 |
Mobile Devices
Doing a digital detox
Sep 1st
Susan Maushart withdrew digital media from her home (and her three teenagers) for six months and wrote a book about it. The gloriously entitled Winter of our Disconnect was published at the beginning of 2011 – and received much media coverage. It was featured on BBC Radio 4 and the author was interviewed and featured in many broadsheet papers in the UK and around the world. Meanwhile, an experiment was featured on a BBC TV programme. A family of six were taken back to the 1970s to experience the changes that technological developments made on family life.
News now from the US. The Marriott Renaissance Pittsburgh Hotel is offering a weekend break from the ‘always-on’ lifestyle. Guests checking in must hand over their digital devices. The rooms have no televisions, telephones or docking stations, but they do have a supply of literary classics.
Sounds fantastic.
The gamification of recruitment
Jun 22nd
Gamification continues to make its presence felt in the world of work.
The hotel chain Marriott International has launched a Facebook game that gives players the opportunity to ‘work’ in various hotel roles. You can start by working in the hotel kitchens and gain points for excellent customer service and profitability. The app is available in five languages and aims to raise awareness amongst ‘millennials’ to job opportunties around the world.
Facing up to the cybersecurity challenge
Jun 20th
In the latest issue of McKinsey Quarterly James Kaplan identifies a perfect storm of factors that are conspiring to make cybersecurity a major business challenge.
- Stakeholders expect more ‘openness’. Increased demands for mobile/smartphone access present new types of security threats
- More corporate value is to be found online – making it a more attractive target for cybercriminals
- Interconnected supply chains making extended networks vulnerable to weak links in the chain
- Increasingly sophisticated cybercriminals and malware
Organisations need a new mindset to tackle cybersecurity challenges. This includes moving from a focus of ‘protecting the perimeter’ to identifying, and protecting, their most valuable intellectual assets. Most critical of all is to acknowledge that cybersecurity is at best a constant battle rather than a one-off problem that can be tackled and ‘solved’.
Tablet news apps
Apr 29th
What do the features and functionality of the leading news/magazine apps tell us about trends in the development of mobile content.? Content Matters reviews the three current market leaders (Flipboard, Zite and Pulse) and summarises the lessons content developers should take from their success. These can best be summarised as:
- Less text, more visual
- Social sharing
- Content personalisation
- Swipe-centric user interfaces
For the author, a key differentiator for these services will be how they gain market share with publishers and the models they choose in order to do this. There is still much more to come.
I wish I’d thought of that…
Feb 28th
For those of you who are NOT app developers but think you have a great idea, why not post it on the The Internet Wishlist? And even if you don’t have an idea right now, but have five minutes to invest/waste, why not dip in to see what other people are posting on ‘the suggestion box for the future of technology’.
The suggestions range from the sensible (“I want an app that can read me emails and blog posts while I drive”) to extreme eccentricity (“I wish there was an app that projected your imagination out into the open”).
And then there are the ideas of genius. This one for example would radically improve the quality of life for many of us. Indeed, I could have written this suggestion myself. If only I had thought of it first:
“I wish there was a Shazam app for peoples’ faces”.
Hockney the early adopter
Jan 26th
The artist David Hockney always been quick to adopt new technologies in his artistic endeavours. He has been embracing the iPhone as form of canvas for over two years. In early 2009, when many of us were still trying to master the basic functions, Hockney was sending his friends paintings of flowers created by using the touchscreen as a canvas.
He has now, of course, begun to add works created by his iPad to his portfolio. In an interview in the LA Times, he extols the speed and convenience of the iPhone and iPad, which he always carries with him. In 2010, one of his iPad works was used on the cover of the New Yorker and an animated version was used to help launch the magazine’s first ‘table’ format.
It is expected that the iPad pictures will appear alongside his other recent work at the Royal Academy exhibition scheduled for 2012.
Technology predictions for 2011
Dec 29th
The BBC’s Peter Day interviews the technology commentator Mark Anderson about his predictions for technology in the year ahead, and reviews his predictions for 2010.
One of Anderson’s key predictions is that there will be a more conscious ‘split’ of content and technology. This will result in the separation of the ‘secure’ from the ‘open’. There will be greater understanding of the issues surrounding information security. CEOs and governments are beginning to comprehend the vulnerability of information and intellectual property. Organisations will need to consider and enable the physical disengagement of what Anderson calls their ‘crown jewels’ from the rest of their content in cloud environments. The smart telephone world will also split in half. ‘Social’ users are less concerned about putting their lives onto the net, whereas organisations will seek to protect high value content.
The ’golden age’ of microapps is over. 2011 will see increased levels and rates of charging as the market becomes more commercial.
Anderson also outlines why he considers Google as a company that has lost its way (“so much money and so little idea of how to spend it”). He considers Google an organisation that does not really know what business it is in.
Other predictions include the ‘mainstreaming’ of e-book readers and electric cars.
No doubt we will continue to be inundated with end of year reviews and new year predictions in the weeks ahead. Anderson’s has his own acronym to sum up 2011 “VEVEM – Very Exciting and Very Messy“.
Can’t wait!
Firms failing to make websites ‘mobile friendly’
Nov 11th
53% of the SMEs contacted in research undertaken by 1and1.co.uk had never checked the functionality of their websites on mobile devices. It seems that corporate websites are lagging behind their potential customers in recognising the increased popularity of mobile access.
Summarising the findings of the research, Hostsearch.com reports that Spanish firms are most likely to have checked their websites for mobile access; French firms are most likely to have worked on website optimisation; and German firms were least convinced about the value of mobile-friendly websites.
Bye bye BlackBerry?
Nov 8th
It seems that BlackBerry could be losing its position as the corporate smartphone of choice.
Bloomberg reports that large corporates, including Bank of America and Citigroup, are considering adding the iPhone to the mix of tools available to staff. A key driver seems to come from individuals who have their own iPhone and want to use one at work.
Research by Nielsen, cited by Bloomberg, backs this up. About 42% of BlackBerry users say they want to stick with the brand when they buy a new phone but for iPhone users the rate increases to 89%.
Mobile marketing
Oct 21st
Nancy Dowd, presenting at Internet Librarian International on behalf of New Jersey Public Libraries, explained how mobile technology was used simply and effectively to engage with hard to reach audiences.
Working initially with an external partner, the service used SMS to segment and target audiences, including Spanish speaking parents and teens. Nancy is the Director of Marketing and Communications for New Jersey Public Libraries and publishes a blog that covers marketing trends for librarians and others.
