Top 6 trends and technologies that’s changing our future!

We have heard that “necessity is the mother of all inventions”, however, what is driving our innovations in modern times, is more than just necessity, it’s our “need” for futurization – meeting the technologies that we see in Sc-Fi movies!

To fulfill these needs of ours is what some have taken as their quest. Hence, we are bombarded with overwhelming number of new techs, every now and then. However, only few really capture our wonder and leave us in awe. Here are a few that did so.Top-6-trends-technology

1.Staying Connected

We have already experienced how convenient it is, when our various devises such as smart phones, laptops and desktop computers are connected via network and make possible for a synced experience. Now, there is our TVs, watches, eye-wares and even cars capable of staying connected with each other and offering us unworldly comfort and accessibility.

This user pleasure doesn’t seem to stop there; with our fridges, heaters, electric meter and other appliances being able to stay connected and communicate between each other, the possibilities of this technology is practically – limitless.

2.Wear Them Too

Closely working in tandem with the above tech, the trend for having devices that are wearable is the “talk of town”. You wear them where you go, from activity bands and Google glasses to smart clothing and smart helmets; the wearable device trend is fast catching on and is leading every tech company out there to wage a war of innovation. These devices can keep track of their user’s daily activities and habits, to provide them with the right information – before they ask for it – how good of a future is that?

3.The (AR) Augmented Reality

Anyone who has seen Augmented Reality in action will know immediately that mankind has made a breakthrough with this technology. Like touch screens that changed the way we use some of our devices, the AR has the power to alter our realty to a whole new level. This amazing technology connects the virtual world with the physical world seamlessly. And with the type of connectivity we can envision being available in our coming future, this AR can open-up an engaging user experience across its digital space.

4.Algorithm to Learning

Now, with Google searches and email spam filtering we understand how our usage history and data can influence the future results. However, this is getting to be obsolete, as newer and more powerful technology is on its way. Called the Machine Learning Algorithm – this technology is based on the advancement in the algorithm of data collection and analysis. The algorithm is such that the system learns, develops and adapts to one’s personal usage, thus becoming capable of predicting and suggesting your future engagements.

5.mHealth

Smartphone’s these days are probably used by more than half the human population on earth. They are with us right through the day, now they can collect information on our day-to-day activities and provide related recommendations, for example on what we can eat, where we can go, what we can read, etc. The mHealth’s potential to direct and improve the lifestyle of numerous users is unparalleled.

6.Print in 3D

The creative possibilities of 3D printing are only left to your imagination. From artistic creations to business potentials, like for sampling architecture or house planning and designing, this technology is beyond the capabilities of any other printer you might have known before. Being able to literally print solid objects, 3D printing could become a perfect business potential.

Companies would no longer need to keep a warehouse of spares – they can just print them into existence!

Other trends that could make some major influences on future lifestyle:

E-learning

Online courses have been around for a long time now, however, its practicality when compared to traditional certification methods, was very negligible. This seems to be changing though, as lot and lot more of students are enrolling on these online certification courses.

Even physical universities have started to offer many online certification courses for their students; this includes globally top ranking universities.

Virtual Money

Have you heard of bit coins? If not – then, they can be considered as something that’s effectively equal to our physical currency, only now they are Virtual. Thus, unlike debit cards or credit cards that represent physical cash that can be used online, these virtual money are on a different level. They are currency on their own rights. Which, you can use to make your purchases or other transactions.

How, effective this will be is left for the future to decide.

How to make Social Media a Marketing Ground for your Mobile Apps?

You have had a great success with the development of your mobile app. You have worked along with your app development partners and have created the most wonderful and useful app. Now you are wondering, what’s the next step towards getting your - soon to be “Hit” - app to its intended customers? Without thinking further, you would know that app promotions and advertisements are your best bets in reaching far and wide. However, how would you go about doing it? Most developers will suggest you that, “in-app advertisements” should be good enough.

Is that enough, though? Remember, it is all about creating demands, the more you let people know about your app and the various uses it offer, the more you create that needed demand. So, would you want to stick with “in-app ads” alone? You probably should think “No”. If so, then what else can you do?

