Posts Tagged ‘Mobile’
Friday, February 15th, 2013
Source: Adobe LiveCycle Blog
Earlier this week, Adobe announced the launch of the most recent version of its enterprise form and document platform, LiveCycle Enterprise Suite 4 (ES4). This new version introduces several enhancements that embrace the “mobile first” ideology, and which should improve accessibility and ease–of-use of forms.
One of the major improvements to LiveCycle ES4 is its transition towards HTML5 for the Workspace tool which enables the product to work seamlessly on any platform, whether it is an Android tablet, an iPhone or a desktop. Adobe has upgraded LiveCycle to be fully optimized for mobile platforms. For businesses, this means greater flexibility for in-field use of forms. For business applications like insurance on-boarding this means that forms can easily be completed and processed directly in the field, using standard mobile devices, like tablets. . Forms and workflows can be managed from any location, online or offline, enabling companies to have a more seamless integration in everyday life and ultimately improving productivity.
(more…)
Tags: Adobe, LiveCycle, Mobile
Posted in Trends and Technology | No Comments »
Friday, January 4th, 2013
It’s that time of year again when Adobe hosts a special webinar to preview some of the key features that are slated to be unveiled in the next generation of its web content management solution, Adobe CQ. While we still need to wait until the Adobe Digital Marketing Summit in March to see the official product announcement and the final list of features, the sneak peek provides insight into the direction and the approach the product is taking with this round of enhancements.
The first change to mention is not a feature of CQ, but a new layer of packaging on the total Digital Marketing offering that Adobe delivers. Adobe has reorganized its product line into a new package, called the Adobe Marketing Cloud.
This package includes five key segments of solutions:
- Adobe Analytics
- Adobe Target
- Adobe Social
- Adobe Media Optimizer
- Adobe Experience Manager
The Adobe CQ solution fits into this last category. Together these cloud solutions provide the ability for marketers to make, manage, monetize and optimize their digital marketing efforts. (more…)
Tags: Adobe, CQ5, Mobile, Social, web
Posted in General, Trends and Technology | No Comments »
Tuesday, May 8th, 2012
There’s no denying the impact that mobile has today on a business. A recent study by IDC predicts that mobile devices will outnumber laptops and desktops combined by 2015, and Forrester Research has stated that by 2014 mobile will influence more than 50% of retail transactions. Even with these figures, the majority of Canadian businesses don’t have a clear strategy of how they’ll address mobile.
Essentially there are three options for going mobile, you can make your current website optimized for mobile by implementing a responsive design, you can build a dedicated mobile website or you can create and deploy mobile applications. (more…)
Tags: Mobile, mobile app, mobile website, responsive website, user experience, webinar
Posted in General, Mobile, User Experience/User Interface | No Comments »
Saturday, February 18th, 2012
Earlier this week we rolled out a new iPhone app that we built for SOSgarde, a popular website that connects parents with local babysitters, nannies, senior caregivers and pet sitters. We’ve had an ongoing partnership with Montreal-based SOSgarde (also known as SOSsitter across Canada) for several months now. We originally approached Paulina Podgorska, the company’s founder, about extending her services to the mobile space. Our plan was to build an app that would broaden the reach of her two sites to mobile parents. This would provide parents with on-the-go access to sitters directly from their iPhone.
We worked closely with Paulina to understand her users and how they leverage her sites. Designing a gesture-based mobile app involves different challenges such as dealing with limited on-screen real estate, and subtle considerations of context and ergonomics. In order to provide mobile users with the simple and efficient experience they expect from their handheld device, we storyboarded all interactions and came up with a progression of screens that allows users to contact a sitter in three steps. In order to make the interface easy to scan, we used appropriate icons and pulled only the essential info from the site. We integrated the standard phone and email features so parents could connect with sitters directly from within the application.
The French version of the application, SOSgarde, officially rolled out this week and is available as a free download in the App Store. The English version, SOSsitter, will be released shortly.
Do you have a mobile project that we can help with? If so, contact us.
Tags: iPhone app, Mobile, Mobile app development, Montreal, SOSgarde
Posted in Mobile, User Experience/User Interface | No Comments »
Friday, November 18th, 2011
As companies struggle today with their mobile presence, they are often faced with the requirement of offering a “one-size-fits-all” approach or are forced to tailor their site for a few select devices. One alternative that’s making waves recently is an approach pioneered by Ethan Marcotte, called responsive web design. In short, responsive web design enables organizations to create beautiful user experiences that are optimized for a wide range of devices, while minimizing the need for costly device-specific development iterations. This approach breaks the constraints of the physical page and encourages designers to create designs that are dynamic and can reflow depending on size of the viewer’s screen.
