are powerless against the momentum and reach of social media. The only valid response to this is to be an honest, open, transparent, helpful company with an excellent product. Be as reactive to your customers as you are proactive to potential concerns. Or die?

Does that not seem a little dreamy to any other realists (ok, cynics) out there? Do you still not encounter thriving companies who don't play the game? While many companies can recognize and pontificate on the common issues within their industry, do they not still seem to fall into the same exact traps? I mean, that's what makes them "common issues."

Are You Buying Into It?

We will all agree that the salesperson, as we remember him or her, is extinct. It's an antiquated (if not romanticized) notion of being slick enough to close the deal. "The deal" doesn't exist anymore either —we're selling real value and honest interaction now. We aren't in the business of persuasion. Or so the thought leaders at Social Media Intelligence Conference would like us to believe.

I believe we've been cornered and a bit bamboozled. We're forced to take more direct and immediate action to appease consumers, but we're also appeasing the industry that couriers those consumers to our doorstep. I've experienced enough ambivalent disregard for my appreciation from any given corporation to believe that statistically speaking, they still don't care about me. The odds that I'll be an influencer with enough reach to disrupt their good name in the media are slim. And should I turn out to be a fly in the ointment, they must either recognize the inevitability of that event or believe they can stunt it.

It seems to me that proactive authenticity is more of a pontification than a practice. What do you think? Does the transparency of Twitter and Facebook demand complete honesty from a corporation? Is there a noticeable trend towards equal engagement between you and the brands you buy into? Or is the social landscape just another place to be neglected, patronized and placated?

About the Author

Matt emerged from a crashed meteor some 30 years ago as an unrecognizable species. Thanks to brilliant innovations by Stan Winston, he is able to walk around in a very human-like state.

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com