That’s where socialmedia marketing come into play. They are mostly free resources that help you reach potential audience over wider range. Thus, without having to spend a small fortune, you can start promoting your apps to audiences, otherwise not so easily accessible.

Here are few things that you can do in order to make that push through social media and amplify your mobile apps promotion.

• Temptation with Content

To bring more visibility towards your app, it is important that you create great quality content that details your app’s various uses and functions. Thus, keeping your potential audience engaged with the practical usage of your app. Creating the need that will drive them to want your app.

The more creative you are with your promotional contents, the more likely that you can capture your intended customers. An attractive to engage with your audience is to create videos of your app’s uses in real situations. This is a straight and effective way to get people to understand your product. The more they familiarize with the app, the more they will want to try it out for themselves. To create this want, is our goal here.

Making these videos funny could add to the excitement and help you push your app without trying too hard. This could be the right calling card depending upon the function of you app, however this usually works for most apps. Also keeping the content simple and allowing the viewers to imaging its implications will guaranty more downloads than otherwise. While at the same time, the more sharable and the more likable your video is, the greater its chance of doing well by itself.

Also, linking your videos to other highly viewed videos - that in some remote way is related with what your app has got to offer or to videos that would peak the viewer’s interest on the features offered by your app - will amplify your app’s popularity meter tremendously.

Having videos of someone influential using your app on the context of explaining something else is also a great way to promote your product. As people watching the video will consider your app to be highly credible, owing to it being not the primary objective of the video itself. This will spread passive popularity and frankly all the more popularity we can get, the better, isn’t it?

• Social Networking

Apart from video marketing with YouTube, you can use other social networking sites too, to make your desire impact on the mobile apps market. The social media sites mentioned here, practically have the entire online world following them in one form or another. How much of an impact will it have on your app’s recognition, is only left to your imagination if you could make one solid presence on any of these networking sites.

Facebook

Literally has millions of users using it every day. With this kind of customer potential, a perfect Facebook channel for your app - can have no alternative in terms of your social media marketing. However, getting this amount of recognition requires dedication and planning.

Once your channel is created, you will start off with practically zero credibility and followers. But, that’s how a beginning usually is. Following others to get them follow you should be start. Then, with constant posting of new contents and articles (related to your app), should be able to get your channel up and running. Keeping your followers updated and providing them with proper follow-ups on their feedbacks, will improve your credibility greatly. And providing them valuable information during conversations will grant you their respect. All this will boost your channel’s reputation and thus your app’s downloads - which is the goal ultimately.

Google +

Might not be as powerful as the Facebook, but, Google+ has its own perks. Being a product of Google, obviously, you app has higher possibilities of making it to the top of the search results when you get it well established here. Then, Google has the hashtag! Use it wisely to improve your SEO.

Twitter

Best place to network and meet “those” influential people, who can promote your app, indirectly, as they re-tweet or otherwise. Then there is a twitter’s feature, called the “Twitter Cards”, with which you can smartly promote your app via content marketing.

Following these, should help you off the line with a flying start and then some more. Else, you can always hire a social media marketing company to do these for you.

How to build your website across multiple devices and different browsers?

Regardless to the type of device our customers use when browsing through our website, they expect to have a great browsing experience. And the responsibility to give them that is ours. An easy to use website, that’s also compatible with the different browsers available, is a mandatory field that needs to be fulfilled in order to experience your website’s full online potential.

Few years ago optimizing the website to a standard screen resolution and running them on few browsers to test their credibility, was enough to be confidently publish the site and expect all the visitors to experience a roughly similar web experience. Some of the users may notice minor issues such as greater display resolution or different fonts, etc. However, mostly the appearance of the website was constant overall, in spite of OS difference or browser difference.

But, in today’s world people are not confined to just few different browsers and even fewer OSs on their desktop or laptop computers, they are now free to access the web for anywhere through any of the mobiledevices available with hundreds of different display capabilities – smart phones, tablets, of course PCs and even TVs. Also, people have become accustomed to accessing these different devices simultaneously and syncing them between each other.

So, how do we ensure that the browsing experience is uniform and best for all our website visitors? Here are few steps that you can take in order to ensure that.

