As developers for tablets and smartphones we like to keep abreast of the latest mobile technology developments . This is a daily digest of mobile development and related technology news gathered from the BBC, the New York Times, New Scientist and the Globe and Mail to name a few. We scour the web for articles concerning, iPhone, iPad and android development, iOS and android operating systems as well as general articles on advances in mobile technology. We hope you find this useful and that it helps to keep you up to date with the latest technology developments.
Coding vs. Programming — Battle of the Terms!
With the recent rise in computer science classes across all grades, we’re starting to grow our personal vocabularies in ways that make the average person uncomfortable. To complicate matters, many of these “new” words seem to have such intimidating histories that we don’t take the time to properly understand their usage — instead we repeat them blindly, whether we know what they really mean or not.
One such example of complex wordsmithing is the synonymous use of the terms “coding” and “programming”.
Like “geek” and “nerd,” these words may seem to mean the same thing from the outside, but to those who identify with one or the other, the distinction is real. While the differences may be subtle, there are differences none the less, and it benefits any tech user worth their salt to know what those are.
For a long time, “programming” was the word most commonly associated with entering instructions into a machine to execute commands. There really was no debate. Programming was the formal act of writing code, and the term also encompassed the greater nuances of computer science.
With the increase in popularity of the home computer (and more importantly, the home-educated computer programmer) a subculture began to develop of “hacker” types that viewed their craft with less focus on pretense and more emphasis on wit, skill, and purpose. With the influx of newly self-taught technophiles, the term “coders” began to gain momentum to describe those who could technically “create code,” but did not necessarily have the knowledge or grace of the traditionalists. It was said that they were “coding” versus truly “programming.”
In recent years (read: post-Hour of Code, circa 2013) the term “coding” has resurfaced as a much more playful and non-intimidating description of programming for beginners. On an informal level, it is used to convey the beginning steps of programming, or programming with a tool intended for beginners, such as Code Studio, Scratch, or App Inventor 2.
Whether or not you accept that there are defined differences between the words “coding” and “programming,” you should at least be aware of the differences in connotation…especially if you want to keep from hurting the feelings of your friendly neighborhood software developer!
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VIDEO: Drone racing in an Aerial Grand Prix
Drone racers go head-to-head near Los Angeles
5 Ways to Take Advantage of the New Google-Twitter Partnership
Recently, Google and Twitter announced a new partnership that willgive Google access to tweets posted on the social media platform, giving them the ability to embed those tweets directly into relevant search results. For the average user, this is great news–now, when performing a search, you’ll be able to see some top tweet results in addition to typical news and links to information that you’re already used to. It means you’ll have greater, more immediate access to real-time updates, and the world will grow to be just a little more connected as a result.
The partnership is mutually beneficial for the companies in play–Google will get to improve their user experience, while Twitter will get some extra visibility from online searchers–but it’s also beneficial for your company, as long as you know how to address the change.
There are several strategies you can adopt to take advantage of this new deal:
1. Beef up your Twitter profile. First things first. The new change means that more people are going to be seeing your tweets, and more people are likely to scope out your Twitter profile to learn more about your business. If your Twitter profile looks skeletal, or worse, if you don’t yet have a Twitter account, now is the critical time to get your presence straightened out. Include the web address you want people to follow, optimize your company description, and think carefully about your profile and background photos. These little details make a big first impression on potential customers visiting your profile, so don’t skimp on them.
2. Tweet about current events. Next, start tweeting about current events–at least the ones relevant to your industry. Some of the most popular searches involve recent happenings, and while the details of the tweet arrangement haven’t yet been revealed, it’s highly likely that tweets relevant to current events will make it to the top of the search results pages. Incorporate trending hashtags appropriately into your regular social content, and read the news on a daily basis to see how your company can respond or expand on those recent events. Also be sure to include keywords relevant to those events, or hashtags, so Google can easily tell what you’re talking about.
3. Tweet answers to common questions and problems. Chances are, tweets aren’t going to appear for broad, information-seeking queries, but for niche problems, they’ll probably be very popular. For example, specific questions like “how do I change a bike tire” could populate tweets with content addressing that question. These types of answers will also be somewhat rare, so you’ll have less competition than you will while posting about current events. Start working in these answers to common questions in your regular post schedule, and the more specific you can get the better. Also include a link to a more detailed explanation on your website–you’ll enjoy the extra traffic.
4. Focus your content around a niche. This has been a solid SEO and social strategy for years now, but this partnership makes it more important than ever. The broader your company is, the harder it’s going to be to turn up in searches. Narrow down your focus to one or two key areas of expertise, and optimize all your content to focus on that niche. You’ll reduce your visibility in peripheral searches, but your relevance for that particular niche will be utterly unmatched. Doing so will make your niche tweets the only ones around for searches related to them.
