7 Upcoming Cyber Dangers To Be Aware Of In 2014

Experts are predicting that cyber terrorists will begin attacking clouds, multiple platforms, and global systems in 2014. Prepare now to combat these threats. Every year brings something different and unexpected, and 2014 will be no exception.
When it comes to cyber security, the unexpected can cost thousands of dollars and leave a business on the verge of failure. Even if it’s not that disastrous, it can result in the loss of some customers’ personal information, leading to a nightmare for them and the business. On a personal level, new cyber dangers can result in the loss of information and hours of work, not to mention credit card information.
While antivirus software companies and anti-malware companies do their best to keep ahead of cyber terrorists, they often are reacting rather than acting. However, these companies are already working to put defences in place for what they believe to be some of the cyber dangers consumers will face in 2014. Read on to learn about a few of these dangers that experts in the field suspect will be seen in the New Year.

#1. New Malware that’s Smarter and Sneakier

Malware, or software that infects your computer and steals information or damages files, has always been fairly insidious. However, it’s been predicted that it will get even worse in 2014. Malware, which has primarily infected PCs and laptops, may start targeting smart phones and tablets since more and more people are using these devices for banking and other financial tasks.
Malware can steal people’s credit card numbers or their banking login information, allowing hackers to steal funds. Experts also expect to see an increase of ransom ware, a new type of malware that locks up a device until people pay the hackers to have the ransom ware removed.  

#2. Macs will be Targeted

One of the things many people cite as a reason to purchase a Mac rather than a PC is that they don’t get as many viruses or malware. However, that may change in 2014 simply because people don’t expect to find malware on their Macs. This gives hackers a target that isn’t as well protected. Antivirus and anti-malware companies will need to devote more time and resources to creating software to protect Macs. Mac owners are being encouraged to make certain they have protection on their computers and not to assume that simply because they use a Mac that they’re safe from viruses. 

#3. More Online Devices Means More Targets

As more and more devices are put online, there will, naturally, be more targets. Computers, smart phones, tablets, gaming systems, home climate controls . . . as more and more gadgets are connected to the internet, hackers and virus creators will have more and more targets. The same type of security systems won’t be able to protect everything. Companies will have to start creating more diverse software and protection programs to defend all of these different systems.

#4. Cloud Protection

Many companies are starting to use cloud storage. This type of storage involves saving information to a server or server farm (the cloud) and then accessing it remotely when it’s needed. However, while this does save storage space, it also creates a new security issue. With all the information moving back and forth between computers and the cloud, there’s a greater risk that it can be stolen.
That’s why companies have to create dynamic security with free cloud antivirus programs. Most clouds already have some form of security, but as hackers begin targeting clouds more frequently, companies will have to respond with stronger defences. 

#5. Global Attacks

Because cloud computing allows people from all around the world to access data, attacks on cloud servers are global attacks. The result is that cyber security companies and law enforcement will have to start acting on a global, rather than a local or regional, level. New agreements may have to be formed in order to track down cyber criminals across international lines.

#6. An Increase in Cyber Security Insurance

Because organizations want to protect themselves and their customers in the event of a cyber attack, more of them will begin purchasing cyber security insurance. This insurance will provide protection from major monetary loss in the event of an attack. It will also help provide their customers with a feeling of trust. According to studies, the cyber security insurance industry can expect to grow by about 50 percent in 2014.

#7. Cyber Security Education will Increase

As more threats occur and more cyber response teams are needed, the education these teams receive will become more diverse and detailed. Only about a fourth of all cyber security professionals surveyed by the Ponemon Institute in 2013 felt like they had the education and knowledge needed to combat growing threats.  

Battling Threats

Overall, while cyber dangers are expected to increase in 2014, security and response times will also increase as companies react to these new dangers and update their security programs.

Software Delivery Strategy For Your Business

Is it your business’s objective to release software faster with higher quality? Are you adopting agile methodologies in your application development and delivery? Do you want to automate your application deployment process? Then, you need a continuous delivery assessment.
Nowadays, a critical situation has arisen, where competitors use predatory pricing and hefty promotion to eliminate or weaken their competitors. For this reason, many IT businesses are thinking on “Software Delivery Strategy”. The continuous demand of software across the different verticals of industries led revolutionary changes in the software delivery model. That’s why the Software Delivery Strategy is alluring and has a wide recognition within both IT vendors and the company.

Continuous Delivery Assessment

The continuous delivery assessment enables project managers to evaluate their existing maturity level and develop a roadmap for implementing a robust uninterrupted delivery practice.
To implement continuous delivery with agility, you should focus on your software delivery strategy first, and then build a roadmap for it. In order to provide robust solutions, organizations are reconsidering their application delivery methodologies and investing heavily in their development process.
Businesses are busy in addressing their rapidly changing requirements to improve their quality products and services. Surveys on software delivery assessment show that Continuous Delivery implementation is one of the key drivers for many enterprises.
Major IT companies are adopting the Continuous Delivery model, because it not only removes the traditional obstacles but also automates manual steps. In addition, automating the manual processes will ensure fast and high quality application delivery.

Continuous Delivery Implementation Roadmap

Businesses are working with their IT experts that will allow them to design a roadmap towards an automated and integrated continuous delivery approach. Meanwhile, continuous delivery assessment enables the organization to determine the current maturity gap and assist the program delivery manager to focus on opportunities in their application delivery practices.

Here are a few recommendations:

• Improve code quality
• Use proactive development practices
• Configuration Management
• Version control
• Unit and automated testing
• Infrastructure provisioning technique
• Application build, packaging and continuous integration workflow
• Application availability and its performance
• Modernization of the application environment
• Utilization of patterns and adoption of automation tools

Businesses are following the continuous delivery implementation roadmap that enables them to gain a competitive advantage enabling rapid software development and greater penetration into the market. The roadmap brings innovative thoughts to market effectively while building justifiable cost and capital efficiencies.

Initiation

The first question that arises in our mind is how to start? You can find many books and references that describe the principles and best practices of Continuous Delivery. If you want to develop your own Continuous Delivery vision then the books and references can provide you with important theoretical knowledge in context ofthe current development and release environment for a large enterprise.

Structured Approaches to a Continuous Delivery Implementation

Below are structured approaches, taking you from the current situation to the realization of your vision.
Firstly, identify the potential changes – you must have a clear picture of your current business situation before taking any practice-oriented implementation initiative. Below are the few mitigating steps, which should be a part of your business plan to cope up with potential impact on your project delivery.
Here are 7 challenges for enterprises:

#1. Large, Tightly Coupled Applications:

Every enterprise needs to develop an application that aims to deliver unique value of their customers, which stand out in the mobile market. Yet, a very small percentage of applications at the infrastructure level are truly unique. The major threshold in Continuous Delivery is creating minute, incremental changes to your applications and services.
Development of a large and tightly coupled application must start from a small part each time. It not only helps the developers to pinpoint and remedy the source of errors and other problems such as compatibility issues, run time errors, slowdowns, but also it will streamline the Software

#2. Development Life Cycle:

A successful Continuous Delivery setup must follow the process of improvement through fast feedback and continuous support. Synchronizing the large applications will help developers to build, test, and deliver the best solution for the enterprise.
Application into Separate Modules: An effective software development process can only be possible with the use of agile development methodology with shorter iterations. Source code must be built for the specific environment so that the development, testing, and integration can be done separately for different modules.
As a result, the development professionals get more time to debug the changes. In order to deal with the pipeline projects, developers could fix the errors rapidly by incrementally break out modules of the application into separate components which could be built and deployed independently.