Analyzing your traffic and customer interactions

It is of primary importance to immediately understand the visitors to your website. What type of device they are using? What type of content they are accessing? Etc. When, with your analysis you realize that the visitors using mobile devices to access your website averages above 10% of the total, then it is time for you to make the necessary changes to your website to make it mobile optimized. And optimizing the contents of your site to be more customers centric (i.e. contents for which visitors access your website) will grant you better traffic flow.

• Responsive Web Designing

As we have seen, to improve the user experience of visitors using mobile devices to access your website, it is important we make our websites mobile optimized. And one such way of optimizing our website is using ResponsiveWeb Designing (RWD.) RWD ensures that the contents of the existing web pages are uniformly displayed on various screen sizes and across different platforms. This is all done without having to create a separate website for mobile viewing alone. This is a much simpler option which can be used when you do not require advanced features on your web pages. RWD resizes your web pages to perfectly fit within all the different screen without the need of zooming or side scrolling.

• Dedicate Website for the Mobiles

Certain websites require more complex functionality such as user interactions, etc in such a case we recommend the development of mobile specific websites. A website with pages that are specifically designed to be used on mobile devices – higher visibility, faster load time, seamless design, easy form interactions are some of the features this option allows. Websites selling products on the web or websites with requires constant interactions with other visitors can make use of this type of mobile optimization optimally.

• Making Browser Specific Changes

Apart for optimizing the websites to be compatible for mobile device viewing, it is also necessary to optimize them to be compatible with the browsers available to the users without any issues.

There were days when you had to have all the different browsers open individually, and check for issues or incompatibility between your website updates and the browsers. When found, you had to again individually make the necessary changes to the coding based on the issue, on a completely setup. This was a time consuming process as multiple changes to multiple page layouts meant, work on them forever.

However, with the advent of newer technologies - HTML 5 and CSS 3 - and better means to make the changes, this process has become much easier. Now, coding the contents based on the browser market you want to engage or conquer will allow you to successfully optimize you web contents to be compatible with the different web browsers.

It is a known fact that with regards web technology, it is possible for the websites to work as good as it can even when something is quite not right. Which when compared with other programming environment is above notches, as even the mistake there will completely cripple it.

Hence, make sure you make necessary change whenever any issue is found on the websites, to provide your customers with the best user experience; to keep your business or service going to greater heights.

Options to list your website on top via online traffic!

How do you increase traffic to your websites? A question that has been a topic of discussion, on many occasions. Also, to which the answers are numerous. However, most of these answers all point to certain key factors that make up for major impact on your websites. They are Quality Content, Social Networking and Good Web Design.

Increasing the traffic flow to any website is a concern for any business or service that is striving to take a foot hold through online means. This is because more traffic naturally means more business possibilities and prospects of growth. To this end many companies go to great levels and greater financial strains in order to attain and sustain peek traffic to this websites.

So, can you too compete and expect to see results in areas where the big fish are dominating? Following are some ways and methods you can consider, that will help you sustain in the competition and improve your website’s traffic.

1- Content

There is always a demand for good and quality content, it doesn't matter how tough the competitions are, but, content that is rich and original will keep your customers coming back to you. Here are some tips to help you with that.

Great Beginning - Title

What other better way is there to attract people to your content than a catchy and resourceful title? Title of an article is the first thing that a reader will see before getting to your article. And that usually will be the only thing they will be seeing, if it isn't driving them forward. So, spend time on your titles and come up with attractive captions that can hook a reader in a glance and spike there interest to a level beyond their resistance.

The Content

It is important to understand, that reader are here to gain something from your article. So, it is very important to provide them with just that. So, making sure your content is rich with information and proves to be a source where your readers can learn something from it, addresses this need. Ensuring this can greatly boost the value of your content.

Never post a duplicate of another website, because this will put yours right at the bottom of the order.

Covering one sector of audience and offering them the best of what they can get, will dramatically increase your web’s traffic with one section of people. This is much better than trying to cover a wider range of audience and not being able to deliver such high quality of content. For this you could either start a web on topic related to your interest, or one based a topic that is least covered (This will require research on its own).

Final Touches

Giving the proper finishing touches can make the difference between “another article” and “right article”. These include Meta Descriptions, Keywords and Tags to your article. Posting your content under the right category and linking them with suitable tags and keywords is a very important step, that, if ignored is going to deprive your website off potentially great traffic. However, don’t overdo them though.

