•
One of the iPad's biggest selling points is its potential as an e-Reader. The included iBooks application and the optional downloadable Amazon Kindle app, for example, provide hundreds of thousands of books to read, all in a relatively standard format: swipe horizontally to flip a page . iPad magazines, however, are trying to be far more creative. As we've mentioned before , the new magazine-style applications include everything from video to music within their pages, plus interactive features and clickable ads. But one problem with these innovative new 'zines is that they each do their own thing, in their own way. While this early adopter applauds the innovations we're seeing on the iPad platform, the mainstream user may find the variations confusing. Sponsor Mini-Movies and More First up: the heavily praised interactive VIV mag , a standout among online newstand Zinio's offerings. Early demos were decidedly exciting. This wasn't text - it was a multimedia experience ! The article featured in the demo video , a sex-ed advice guide, used actors against a green screen to produce a mini-movie illustrating the article's main points. Worried about AIDS? A women writhes against a bull's-eye as knives fly at her. Afraid of pregnancy? A women casts a worried glance at the man entering the room while pressing her hand to her stomach. In practice, however, this format is not as much fun as expected. The cover features clickable links, one that reads "Enter Issue" and another that says "Click to VIVIFY this cover!" Sorry - what? Now I know that they mean "launch interactive content" but mainstream Dicks and Janes may not. And the iPad, if anything, is targeting these so-called "everyday" users - the content consumers whose tech-savviness is a bit lacking, if I may say so kindly. But if you don't "vivify" the mag, you miss the movies - the main attraction. (There is a "Vivify" button at the bottom of each page, too, in case you didn't see it the first time around, but the text next to it says "Tap on the 'V' to read more." Read? How about "watch" or "see?") Another problem with VIV? I'm not sure if it was an app glitch or an iPad one, but the first movie got stuck "downloading" at 16%. Future, here I come? Next is TIME magazine . A gushing editor's letter talks about the publication's embracing the new slate-computer platform of the iPad. But how they've done so is already attracting some criticism . One of the problems is that TIME decided to go with vertical swipes for reading articles but horizontal swipes for navigating from one article to the next. This is not intuitive. On an eReader, whether book or magazine, we expect to read left to right. Vertical only works on the desktop-based web. Condé Nast's GQ magazine is another specialized iPad creation I examined. It doesn't start off well: upon launch, a progress bar displays how much of the magazine has download so far. Will the mainstream user know that you don't have to wait for the download to complete before you tap "read issue?" I'm so not sure. They've also chosen to go with vertical navigation for reading articles and horizontal navigation for scrolling between sections. Meanwhile, Car & Driver's "iPad Interactive Edition" returns you to plain ol' horizontal flipping. In fact, the magazine looks so much like a color PDF that we almost missed the interactive features. Obviously, two white squares overlaid on an image surely means "launch photo gallery," right? One app that gets it right is NPR ....although that's probably because it's not really trying to be a magazine, despite the company's claims that it uses a "magazine-style presentation." While it's true that you can flip from page to page, horizontally of course, the app is more than a mere digitized mag. There's an audio player, playlist creator, program and station finder and more. The news items with an audio track feature buttons for listening and adding to your playlist. Straight text-based items do not. Simple and easy, and overall, well-done. At the end of the day, these magazines are still more fun than their analog counterparts, but, clearly, they're all in very experimental stages right now. The navigation and interactive features differ from magazine app to magazine app, with some getting it better than others. Will they eventually standardize their presentation in an effort to simplify their features? Should they? It's too early to tell what format readers will prefer: mini-movies, some interactive bits sprinkled throughout or straight-laced e-reading. In the meantime, it will be interesting to try out all the variations. Discuss
The rest is here:
iPad Mags: Amazing or Confusing?
