Is it an E-Mail War? Microsoft Introduces Outlook.com

How it Was and Is

For what it takes, Microsoft belongs to one of the largest and the most powerful IT companies in the world, having millions of fans and admirers around the globe. Yet, the enterprise has somehow started losing its user ratings lately, much due to the growing demands for convenience and simplicity of its services. In particular, Microsoft’s old-known Outlook Express has already become quite an old-fashioned one among the range of e-mail options and is rarely used these days.

On the contrary, Google is generally considered a highly innovative company that invests much in making its products as user-friendly as possible, including perhaps the most popular e-mail service in the world Gmail.

How can it be?

Apparently, Microsoft has got sick and tired of its reputation to be an old-school IT competitor in the e-mail niche, as it’s recently presented its Outlook.com. As it’s stated, the fresh mailing rival is absolutely beneficial to try and can even overpower Gmail in its features. 

As the authors of Outlook.com pinpoint, the most obvious advantages of the service are related to seemingly unlimited amount of space for letters, its integration with famous social networks and the possibility to create e-mail aliases for users’ convenience, not to mention the available WYSIWYG editor.

Sounds awesome, right?

 

How will it be?

Surely, it goes without saying that Microsoft has put incredible efforts into the development of Outlook.com, and the service can’t simply be a huge disappointment. At the same time, it’s seemingly doubtful that a lot of Gmail fans will move onto using the fresh rival. Why not? Well, it’s crystal clear: as long as you’re absolutely satisfied with what you have, you won’t bother to change your preferences. Likewise as with Gmail, you wouldn’t bother to move from the beloved Internet browser, music player or even file storage, like 4shared, for example. What for?

Therefore, even though Outlook.com has good chances to find its devoted admirers, all talks about its future conquer of the e-mail world can be considered a good joke. At least, that’s how I see it.

Stay cool)

Andy

Facebook Ads: Targeting Digs into Mobile Apps

It became clear quite a while ago that one of the weakest aspects in the profitability of Facebook was related to the monetization of mobile audience, that is, getting more revenue from users, who access FB on their smartphones and tablets. Therefore, as soon as the owners of the service were done with the IPO fuss, they got down to business.

As for now, it’s already possible to browse the first steps in the company’s new mobile ad strategy: FB has integrated specific mobile app targeting options, which enable track, which apps are installed on their gadgets and thus display only related ads in the mobile version of the site.

Such app targeting innovations are, undoubtedly, essential for Facebook and can increase the company’s profits to a considerable extent. The definition of what mobile applications people are using, will, actually, enable to figure out what users wish to have, what they are willing to pay and give them the ad they will respond to. Not bad, ha? 

Certainly, the introduced differentiated mobile app ads appear to be much better, than just the usage of provided basic users’ info, like personal interests or place of birth, for instance. Moreover, it hides so much potential that can, in fact, make Facebook owners much wealthier, than they hope. Yet, is it just?

With the time on, our personal data becomes more and more accessible to versatile services, leaving no space for what we used to know as “private”. It sometimes seems that we are always watched or tracked by someone, who can use the information, which isn’t supposed to become public, when it’s necessary.

Obviously, the reasons why Facebook mobile ads dive more into our lives through newly-added targeting options are related to money, but there should surely be predefined the line of privacy, which the companies should be forbidden to go beyond.

I often miss the times, when the information you provide only included the chosen name, e-mail address and password, like it is still required at 4shared, nothing more, so that I can keep what I like, who I know and apps I use to myself. 

Stay cool)

Andy

Design Gets into Limelight at Gojee

Naturally, the changes in the IT world are mostly continuous and totally inevitable. Some of these are relatively minor and mostly concern the shift of audience’s life interests (the shift of popularity between music and photo applications, for instance), whereas others are much more important, including the priority level of services’ design and functionality.

Essentially speaking, it’s been for long now that the functionality of a device or a service has been taken as the prior notion. Even though Apple has brought back the image-focused gadgets with their iPhones and iPads, no one would dare say those are inferior in functionality in any way.

As for the apps and services, the functionality remains at the top, leaving the design peculiarities behind. It would be basically enough to create a high-quality logo, select the colourscheme and the fonts, other that that, it’s vital to care about the features, in the first place.

At the same time, there can be distinguished a few exceptions of a rule, as a number of services have opted for making the service’s design its most efficient part. Among these, one of the recipe-sharing sites Gojee can be easily called the embodiment of great design solutions and exquisite style.

The overall delighted impression about Gojee is, perhaps, influenced by the initial purpose of its creation – sharing of recipes. In this respect, the full-screen background picture of dishes and drinks is what every visitor craves for, whereas the fast sliding bar enables to check the available variety of cooking instructions. At the same time, what Gojee lacks is, obviously, the powerful functional basis, as there’s neither a convenient search option nor the mere division of recipes into categories, for example.