2-Social Networking

As your contents become more and more likable, your readers would want to share it, thus creating contents that are easily sharable through networking sites is mandatory for a successful website.

Twitter, Facebook, Google+ Pinstrip, Instagram are some of the major networking site that you effectively can use for this purpose. Making sure that you have a greater presence in these will improve your traffic by multi-folds, as sharing and following becomes a necessary step towards getting higher recognition and exposure.

Interacting with your readers and creating opportunities where they are motivated to interact, comment, follow and write on your forms is also part of networking. The more networked you are, the higher the probability for greater website traffic.

Apart from getting your website linked to these sites, you can also make internal links. That is creating links to your older posts within newer post, where appropriate.

Advertising

Of various modes of marketing, advertising has had the primary position for centuries. This holds true with our need for more traffic too.

There are both offline and online methods to advertise your website. The most obvious means of offline advertising is through word of mouth; tell everyone you know and get to know about your website - newspapers, magazines, etc are other mediums that you can make use of.

The online methods would involve buying advertising packages available in search engine majors, such as Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, etc.

3-Good Web Design

The look and layout of your website is another factor that is going to play a vital role in retaining and attracting customers and tempting them to return often. Making sure that your website’s design matches that of what you are offering is the first step towards it.

A simple and sharp web interface will go a long way in being attractive. The layout will be simple to handle and easy to navigate around. This keeps the visitors and potential customers from getting lost and frustrated.

Make your website optimized for mobile devices. As more and more are accessing the internet via their smartphones and tables, it is only obvious that optimization of your website to suit these needs is next to immediate.

These are some of the best proven and tested ways to improve the traffic for your websites.

Mobile augmented reality apps to drive sales in retail sector!

The term Augmented Reality (AR) has been around for over two decades now, however only with the advancement of smartphones did AR really begin to make the intended impact. And the implications of this technological marvel are so huge that whatever is available in the digital world at the moment (Jul 2014) is only scratching its surface.

More over with the advent of newer and better computing options such as wearable computing and “smarter” smartphones, AR is making a steady progress into the consumer market. The implication possibility of this AR technology is only left to the imagination and the capabilities of mobile apps.

From being a tech toy that’s used for entertainment and fun to being one of this generations’ ultimate business tool, AR’s potential is limitless. With that in “sight” Google & many other companies are scrambling ahead to make this market, theirs. One such product from Google is Google Glass, it is set to make use of all the potentials of AR to its advantage and deliver the perfect Augmented Reality world to the users.

So, how all this has anything to do with the retail business?

In today’s world, the conventional means and modes of shopping has dwindled to a great extent. Once we all had no other options but to physically go to places and browser through the shop’s inventories and shelves in order to look for the products we want to buy. However, now we have plentiful of options no matter what we are looking to buy be it garments, tech gadgets or even an automobile. We can browse for them, compare them, customize them, read their reviews, order them, advance book them, all that and more by sitting anywhere we want with a computing device and an internet connection, through a wondrous technology called online shopping. What more could we want? Everything at our finger tip!

Well, we humans cannot get enough of anything, can we? Here comes AR to quench this thirst, with its next level of shopping possibilities. Blending the two worlds together – the online world and the offline world – to give us this next level experience. Let’s have a look at some of the mobile application possibilities, of which most are already being implemented in shops across the globe.

• Virtual Fitting:

So, what makes the major difference between the online garment stores and the real-world stores? It’s the Trial Room!

This has always been the issue with buy a dress online, we cannot be sure of its fitting until we finally receive it in hand and are able to try it out personally. Now, with AR’s Virtual Fitting we can do just that; virtually.

We can try out all the different garments available to our hearts content and then make the buy. As an added bonus, this process in much less cumbersome and is within instants.

• Warehouse Space Management and Navigation:

Keeping a record of the warehouse’s inventory is by itself a daunting task, finding a particular product from this huge list could prove to be another trouble altogether. With the AR technology, all this can change in a jiffy. Browsing the inventory, updating it, filtering it can all possibly be done with just a look and few clicks. Now, how smart is that?