#3. Automate Development to Production:

A continuous delivery process requires the environment to transit a new application version from development to production. Identifying many manual steps that need automation during the development phases (Requirement gathering and analysis, Design, Implementation or coding, Testing, Deployment and Maintenance).
If your development needs more and more manual steps, this will stop you from being able to scale your Continuous Delivery execution to the anticipated number of pipeline runs. Therefore, it is advisable to automate numerous currently manual steps by using alternatives in your delivery process, or remove certain steps from the process altogether.

#4. Build a Favorable Environment:

Limiting your organization in terms of infrastructure will not work at all. If you have a limited testing environment, then there is a risk of obstruction during Continuous Delivery implementation. Furthermore, misconfigured or broken environment that have been changed by previous developers or testers are one of the leading causes of deployment failures. A dynamic pool of developers and clean target environments are required to run delivery pipeline projects. To tackle these challenges, you need cloud platforms, coupled with provisioning and configuration management tools that allow you to flourish and shrink the requirements automatically on demand.

#5. Release Management Requirements:

Let’s take a few examples for release management requirements like the a change ticket creation, placing the change on the agenda for the Board meeting, getting Change Board approval, and confirming deployment, which is very vital for Continuous Delivery of the project. It is right to say that necessity is the mother of invention and the origin of change management practices is based on providing assurance in quality and consistency during production. Experience from well-known companies that are proficient in Continuous Delivery indicates that traceability, excellence and consistency of releases can be achieved using pipelines irrespective of their change management practices.

#6. Scale Continuous Delivery Implementation

If you are running a large organization, then there will be many pipelines to manage as you scale your Continuous Delivery implementation. You have a different service portfolio that you are handling during Continuous Delivery implementation like different departments, different internal and external customers, different technology platforms, different development, and support groups.
Management and measurement of your Continuous Delivery implementation will be affected, when application defines its own custom pipeline. In the delivery process, every pipeline ends at a different stage. Therefore, it is hard to make performance matrix for successful implementation of the project. To simplify the process, a standard pipeline is needed that not only saves the time but also make the Continuous Delivery process agile. You have to create templates depending upon the variations across your service portfolio.

#7. Project Ownership and Security

Nobody will interrupt you while everything is running smoothly. But when pipeline stages fail, you will have to face many problems from the project manager and the customer as well. Therefore, it is essential that clear responsibilities must be in place to fix these things and get the delivery process effective and organized. The sense of ownership should be there with the owner (responsible person/team), who has to tackle the problems occurring during the Continuous Delivery Implementation.
There must be a visibility into the state of the entire pipeline in the different stages. Enterprises should provide a greater level of security for users or groups that will be defined by the admin rights; who can enable, disable, or modify the development and functional testing step.

How To Make Your WordPress Blog Mobile Friendly

Mobile technology is increasingly growing. Science has invented many things and one of the greatest inventions is mobile internet. In fact the whole internet is now in our pocket. We have the capability to visit the world wide web through just a mobile phone and as a result mobile internet users are increasing day by day. Therefore it is essential that all websites are mobile friendly.
WordPress is one of the most popular blog softwares available and many websites use it. Used by more than 18.9% of the top 10 million websites in the world (August, 2013) WordPress is mainly a software for blogs of all types. Is your blog optimized for mobile devices? If not, you’d better do this to keep the valuable mobile readers in the future. But as a newbie your question would be “How to Make a WordPress Blog Mobile Friendly?”. Through this post I am going to discuss the easiest ways to make your blog mobile friendly.

Top 3 Ways to Create a Mobile Friendly WordPress Blog

#1. Use a Responsive Theme

A responsive theme means a theme that will render automatically depending on the web browser width. For example, if you are using a device of 1280px X 720px, 640px X 240px or any dimension, the theme will load it’s responsive style sheets as per the dimension of web browsers. Using a responsive theme, you don’t need to think about mobile optimization.
You can even turn your existing WordPress theme into responsive by the help of a responsive CSS file. If you are a website developer, you could do this by yourself. Otherwise, you should contact your web developer. I would recommend you buy a high quality premium response theme from a good provider as it will ensure the best performance and you could get support from the provider.

#2. Use Mobile Themes Through Domain Mapping

To create affordable usability for your mobile visitors, you can make custom domain mapping such as m.yourdomain.com or anything else like this. Similar to setting up Facebook and Twitter. All you have to do is set up a subdomain and function it to render for mobile visitors. You also have to set your mobile theme for the subdomain. As a result, your mobile users could enjoy your blog by just visiting m.yourdomain.com. This way you don’t need to add a responsive style or anything.

#3. Use Mobile Plugins:

Here are a top list of plugins to optimize WordPress for mobile devices without much effort.

• WordPress MU Domain Mapping: It is a plugin for WordPress that can easily handle all the domain mapping processes. Those who are unable to add this manually should try this plugin.
• WPtouch: This is the best mobile plugin to optimize a site for mobile users, especially for touch screen devices. Nowadays, almost half of mobile internet users prefer to use touch Smartphones, so this plugin is highly recommended. It will generate a simple elegant theme for mobile. As per your needs you can simply customize the appearance through the settings from the WordPress Dashboard.
• WordPress Mobile Pack: This is a complete package of all mobility requirements. It has the functionality of custom switcher, themes, widgets and mobile WordPress admin panel. If you are looking to optimize your admin panel for phones, you must use this plugin.
• Jetpack: Jetpack is a must have for every single WordPress blog. It has its own plugins list integrated a nd one of these is Mobile Theme. Just install the plugin and enable the mobile theme from the Jetpack settings. That’s all you have to do. If you have already installed this plugin, just go to the settings and activate the theme functionality.
• MobilePress: It is another great mobile plugin that renders a mobile friendly version of every WordPress site or blog. There are also some friendly settings available for custom appearance. It has the custom themes functionality too.
• WordPress Mobile Edition: WordPress Mobile Edition is one of the simple plugins that has a beautiful interface for the mobile viewer. As like other plugins, it will automatically detect all devices and render a nice interface. Plugins like this one are really easy to use as well.

Now Test Your New Mobile Interface

If you have followed the steps above you have optimized your WordPress site for mobile viewers. Before going live it is recommended to test it. And it is also important to test the usability from the different devices such as iPhone, Tab, Smartphones etc. So here are some online resources where you can easily input the mobile website addresses and see the rendered interface – even from a computer.

• iPhone 4 Simulator: It is a simple mobile website simulator to test site view from iPhones. Currently iPhones are the most used among global mobile phones. So it is a must to test through this simulator.
• iPad Peek: This is a simulator to test the rendering of iPads or Tabs. These pads and tabs are bigger than phones so we should really take notice of them because a large number of people are using these all over the world.
• Opera Mobile Simulator: Using this simple simulator you will be able to view the site as on normal phones. Many people use Java based phones and this gives you a look just like a Java device.

Final Words About Optimizing WordPress Sites

In this competitive era everything needs to be perfect, however, if it is a website or blog, it has to be optimized for all viewers. A good quality site always needs to have perfection and professionalism. If you lack these qualities your platform won’t be attractive to the readers.
So, it’s time to enrich the usability of your WordPress sites. I don’t think it’s very hard. Just spare 10 minutes to apply the above methods and create a professional WordPress mobile site.

Software Delivery Strategy For Your Business

Is it your business’s objective to release software faster with higher quality? Are you adopting agile methodologies in your application development and delivery? Do you want to automate your application deployment process? Then, you need a continuous delivery assessment.
Nowadays, a critical situation has arisen, where competitors use predatory pricing and hefty promotion to eliminate or weaken their competitors. For this reason, many IT businesses are thinking on “Software Delivery Strategy”. The continuous demand of software across the different verticals of industries led revolutionary changes in the software delivery model. That’s why the Software Delivery Strategy is alluring and has a wide recognition within both IT vendors and the company.