With responsive web design, designers and developers can embrace this inherent fluidity from the ground up. As the size of the browser window changes, the content can simply reflow, resize and re-position itself on a sliding scale from the smallest phone to the largest desktop computer.
An example of responsive design. The look of the site changes to fit the visitor's resolution.
My colleague, Kent Rahman, recently authored a great eGuide explaining this approach and providing some guidance around the topic. I would encourage you to download the eGuide today and read more about how you can create engaging experiences for the desktop, web and everything in between.
Check out our own INM.com website for a live example of a responsive design. Our site is built to work on virtually every device, from a mobile phone through to a desktop screen.
Tags: cross-platform design, Mobile, responsive design, user experience, web design, website
Posted in User Experience/User Interface | 2 Comments »
Friday, April 15th, 2011
With the announced availability of the Blackberry Playbook, the growing popularity of Android devices, and the traction that Windows Phone 7 is seeing, is it’s getting more challenging for businesses to develop a mobile applications strategy.
There are several different paths to building a mobile application, including:
- Native Development: This involves building a separate application for each platform using the recommended native language.
- Titanium Appcelerator: An open source platform that allows developers to build mobile apps in Javascript and to package them for delivery on different platforms (Mac, Windows, mobile).
- Open Plug: A software developer kit (SDK) to build cross-platform native mobile apps using ActionScript/Flex.
- QT: A cross-platform application and UI framework that enables developers to build once and deploy across many platforms.
(more…)
Tags: Android, Blackberry Playbook, iPad, iPhone, Mobile, Open Plug, PhoneGap, QT, Silverlight, Titanium, Windows Phone7
Posted in ePublishing, Trends and Technology | No Comments »
Thursday, December 9th, 2010
As we prepare to pack-up for Washington and set-up our booth for this year’s American Society of Association Executives (ASAE) Technology Conference next week, my mind is focused on the challenges this market is facing. Just like for-profit companies, Associations are struggling with staying relevant to their members in this tough market and are looking for new ways to increase non-dues revenue. One such channel is though their publications. Association publishing is big business and will continue to grow in the years to come. According to the recent Folio Magazine Survey, 29 percent of associations publish five or more magazines, and 12 percent publish 20 or more titles. But today, revenue from these publications is still low, with 24 percent of associations saying that magazines account for between one and nine percent of their entire revenue stream. (more…)
Tags: ASAE Technology Conference, Association, Folio magazine, Mobile, Publishing, survey
Posted in ePublishing, Trends and Technology | No Comments »
Friday, October 8th, 2010
A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to attend the Canadian Society of Association Executives National Conference and Tradeshow in Quebec City. At INM, we’ve worked with associations now for a number of years, providing a variety of services, including online and CD-based membership directories, Interactive publishing solutions, abstract management solutions for large meetings, and recently, design and development for website revamps. However, we haven’t really spent time with this audience disucssing broadly the challenges that this market is facing. Associations are unique organizations, funded primarily through membership revenue and sponsorships. In this recession economy, both of these sources are frequently cut from budgets. (more…)
Tags: Associations, CSAE, Mobile, social media, web design
Posted in Trends and Technology | No Comments »
Friday, August 13th, 2010
It’s been a dismal time for Google with the discontinuation of Google Wave, but some interesting news has surfaced about the market share figures for the Google Android operating system. In the second quarter of 2010, Android Smartphone shipments have surged by a whopping 886%. During the same period, RIM saw a 41% jump in Blackberry sales, allowing it to maintain almost a 50% market share lead over the iPhone. These are some interesting numbers, but why is the Android seeing such an incredible increase? One possible issue inflating these figures is the definition of what constitutes a “Smartphone”. While one would expect a Smartphone to be a robust, app-running device, for the purposes of market share data, pretty much any device that has the power to surf the web and is running Android to do so is counted as an “Android powered Smartphone”.
What does this higher than expected Android market share data mean for businesses contemplating getting into the mobile market? Well, the good news is that the market is narrowing down to just three major players in terms of OS (until Windows finally comes out with its Windows Phone7 OS). The even better news is that companies now have a viable delivery alternative to the iPhone for rich mobile content. The Android operating system supports Flash and has its own App Store. With its skyrocketing adoption level, Android is quickly becoming another channel for reaching consumers and it’s one that companies in the mobile space should have on their radars.
Tags: Android, Flash, Google, Google Wave, Mobile, RIM, Windows Phone7
Posted in Trends and Technology | No Comments »
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.
Tags: Cloud Computing, Mobile, RIAs, Rich Internet applicaitons, SaaS
Posted in Rich Internet Applications, Trends and Technology | No Comments »
