Can’t say I was surprised to hear that Apple is likely to rid the 3.5mm Headphone Jack from the next iPhone model. In a way I am surprised Apple hasn’t done it sooner.
Category: e-Technology
Categoriese-Technology
Office 365 not being used to its full potential
Ambition is what defines whether or not a software developer will succeed in an increasingly competitive industry. Corporations such as Microsoft are constantly pushing the envelope on how much it can improve its programs.
Categoriese-Technology
What to look for in an IT certification
Because of the large number of technologies falling under the IT umbrella, it’s often difficult for enterprises and individuals to figure out which certifications they should invest in.
Categoriese-Technology
Unlearn your MBA. A word of wisdom for those getting their business degrees
Excellent advice to those graduating business schools and looking to join workforce. I personally, did not realize that lack of touch with reality is an international plague that haunts business schools across the world.
In his talk at Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders Lecture Series at Stanford’s Entrepreneurship Corner David Heineimeier Hansson, the creator of Ruby on Rails and partner at 37signals in Chicago, says that Business education with its management theories and 20-page reports is irrelevant to what people actually do in real life.
“Real life is about making a good product, pleasing customers and making profit as business,” said Hansoon who for three years attended Copenhagen Business School.
“Your 20-page report on Five Forces is just irrelevant. All of the tools that you learn in the business school are juts for you. They are not going to impress anybody else,” he added.
Unlearning your MBA according to Hansoon starts with a key spot – WRITING. “When you come out of the business school your writing sucks! Because your writing is targeted at pleasing professors who want you to see you demonstrate theories and write a certain amount of work.”
There’s no bonus points for writing one page report. But learning to write exactly what you need is a key to success in business today.
5-minute highlights of Hansoon’s talk
David Heineimeier Hansson: Unlearn Your MBS highlights
The complete podcast of the talk can be found on iTunes or on Stanford’s Entrepreneurship Corner’s website.
Full video of the talk
Categoriese-Technology
8 WordPress CRM Solutions for Your Business or Nonprofit
Keeping track of your leads, contacts and community members is of the utmost importance for growing and communicating with your customer base. Many businesses are turning to CRM (Customer Relationship Management) solutions to help them keep in touch. If your site runs on WordPress, you will be able to save quite a bit of time by using a CRM that directly integrates with your contact form and site membership. This is especially helpful if you have a strongly sales-oriented business or donor-driven nonprofit. Streamline your communication flow and never let your prospects fall through the cracks again.
We’ve prepared a a list of CRMs that integrate with WordPress. All of the options here are updated and ready to go with WordPress 3.0.
WordPress-to-lead for Salesforce CRM
WordPress-to-Lead for Salesforce CRM creates a solid integration between your WordPress install(s) and your Salesforce CRM account! People can enter a contact form on your site, and the lead goes straight into Salesforce CRM. Learn more about how you can capture more leads with WordPress and Salesforce CRM.
RoloPress
RoloPress is an Open Source Contact Manager, licensed under GPL v2, and built on the WordPress. It uses standard WordPress features like Posts, Custom Fields and Custom Taxonomies to transform WordPress into a contact Manager. You can also expand its functionality with themes and plugins
WP Highrise
This plugin generates a form which you can drop on any page or post. When a visitor fills the form, the data will be sent to you via email and it will also be sent to your 37signals Highrise account so that you can easily manage and record information from contacts through your website.
Capsule Web2Lead
This plugin provides a widget that allows the user to place a web to lead form in their side bar. When a visitor fills in the form a lead is inserted into the users Capsule CRM account.
WICE Contact for WordPress
The WICE Contact for WordPress plugin allows you to build a contact form that you can place on your site via a shortcode. The plugin will send the data to WICE CRM-Groupware, a web-based solution for customer relationship management. WICE CRM-Groupware automatically adds the new address and contact person and starts a new ticket for further contact management.
CRM4WordPress
This plugin does something a little different. Anytime a visitor posts a comment on your blog his details will be captured in the BatchBook CRM system.
WP Sugar CRM API SOAP
SugarCRM is a commercial open source CRM software for sales force automation and customer support. This plugin enables you to access SugarCRM using its SOAP interface.
Gravity Forms plus Constant Contact
Gravity Forms makes the bridge between WordPress and Constant Contact, which is becoming more than just an email marketing service and now includes event and social media marketing to your contacts.
If you’re aware of any more third party CRMs that have tools for integrating with WordPress please feel free to share in the comments.
Lessons from GoDaddy mishap
Domain registration company GoDaddy came under heavy criticism from animal rights activists after its CEO Bob Parsons posted a video online where he hunts elephants in Zimbabwe.
Parsons defends himself by saying that he only hunted those species that they destroy farm crops and could potentially cause starvation of local farmers and their families.