5. Get involved on other social platforms. This partnership is currently only between Google and Twitter, but Google has made a number of moves to acquire or integrate with other social platforms and apps. It would make sense for Google to form similar alliances with other social media companies in the future, so the sooner you get involved with those platforms the better. Establish a presence on up-and-coming platforms like Instagram and Snapchat, even if you don’t use them as frequently as your other social hubs. You’ll be grateful if and when Google decides to incorporate them into its search results.
This partnership is scheduled to take effect during the first half of 2015, but don’t wait until this change goes live–you can start implementing your new practices now to build a routine and establish a baseline, which you can then use on an ongoing basis moving forward.
It’s also worth noting that the details of how tweets will be embedded into search results are still being ironed out. There may be surprising ranking factors that make some tweets more likely to appear than others, so keep an eye out for updates and news once the feature goes live and make adjustments accordingly. The better you’re able to adapt to these changes, the better positioned you’ll be to gain new visibility, new traffic, and new customers.
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6 Practices That Will Shape Retail Digital Transformation
Digital transformation is one of the most important topics facing retail today. As one of the largest retail brands in the U.S., second only to Walmart, Kroger Co., a Fortune 25 company with over $100 billion in revenue, is two years into its digital journey. Kroger is making the transformation from its traditional roots as a sole brick and mortar company into starting to build out the omni-channel and digital commerce experience for customers.
Shashank Saxena — Director, Digital and e-Commerce, Kroger
Leading this digital transformation is Shashank Saxena, the Director of Digital and e-commerce technology at Kroger. As part of this role he manages the Web, Mobile, Tablet, e-commerce and shared service app development teams in growing the digital presence of the Kroger brand and looking at how they can connect and serve their customers digitally. Working on his second digital transformation for a Fortune 25 company (prior to Kroger he was at Citigroup), this veteran sheds some light onto the hot topics of retail, digital, analytics, user experience and business models and provides an inside view on what’s driving the change and how retail is going about in responding to this new environment.
6 Trends that will Shape Digital Transformation in Retail:
1. Use customer feedback for evolutionary change. Saxena says that customer feedback is absolutely critical, and in terms of understanding the customer needs they are very focused on what their customers are asking for. But as Kroger starts looking at what they want to build from an innovation standpoint, it is very different from just catering to a customer’s needs.
Innovation is pretty different in my opinion. Innovation and digital transformation generally can happen in one or two ways. Either you go ahead and innovate through evolution, which is step features and functions, or through revolution. We’ve seen the industry go ahead and do both.
He categorizes innovations that change the way we do business, like the iPhone, as revolutionary innovations, whereas small step feature functions and enhancements that improve the product but do not fundamentally change the way something was done, he categorizes as evolutionary innovations.
At Kroger, customer feedback works really great in terms of evolutionary step feature innovations and is a very critical driving point in terms of what goes out in the next release on the product roadmap. And that’s not just for Kroger, but that’s across the board and in any industry where good product managers listen to customer feedback and incorporate feedback to evolve the product in the next release.
Saxena explains:
We are very focused on our customers and our customer feedback is a great thing. We try to incorporate that and evolve our products in that way, but we keep the distinction very clear in terms of when we are trying to be revolutionary versus evolutionary.
2. Pay attention to macro-economic trends. While customer feedback is the center of everything they do, as it should be that way for all companies and industries, Saxena says that over and above that, you also need to start factoring in macro-economic trends. Not just the overall trends impacting retail, but trends that impact digital in particular. According to Saxena, the rise of the value shopper, the rise of the millennials and the boom in the health and wellness are macro-economic trends that are starting to shape digital transformation in retail. Yet across all industries we’ve see the explosion of data, the emergence of platforms and the rise in mobility.
Saxena shares this astounding fact:
Since I woke up this morning and up until the time when this Google hangout session began, there has been more content uploaded on YouTube then content that Hollywood has produced in its 100+ years of its entire existence.
This is why understanding the trends and what’s going on with data explosion is really critical. In his opinion:
As important as customer feedback is, it’s not going to go ahead and explain the trends to you. Companies need to understand the macro-economic trends and start using them in a very focused way to add value to the life of the customer.
3. Evolve business models to meet customer preferences. In the last five years or so, in addition to technology innovation, we are starting to see business model innovation. Saxena points to Airbnb and Uber as examples of business model innovation because they are not hard-core tech innovations since the technology powering them is pretty simple for the most part. But what is innovative is actually the business model and how it’s funded with low infrastructure cost, low start-up costs and crowdsourcing economies which has become the transformational piece of it.