Tags:
aids,
amazon,
amazon kindle,
app,
apple,
article,
clickable ads,
desktop,
driver,
interactive,
iPad,
magazine,
mainstream user,
movies,
pdf,
presentation,
Read,
time,
variations,
VIV
•
EMC is a large company focused on high performance storage for enterprises. It's offerings are closely aligned with the idea of extending infrastructure from virtualization to private cloud infrastructure. The company wants to help IT data provisioning services are as easy as Amazon and as secure as Fort Knox. To get a handle of where enterprise data storage meets the web, we looked for inspiration from architects of the web and Internet, including web pioneer Sir Tim Berner-Lee and Vint Cerf . We take a look at EMC as positioned as the closet, physically, to the core assets of the enterprise. Sponsor In this report, we also spoke with Ted Newman, CTO of the Cloud Infrastructure Group of EMC Consulting, which is part of EMC Global Services to find out what is really happening in the enterprise sales and delivery engines. We mashed his thoughts up with some big-thinkers in the core of computing to get perspective on the company's future as a map to enterprise information assets. Where Does Data Live? EMC's byline is " Where Information Lives ", and by being a leading provider of storage solutions, this claim is literal indeed. Here, we see that data does have a home. In this case, in an enclosure, in a data center. This YouTube video shares a 2009 demonstration of EMC's Symmetrix V-Max. This unit, built in partnership with Intel, can be configured with up to two petabytes of storage and one terrabyte of cache. Based on our interview Newman from the company and its focus on creating and extending private clouds, we think the EMC is recognizing the vast power of extending the enterprise out and providing services that compete with with the ease and speed of Amazon Web Services, but also provide enterprise class controls and performance. Where Does Data Dance? Tim Berners Lee sheds some light in this interview about the future of the web and its data. Question : "Is your vision of the Semantic Web one in which data is freely available, or are there access rights attached to it?" Answer : "A lot of information is already public, so one of the simple things to do in building the new Web of data is to start with that information. And recently, I've been working with both the U.K. government and the U.S. government in trying not only to get more information on the Web, but also to make it linked data. But it's also very important that systems are aware of the social aspects of data. And it's not just access control, because an authorized user can still use the right data for the wrong purpose. So we need to focus on what are the purposes for accessing different kinds of data, and for that we've been looking at accountable systems. Accountable systems are aware of the appropriate use of data, and they allow you to make sure that certain kinds of information that you are comfortable sharing with people in a social context, for example, are not able to be accessed and considered by people looking to hire you. For example, I have a GPS trail that I took on vacation. Certainly, I want to give it to my friends and my family, but I don't necessarily wish to license people I don't know who are curious about me and my work and let them see where I've been. Companies may want to do the same thing. They might say, "We're going to give you access to certain product information because you're part of our supply chain and you can use it to fine-tune your manufacturing schedule to meet our demand. However, we do not license you to use it to give to our competition to modify their pricing." This vision is where there is opportunity, accountable means controls. Shared, means cloud. Perhaps a new term in the making: Accountable clouds. Does Your Cloud Compile? Vint Cerf, Chief Internet Evangelist posted to the Google Research blog, Cloud Computing and the Internet that further expands on vocabulary management and cloud computing. We see a definition of cloud computing emerging here that ties it to data portability and capability, a defining moment in the definition of semantic web. "Interestingly, my colleague, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, has been pursuing ideas that may inform the so-called "inter-cloud" problem. His idea of data linking may prove to be a part of the vocabulary needed to interconnect computing clouds. The semantics of data and of the actions one can take on the data, and the vocabulary in which these actions are expressed appear to me to constitute the beginning of an inter-cloud computing language. This seems to me to be an extremely open field in which creative minds everywhere can be free to contribute ideas and to experiment with new concepts. It is a new layer in the Internet architecture and, like the many layers that have been invented before, it is an open opportunity to add functionality to an increasingly global network." All of the sudden, the semantic web seems required to realize the vision of the cloud. And, the great thing about it is that the cloud layer being a first example of the