For what it takes, the notion of balance appears to be the most valuable thing in the IT industry anyway. No matter if it is a gadget, an app or a service, it has good chances to become globally popular, as the grandees, e.g. Facebook, Google or 4shared, in case both the functional and the design aspects are taken care of.

Stay cool)

Andy

ThisLife: Do We Really Need More Photo-Sharing Options?

The reasons why we desperately need photo-hosting and sharing services can’t ever be disputed, that’s for sure. It’s not even about our natural desire to boast about our photographer talents all around the Web among people we know and those, who aren’t that lucky yet. Just picture the day when you’re phone suddenly deletes all photos or videos, which you’ve taken on it. It’s scary, isn’t it? Well, this is what photo-sharing services are about – to make your life simpler and calmer, at least as far as the safety of your digital masterpieces is concerned.

Logically, there have been introduced a lot of photo-hosting and sharing resources, like Tumblr or Flickr, not to mention Instagram (now owned by FB), which already have millions of users and devoted fans all over the world. Yet strangely, the new players on the market are continuously introduced to the public even now, though the current selection is more, than sufficient.

One of the mentioned services, for instance, is known to be called ThisLife and is specifically aimed at sharing photos and videos among the family members. In this respect, whereas it’s totally understandable, why the authors have launched it (to take the barely occupied market niche and earn some money), it’s still pretty hard to grasp, why ThisLife would attract the attention of millions.

It’d be, certainly, inappropriate to say that the service is 100% useless, as it features well-designed photo-album layout and the overall UI is rather convenient in usage. Yet, is it special? That’s the question. Likewise as its ancestors, ThisLife enables group sharing of photos, different view modes and the opportunity to upload versatile family videos as well. At the same time, the storage space for loads of supposedly funny stuff is limited, so you will have to pay to share more, than 1000 photos (that is use more than 5GB of space).

Moreover, there can also be a sort of hidden disadvantage both in ThisLife and the similar small or mid-sized photo-sharing services – data security. Even if you can believe in the fact that your password is never uncovered (as it happened with Dropbox users), who can guarantee that your photos won’t disappear, when the service becomes clearly unprofitable and is shut down?

Of course, we all decide for ourselves, which photo-hosting to use, and which not to. As for me, I belong to people, who prefer keeping all files at one hand, not remember numerous passwords. For those, like me, separate photo-sharing sites aren’t needed, especially if they use 4shared or any other file storage for saving and sharing data. 

Stay cool)

Andy

Ubokia & Its Reverse Sales – Possible Advantages

It’s been a tradition both in real-time and online retail industries to use the well-known working scheme in the business: a potential buyer checks the diversity of supply and selects the desirable goods. As for now, either because of the changed consumers’ preferences, or the growing competition on the market, there have already been presented fresh services with the so to say “reversed focus”.

Aiming to satisfy customers’ tastes and wishes to the fullest, an array of brand-new online retail services are offering their clients to post info about the goods they need and let the sellers contact them themselves. In this respect, one of the major rivals is recognized to be Ubokia, offering to simplify the search for a desirable product.

The essence of Ubokia is crystal clear: as a user, you get an opportunity to inform the sellers of what you wish to purchase by posting your WANTS, yet this is far not the only option to select from. It’s also possible to browse what other people’s wish to buy, or even sell something.

Moreover, the essential advantages of Ubokia lie in users’ ability to define versatile details, like the group of goods or the needed location, while browsing others’ WANTS, which makes the purchasing process even simpler.

For what it takes, Ubokia is seemingly a beneficial service for people, who are willing to purchase online, but aren’t willing to surf for the best offer for a long time. At the same time, it’s rather questionable, whether the site will become a global passion, as many of us don’t have enough time to wait, until the sellers send their offers.

As for the general outlook at the ideas, which Ubokia uses, these are, undoubtedly, advantageous both for buyers and sellers. No wonder that the similar ones have already been implemented in a large number of services, like social media sites, for instance. In particular, Facebook usually sends friend or article suggestions, whereas Twitter allows users to browse through trending topics at the site. Likewise, 4shared file storage enables you to check the top searches in various categories, so that you can find what you need easier.

Thus, all we can say now is: good luck, Ubokia, and thanks for your broad vision.

Stay cool)

Andy

United Online Buys SchoolFeed – Social Networks Prove Alive

Ok, if to be completely honest, I consider myself as one of the skeptics, who can’t wait for the moment of social networking sites’ decay. Yet, the current deals on the IT market somehow prove the pessimistic forecasts wrong.

