Archive for 2008

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Great Example of a Mass Customization RIA Application

Monday, October 20th, 2008

More and more, rich Internet applications (RIAs) are being used as a way to customize mass production projects and give items a “personal flair”. A great example of this is the new customization module for the Flip Mino that was announced last week by our good friends at Pure Digital Technologies. This module allows buyers of the popular Flip Mino, a pocket-sized camcorder, to personalize the front cover of the camera with photos, logos, or graphic designs. Users can choose from thousands of designs that include celebrity photos, original artwork, and iconic brands, or they can upload their own graphics or photos. There is also an exclusive design engine – the Pattern Generator that buyers can use to whip a unique pattern if they want a truly custom design.

Mino Flip with custom designs – great example of mass customization using a rich Internet application

Customized Mino Flip

As another twist, the company has also created a Marketplace where artistic consumers can upload their designs for others to purchase, earning a commission each time their design sells, or they can elect to have their design sales earn money for non-profit causes.

This is a great example of using RIAs for mass customization. Kudos to Pure Digital, and its partner Café Press on this project.

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Microsoft Releases Silverlight 2.0

Wednesday, October 15th, 2008

Earlier this week, Microsoft finally rolled out version 2.0 of Silverlight, its competitor to Adobe Flash. This version has been over a year in the making and was promised to be the “one” that made Silverlight a true contender with Flash Player.

Version 2.0 supports:

  • Powerful built-in controls: DataGrid, ListBox, Slider, ScrollViewer, Calendar controls and more.
  • Deep zoom: For ultra high resolution imagery.
  • Advanced skinning and templating support: For easy customization of applications.
  • Cross-platform and cross-browser support: Support for Mac, Windows, and Linux in Firefox, Safari, and Windows Internet Explorer.
  • And many more….

One of the most interesting points around the announcement was the install base that Microsoft quoted in its press release. The company claims that one in four consumers worldwide has access to a computer with Silverlight installed. Besides being an unusual way to present install number, this figure seems a bit high, given the relatively low developer adoption of the technology. However, with Silverlight used for both the Olympics and the Democratic National Convention this year, it may be feasible.

What does the release of Silverlight 2.0 mean? Well, it’s a very positive step toward broader penetration of rich Internet applications (RIAs) and it provides developers with a real choice in technology outside of Adobe. However, Silverlight has a long way to go to catch up with Adobe’s 99 percent install base with Flash.

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Big Day for Tech Announcements: Google Android Phone and Adobe CS4

Tuesday, September 23rd, 2008

It’s a busy day for technology reporters today, with big announcements coming from both Adobe and Google. Today marks the official introduction of Creative Suite 4 (CS4) from Adobe. This new suite of software, tools and technologies is geared to ease the transition of content from print, to the web, to the interactive world. CS4 comes in four main editions:

  • Design Premium
  • Web Premium
  • Production Premium
  • Master Collection

The full suite, packaged as the Master Collection, contains thirteen individual products, fourteen technologies, and seven hosted services. Together these elements are designed to streamline the designer/developer workflow, saving time, promoting integration and creating content that easily scales across media and devices. The preview this morning was impressive, particularly for the enhancements that allow export from InDesign directly to Flash, and for the content-aware image editing functions that were added to Photoshop. It’s worth checking out on Adobe TV.

The other big announcement of the day is the launch of the first mobile phone that leverages the Google Android platform. Launched by T-Mobile and built by HTC, the G1 with Google phone is expected to give the iPhone a run for its money. The G1 with Google includes features such as a touch screen with slide-out QWERTY keyboard and one-hand trackball navigation, a 3MP Camera, full HTML web-browser, one-touch access to Google applications, a host of useful pre-installed applications, pre-installed access to the Amazon MP3 store, and access to the Android Market (a competitor to the Apple AppStore), the phone looks interesting on paper at least. Gartner is estimating that Android will capture 10% of the smartphone market by 2011. Certainly not an iPhone killer, but an interesting contender.