Continuous Delivery Assessment

The continuous delivery assessment enables project managers to evaluate their existing maturity level and develop a roadmap for implementing a robust uninterrupted delivery practice.
To implement continuous delivery with agility, you should focus on your software delivery strategy first, and then build a roadmap for it. In order to provide robust solutions, organizations are reconsidering their application delivery methodologies and investing heavily in their development process.
Businesses are busy in addressing their rapidly changing requirements to improve their quality products and services. Surveys on software delivery assessment show that Continuous Delivery implementation is one of the key drivers for many enterprises.
Major IT companies are adopting the Continuous Delivery model, because it not only removes the traditional obstacles but also automates manual steps. In addition, automating the manual processes will ensure fast and high quality application delivery.

Continuous Delivery Implementation Roadmap

Businesses are working with their IT experts that will allow them to design a roadmap towards an automated and integrated continuous delivery approach. Meanwhile, continuous delivery assessment enables the organization to determine the current maturity gap and assist the program delivery manager to focus on opportunities in their application delivery practices.

Here are a few recommendations:

• Improve code quality
• Use proactive development practices
• Configuration Management
• Version control
• Unit and automated testing
• Infrastructure provisioning technique
• Application build, packaging and continuous integration workflow
• Application availability and its performance
• Modernization of the application environment
• Utilization of patterns and adoption of automation tools

Businesses are following the continuous delivery implementation roadmap that enables them to gain a competitive advantage enabling rapid software development and greater penetration into the market. The roadmap brings innovative thoughts to market effectively while building justifiable cost and capital efficiencies.

Initiation

The first question that arises in our mind is how to start? You can find many books and references that describe the principles and best practices of Continuous Delivery. If you want to develop your own Continuous Delivery vision then the books and references can provide you with important theoretical knowledge in context ofthe current development and release environment for a large enterprise.

Structured Approaches to a Continuous Delivery Implementation

Below are structured approaches, taking you from the current situation to the realization of your vision.
Firstly, identify the potential changes – you must have a clear picture of your current business situation before taking any practice-oriented implementation initiative. Below are the few mitigating steps, which should be a part of your business plan to cope up with potential impact on your project delivery.
Here are 7 challenges for enterprises:

#1. Large, Tightly Coupled Applications:

Every enterprise needs to develop an application that aims to deliver unique value of their customers, which stand out in the mobile market. Yet, a very small percentage of applications at the infrastructure level are truly unique. The major threshold in Continuous Delivery is creating minute, incremental changes to your applications and services.
Development of a large and tightly coupled application must start from a small part each time. It not only helps the developers to pinpoint and remedy the source of errors and other problems such as compatibility issues, run time errors, slowdowns, but also it will streamline the Software

#2. Development Life Cycle:

A successful Continuous Delivery setup must follow the process of improvement through fast feedback and continuous support. Synchronizing the large applications will help developers to build, test, and deliver the best solution for the enterprise.
Application into Separate Modules: An effective software development process can only be possible with the use of agile development methodology with shorter iterations. Source code must be built for the specific environment so that the development, testing, and integration can be done separately for different modules.
As a result, the development professionals get more time to debug the changes. In order to deal with the pipeline projects, developers could fix the errors rapidly by incrementally break out modules of the application into separate components which could be built and deployed independently.

#3. Automate Development to Production:

A continuous delivery process requires the environment to transit a new application version from development to production. Identifying many manual steps that need automation during the development phases (Requirement gathering and analysis, Design, Implementation or coding, Testing, Deployment and Maintenance).
If your development needs more and more manual steps, this will stop you from being able to scale your Continuous Delivery execution to the anticipated number of pipeline runs. Therefore, it is advisable to automate numerous currently manual steps by using alternatives in your delivery process, or remove certain steps from the process altogether.

#4. Build a Favorable Environment:

Limiting your organization in terms of infrastructure will not work at all. If you have a limited testing environment, then there is a risk of obstruction during Continuous Delivery implementation. Furthermore, misconfigured or broken environment that have been changed by previous developers or testers are one of the leading causes of deployment failures. A dynamic pool of developers and clean target environments are required to run delivery pipeline projects. To tackle these challenges, you need cloud platforms, coupled with provisioning and configuration management tools that allow you to flourish and shrink the requirements automatically on demand.

#5. Release Management Requirements:

Let’s take a few examples for release management requirements like the a change ticket creation, placing the change on the agenda for the Board meeting, getting Change Board approval, and confirming deployment, which is very vital for Continuous Delivery of the project. It is right to say that necessity is the mother of invention and the origin of change management practices is based on providing assurance in quality and consistency during production. Experience from well-known companies that are proficient in Continuous Delivery indicates that traceability, excellence and consistency of releases can be achieved using pipelines irrespective of their change management practices.

#6. Scale Continuous Delivery Implementation

If you are running a large organization, then there will be many pipelines to manage as you scale your Continuous Delivery implementation. You have a different service portfolio that you are handling during Continuous Delivery implementation like different departments, different internal and external customers, different technology platforms, different development, and support groups.
Management and measurement of your Continuous Delivery implementation will be affected, when application defines its own custom pipeline. In the delivery process, every pipeline ends at a different stage. Therefore, it is hard to make performance matrix for successful implementation of the project. To simplify the process, a standard pipeline is needed that not only saves the time but also make the Continuous Delivery process agile. You have to create templates depending upon the variations across your service portfolio.

#7. Project Ownership and Security

Nobody will interrupt you while everything is running smoothly. But when pipeline stages fail, you will have to face many problems from the project manager and the customer as well. Therefore, it is essential that clear responsibilities must be in place to fix these things and get the delivery process effective and organized. The sense of ownership should be there with the owner (responsible person/team), who has to tackle the problems occurring during the Continuous Delivery Implementation.
There must be a visibility into the state of the entire pipeline in the different stages. Enterprises should provide a greater level of security for users or groups that will be defined by the admin rights; who can enable, disable, or modify the development and functional testing step.

Exploring Web Applications: What Tools Are Available To Freelancers

Freelancers are an interesting group of business professionals that expands each day as more and more day workers leave the corporate world and enter the world of working for themselves. With a much looser operating structure, freelancers can get into bad habits if routines aren’t established from the start. Large and small companies in addition to freelancers themselves have found a niche market in producing tools, applications and software oriented towards freelancers. Applications consist of time trackers, invoicing and billing, project management and quote or proposal web applications. Utilizing available tools whether they be free or paid, can significantly cut down on the amount of time spent doing monotonous or daunting but necessary tasks as a freelancer. Similar to the way that a corporation’s accounting department has ledger software, the creatives have design software and the coordinators have project management software – a freelancer needs to become all of these entities in order to run a successful business.

Project Management Tools for Organization

Once a freelancer starts working with multiple clients at a time, it can be difficult to remember what was emailed to who, said over the phone or promised during a meeting. Using a software that can note these events under clients will save time and prevent heartache in the future.
Certain project management applications even offer internal task creation events to keep a virtual, cloud based to do list for each client. Insightly is a free project management software that also offers Gmail integration; making logging contact with a client even easier. Enjoy all of the benefits of a large company’s system available to you as a freelancer with Insightly.

Contract and Proposal Creation Applications

Freelancing involves a little bit of sales work as well. As a freelancer, you’re constantly pitching yourself and your skillset to new clients who have quite the list of freelancers to choose from. A great contract and proposal creation application offers freelancers the chance to show off their skills while spending half the time than before when putting contracts or proposals together manually.
Motiv is an excellent choice for creative freelancers as it offers industry specific content for freelancers to aid in the proposal creation process. It’s a known fact that each job a freelancer does requires a contract; Motiv also has handy content for aiding in this process including the option for clients to e-sign.