It has already become clear that the populatity of SM monsters, like Facebook, for instance, won’t deteriorate at least in the nearest five years. Both the company’s purchases of Instagram & Glancee and the development of segmented FB apps for photos, videos, and so on, have sustained its top-position in the eyes of potential partners and users.

Moreover, it has recently become crystal clear that smaller social networks, which are likely to focus on specific audience, have also got their more or less prosperous future. In particular, the popular service SchoolFeed, offering users to browse through numerous uploaded yearbooks and find former school friends,  has been just bought by a large IT enterprise United Online (the parent company of Classmates and other services).

Why this deal is rather significant in terms of the social media perspectives is that United Online has apparently got plans for uniting the mentioned SchoolFeed with their own service Classmates to create one powerful social network out of two. Its functionality will certainly expand from simple browsing through versatile yearbooks or school alumni and will, perhaps, enable to back up the found friends’ photos somewhere else in the cloud, not just within users’ profiles.

Of course, it’s hard to predict, whether such function will really be implemented, but if it is, my personal preferences would go to 4shared. First of all, I’ve already got my account there and, secondly, because the amount of provided space and a wide range of disposible features are totally striking.

Well, we’ll see.

Stay cool)

Andy

Will HR Industry Get Smarter with Smarterer?

Since hiring the best personnel is recognized to be one of the most important factors, if you wish to succeed in your business, no matter what industry you’re working in, various HR-focused services have also become highly popular on the market.

Most of these, like Jobvite, which simplifies the hiring process using referrals, social networks and even e-mails to invite a desirable talented candidate to a job interview, are oriented on finding the very best employees for the company, so that one would invest all his/her talent, creativity and efforts to make the enterprise prosper.

Other services, on the contrary, help acknowledge all possible pros and cons of the company that is going to offer you a job, or has already done that. Considering your future employer’s intentions to use all your creativity and efforts, as it’s been mentioned above, it would be great to find out, what you will gain instead (e.g. social bonuses, vacation, flexible working schedule or else). The most famous one among these is, undoubtedly, GlassDoor that helps you find out all about the “real company face”.

Moreover, there has recently been introduced one more HR-focused service, which would be potentially advantageous both to employers and employees, as far as its authors are sure of, - Smarterer.

For what is worth, Smarterer is really unique to a considerable extent, much because it uses a somewhat different approach, moving away from resumes, social media profiles and referrals to the professional skill tests as one of the most essential aspects in hiring a person.

One the one hand, such an innovative vision might be useful for HR managers, who are constantly looking for the fastest and the simplest ways to hunt the best of the best. Nonetheless, there are also quite a lot of drawbacks in Smarterer service. To start with, the skill quizzes presuppose timing for each question, so if you need do some thinking over the right answer, your chances to fail are rather high. Besides, the quizzes contain a limited number of questions, so even if you don’t know the answers to all of them, it can’t really prove the fact that you’re not a pro in the subject. Likewise, you can always guess them, so the quiz doesn’t fully show any of your skills.

Anyhow, it would be wrong to say that Smarterer is totally useless. You can check your skills at least just for yourself. At least, I’ve even saved several of screens with my results at my account at 4shared already to boast about how good I am, perhaps, in future. Fortunately, there’s still much space from 15 free 15GB left.

Stay cool)

Andy

Image is Everything. Piccsy Causes Stir with its Pitchdeck

For what it takes, the current versatility of photo-oriented sites is absolutely stunning. Of course, there are the old-known rivals, like Flickr or Tumblr, offering users the possibility to create their own photo-blogs, browse others’ works, store and share their masterpieces with others. At the same time, an array of newbies, like Pinterest, or Imgur, for instance, is somewhat innovative, but their aim is pretty similar, being the global sharing of beautiful, funny or simply unusual photos.

Nonetheless, despite a wide range of useful and convenient features, available for users, most photo-hosting and photo-sharing apps and services don’t pay likewise as much attention to their own image, at least as far as their pitchdecks for investors are concerned. It is even better to put it this way: either they pay insufficient attention to those or just don’t show them publicly to users, so it’s hard to evaluate, how creative such pitchdecks, actually, are.

Anyway, there are freshmen on the photo-sharing market, like Piccsy, who have opted for public description of their benefits at the official site in the bright, colourful and, what is important, comprehensive pitchdeck, which overplays many of the popular pitchdeck templates.

It is not that there appears the instant desire to name Piccsy the top app among the others (I still can’t handle any service, except for 4shared, for storing and sharing all my files, including photos), but if I were a wealthy man, I would certainly think about investing in it.

As for average users, they will certainly appreciate the service that finds it essential to maintain its trustworthy and positive image.