Several human rights groups decided to call it quits with GoDaddy with PETA reportedly closing their account with GoDaddy.
Among the few benefiting from GoDaddy’s misstep are its competitors, such as NameCheap.com, that is offering a transfer of domain names from GoDaddy for $4.99 of which 20 percent will go to SaveTheElephants.com. Clever!
Now, I’ve never been a fan of GoDaddy’s. Their prices are not so good (com domain for $12 and up when you can buy one from Google for $10), their customer support is responsive but not that all that helpful, and the glorious hosting is not all that great (a total of 1 hour of downtime over the past month on one of my websites). And hey, what’s up with your hosting control panel? How can they still be using that custom made usability misfortune when there’s something called CPanel? But I digress.
In this day and age how silly can you be to post photo and video of sensitive nature to the public? Of all the people should have known that once that info gets out of control there’s no way of stopping it.
GoDaddy’s lack of valid explanation to this date is another reason for concern. Bad news these days travel with the speed of wild fire. The longer you wait the more work you will have to do later dealing with the consequences.
As I said, I am not a big fun of GoDaddy, but this whole situation certainly does not make me want to recommend it to my clients. I’d rather choose NameCheap.com instead.
How do develop an awesome mobile app
Every computer science kid these days seems to have some kind of ‘app idea’. I’m sure you have one too. But how do you know if your idea is going to fly? Is there any way of trying to idea out against some sanity checks before investing time and money into development.
I’m sure there’s plenty of stuff online on the topic. But here’s my 5 cents. The tip comes from professor Umar Ruhi who teaches Mobile Marketing class at the University of Ottawa.
At one of the classes Umar introduced a C-L-I-P components framework for mobile commerce. The framework describes theoretical approach to functionalities of a mobile app helps developers decide which features should be added or eliminated on the stage of conceptualizing.
C-L-I-P stands for Communication, Locatabiltiy, Information, Payment. According to Ruhi’s assumption, a combination of any three of these components will boost your app’s chances for success on the market. So what are those components?
Communication has to do with the kind of communication channel your apps will be using: text, voice, video, data, one-way, two-way, wireless, browsing. A good practical example will be an ability to send an email, chat or fill in a form or leave comments. Skype’s mobile app, IMO.im or any other app that allows sending emails straight from its interface are the examples.
Locatability. Will your app know where you are and what sort of environment you’re in? Can it adapt itself to these settings? I.e. provide text-only version if the connection is bad, or offer a list of nearby restaurants if I am looking for a place to eat. To cut it short, the app should make use of inbuilt GPS-capability or any other location-determining functionality of your device (BlueTooth, WiFi triangulation, etc.) Square, Facebook (places), Google Latitude.
Information. Does your application provide access to unique set of data or presents data in an original way? Any database-driven functionality will be a good example. News apps will fit here too. App examples: Autotrader.ca, ZooCasa, Realtor, Reuters, Metro.
Payment. Is there a way to pay or receive payment using a particular device or application? This feature may be embedded into device/application itself or there should be some sort of convenient way to make use of another payment provider to enable commercial transactions. PayPal, ZoomPass or ScotiaBank mobile app are good example of this component being implemented.
Most of the apps I’ve mentioned have at least this functionality. As I previously said, this framework may come handy when app is being conceptualized or maybe used to identify the direction for adding new features.
Apple’s App Store is an excellent example of almost all four components being implemented. It provides a way for users to communicate with developers and other users by leaving comments and rating the apps. You can also register in the store through your iPhone by filling out the registration form; its location component is somewhat weaker and is based on your registration information (food for thought, Apple). Yet, it’s enough to allow the app to offer specific products for specific markets.
Its information component is huge and consists of humongous database of apps with searching and filtering capabilities;
and last but not least the payment module linked to your credit card which transforms Apple App Store into a standalone, fully functional money making machine.
Categoriese-Technology
Backup your Gmail… Now!
I bet you did not know you could backup ALL your gmail correspondence with one nifty application. I did not either. Until today, when about 150 000 gmail accounts representing less that 0.08% of all Gmail users were reset to ‘0’.
How did that happen? – Not even Google engineers know, but they swear they are working hard to correct the problem.
In the meantime, those concerned about safety of their gmail accounts may use app called Gmail Backup. It is available for Mac, PC and Linux. It might take a while to back up and download all the mail you’ve got but it’s definitely worth a shot. I know I am downloading it already.
Fortune 500 Companies Achieve ROI with LinkedIn
A recent Fortune Magazine article, How LinkedIn Will Fire Up a Career, provides great example of social media delivering significant financial savings to Fortune 500 companies.
How internet has changed our lives
Very probable, yet scary scenario of what might internet and social media can do to you lives in the very near future.