We no longer have to navigate around the huge spaces of a warehouse blandly looking at the lists. Rather looking straight at the various cartons could give a virtual 3d image of its contents, thus cutting down our time spent drastically.

• Advertising and Product Details:

No longer do advertising banners and posts be static and uneventful, retail brands can AR their advertisements and capture the eyes of potential customers. The poster can be augmented with product videos, content details, etc.

The customers will also be able to scan through the various products available in the store and get detailed information including product rating, coupons, expert discussions, etc on these different products in an instant. Allowing us to make informed purchases.

• Virtual Products:

Gone will be our present days, where we take measurements of our living room wall to find the right set of sofas. Through the AR tech, we can get projected catalog – IKEA is offering this option – to virtually stimulate an experience in real time and in real scale to view exactly how the product would fit within the home space; long before we make the decision to buy.

Thus, the magnitude and potential if this great technology is unfathomable, yet. But, all hands point towards the direction of absolute growth for the retailers who make wise use of this Augmented Reality.

How to list your app on top using app store optimization?

Let’s face it, the mobile apps industry has grown multi-folds over the past few years and continues to grow at staggering rates. With hundreds if not thousands of apps under similar categories already competing over the top positions, new app developers don’t seem to have much chance at even getting noticed, that is, unless they are considering to work on their App Store Optimization (ASO).

ASO is similar to SEO, however, for optimization of their mobile apps’ ranking. At present the app industry is split between two major players in terms of market share – Apple’s iOS and Android. Let’s have a look at them.

Google Play for Android

Android is an open source platform and has slightly greater market share and correspondingly more apps under its belt than its counterpart; which doesn't necessarily mean it has “better” apps though. Also, android seems to show an increase in its share, during the course of coming years due to this open sourced nature of the platform.

Apple’s iOS Store

Apple’s iOS on the other hand is not an open source platform, hence, the number of apps available in iOS Store is comparably less. Yet Apple is making more revenue from its apps than Google Play, in-spite of android having more apps and more downloads per app.

App Store Optimization Techniques to optimize your Apps:

Here is a quick tip to help you optimize your apps to hit the top lists.

1  App Titles

An app title is the most important aspect, keeping it small and making sure it highlights the apps main function will add to your ASO. The ideal recommendation for an app titles is 25 characters or less, as longer titles do not appear appealing when viewed through small screens of a mobile devices.

2  App Description

A short and clear explanation on what the app is about on what it does. Consider this as the place where you market your app, so make sure to provide all the necessary details, while making sure it is still short enough for users accessing through mobile devices to understand it preciously. As any misleading information here could lead to your app getting a lot of negative feedback, which obviously is what we are trying to avoid.

3  App Icon / Logo

Make sure you spend your time and effort on developing an icon/logo for your app. Get creative here and make it happen, never ignore this aspect of the app, as it is one of the key for ASO. Developing one that represents the essence of the app is going to make a great difference too.

4  Category

How else are the users going to be able to find your app, if you are not categorizing it under the right one? When not clear on which category your app will fall under, it is best to scope through the different categories, analyze other similar app and the category they are posted in. If the app falls under multiple categories then place it in the one that’s most appropriate.

5  Screenshots / Videos

Users like to have a look at the app before downloading it, be it a game or any other application; this is where you can capture this interest. A neat screenshot or a video demo (Google Play) increases interest and trust, leading to more download probability.

6  Google Play – Google Plus

As, both are products of Google, a Google Plus plugin of your app is also available. More pluses your apps get in it the more likely your app could end up being on top. Use this feature wisely.

7  iOS Store – Keywords

Follow the recommendations of Apple and Keep your keywords as unique as possible and avoid dumping of generic keywords. This could prove counter-productive.

Following these tips will greatly boost your app’s ranking on both the Google Play and iOS Store. However, like all this in like – practice makes perfect.

Browser based video formats in HTML5

Video formats are diverse and each of them can be used in a specified browsers. Few of the video formats are MP4, VP8, VP9, Theora and so on. There are lots of browsers being used in the web. Most of the web developers are not aware of the latest browsers and the video formats supported by the browsers, they automatically use the prescribed or default video formats. In order to display the videos without any plugins, HTML 5 launched an element called ‘video element’.