All things considered,  there can be formulated some helpful advice for photo-oriented startups, or even any startups in general: as long as your business is still at the stage of its early development, don’t forget that your image is vitally important, so make sure that it’s the way you wish it to be. In this respect, your pitchdeck IS your image to a considerable extent, thus do everything to make it intelligible, creative and bright.

Oh…and stay cool)

Andy

Successful Facebook IPO –What's Now

It would be too less to say that the whole world has been expecting FB IPO for quite a long time. This has become one of the most media-covered and discussed events in the global IT world with incredible amount of gossip regarding its possible results and consequences. Now that the IPO day has passed, the only thing left is to analyze.

To start with, although many skeptics had been questioning the high stock price before Facebook IPO started, the results of the offering have exceeded their expectations. With initially established stock price of $28-35, the eventual price of each stock on May, 18 reached $38, 37 at the closing point, whereas the very first part of them was sold for $42 each. In a whole, the overall capitalization of Facebook is now estimated at almost $104 billion.

What is essential, such successful results could even be better, perhaps, if to consider the technical hurdles during the day, which NASDAQ has already apologized for.

Guess what’s now?

Now that Mr. Zuckerberg has become a much wealthier man, it seems that Facebook has proven its reputation of the globally popular service, along with Google, and Twitter, and 4shared, and will certainly have a cloudless future, at least as far as the upcoming years are concerned.

As for the received money, the company has already claimed the focus-dimensions of further development, which the funds will be invested to. In particular, FB is planning to sustain and improve its positions in the mobile sector, not to mention the general technological innovations, expected to be added soon.

Undoubtedly, such plans for investments in this niche are 100% justified, as Facebook truly needs to develop its mobile sector to a considerable extent. The essential difficulty, in this respect, is related to the importance of monetizing the company’s audience via mobile ads, which aren’t now sufficiently profitable. Thus, the further strategy should definitely include the wider involvement of the audience, which would help maximize the effectiveness of mobile ad campaigns.

Stay cool)

Andy

CloudFlare Widens Horizons for Sites' Improvement

Do you happen to own a site? Even if you don’t at the moment, you will, perhaps, get one, as long as you run the business of your own or are more or less interested in blogging, for instance.

The thing is that the boost in development of Internet technologies and the colossal growth of popularity of online resources force the businesses in almost every niche to maintain their presence on the Web.

Well, there you go. In case you have a business, you must have a site.

Yet, the maintenance of a site, especially if you wish to make it rich and bright in the interface and multifunctional,  is a far more complicated matter, than just the creation of one. In this respect, one of the fresh services on the market CloudFlare happens to offer convenient tool to protect and improve your site’s work.

One of the essential aspects, which CloudFlare enables you to upgrade, is the loading time of your site. It often happens so, that the large sites with complex graphics and sufficient amount of ad content load rather slowly, which irritates visitors and can even make them refuse to ever try the service again.

Well, as the creators of CloudFlare state, their featured optimizer can help your site load really fast, which is incredibly encouraging.

Another essential feature, offered by CloudFlare, is related to the site’s security. It is, actually, one of the most painful aspects of every site’s work, which can either benefit your reputation, or totally destroy it.  Much because of that, the majority of trustworthy companies pay much attention to proving their reliability and safety to clients.

As an example, I’ve recently found the news that 4shared established partnership with McAfee security company to double-check all files in their database. Not bad, or I’d say even grrrreat!

Back to what CloudFlare can provide you with in terms of security, the service enables you to detect hacker attacks, create block lists and trust lists for your visitors, etc. within convenient UI.

The last but not the least…

CloudFlare is also recognized to provide you with traffic analytics for your site, which is one of the most important aspects in terms of sites’ promotion.

Of course, you can stick to using Google Analytics, it won’t be a problem.

All things considered, CloudFlare is, undoubtedly, worth trying, especially if you need to make your site more reputable and popular among users.

Stay cool)

Andy

Google Takes Action in a File-Sharing Scandal: Reasons & Causes

With SOPA haste seeming to be now over, the file-sharing scandal, involving MegaUpload, has taken an interesting twist with Google saying its defending word in court. In fact, the IT giant has also officially claimed its position in the case with accusations of HotFile, recently made by MPAA (the abbreviation corresponds to The Motion Picture Association of America).

In particular, Google representatives claim, that any complaints towards HotFile, and even MegaUpload accordingly, are rather groundless, as both services are recognized to follow DMCA (The Digital Millennium Copyright Act), which makes their work legal, except for the links to files at MegaUpload, protected by copyright, which should, undoubtedly, be removed immediately.