semantic web shows us we can start it in information technology's own backyard. EMC's Opportunity The enterprise of the future needs to share nicely, store petabytes at-will, and be available on demand. Also, to the degree that organizations run sensitive or personalized enterprise software, the platforms it runs on and interacts with will need to demonstrate the controls and permissions similar to those today inside the enterprise. This will be a key factor in whether the enterprise systems can gracefully consume cloud computing - or what they can adopt it for. This is the space open for EMC to provide hardware solutions coupled with software to manage the resources of the cloud, including storage, computing, and network. This is also the area of much focus - from monitoring to provisioning. And a winner is not going to be determined overnight. A roundup of open questions for the company and the enterprise information industry: VMware and Not - Can EMC win soley with ties to VMware, if open source hypervisors take significant market share, can and will the company be well positioned in these architectures? Oracle with Sun - Will Oracle's move into hardware, cloud, and storage have an impact on the companies positioning? S3 Servers in the Enterprise - We may have made this up. It seems clear that S3 and other Amazon Web Services will become the core fabric for IT adopting the cloud. It only makes sense to do the same with abstracting storage in the enterprise. We believe in the power of the cloud to creep in, and we want to see how big storage providers react to this new logical competitor. A key here for EMC and the rest of the IT industry is that Amazon sells storage with no consulting involved, or waiting period. At EMC, global services was responsible for 37% of EMC's total revenue in 2009 and is a important part of servicing customers. We wonder, should EMC offer an "S3" for the enterprise that plugs into Ionix and other EMC offerings? Open Protocols Inside, APIs Outside? - We asked recently in a discussion with Hitachi Data Systems whether open protocols instead of APIs would be the driver for this industry interoperability. Amazon, is clearly an API, where things more in the core of storage tier are protocols, worked on in tandem by many and influenced by those who matter. Helping IT Respond to Now - In a way, EMC and cloud computing meet in the IT budgeting process. We think that providing "always available" and "highly available" will meet, "low latency" and "DR" in a real way in future Amazon vs. internal discussions. What we mean, is that Amazon providing "scale as you go" is perfect disruption for the IT department. Iinfrastructure scales, IT budgets don't. This can be a big headache for IT trying to predict the future and is an opportunity for EMC to provide a better solution for enterprise capacity management. Yes, that means paying with a credit card - at least sometimes. Intel / Cisco as partners - New types of network management and cloud services are evolving in the chipset and network layer. We see the companies maturity in how it has global partnerships with these companies to help the the channel and drive solutions. At the same time, this centuries IT industry is more of a mosh-pit than a sing-a-long, and it seems like it is going to get very cozy in the future in the area of network and cloud management. This EMC rant on YouTube is a funny take on where the company is positioned. If EMC plays it's cards right, enterprises will choose its tools to "control the shape" of the data and systems in the data center. And, if it evolves quickly enough, the same IT manages will have solutions that keep all of the companies assets, including public cloud offerings, under one umbrella. Is your enterprise moving your data out into the cloud? Or is the cloud moving into your company's data? Photo credit: paul_clarke Discuss
Read more from the original source:
Rulers of the Cloud: A Multi-Tenant Semantic Cloud is Forming & EMC Knows that Data Matters
Tags:
amazon,
cloud computing,
colleague,
companies,
data,
driver,
enterprise,
industry,
internet,
manufacturing,
open-source,
platforms,
social
•
From knowing who to hire next, to ethical and legal concerns, to how to interview the best candidates, to how to evaluate them once they're hired - startups have their work cut out for them when it comes to hiring. If you can afford to hire a trained professional, someone who's skilled in evaluative testing, do so. But if not, you need to learn as much as you can about how to hire the right people. Here's our contribution to your endeavor. Sponsor How Does a Startup Know Who to Hire Next? First it must be said that each startup has different needs. But in general, a startup that's still in pursuit of funding requires a sales-oriented team, whereas a startup with funding sources that have begun to stabilize can focus its team on more specific objectives. In general, Anthony Cerminaro of AllBusiness says that the classic hiring stage starts with hiring someone to build a prototype. Then a manger is hired to turn the prototype into a product. Then a business manager is hired to coordinate business opportunities for