Time Tracking and Invoicing Tools

Projects taken on in the freelancing world either operate off of an hourly rate or a flat rate per project. Both are common depending on the specific industry and scope of the work. A large website would be done on an hourly rate while a small character creation or animation would be done on a per project basis.
Harvest is a legendary time tracking tool that allows freelancers to honestly report the amount of time they spent working on a specific project. It offers one click time tracking from your desktop, browser or mobile device. From there, reports and invoices can be generated for clients when it comes time to invoice. Invoicing in itself may be a feared aspect of the freelancing job. Having to keep track of accounting and produce documents to both clients and accountants is no simple task.
Freshbooks has a wide amount of invoicing tools for freelancing professionals including the option to be paid online versus snail mail checks. 

A freelancer can arm themselves with many tools that will help them succeed in both the long run and short run of their freelancing career. By utilizing one or all of the available tools, a freelancer can adequately track their hours and send professional invoices using Freshbooks and Harvest, create killer proposals and contracts using Motiv and keep track of what’s what with Insightly.
Most of the applications mentioned above offer a free trial period and are under $20 per month for individuals. Considering the amount of time saved by utilizing available applications, many freelancers take advantage of applications available. Finding what works for you may be a process with a significant amount of applications on the market. Achieve a balance between apps and complement them with your work. Remember, apps are here to help you grow as a freelancer; not hinder your work.

How Mobile Apps Have Revolutionized Healthcare

Healthcare industry around the world, and specifically in US, UK and Europe, is embracing mobile technology. Apps targeting specific types of patients, doctors and healthcare processes are launched every day.

While a bulk of health-related apps are more lifestyle than medicine, there are hundreds of apps that have the interest of patients and doctors at their core. There is not one iPhone app development company that doesn’t list healthcare app development as a service. A lot has been written about individual apps, but today we will focus on how exactly these apps are benefiting doctors and patients.

Better Self-Health Management

Several healthcare apps in the market enable patients to monitor their medication and note down the side effects. Such apps also remind the app user to take the medicines on time, and they can also tell the user when he/she is running out of medicines. A number of people end up taking medicines twice, forgetting it altogether or missing a dose because they have run out of medicine. Healthcare apps ensure that such situations never arise.

Easier Access to Information

Almost all the data related to health, diseases and treatment you need is available online. Self-diagnosis is not a good idea, but knowledge regarding one’s condition is very helpful in fighting a disease. Also, access to doctors in the area who can help treat that disease is very useful. Interactive apps, especially ones on tablets, help the patients or their caretakers get a better understanding of the illness, enabling them to obtain better health care.

Billing and Personal Health Profiling

Medical charges are not easy to understand. Mobile apps make it very easy to access and track one’s medical data. All the billing information can be viewed and analyzed through a mobile app. Also, apps can store all the medical information regarding a patient, reducing the need to take off stacks of paperwork. Most mobile app development service providers create apps of this type, as they are in great demand.

Staying Connected

Too many patients fail to take proper care after they are discharged from the hospital. For many, it is simply not possible to visit the hospital frequently. Mobile apps function as a conduit between the doctor and the patient. Patients can simply upload the details of their condition on the app, and the doctors can take a quick look at their leisure. This saves a lot of time and effort, both on the part of the patient as well as the doctors.

Automating Hospital Administration

Managing hospitals are a tough task. There are a wide range of personnel that perform a wide range of tasks. All those tasks have different levels of difficulty, and the time taken to perform them varies. The employees work different shifts.
For example, nurses do a whole range of tasks, and they work different hours. It is not easy for a doctor or administrator to assign tasks justly. This gives birth to resentment on the part of the personnel, who wrongly or rightly think that they are given the worst jobs and have to work harder than most other people. But, an app can automate the task of assigning and monitoring work, cutting the problem at the root.

Conclusion

Over 1.5 people in the world use Smartphones– and the numbers are rising rapidly. Mobile apps are easy to use, and they have the power to replace most paperwork from health care. Also, the 24/7 connectivity extends the capability of mobile apps as healthcare suppliers.
Most processes – scheduling the appointments, monitoring medication, prescriptions, even diagnosis – can, at least partly, be done digitally. And, healthcare apps make things easier for the patients as well as doctors. Both – mobile app development service providers and healthcare companies are equally keen on leveraging mobile technology, and we can expect to see more innovations in this segment of app development.

How Mobile Payments Benefit Small Businesses

Not many years ago, small businesses had little choice but to depend on cash only transactions, limiting opportunities for profit or making steady cash flow a rarity. Mobile businesses like food trucks, lawn services, and pop-up market booths, for instance, could sell only to customers with cash in hand, while caterers and contractors invoiced for jobs and covered expenses while waiting 30 to 90 days for payment. Many such businesses depend on credit lines to cover the gaps.

The launch of mobile payment processing changed everything

Businesses can collect on the spot to cover payroll and expenses, freeing them from the uncertainty of low cash flow periods while reducing operating costs and benefiting customers at the same time.

• By the end of 2013, International Data Corporation (IDC) projects that 918.6 million cell phones will be in use, a 27% increase from the previous year.
• About half of all cell phones in the U.S. are smartphones.
• In five years, experts say that number is on track to grow to 1.7 billion smartphone users worldwide. The mobile payment market is huge, and growing.

The Carlisle & Gallagher Consulting Group estimates that 50% of smartphone users will abandon credit cards and other noncash methods of payment in favor of mobile payments within five years. Since the noncash market, including credit and debit cards, ACH transfers, mobile payments, and checks, racked up more than $73 trillion in 2012, the implications are clear.

Reducing the risks

Cash is a significant risk for any small business. Since it can’t be tracked, employee theft is always a potential issue. The National Retail Security Survey estimates the cost of employee theft at $34.5 billion in 2011, a figure that’s gone down in the last couple of years.  Unfortunately, about 75% of employee theft goes undetected.
Theft may take place in many different forms, from making a sandwich before leaving for the night to pocketing cash that should go into the register or cash box. It’s difficult to monitor everything, and impossible to  prevent all theft. It’s important to understand that opportunity is a common motivating factor. Reducing cash transactions also reduces an easy, untraceable, and tempting opportunity.
Employee theft is not the only risk, however. At the end of the day, small business owners, especially those with mobile businesses, take a personal risk while carrying the day’s receipts home, to the bank, or back to the office.
Customers, too, are more leery of carrying cash. They face the same risk of theft or loss, and can be inconvenienced by simply running out before the fun is over. Mobile credit card processing offers an efficient way to pay and get paid with equal benefits to both customers and vendors.
For businesses that depend on payment for large deliveries, like catering service, the ability to accept payments on-the-spot is far superior to the wait that invariably accompanies sending out invoices for goods already delivered. Prompt payment impacts the entire supply chain, from seafood delivery to table rentals. The faster the caterer collects, the better he’s able to meet his own obligations. In addition, with the expectation of immediate payment, the customer is less likely to default and leave the business owner on the hook for immediate expenses and prolonged collection efforts. The result: higher profits with less effort and minimized risk.
A primary consumer concern with mobile payments is security. Credit card theft and identity security continue to plague merchants, card issuers and consumers. Mobile payment processing relies on an encrypted and secured transactions to ensure centralized control and secure reporting. The best systems send encrypted credit card data directly to a point-of-sale (POS) system, without third-party processing.
It’s important to note that credit card terminals use the same technology as mobile payment processing. Every time a customer whips out a card for a transaction, whether buying tools at a retail giant like Sears or a gourmet goat cheese burger at the local food truck, the technology used to process the transaction is essentially the same, and customers face the same level of risk. No method of payment, including cash, can be 100% secure. Mobile payments are as secure as any other.