What makes such a position of Google so peculiar is that the company has nothing to do with either HotFile or MegaUpload, regarding the shareholding aspect, for instance; yet, it has decided to stand out and say its word in, perhaps, the most media covered scandal recently. Nonetheless, if to take a closer look at the whole situation, Google’s actions turn out to be absolutely justified.

The most essential reason, in this respect, is the fact that the company’s own services, like YouTube, also happen to follow the mentioned DMCA, and they are generally considered 100% legal. At the same time, if HotFile is being accused of violating the law, what can prevent such companies, as MPAA, from accusing Google itself in future? That is the question.

Here, what can Google’s actions in the case with MegaUpload and Hotfile cases change? There’re, actually, several ways, in which the situation can develop. On the one hand, since Google is commonly known as one of the most influential IT companies ever, its official opinion is, obviously, highly valued. Moreover, the enterprise has a point when emphasizing the necessity of following the general laws, and DMCA is what the most reputable file hosting services, like 4shared.com, are pursuant to.

On the other hand, if the above-mentioned cases finish with guilty verdicts, can it lead to implementation of changes in DMCA itself? Hopefully, not.

But, we’ll see.


Stay cool)
Andy

Visual.ly Goes Beyond Limits

I have already written about Visual.ly in one of my previous posts, yet I find it highly essential to dedicate one more piece to the service, much because the recently introduced updates have caused large media coverage and attracted a great amount of attention from the side of users as well.

What I am actually talking about is the new available function, which enables to create your own inforgraphic, using an array of provided templates, not just upload your own pieces to the site’s database. Moreover, it’s likewise simple to either enter your own creadentials (for instance, in a Twitter-related infographic), but check the popular masterpieces, created on the basis of the same template as well.

One of the most essential advantages of the newly-offered feature is its being free for registered users, as virtually anyone interested can try his/her hand at building an certain inforgraphic. The only thing needed is to enter the required details and wait till the system generates it.

Moreover, what I really admire is the wide coverage of the great news in the media. Much due to this, even yesterday Visual.ly Twitter account was already full of users’ wishes for the best, versatile congrats and positive feedback.

At the same time, as with absolutely anything in our world, I have also encountered a few drawbacks in the feature. In particular, it took me quite a while to get the first infographic done, and the process is very vulnerable to short-term Internet coonection abrupts, at least this is what I have experienced during my alpha-test. Nonetheless, the site itself is loading in a normal way, despite the fact that a great number of users are presumably trying to open it simultaneously.

In a whole, I would also like to join the happy user community and wish Visual.ly all the best, as the company has really done a great job and put much time and efforts into developing more useful features and tools for its clients.

As for me personally, I will perhaps stay in the group of not-so-permanent users, even though I have already saved 2 of my infographics at my 4shared account. Who knows, may be I’ll find where to use those some day.


Stay cool)
Andy

Highlight App in the Limelight

It goes without saying that the variety of newly-appearing apps for different mobile OS’s is so striking today, that it can amaze even the most fastidious and picky users, including the helful and beneficial tools as well as fun entertainment options.

As for the latter case with apps for entertainment, the fresh newbie, created for iPhones and iPads, Highlight is seemingly a wonderful way to get acquainted with people around. At least, that’s how the authors of the application present their masterpiece to the public.

The essence of Highlight is crystal clear: you’ll get a notification with an automatically opened user profile, in case anyone standing/sitting near by is also registered in the app database. This profile will inform you, whether you have got anything in common, so that you can figure out some interesting topics for discussion with this very person. These, in particular, might include the common file storage, like 4shared, for instance, or the similar hobbies of yours. The suggestions might also comprise your common acquaintances or friends, if those are also registered users of Highlight.

Undoubtedly, Highlight is fun to try, and you’ll be shocked how really small the city or town you live in is. At the same time, it’s a bit weird to check the strangers’ profiles, just because you happen to use the same bus with them, for example. Moreover, I highly doubt that adequate people, having a normal life (and please, don’t ask me to define “normal”))) with sufficient number of friends will be ready to open all of their interests to public access of others on the street, in the transport, in the night club, or anywhere else.

Yet, Highlight is supposingly a good way to communicate with others, in case a person is too shy or unconfident in real life, as the application might appear to be a useful way to eliminate some of the social boundaries, in this respect.

In a whole, I’m absolutely sure of the fact that Highlight will be a huge success in the nearest future, as there’re a great number of people even just on the US territory, especially adolescents, who feel lonely or just love to gossip about some of their friends with others.

On the other hand, I don’t really think there’s a good reason for more or less mature adults to start using Highlight on a permanent basis (of course, we’re all curious to take a shot and try it for once just to check how it actually works). That’s, in fact, so as there’s always a chance to talk to someone you are acquainted with in person, via phone, SMS, Skype, Facebook or 4shared messaging (I’m not sure if other file storages provide this option to their users) without any additional apps. And may strangers remain just strangers, until you meet them for real.