the product. Then a lawyer is hired. Finally, someone is hired to focus on overall business development. What Kind of People Are You Looking For? To find the answer to that question, you need to understand the work ethic of each generation. Yesterday Ypulse interviewed the president of LifeCourse, Neil Howe. With a background in history, demographics and economics, Howe offer this advice: "If you want visionary leadership, if you need to redefine your corporate culture, go to your Boomers. If you need to apply incentives in a creative out-of-the-box way, if you need that cost-cutting, reality shock therapy done to your department, get your X'ers to do it. But if you want a group of people to come together in a team and to design a system and a protocol to get everything working effectively in an organized fashion, if you want to improve the morale of the group, get your Millennials to do it." Ethical and Legal Requirements Laws protect us from discrimination based on age, race, gender, religious and political beliefs. These laws are not as easy to follow as you might think. But some of the most common hiring advice given to startups is to treat your job candidates with respect. As blogger Rands in Repose says : "...a team built on trust and respect is vastly more productive and efficient than the one where managers are distant supervisors and co-workers are 9-to-5 people you occasionally see in meetings. You're not striving to be everyone's pal; that's not the goal. The goal is a set of relationships where there is a mutual belief in each other's reliability, truth, ability, and strengths." Finding this on a resume and from references, and from face-to-face meetings is not easy. The atmosphere around you is critical. Essential Ingredients of a Successful Interview TechStartups suggests that the ultimate disrespect is to interview someone in public. A quiet office or home is an essential atmosphere to put your potential new star employee at ease. If you are using a computer during the interview don't peer out at them from behind it. Set the interview space up so you can easily look at the screen together. Don't surprise them with a room full of partners staring them down. If they'll be meeting other partners let them know ahead of time who these people are and how they can learn more about them prior to the interview. Do your homework on how to interview. This means no generalized questions, no storytelling or memorized presentations about what your company does. Get detailed and specific right away. Demonstrate to them the type of professional rapport you'll be expecting in the workplace. Who's Best and How Do You Get Them Started? Have you ever been told by someone that they don't like the business side but they love the work they do? Don't hire those people! People who are enthusiastic about the business side are far more cognizant of how teamwork and problem solving affects the bottom line. An additional quality is someone called a "Driver." Online product marketing guru Eben Pagan explains how a Driver doesn't slack off on their work if their boss is too busy to give them a crucial answer. The Driver keeps pursuing the boss rather than using the lack of response as an excuse to slack off. As Pagan explains in the video below, if you want to know if you hired a Driver give them their first task, tell them who to work with and then let them get the work done with as little supervision as possible. At the end of each day ask them to take five minutes to send you a very brief email describing how their day went. And again, don't supervise them or send them in-depth guidance in a reply - just take a step back and see how they respond to the real world. Pagan explains that shifting from high expectations to neutral will reveal if you have a real Driver. In the long run, no one is served by keeping an employee around who can't relate to the drive for success that you are putting into your startup. Do you have more hiring tips. Or do you have horror stories about hiring or being hired by a startup? Let us know in the comments. Image from Wiki Commons . Discuss
See the rest here:
5 Hiring Tips for Startups
Tags:
advice,
Business,
contribution,
driver,
Legal,
millennials,
people,
president,
reality shock,
shock therapy,
startup,
startup 101,
video,
work,
work ethic
•
It used to be you might need a huge thumb, like Sissy Hankshaw , to be a master of the roadways. Then, along came Craigslist's rideshare board, making it even easier to get around the world sans car. Today, Flinc has debuted at the DEMO conference in hopes of forever changing the lives of leather tramps and hitchhikers, or even the car-less simply looking for a lift, worldwide. Sponsor Flinc is following in the footsteps of another ride-share app for the iPhone that debuted at DEMO in 2008, Avego . Flinc has one major difference - it will be "the first dynamic ridesharing service that connects Internet-enabled navigation systems with smartphones", according to a tweet by the company this morning. Flinc acts as a go-between, matching potential riders with drivers by offering riders with a list of available drivers, including the price and profile for