How mobile payments cut costs

Accepting mobile payments represents a significant savings in cost over today’s complicated cash register systems. Mobile credit card processing eliminates the need for pricey specialized equipment or custom software, making transactions accessible from any smartphone, with similar easy-use technology most customers and employees are already comfortable with. Shortening the learning curve saves time and money at every step, training, implementation, and processing.
More savings opportunity comes with smoother cash flow. Reduction in wait times means the up and down cash situation where a business is either flush from freshly paid invoices or struggling to stay afloat while waiting for overdue payments, commonly known as “lumpy cash flow,” is gone. To cover expenses prior to instant payment processing, many small businesses turned to credit, adding the expense of interest to their bottom line. Meeting payroll and supplier expenses with a loan or credit card is practical in the short run, but can quickly eat profits.
In 2012, Bank of America surveyed small business owners and found 45% of 1,000 respondents cited “not getting paid on time by clients and customers” as the biggest challenge to managing their cash flow. Other factors were low profits or lack of business, and 9% said they had trouble getting invoices out in a timely manner. Doing the paperwork, sending the bills, and following up are time consuming, costly, and potentially fraught with errors. Mobile payment processing client, Intuit Payments, solves a number of issues by integrating seamlessly with Quickbooks™ to simplify and improve accuracy for invoicing, bookkeeping, and billing.
It’s easy to speculate that the growing adoption of mobile technology might explain why 71% of small business owners say they have enough capital available to run their businesses. Robb Hilson, head of Bank of America small-business segment, said, “The bottom line: with improved cash flow, many small businesses don’t need to borrow to make payroll.”

Improving the customer experience

Business owners aren’t the only party to benefit from the boom in mobile payment processing. For customers, mobile payments offer a range of convenience. It’s is generally faster and more efficient than a traditional cash register transaction, and most payment processing software emails a receipt, which makes keeping track of purchases and spending easier.
An email trail of electronic receipts will make it easier at tax time for customers who write off expenses and for supporting businesses with their own bookkeeping needs. The IRS accepts electronic documentation for expenses as long as pertinent details such as venue name, date, and amount are included. Customers can happily toss the shoebox full of paper receipts and open a file folder full of electronic receipts instead.

Boosting sales with mobile payments

In 2012, a quintessential mobile business got an unexpected boost in sales numbers. In an interview with the Christian Science Monitor, John Graves, chief financial officer for the Girl Scouts of North East Ohio reports that Girl Scout cookie sales soared after he cut a deal with a mobile payment company to put credit card processing in the hands of little girls armed with Thin Mints. Customers loved it, and sales jumped by 13% for 150 participating troops, while troops that did not adopt the technology did not see any improvement in sales. In 2013, 536 troops participated in the card reader program. Graves reports that participating troops had the largest restocking orders in history.

Inventory tracking and consumer trends

Mobile payments allow businesses to automate inventory tracking and stay on top of consumer trends, making customer preferences more transparent. By collecting mobile payment data, small businesses have access to the kind of big data formerly available only to big businesses with deep pockets. Restaurants, for example, can use the consumer trend data to figure out what products sell best at a certain time of day, on a specific day of the week, or what appeals more to customer appetites when the temperature falls or rises.
Prepared with detailed information about when and what customers are most likely to purchase, business owners can reduce waste and stock the right products at the right time. By addressing customer preferences, businesses of any size will see a rise in sales and an improvement in customer satisfaction.

The Benefits Of Integrating iPad POS To Your Small Business

An iPad POS is a revolutionary Point-of-Sale system powered by iPad tablets. Prior to the advent of iPad POS, the POS systems used to be powered by large and complex terminals, computer software and applications. However, such systems came with a lot of limitations, particularly when it came to features, functionality and cost effectiveness.
An iPad POS can be considered as a major breakthrough in retail technology, as with the help of this a proprietor may now spend prolonged hours in his store stowing inventories, placing orders, and performing other tasks that are often done by the computer in a large establishment.
In fact, iPad POS is a great tool for both small business and large business entrepreneurs. While it proves to be a cost-effective solution for small business owners considering that they cannot afford big budget expenses on point-of-sale system; for large business owners, an iPad POS can be a great way to boost business and expand sales through integration of multiple points at affordable costs.

How it works

Basically, an iPad POS system is an application software that has been styled to operate on an iPad tablet – but is not able to order items automatically. Developers can design these programs to integrate seamlessly with the Apple and Windows operating systems. Similarly, additional software can be used to print out an order form, and the shopkeeper can use his computer to print out the form.
Moreover, iPad POS are also used by small business retailers to track sales and also monitor employee man-hours; besides availing reports about the stocks with the support of inventory system. Bar code scanning options are also available for those who want to identify the products without any hitches.
Step # 1: Add Items
You may add items by just tapping, searching by name, or using a barcode scanner. Adjust quantities and apply discounts seamlessly.
Step # 2: Choose a Payment type
Choose a secure payment type that suits you. You may choose payments by cash, swiping credit cards, or any of the ‘designated’ mobile payment options offered by the system.
Step # 3: Adding a gratuity
Preset gratuity buttons to boost tipping.
Step # 4: Transaction Complete
This is the final procedure in iPad POS where the customers sign right on your iPad, the receipt is either emailed or printed as a conventional receipt.

Features of iPad POS

• One of the key features that make iPad POS indomitable is that the device is mobile and optimizes space.
• Manager reports can be generated in seconds with just the push of a button.
• Integrated staff time card systems help schedule hours and also generate payroll.
• Running inventory checks is easier with the iPad POS inventory that is wise and self-managing.
• The iPad POS is much less expensive to operate than the traditional POS.
• No bulky terminals required facilitating affordability in pricing due to fewer hardware requirements. While a cash register and related equipment would have cost you $300 to $1000, a wireless Apple iPad will cost you $300 to $500.
• Cloud-based solutions empower businesses to use their software without having to rely upon the Internet or third-party apps.
• Customization options enable iPad POS to be modified to accommodate various different small business operations.

Benefits of iPad POS

Why is it Important for your Business

An iPad POS system is an asset for businesses, especially small business. Besides being highly affordable and cost effective, it is user-friendly, has good synchronization, reduces administrative strain, and offers enhanced customer experience. Also, you can easily monitor your business from anywhere using iPad POS systems provided they have a smart phone, tablet, and/or a computer.

iPad POS is User-friendly

An iPad POS system is more user-friendly considering the fact that iPad offers an intuitive interface that is easy to learn. This can not only prove to be time-saving when it comes to training of employees, but the user-friendliness also helps reduce cases of errors.

iPad POS helps better Synchronization

An iPad POS system helps synchronization as it helps to improve communication with the tablets that are running the digital menu software for secure payment and real-time ordering. This feature is especially great for hotel industry. Here you will find menus with appealing features that enable guests to enter custom cooking specifications, place orders, request table service and order drinks among many other things.

iPad POS eases Administrative Strain

The administrative responsibilities used to show when managers had to schedule employee hours, compile manager reports by hand, keep track of time cards, handle reservations, do inventory checks and generate other reports, when performing tasks by traditional POS. However, with iPad POS and its entirely automated system, business administrators are able to integrate employee time card systems, manage the inventory and generate payroll and produce reports in seconds.

iPad POS offer Enhanced Customer Experience

Benefitting from the low cost, mobility factor and less optimization of space the iPad POS system offers place for more merchandise facilitating customers to avail products of their choice and make payments from anywhere – for immediate pick up or delivery to their home address. Moreover, the real time data it offers helps improve sales and prove to be a great assistance to the management in taking better decisions for the business.

iPad POS facilitates Effective data management

An iPad POS system helps manage receipts effectively and also store customer as well as credit card data, while ensuring the accurate processing of sales tax, cash and credit card payments. Thus eliminating the probabilities of erroneous computations such as double entries; besides facilitating tracking of sales in real time.