Let us have brief information about the Video element of HTML 5 and the browser-based video formats in this article…

HTML 5 Supported Video Formats

HTML5 does not state which video formats should be supported browsers. If a video format is appropriate, the browser can support them for free. But, content authors will not allow them to do so, as they consider that the browsers have no least set of video formats to support.

The HTML5 Working Group states that, each browser should support at least one video format. That ideal format of a video should hold the following constraints:

• Royalty-free
• Good image quality
• Low decode processor use
• Good compression
• Hardware video decoder must be present with software decoder for a video format. 

Video Element of HTML 5

To download a video file in a browser, two methods are used:

• JavaScript canPlayType() function

Type refers to the MIME (Multi-Purpose Internet Mail Extension) type and the list of codecs. This instructs the browser to decode the file.

•  <source>

Fallback is supported by the ‘video’ element through the multiple sources specifications. <source> can be any number of elements. The file to be downloaded can be picked by the browser.

Browser- based Video Formats

Theora and WebM are the free formats. MPEG-4 is the non-free format. The most common browser-based video formats in HTML 5 are:

• Theora
• H.264 (MP4)
• VP8
• VP9
• MPEG 4

Let us see in detail about the browser-based video formats regarding their operating systems, versions, and the browsers to be used.

 

Theora

Theora	Browser	OS	Latest Version
3.0	Google Chrome	35.0.1916.153	35.0.1916.153
Manual	Internet Explorer	Windows	11.09
3.5	Mozilla Firefox	Windows 7+, Vista, Linux,  Android and others	30.0 ESR 24.6.0
2.3	Android	Android	4.2.1 Jelly Bean
2.28	Web	All supported	3.12.2
10.50	Opera	Windows Presto, Windows OS, Linux, FreeBSD	12.17, 22.0.1471.7, 12.16
r18297	Chromium	Unix, & others	-
Manual	Safari	OSX	7.0.5, 6.1.5
4.4	Konqueror	All supported	4.13.1

 

H.264 (MP4)

MP4	Browser	OS	Latest Version
3.0	Google Chrome	35.0.1916.153
9.0, 9.0, 10.0	Internet Explorer	Windows, Windows Phone, Windows RT	11.09, 10.0, 10.0
21.0, 22.0, 26.0, 17.0	Mozilla Firefox	Windows 7+, Vista, Linux,  Android	30.0 ESR 24.6.0
3.0	Android	Android	4.2.1 Jelly Bean
2.28	Web	All supported	3.12.2
11.50	Opera	20 for Android 12.0.22 for Symbian S60 10.0 for Windows Mobile
3.1	Safari	OSX	7.0.5, 6.1.5
Manual	Chromium	Unix	-
4.4	Konqueror	All supported	4.13.1

 

 VP8

VP8	Browser	OS	Latest Version
6.0	Google Chrome	35.0.1916.153
Manual	Internet Explorer	Windows	11.09
4.0	Mozilla Firefox	Windows 7+, Vista, Linux,  Android & others	30.0 ESR 24.6.0
2.3	Android	Android	4.2.1 Jelly Bean
2.28	Web	All supported	3.12.2
11.50 10.50	Opera	20 for Android, 12.0.22 for Symbian S60 10.0 for Windows Mobile
		Windows Presto, Windows OS, Linux, FreeBSD
Manual	Safari	OSX	7.0.5, 6.1.5
r47759	Chromium	Unix	-
4.4	Konqueror	All supported	4.13.1

 VP9

VP9	Browser	OS	Latest Version
29.0	Google Chrome	35.0.1916.153
-	Internet Explorer	-
28.0	Mozilla Firefox	Windows 7+, Vista, Linux,  Android & others	30.0 ESR 24.6.0
-	Android	-
2.28	Web	All supported	3.12.2
16.0	Opera	20 for Android 12.0.22 for Symbian S60 10.0 for Windows Mobile
-	Safari	-	-
r172738	Chromium	Unix	-
4.4	Konqueror	All supported	4.13.1

   

MPEG 4/H.264

This format is widely used. It has good speed, video quality, hardware decoders, and compression.

H.264 is used in MP4 format, with Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) audio. Users of MP4 should hold the licences of both AAC and H.264. This format is supported by Apple and Microsoft.