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Retailers Up eCommerce Spend: Focus on SaaS Options

Thursday, September 11th, 2008

A recent Internet Retailer report includes some interesting information about how retailer are addressing their eCommerce needs in today’s leaner market. While 72 percent of retailers are planning to purchase new eCommerce applications or services this year, what they are spending their money on is changing. New investments are focused on technologies that are critical and will produce the most business.

A big change is that web retailers are taking advantage of more affordable hosted software and software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications to update their e-commerce platforms. The survey finds that 29.3 percent of merchants are implementing SaaS applications in lieu of more costly licensed software options. The on-demand SaaS options provide merchants with two key advantages, they are quick to implement and roll-out and they often provide instant access to new features.

It looks like SaaS is making inroads across many markets these days.

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Browser War Heats Up with Chrome

Monday, September 8th, 2008

Last week, Google added some heat to the web browser market when it introduced its newest offering, Google Chrome, a web browser designed to better support rich Internet applications (RIAs). In just one week, this browser jumped in popularity to claim over 4 percent of the market share. What’s interesting when you look at these numbers is where the market share is coming from. Firefox dropped in popularity from 72.9 percent down to 67.5 percent and Opera too dropped slightly from 3.51 percent to 3.47 percent. At the same time, Internet Explorer gained ground, moving from 18.18 percent to 20.08 percent.

What does this all mean? If Chrome continues to pick up market share, then this means another new browser for web developers to add to their test platforms. So far, Chrome is a Windows-only offering and it still lacks a number of the key features that advanced users crave, such as add-ons and extensions. However, Google has indicated that both of these items will be resolved quite quickly.

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RIAs in the Enterprise

Tuesday, September 2nd, 2008

Over the past few weeks, there have been some interesting developments that support our predictions that RIAs will become a trend in the enterprise over the coming year. The first move came from ReadWriteWeb (RWW), a popular and widely respected technology blog. Recently, RWW launched its new Enterprise Channel. While this channel is not purely about rich Internet applications (RIAs), its broad Enterprise 2.0 focus will no doubt touch on them. In fact in the channel’s first post, RWW does a great job of presenting the perfect storm that’s hitting enterprises and causing the push toward RIA-driven interfaces.

The second noteworthy item comes in the form of a comment made by Rebecca Wettemann, an analyst with Nucleus Research, in a Wall Street Journal article. While not directly implying that RIAs are a coming trend, she certainly lays down the path with this statement:

There used to be a time when IT departments could get away with forcing employees to use complicated and hard-to-use software. The average worker didn’t know that better alternatives were out there. But as workers gain experience with consumer-focused software – either in their personal lives or at the office – they’re starting to realize that software can be easy-to-use and quick to get started on.

It will only be a matter of time before we see more movement in this direction.

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New White Paper Available: Creating Your Corporate eLibrary

Thursday, August 28th, 2008

In an effort to help corporate librarians build compelling business cases for their electronic library projects, INM has published a new whitepaper. This free white paper, entitled Creating Your Corporate eLibrary, looks at the benefits of creating an eLibrary and walks librarians through the steps for analyzing their needs, evaluating potential solutions, choosing technology, and building a compelling business case.

Creating Your Corporate eLibrary is available for download at: http://www.INM.com/resource-center/whitepapers/.

This white paper is also supported by a webinar of the same name which will be offered on Thursday, October 2, 2008 at 11:00 AM Eastern Time. To register, visit http://www.INM.com/webinars/.

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Silverlight Makes Headway

Tuesday, August 26th, 2008

Microsoft’s Silverlight technology is making waves this month with two very high profile events. First, Silverlight was the technology of choice for NBC’s streaming Olympic video coverage on NBCOlympics.com. The site racked up 70 million page views on Friday August 8th, and 4.8 million people watched 3.1 million video streams on Saturday. These are impressive numbers for Silverlight’s big debut. However, there were a number of critics that commented on the frustrating delays for online coverage, as well as the lack of full screen support and the size of the windows.