How to Choose the Right iPad POS app

Research the Market

Researching your market is the first priority in choosing the right iPad POS, as vendor websites are always the perfect place to start your research and analyze retail POS system reviews. Remember that vendors often use phrases like “cashier software” and “cash register software” to describe their solutions; however, these terms are tantamount with point of purchase software.

Prioritize your Needs

While it is true that there are many solutions to meet your basic requirements, specific functionality is required in the new system. So, what is important is to understand if integration of e-commerce functionality is required; or the significance of the vendor having adequate experience to support retail software for small business.
Next, you need to assess if it makes business sense for you to invest in open source POS software. This is especially beneficial while you are actually on ‘POS hunting’ – going through reviews and trying to make the right iPad POS system.

Compile a list of Prominent Vendors

Once you have made up your mind and set your eyes on choosing the right iPad POS, compile a list of the best retail iPad POS systems that meet your priorities. Shortlisting vendors can effectively simplify the system search and ensure that you only evaluate systems that will be a good fit for your business. A few prominent ones are ShopKeep POS, Shopify POS, Paypal Here, GoPayment (Intuit) to name a few.
Have you chosen your iPad POS for your business? Share with us.

Exploring Web Applications: What Tools Are Available To Freelancers

Freelancers are an interesting group of business professionals that expands each day as more and more day workers leave the corporate world and enter the world of working for themselves. With a much looser operating structure, freelancers can get into bad habits if routines aren’t established from the start. Large and small companies in addition to freelancers themselves have found a niche market in producing tools, applications and software oriented towards freelancers.
Applications consist of time trackers, invoicing and billing, project management and quote or proposal web applications. Utilizing available tools whether they be free or paid, can significantly cut down on the amount of time spent doing monotonous or daunting but necessary tasks as a freelancer. Similar to the way that a corporation’s accounting department has ledger software, the creatives have design software and the coordinators have project management software – a freelancer needs to become all of these entities in order to run a successful business.

Project Management Tools for Organization

Once a freelancer starts working with multiple clients at a time, it can be difficult to remember what was emailed to who, said over the phone or promised during a meeting. Using a software that can note these events under clients will save time and prevent heartache in the future.
Certain project management applications even offer internal task creation events to keep a virtual, cloud based to do list for each client. Insightly is a free project management software that also offers Gmail integration; making logging contact with a client even easier. Enjoy all of the benefits of a large company’s system available to you as a freelancer with Insightly.

Contract and Proposal Creation Applications

Freelancing involves a little bit of sales work as well. As a freelancer, you’re constantly pitching yourself and your skillset to new clients who have quite the list of freelancers to choose from. A great contract and proposal creation application offers freelancers the chance to show off their skills while spending half the time than before when putting contracts or proposals together manually.
Motiv is an excellent choice for creative freelancers as it offers industry specific content for freelancers to aid in the proposal creation process. It’s a known fact that each job a freelancer does requires a contract; Motiv also has handy content for aiding in this process including the option for clients to e-sign.

Time Tracking and Invoicing Tools

Projects taken on in the freelancing world either operate off of an hourly rate or a flat rate per project. Both are common depending on the specific industry and scope of the work. A large website would be done on an hourly rate while a small character creation or animation would be done on a per project basis.
Harvest is a legendary time tracking tool that allows freelancers to honestly report the amount of time they spent working on a specific project. It offers one click time tracking from your desktop, browser or mobile device. From there, reports and invoices can be generated for clients when it comes time to invoice. Invoicing in itself may be a feared aspect of the freelancing job. Having to keep track of accounting and produce documents to both clients and accountants is no simple task.
Freshbooks has a wide amount of invoicing tools for freelancing professionals including the option to be paid online versus snail mail checks. 

A freelancer can arm themselves with many tools that will help them succeed in both the long run and short run of their freelancing career. By utilizing one or all of the available tools, a freelancer can adequately track their hours and send professional invoices using Freshbooks and Harvest, create killer proposals and contracts using Motiv and keep track of what’s what with Insightly.
Most of the applications mentioned above offer a free trial period and are under $20 per month for individuals. Considering the amount of time saved by utilizing available applications, many freelancers take advantage of applications available. Finding what works for you may be a process with a significant amount of applications on the market. Achieve a balance between apps and complement them with your work. Remember, apps are here to help you grow as a freelancer; not hinder your work.

8 UX Pitfalls To Avoid In Mobile App Design

Be it games, shopping, videos, news, stock market updates, or education, the number of apps available is increasing at a phenomenal rate. There is an app for everything imaginable. With more than 6.8 billion mobile subscribers which accounts for a staggering 87% of the world’s population and over 56 billion app downloads predicted for 2013– the mobile app industry is booming and perhaps is one of the fastest growing industries.
Analysts estimate that app revenues will hit $25 billion in 2013 and could triple by 2017. However, despite the buoyant figures, Localytics found that one in four apps are never used again once downloaded. Let us not discuss about zombie apps which never get downloaded even once and become oblivious in the app world.

So what is the reason behind this abysmal user engagement ratio? Is it poor usability, lack or innovation, or technical glitches? Well, this is a complicated and highly-debated question. While different theories regarding this low user engagement levels float, we will focus on the most common UX pitfalls in mobile app design that spill the word disaster for a mobile app.
Here are some of the common pitfalls that should be avoided:

# 1.  Tossing user experience to maintain consistency with web

Remember, mobile UX is unique and needs special consideration in terms of design and user interaction patterns. Simply scaling down website design for the mobile device without applying any thought will result in poor experience. It is important to maintain visual consistency across web and mobile mediums, but not at the cost of overall usability of your mobile app. Trying to put together all web UI elements into a mobile experience will not only confuse, but also alienate your audience. Branding cannot override user experience.

# 2. Information onslaught

It is a proven and documented fact that it is difficult to decipher content without context of use. Don’t bombard users with detailed tutorials mentioning everything about your app on the first time, especially if not asked for it. There is no denying that tutorials in apps are common and important to some extent. However, it is timing of information that counts. App should be intuitive and easy to navigate. In fact, if your app relies on extensive tutorials to clarify each and every functionality, it is an obvious UI failure.

# 3.  Apps that slow down

Mobile users are on the go and generally multitask while using apps. They want information at lightening fast rate with minimum efforts. If your app slows them down, they will look for better options. Avoid elements such as animations, videos, and heavy images that take too long to download.

# 4.  Apps that confuse and keeps you guessing

Keeping users guessing about every action kills the spontaneity associated with mobile apps. It is crucial that you provide feedback for actions and its result in the app clearly. In order to avoid confusion, play safe. Don’t experiment and deviate from tried and tested methods, unless you have a persuasive or compelling reason behind the change. It is important to rigorously test design elements that are likely to confuse users.

# 5.  Develop app for users and not yourself

Your app should evolve around your users. Period. Don’t just rely on your creative juices and resist the temptation of designing app the way you want to see. Rather design an app for your target audience. Show users what they want first. Always consider feedback as one of the most effective methods to improve your app.