Stay cool)
Andy

Fancy the new “Fancy” Pinterest Rival?

I remember my first post about Pinterest, written a while ago, when the service hadn’t yet become the new passion for millions and how delightful it was to receive a confirmation of my personal account.

In case you didn’t know, Pinterest is a social service, which enables you to repost interesting, funny pics from the large accessible gallery of the site and add the fun photos yourself from any site you would like (all links are kept, so there’s no copyright infringement). Actually it works in the similar way you would add some useful files to your account at 4shared.com, selected among the data, previously uploaded by other 4shared users.

With some time having passed, I am now happy to present you with my, so to say, alpha-test of the fresh Pinterest Rival – Fancy, which is, actually, quite similar to its Pin-forerunner, yet has also got a number of its own essential peculiarities.

More reserved in the colorscheme of its interface, Fancy is seemingly more focused on attracting carrier-oriented people, who check the essential and necessary sites more frequently, than some cute animals, or something.

Some other design peculiarities go to the “Fancy It” button, which displays a popsickle icon. In this respect, I’d say it doesn’t look likewise stylish as the “Pin It” button, and I didn’t really get the idea with ice-cream (perhaps due to the fact that I loathe eating it lol).

As for available options, the service allows you to check the latest users’ Fancies, Fancy some of them and add personally found masterpieces. Unlike Pinterest enabling to add its Pin button to the browser, Fancy is offering to install the special Fancy Add-On (at least what I was shown in Chrome) to be able to Fancy interesting stuff on the Web and add it to your personal account at the site.

Moreover, there’s also a unique feature in Fancy, which hasn’t even been fully implemented by Pinterest – that is an ability to purchase some of the things you happen to browse in the gallery. In a simple example, it might be a leather jacket, the photo of which has been posted by one of the stores, or virtually anything else, as long as you see a “Buy it” button near the picture.

As for the general impressions about Fancy, I can’t but admit that the service has got all chances to compete with Pinterest in future. Here, the initial photo-reposting trend being one of the hottest ones now, I guess we might witness the rise of one more competitor in the niche soon enough as well.

Stay cool)
Andy

SendHub Messaging – Remedy or Contagion?

How often do you SMS your friends now? Perhaps, much less, than at least a few years ago, when social media and various messengers weren’t as popular as they are now. In fact, some of us have almost stopped using the SMS phone feature, having changed it to texting in other ways, or just making calls.

Nonetheless, despite the fact that many experts predict the future death of SMS’s, they are still available for usage with individual and business purposes. The latter case can, actually, be rather profitable for the company; otherwise I wouldn’t really notice the reasons, why the new service – SendHub, a relatively new startup, has already got so many clients.

The essence of SendHub is awfully simple: as long as you provide everyone in your potential contact base with your phone number (previously selected among versatile SendHub options) and any chosen keyword, each user sending the keyword to this very number will automatically be added to your contact list. In such a way, you’ll be able to send multiple SMS’s to everyone from the list and inform your clients about the news, updates or discounts in a faster way.

At first sight, the idea of SendHub is seemingly very convenient for an enterprise, as there’s no need to either collect the contact data or share the information manually. The automechanism will do it for you.

At the same time, there’s something quite illogical about SendHub, without any doubt. To start with, many of us (ok, many like me))) get irritated, when notice one more spam-SMS from the service, you’ve once shared your number with, like the restaurant or the taxi-center, for instance. You’d definitely sign out from it, but, unfortunately, there’s no “Unsubscribe” link, as in e-mail newsletters. SendHub, at the same time, presupposes your voluntary decision to sign up for being spammed even more, is it even logical? For users, like me, it’s far from any common sense, in fact.

In this respect, it seems almost impossible, how SendHub clients get their customers contacts and, thus, manage to use the service after all.

In a whole, though I always tend to wish luck to any new startup, which has got something creative in it, I somehow miss a more usual way to spread news among the users. E-mail notifications or just the separate news sections at your account, like they do it at 4shared, for example, are a much better way out. The latter seems even more awesome, as you check the messages/news box only, if you need to find out about something new, otherwise, the notifications won’t disturb you.

Stay cool and Happy V-Day to all who care about the holiday)

Andy

MediaEverywhere by Polar Mobile – One More Win for HTML5

To start with, recollect in memory what you might have heard about Polar Mobile before.

Got it? If it’s nothing, then you’re a either a newbie in IT, or..Well, here I’m done with options, for Polar Mobile has already become an unbelievably famous player on the application development field recently.