each ride. When a rider picks a driver, the driver can see on the navigation system how far out of their way they would need to go and has the option to refuse or accept the ride request. Any cost for the ride is taken care of by the app. According to the company, "flinc is a dynamic ridesharing service that can be used on smart phones or online, combining GPS and location based capabilities with social networking to offer a dynamic and automated method of transport." The only problem we see, of course, is that a service like this needs to become ubiquitous before it is even slightly useful, so it requires a leap of faith on its users' ends. Avego, which came out in 2008, says today that it has more than 7,000 "empty seats" worldwide, with 165 in Texas and 75 in Austin. But could we find a ride across town? Not really. Either way, the idea of real-time ride-sharing apps is one we love, both for its greenness and its inherent utility. What we really love about this is that it doesn't (from what little we've seen on the website) have anything to do with badges or virtual items or "checking in", like we've seen so much with so many location-based services lately. Flinc and Avego both deal with location in its most basic sense: you are in Austin, someone else is in Austin, you both want to go to Arizona, let's make it happen. Currently, the project is in initial testing stages and has yet to launch. To this end, it is asking where to go to market first, allowing potential users to suggest its launch location . Discuss
See original here:
Flinc: Become an Internet-Enabled Leather Tramp
Tags:
Craigslist,
debuted-at-demo,
demo,
driver,
iphone,
make-it-happen,
making-it-even,
mobile,
price,
project,
ride,
Sissy Hankshaw,
Texas,
used-on-smart
•
Last week we told you about how Chevrolet , a division of General Motors , was bringing an augmented reality (AR) marketing promotion to SXSW in Austin. Now General Motors is kicking it up a notch with some experimental technology that will bring the world of AR to car windshields and provide a heads-up-display (HUD) experience. The new technology , still very much in the testing phase, uses an array of sensors which track both objects on or near the road, as well as the position and angle of a driver's head and eyes. By combining the data from these sensors, GM can then project images onto the windshield with lasers to help drivers stay safe when driving. Sponsor "Let's say you're driving in fog," says Thomas Seder, group lab manager for GM's research and development. "We could use the vehicle's infrared cameras to identify where the edge of the road is and the lasers could 'paint' the edge of the road onto the windshield so the driver knows where the edge of the road is," Seder said. In other words, it would be like having a fighter pilot's HUD in your car, except instead of tracking the sky for bogies, your car tracks the road for possible dangers. The display works by coating the windshield with transparent phosphors which emit light when excited by a laser. GM says this is better for the driver because the entire windshield can be used to display information, not just a portion of it like current in-car HUD systems. The technology also includes the ability to recognize and read road signs and alert the driver to when they are driving too fast or if construction is ahead. The company says that while this exact technology will not be in any cars in the near future, some of the features will start to be rolled into upcoming models. What this likely means is the transparent phosphor windshield will be placed in cars and used to display other HUD information, like speed, gas and other indicators. The hard part of this technology doesn't seem to be displaying it; rather, the barrier is in the sensor work between tracking objects on the road and tracking the position and angle of the driver's eyes. Since it's much easier to simply display objects that don't rely on exact positioning for the driver's point-of-view, it's likely we'll see these additions before the true AR experience becomes a reality. Eventually, however, GM hopes technology like this will make for better turn-by-turn directions and make it easier to find locations upon arrival. We've all heard our GPS systems say, "You have arrived at your location!" only to look around and not necessarily know where it is. With this new system, GM hopes they can solve the problem of "the last 100 yards" by displaying indicators of specific locations based on the sensor readings. This certainly seems like the future of driving, but I wonder if it will be displaced by cars that simply drive themselves. If we can create sensors good enough to find the lanes in the road and nearby vehicles, why not just let the car drive it self and skip the HUD? Either way, its great to see AR taking steps forward beyond marketing and into practical application in a consumer space, even if it is years in the future. Discuss
Original post:
General Motors Wants To Augment Your Windshield
Tags:
augmented-reality,
before-the-true,
data,
driver,
edge,
future,
general-motors,
like-the-future,
location,
position,
road,
sensor,
technology,
windshield,
words