# 6.  Blank Loading Screens

One reason that could definitely irritate customer is a blank loading screen, unless handled tactfully. It is important not to keep user staring at blank screen in anticipation of what will come next. Think about innovative ways to make blank pages appealing and engaging.

# 7.  Forced sign-up

There are thousands and thousands of apps out there. When you make it mandatory to go through a sign-up or registration process or ask for other credentials without showing the benefits of your app, you are bound to raise questions and doubts, ultimately leading to abandonment of your app. Always have the option of guest users for your app.

# 8.  Human-interface guidelines

Both Android and iOS offer comprehensive and well-defined human-interface guidelines for app makers. However, in the flow of creativity and innovation, designers ignore the standard and industry best practices. And the end result is overuse of unknown gestures, hidden menus, and jazzy visual elements which lack any purpose or context. These elements typically end up annoying and frustrating users.

Conclusion

One of the most overlooked aspects in developing a great user experience is observing user habits, interacting with UI design and modifying the app accordingly. But in an attempt to launch cool apps at reduced time-to-market factor, UX designers often compromise and in some cases get their basics of mobile app design wrong. Remember, exhaustive testing is one of the safest ways to overcome UX pitfalls and save yourself from huge losses.

Technology To Make Your Business Run Smoother

A business is a lot like a car: all the parts and pieces need to work together for you to move forward. And just like a car, to keep it running at peak performance you’ll need occasional upgrades and services. Depending on your business model and budget, you need to decide which upgrades take priority. But no matter of what you start with, there are many simple, cost-effective upgrades available that’ll help your business run like a well-oiled machine.
There are so many accounting programs on the market that it’s hard to choose which one to use, but don’t let that intimidate you. Regardless of which one you choose, these programs can cut a significant amount of time and cost from your budget. Accounting software is designed user-friendly so you or a member of your staff can easily learn the program, eliminating the need for an expensive corporate accountant.
The likely hood of a human-made error is also greatly reduced, resulting in a worry-free spring when taxes are due.

Accounting Software

There are so many accounting programs on the market that it’s hard to choose which one to use, but don’t let that intimidate you. Regardless of which one you choose, these programs can cut a significant amount of time and cost from your budget. Accounting software is designed user-friendly so you or a member of your staff can easily learn the program, eliminating the need for an expensive corporate accountant.
The likely hood of a human-made error is also greatly reduced, resulting in a worry-free spring when taxes are due.

New Office Equipment

When considering upgrading technology, office equipment seems to fall low on the list for most people. Consider this though: you may invest in the greatest software and most expensive machines, but if you’re employees are spending their days in uncomfortable chairs, productivity will drop from sore backs and unhappy workers.
Along with the reduced productivity, you’ll actually end up spending more on the cheap equipment. Buying that $50 knock off printer may seem like a good idea now, but when you end up having to replace or fix it every 6 months, you’ll regret not purchasing the $150 one with a 5 year warranty.

Cloud Data Storage

 

Utilizing technology like a cloud data storage system is something that every business should consider. In case a server crashes, you run the risk of losing important documents and projects, resulting in a huge loss of time and resources. With a cloud storage system, however, the only time you would lose your projects is if the entire Internet were to fail — if that were to happen you probably will have more pressing concerns.
With a cloud storage, you can get access to files at any place in the world. So if you’re managing multiple sites across a large distance or on a business trip, you’ll still have access to anything you need.

Workload Automation

Imagine a software program that can handle anything from job scheduling to IT processes. Workload automation software is leading the way in convenient, time-saving practices. Using workload automation won’t only save you time and money, but job scheduling and monitoring IT processes has never been easier. Allowing a program to handle these mundane daily tasks frees up your time to focus on promoting your business and striving for success.

Tablets

Tablets are revolutionizing the corporate world and are quickly becoming a must-have for any profitable company. In fact, many businesses are replacing tablets in lieu of laptops or desktop machines. So why should you consider getting a tablet? The portability for one is a big selling point.  Traveling with a laptop is frustrating, especially when so many face problems of over heating and poor battery life. Most tablets brag to have twice the battery life as laptops, and processors that are on par with desktops.
While not all the programs you have are capable with tablets yet, many developers are making it so you can do anything with a tablet that you can with a laptop.

Faster Wireless Internet

If you’re business is still using an 802.11b or 802.11g Wi-Fi network, it’s time to consider upgrading to a faster wireless network.  Working on an 802.11n Wi-Fi will yield better results in both productivity and functionality. Having increased wireless connection will make your work flow together seamlessly without pesky distractions like loading screens and buffering errors. It’ll also increase the amount of connected devices, meaning more people can connect and thus more work gets done.
Don’t let your business die because it couldn’t keep up with technological demands. The corporate world is an ever-changing, expanding community and if you want to succeed you need to prepare to change with it. New technology is often daunting, but is necessary to compete in today’s market. If you make it work in your advantage, you’ll find it’s the best thing that ever happened to your company.

What Is Open Source?

Open source software, open systems, open data, open standards, open….
‘Openness’ is a topic that is increasingly being talked about. From reading and listening to the discussion, it is clear there is no consistent definition of what Open is. However that doesn’t detract from the passion of open advocates and the benefits of Open source, data, standards etc.

Lets look at some of the components

Open source software consists of applications and components where the source code is publicly available for others to use and enhance as they wish. Such software has large (online) communities of developers and users sharing information on bugs, enhancements and ideas related to the application or component.
Examples include:

1. Joomla or Drupal – web content management applications
2. Thunderbird – desktop email and messaging application
3. LibreOffice – desktop productivity suite
4. Linux – operating system

In the world of open source software, there are two types of licences used to ‘govern’ ongoing development in summary;

• GNU General Public Licence where the main principle is that if you use an open source application or component in your software then your software needs to be made available as open source as well
• Apache Licence where the principle is a little different in that you don’t have to make your software application open to other developers even though you may have used open software in the application

(Open) standards are needed to produce open software

In order for software to be open, standards are needed. Open standards exist in many software areas but in order to considered as an open standard, each one must comply with a number of criteria. Two examples of open standards are;

• TCP / IP – together these two open protocols enable networks around the world to exchange data and thus was a big contributor to the development of the worldwide web
• HTML – one of the markup language standards for web pages

Such standards work from a similar principle as open software; if a standard is good enough, then they are used, otherwise an existing standard is enhanced or a new standard is started and shared around the world. One benefit from using open standards is ‘interoperability‘ where my application or component can work in different software environments.

Then there is open data

The final open component is open data, which is as important as the other components. As the use of the web has increased, so has the amount of data and information, both personal and business, from new product and customer announcements to holiday photos and Government services information. With this growth, a debate on how best to use all this information with due consideration to privacy, security and the potential benefits of information sharing has taken to the air.
In an ‘open’ letter from Google on the “Meaning of Open”, three useful principles of openness were discussed;

• Value - by sharing information and data companies can make products and services that can be beneficial to people. In return, companies need to explain in simple language to users the value that they receive in turn for sharing some or all of their data
• Transparency - where it needs to be easy for a user to find out what information is being gathered and how it is being used
• Control – where the final decision is in the hands of a user to easily control how much information is shared via such features as opt-out.

From my experiences of the Open world, I find it innovative and with that innovation it can be a little chaotic as open source software, standards and data evolve. Evolution is an apt term for the Open world because I think it’s a longer term game but progress is ongoing.