With its numerous media clients being also more, than simply popular, like CBS Interactive and GQ, just to name a few, Polar Mobile has left many of its former rivals far behind, due to its incredible cross-platform app building solutions.

For now, the company is ready to open the new era in expanding its business – there has already been announced the upcoming appearance of specifically created content distribution engine - HTML5-based MediaEverywhere.

In this respect, Polar Mobile has got impressive expectations for MediaEverywhere, as the new product will definitely increase its client networking opportunities to a considerable extent. At the same time, there’s one more win to observe – one more win for HTML5, and one more proof that this very technology owns the future.

It’s not that somebody has had any more doubts about the cloudless perspectives of HTML5, on the contrary, the latest IT trends reveal that soon there’s be no company in the industry not using the language. Moreover, a large number of brands in versatile fields, including media portals or large cloud storages (namely, 4shared), for instance, are known to have been using HMTL5 already, so the technology is likely to rule the world pretty soon.

Anyway, MediaEverywhere is promised to be presented in public in the 1Q, 2012, and I’ll make sure to test the fresh service as soon as it’s available

So, let’s get ready to be impressed, guys.


Stay cool
Andy

Patent Wars - Real and Fake

To start with, let me say something anti-tech to you, guys. Namely, I’d love to send you my sincere congrats on Christmas and upcoming New Year holidays and wish you all to be healthy, happy, loving and loved, wealthy, and always optimistic!

Now to the point.

I’ve been perusing the patent wars topic for quite a long time, much because of Apple vs. Samsung War both in technological and design aspects of their products, and at one point I got completely stunned with how many infringement cases we can now find within the whole IT industry.

It’s true, that the possibility to produce something utterly unique is more, than hard. It’s also pretty hard to handle the fast tempo of market development and expansion to resist the growing competition with the rivals. What else can you do to let your business survive and, moreover, prosper? Of course, you can copy the technology, or the designs, or the marketing moves, or anything else. Obviously, the morality or professional ethics have nothing to do with this situation; it’s the money, which turns out decisive.

In this respect, the amazement at the patent wars is no longer this big, as you understand, that as much as everyone in the IT business wishes to earn, it’s highly essential not to let your competitor earn more, especially at your cost.

Nonetheless, the matter of patent wars has one more essential aspect, which is even trickier, than everything lying on the surface. That is the fake patent wars. They are not, in fact, fake, rather – as real as it’s only possible, but the essence of the claims is frequently groundless. “One small company” formulates the reason for suing “the large company”, and the story begins. The thing is that there’s always the notion of luck, which can be helfpul in court, and there’s always the company’s image put on stake, when the enterprise is sued. These 2 factors are what can make such a patent war, even if the case is totally fake, really profitable for “one small company” owners.

Fortunately, the positive side with the story about fake patent wars is that these are mostly unsuccessful for those, who start the fight. Otherwise, we’d probably witness hundreds of “real” patent wars being begun each and every day. For large companies, like Twitter, or Facebook or 4shared, having millions of users, this would be really bothersome.

In a whole, at least, it’s good that patent justice works properly for now, right?

Stay cool)
Andy

SOPA – Good Intentions vs. Abusage of Power

I’ll be perhaps one of the thousands, if not millions to speak about SOPA, which, in fact, has all chances to become the most dangerous Act in the recent years.

In case you somehow missed what SOPA is about, while preparing for Christmas and New Year holidays, I’ll try to explain it in brief. Stop Online Piracy Act, or as it’s mostly called SOPA (almost SOPE, lol)) is the US Congress Act, according to which the government authorities and private corporations (what a surprise!) receive a magical right to censor websites, and consequently cut the “unwanted ones” both from search on Google and a number of payment providers, like Visa, for example.

To say that SOPA is ridiculous, from my point of view, is to say nothing. First of all, it hides the danger for the fresh start-up social media sites, or, in a whole, the whole array of startups, and will, undoubtedly, slow their development down. Moreover, it also hides the incredibly vast area for abuse and corruption, and might be easily used as a tool to eliminate fresh rivals and gain monopoly in specific niches of the IT market.

My concerns are a just a small drop in the sea of worries and irritation, already expressed by almost 50 large and middle-sized reputable companies, like Twitter, LinkedIn, Tumblr, not to mention TechCrunch and a great deal of others, and hopefully, their efforts won’t be vain, otherwise the consequences can be truly horrible.

I won’t be dwelling on the political underwater stones of SOPA, as I’ve never been involved in any party or something, but on the surface the good intentions to eliminate content infrigement have turned into a total scam, from my perspective.

They haven’t felt enough after removing large and (as I’d like to emphasize) trustworthy file-sharing sites, e.g. RapidShare or 4shared, from isnstant Google search with no auto prompts available. They want more, more power to manipulate the whole Internet community.