Silverlight is also the official software and HD web content provider for this week’s Democratic National Convention. Although many networks are offering streaming video from the convention, the official site is the only one showing HD video content. The HD is quite impressive, and was even dubbed as “awesome” by the Washington Post.

Even with these two high-profile events, I’m not sure it will allow Microsoft to catch up to the massive install base Adobe Flash Player already has, but it certainly brings Silverlight closer to being a true contender.

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The Year to Come – Looking Forward

Thursday, July 31st, 2008

In my last post, I took a moment to look back over the past year to see what changed. After looking back, it’s time now to look forward and predict what will happen over the year to come.

What’s in store over the next 12 months? Well, I see a number of big changes brewing on a few different fronts:

  • Cloud Computing/SaaS – We’ve written about this topic for the past year, and it seems to really be gaining traction over the last few months. Enterprises are embracing hosted services and software as a service (SaaS) as a way to become more responsive and to focus energies on core business. They will come to realize that entrusting some data and control to an SaaS is bliss as SaaS’ economy of scale allows for a level of security and reliability beyond what a modest in-house IT team can deliver. I predict that we will see greater acceptance of this in the coming year and will see many enterprises openly embrace SaaS for core business applications.
  • RIAs – Rich Internet applications have been one of the most popular topics in tech media this year. Over the next year, I predict that we will start to see a shift away from general RIAs and toward different categories of solutions such as Rich eCommerce, Rich BI, etc…. I also think that there will be big advances in the tools used to create RIAs. We’ve already seem previews of Thermo, but I suspect that this won’t be the only solution bridging the gap between developer and designer. The official launch of Silverlight 2.0 should add some much needed competition in the rich web content space. RIAs will also migrate deeper into the enterprise, with adoption expanding beyond B2C applications. RIAs will be pivotal for internal enterprise applications, as well as B2B.
  • Mobile – With nearly double the growth last year in mobile browsing, I predict that we are getting close to a big change in the way users interact with their mobile devices. This change will vastly be driven by better user interfaces and enhanced usability, but also by better display and battery technologies. Context-sensitive interactions (based on location, time of day, usage pattern, ambient attributes, etc.) will be a very hot topic.

So far it’s shaping up to be an exciting next 12 months. What do you think is in store? We welcome your comments and predictions.

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One Year Later – Looking Back over the Last 12 Months

Wednesday, July 30th, 2008

In preparing for the one year anniversary of Impact, I decided to write two posts – this one, which looks back over what’s happened in the past year, and a second post which will go up tomorrow that will look forward to what we can expect in the coming twelve months.

Since July 2007, there have been a number of big changes in our space. Here are my thoughts and comments on a few of the key ones:

  • RIAs – This was a banner year for progress on the RIA front. Adoption catapulted forward, new tools and technologies like Adobe AIR, and Silverlight were introduced, barriers were broken in terms of content indexing, and many new tools for development were introduced. We also started to see RIAs adopted by enterprise for mission critical business applications like dashboards. The improved user experience and productivity benefits are being recognized and embraced by early adopters.
  • SaaS – In the past year, there has been a huge increase in acceptance of SaaS by enterprises and their users. Decision makers are starting to realize that flying from New York to London does not require the purchase of an aircraft, but just the “licensing” of a seat for the duration of the flight. We’ve even seen the emergence of PaaS.
  • Mobile – Few can doubt the impact of the iPhone, but it alone is not responsible for the growth in mobile browsing. According to AdMob, the number of internet web users in the US grew by 10 million, to reach 40 million, and mobile web usage has grown by over 100% in the past year.

On a more personal note, we’ve seen many changes here at INM as well. Over the past year, we’ve really beefed up our team and have added a number of key resources. We’ve created an in-house team for User Experience Design and have encouraged a number of our developers to pursue industry certifications. We’ve gained significant experience in working on ground-breaking RIAs, and have brought in a number of really exciting new clients.

Stay tuned tomorrow for my predictions on the year to come.

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