7 Reasons Why Android Is Still Better Than iOS7

Android and iOS, these are the two most competitive OS in the market of mobile applications. In such a healthy competition, no one can say that which one is better than other. In fact, I asked many people about their experience using iOS and Android but the supporters of both are almost equal. But I found in some cases that people prefer Android on iOS due to some genuine reasons.
iPhone released the iOS7 which is the latest version of OS. There is no doubt that the latest iOS7 is better from every aspect than other Apple OS but still it couldn’t defeat Android and people still love the OS of Google. Application developers for Android and iOS are also giving their vote to Android. Do you know why? Some features of Android are still better than iOS which I discuss below.

#1. Unlimited Sharing

It is a major edge of Android that it has unlimited sharing options. You can have any type of content, and move it through any app installed in your smartphone because the OS gives options to share the content to everywhere. On the other hand, iOS gives you limited options to share the content such as mail, message, social media (Facebook, Twitter, etc).

#2. Third Party Software Keyboards

In the Android, users have an advantage that they can replace the default keyboard from any type of third party keyboards available. This is not available in the iOS and still people are not happy about their typing experience in iOS7.

#3. More Options to Customize

Android also has unlimited options to customize your smartphone. Even if you want to download an iOS theme then you can through it. Whatever you want to do in your smartphone, you can do it by using Android. But iOS has limited options of customization.

#4. Easy Access to File System

When you attach your Android phone to your PC to transfer something then it gives a file system option in which there is flexibility for you to search any file(s) on your PC. On the other hand, iOS has no feature that can give you a similar type of access to your files.

#5. Import Photos from your Contacts

If you have an Android phone then it can automatically import your photos from your contact list. It also gives you the option to set these photos yourself. Due to this useful feature, it is very easy to view your contacts’ images rather than to view on iOS7.

#6. Multiple User Accounts

Come to the tablets. If you have an Android tablet then you can share it with any family member as well as co-workers because Android gives you a great option to create multiple accounts on one device, which just some limitations. But if you have an iPad then there is no similar type of option in it.

#7. Easy Access to Multimedia and Images

Download your favorite music and images from anywhere you want via your Android phone. It doesn’t care where the sources are from which you download any multimedia. But when we come to the iPhone then iTunes and iPhoto – both are required to access and download music as well as photos.
So, on the basis of these 7 features, I can say that Android is better and capturing the market more than iOS because users always prefer the ease and flexibility which they find in Android. I’m not saying that iOS has no value. It definitely has a big market in the world, but still, people love Android.  Which do you prefer?

Website Accessibility: Why Bother?

An accessible website is the one that anyone can access and can easily use, including those with disabilities. It would be fair to say that while most business want their website to be ‘user friendly’. Accessibility is not at the top of their agenda. In all of the years I have been developing business websites, no company has ever requested accessibility as part of their website brief. It is often part of the brief for public sector websites but even then this is usually a result of a legal requirement or the aim of achieving an award.
Making a website accessible can mean extra effort on behalf of the web designer and the organisation behind the site. To achieve great accessibility though, all types of end user need to be considered and catered for, from those with visual impairments who may use a screen reader to read your website’s text, to users with motor skill difficulties and intellectual disabilities. This can add extra cost to the project which many businesses are not willing to pay especially since the return on investment may not be immediately obvious. Given the extra cost and effort…

Why should a business consider having accessibility as part of their website brief?

1. If your business has a social conscious and states that it cares about it’s social responsibility, then incorporating some accessible features is worth considering. These can then be listed in an accessibility statement on your website.
2. You may think that your target customers do not have disabilities but when you think of all of the different types of disability then chances are that a certain percentage of them do. For example, most of them will not be totally blind, but many of your customers may have poor vision or be colour blind and will not want to work with you if they can’t use your website.
3. A website designed for people with disabilities will also be very accessible to everyone else, allowing your site to reach a wider audience.
4. Many accessibility features also have good cross over with other important considerations like cross browser and cross device compatibility. For example many experts don’t recommend the use of Flash, as screen readers can’t read the content in a Flash site and people with certain disabilities can find moving content hard to focus on or interpret. Similarly a Flash site won’t display at all on the iPhone or iPad so by meeting this accessibility requirement you are making a site that will ultimately be seen by more people. I have come across a few sites lately that because they are built entirely in Flash don’t display at all on the iPhone or iPad.
5. Accessibility forces you to think about the end user. Often business managers want to include a particular item on their website such as animation or a video because they think it will look impressive or because the competition has it on their website. If they have to consider ‘Is that Accessible?’ it forces them to stop and think about how the end user will perceive the content. If it does not enhance the site for the end user then why would you add it to your website?

If accessibility is part of your website brief from the beginning then it is a lot easier and cost effective to achieve than trying to make an existing site accessible.
In website accessibility – Part 2, I will guide you through some of the features you can add to your site to ensure it is accessible, as well as giving tips on how you can check the accessibility of your website. In the meantime The Centre For Excellence in Universal Design is a great resource.

VoIP: A Growing Industry

Infonetics Research, an international market research group, recently conducted a study that showed the VoIP (voice over internet protocol) industry growing by nearly 10% in the global market in 2012.  Taking into account both the business side of the VoIP industry and the quickly growing residential sector, combined revenue increased by about $6 billion dollars during 2012, making the industry worth some $63 billion dollars.
With these analytics in mind and keeping in-line with VoIP’s growth, experts expect that by 2017 global earnings will shoot up to $82.7 billion dollars.

Integrating into mainstream use

The reason behind VoIP’s growing success has to do with the way it has quickly begun to integrate itself into mainstream use.  When IP phone systems started to catch on back in 2004, it was still a pretty niche industry.  While some businesses were cutting the cord to their landlines and moving over to Internet-based telecommunications, many still were wary of putting so much trust into a fairly new industry.
But now in 2013, all that has changed. Each month, more and more geographic locations are opening up allowing the service to continue to proliferate on the global market.  This growth isn’t falling on deaf ears either—many of the big name phone service providers are in support of these changes, citing things like the continued upkeep costs of old switch operated lines and the push towards mobile communications as the main reasons to embrace this switch.

Why is VoIP attractive?

This begs the question: what makes VoIP such an attractive option over the quickly becoming defunct public switched network?  The answer lies in a user or company’s pre-existing IP structure.  VoIP is made possible as packets of information travel between one user and the other, similar to the way information travels across the internet, only instead of text, video and images, VoIP packets transport sound.

Hosted or not?

Within the industry, consumers are given two options: hosted or not hosted.  Hosted VoIP uses a supplier’s servers to host the service, eliminating the need for the company in question to devote any onsite personnel to the upkeep and maintenance of the technology.  This can be a great fit for companies in the nascent stages of growth who have yet to dedicate an IT staff for such issues.
Non-hosted VoIP services require that the business purchases the necessary equipment from a dealer and sets up the infrastructure on their own.  The benefits of this method include faster response times in the event of an error and a heavier hand in the quality control department.  If a business has a dedicated IT team, they should have no problem setting up and maintaining an onsite VoIP system.

The future of VoIP

What do VoIP services have in store for the future?  While businesses continue to enjoy the benefits of Internet based telephony, VoIP suppliers seek to make more of an impact on the residential market.  By advertising lower rates (in some cases up to a 90% annual savings) and many of the same features that exist on today’s public switched networks such as three-way calling, call waiting and voicemail, suppliers hope to prove that VoIP phone services are an attractive alternative to their current method of telephone-based communication.
Today, many government organizations are spearheading the VoIP movement as they release study after study that shows the huge opportunity for savings.  One study conducted in schools across the UK showed how switching to VoIP communication systems saved them nearly £100 million annually.  Funds saved on phone services can lead to increased investment in new teaching technologies and supplies.  If VoIP technologies can save this much money in the education sector alone, just imagine what it can do for your industry!
Have any thoughts that you would like to weigh in with?  I’d love to hear from you below.