I won’t name who They are, let’s everyone have our own personal understanding, the only thing to add is that the proverb “The road to hell is paved with good intentions” has got one more proof of being right. We only need to add “so-called” before “good”, probably.

Stay cool & stay strong

Andy

From Minute to Global: What Do Decreased Intel Sales Mean?

I’ve actually been thinking of dedicating this post to reviewing one of the latest app releases, but have changed my mind eventually.

Much because of the fact that today Mr. Robert Norton Noyce would celebrate his 84th birthday, if he were alive, I can’t but write about one of his utterly successful projects, Intel.

Undoubtedly, the company is one of the largest ones even if to take the huge steps in the development of modern IT industry in the recent years, still the latest news about the expected rapid decrease of sales in the 4th quarter of 2011 has made me wonder about the cloudless future of the corporation.

Since the explained major reason for negative revenue expectations of Intel is the descrease of PC supply, and consequently, the lowered demand for chips, produced by the company, this news raises even more global questions, like: Is PC’s future cloudless either?

To be honest, it’s still hard to imagine our lives without computers in their classic mode, but, at the same time, the paste of life dictates its laws, namely, the necessity to keep all our data at hand, even in case we aren’t near the PC.

It’s actually the consequence of this quick-paste rhythm that we have already become much more accustomed to using file-sharing services (otherwise the grandees as RapidShare or 4shared wouldn’t get so many users), file-syncing tools, powerful smartphones, tablets, external hard-drives, and extra-thin laptops. It’s also the cause of our frequent exchanging the wired provides for Wi-Fi (I wonder if people even use the wired Internet for personal needs now).

Getting back to the question about the future of PC’s, no matter how much we’re gonna miss the oldies, the current trends reveal that they won’t be able to last long from now. There might be left the large and incredibly functional computers, used in a number of specific industries (the defense, for instance), but these will also vanish with time, as from my point of view.

Thus, the future of Intel sales (and the whole company as well) seems also doubtful, in case the company won’t turn to the production of innovative chips, which will sooner or later replace the ones that are being used in PC’s at the moment.

Just because the times change, the laws change, and we’ve gotta change as well.


Stay cool)
Andy

Podio.com: Online Project Management and More

With all the haste about PayPal service losing its trust from the side of its corporate partners, and consequently, even regular clients, I don’t actually see the point in writing the whole post about the current problem with frozen accounts.

Yet, I wouldn’t dare keep silent and not express my opinion in short: the only obvious thing PayPal should do now is to expain themselves and change the politics, regarding freezing their partners’ accounts. Otherwise, the consequences for their business might be disastrous, I’m afraid.

Now, what I really found worthy of writing about is the separate, enterprise-oriented niche of the software market, which I haven’t even mentioned before – the enterpise services, aimed at managing and planning versatile projects within the company in a fast and convenient way.

In particular, one of the reliable players in the field is Podio.com, which is, by the way, among the winners in this year’s The Europas and is currently participating in The Crunchies 2011. I haven’t yet used this service myself (due to the obvious reason, that is my NOT having a company yet))), Still, according to what I have checked in terms of its features, and a short survey, that I’ve made among my few busy businessmen-friends, the service is seemingly providing high-quality assistance to every manager.

To start with, I’d like to say a few words about the official Podio.com site interface, which is absolutely perfect, as from my point of view. The design is minimalistic with pale backdround colours and the readable fonts. As for the structure of the site, every feature is explained in a very detailed way + there’s a short video-tutorial how it should be used at the same page, so the user won’t need to check the whitepapers to learn about Podio’s benefits.

As for the functionality, Podio.com is also impressive in number of options, available for clients, from Project and Event Management solutions to CRM and Lead Management tools, not to mention convenient Social Intranet, Product Development, etc.

What I’ve personally found especially useful is that Podio’s features (offered separately or in a package) appear to combine the functionality, which we accustomed to in JIRA, for instance, as far as task and project management is considered, in addition to CRM and budget calculation option. This is, obviously, a great Podio’s advantage over other services, as an array of different tasks can be resolved within the unified interface with specified dashboards.

Furthermore, you can also access the necessary data via user-friendly Podio mobile apps for iPone and Android (haha, seems like Windows Mobile and Blackberry users are unwelcome)), which makes it simpler to browse and manage the dashboards on the go.

The only question that is still bothering me is the possibility to maintain the work of the whole large corporation with a great number of employees all around the world (like Twitter, or 4shared staff, for example), or is it yet more suitable for middle-sized enterprises, like the ones, my friends have got?

This question remains open for now, but the overall impression of Podio is, nonetheless, absolutely positive!


Stay cool)
Andy)