Saxena says:
At Kroger, we think about business model innovations pretty often and we are starting to see that emerge more and more. But we also think about it in terms of how do we personalize our offerings, because personalization is a key differentiator and another emerging trend that we are seeing and business models will evolve as they start understanding customer preferences, or rather the change in customer preferences.
4. Drive value, not features. “We look at competitors, but we don’t obsess over competitors because we’re so obsessed with our customers that we focus on customer needs and what our customer is asking for,” says Saxena. This is why he is slow to jump on the push notification bandwagon, even though he is constantly bombarded with the idea. He feels that launching a push notification where customers walk past the shelves of Tide and they receive an alert saying a dollar off Tide is a great feature that comes with a lot of other downstream implications.
Saxena believes that driving customer value is very different from bombarding customers with features because it’s only a matter of time before the customer will be turned off. The value Kroger offers is very different. They incentivize customers to buy the things they buy often, not trying to cross sell and upsell them. They have a successful program called LCM Mailers where they send coupons to customers for the products that they buy.
Says Saxena:
We are so focused on what our customers want and what they buy often that we just want to go ahead and help them buy more of that or get what they want and not necessarily have them brand switch or try to monetize on top of that.
That’s one thing I believe that Kroger does really well and we believe in the customer, which is why we keep track of what competitors are doing, but are not obsessed with our competitors.
5. Bring on the data. With today’s connected customer being a lot more informed in terms of what they are doing, Kroger supports that behavior and drives analytics and insights around customer behavior and customer purchases.
Internally when we try to decide what to launch for the customer and what should go next on the product roadmap, the famous quote we have is, ‘In God we trust. Everyone else must bring data,’ because we want to be a very data driven retailer and we try to leverage insights in terms of what the customer is asking for and what we should be catering next to the customer.
6. Don’t mess with the core brand. As someone who has spent time talking about lean organizations, Saxena says that the fundamental difference between big companies and The Lean Startup is that customer expectations are very different when a big company that has a well-known brand goes to market with a product. From a big company, the expectations are different because the brand promise says something. Yet Saxena points to the fact that every big company was small at one point when it started, meaning that essentially every big corporation was a startup at some point, and the way it became big was with repeatable, executable processes that scale.
These repeatable, executable processes are very counter intuitive to innovation, because customers expect consistency from big companies.
When a person choses to buy a brand, what you really need to understand from a customer mindset is they are opting for security over the unknown. There may be a product offering on the same shelf right next to your preferred brand for half the price. But when you are willing to pay the price premium, what you’re opting for is security. You’re trying to mitigate the risk of the unknown.
This is why trying to experiment with your core brand, may or may not be productive. It could work, but if it doesn’t, you’ve lost a valuable customer. How you innovate, how you chose to innovate and where you chose to experiment become critical factors when you talk about big companies.
Saxena manages the tension between maintaining the stability of traditional grocery retailing and the need to shift and make changes based on data and these macro-economic trends by identifying areas where they can experiment versus areas where they don’t want to run experiments. For big companies to create that startup culture around innovation and brainstorming, Saxena advises that it has to be done in a very controlled environment. You can run experiments, but you need to avoid the core products which built the revenue base and experiment and innovate elsewhere.
In running controlled experiments, the art lies in mastering the process of setting a hypothesis, tracking and monitoring results and then going ahead and rolling it out mainstream, which is very different from going ahead and experimenting with your core brand values.
You can watch the full interview with Shashank Saxena here. Please join me and Michael Krigsman every Friday at 3PM EST as we host CXOTalk – connecting with thought leaders and innovative executives who are pushing the boundaries within their companies and their fields.
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You Can't Wear It, But This 'MOTI' Device Could Change Your Life
Apple thinks the key to a better life is a high-end watch that connects to your phone and tracks your health. But could a much simpler piece of technology actually make the difference you’re looking for?
Kayla Matheus, the 25-year-old creator of MOTI, a small desktop gadget in pre-production, thinks so. MOTI’s purpose is to help you practice good habits by offering tangible encouragement: It sits on your desk, lights up and vibrates to urge you along. Matheus has been developing the idea since last fall at 30 Weeks, an experimental program sponsored in part by Google that helps designers create and launch products.
MOTI isn’t ready for consumers yet — though you can apply to be one of 50 beta testers — but it’s expected to enter production by the end of summer. You’ll decide what you want MOTI to help you with (running every day, maybe), and you’ll press its single button whenever you do that thing. Its “face,” if you could call it that, will flash different colors, and the device will vibrate and chirp to mark your achievements. Users are supposed to put it in plain view so they can’t ignore it.
“The problem with most habits is delayed gratification,” Matheus told The Huffington Post during a recent interview at 30 Weeks’ New York City office. “MOTI celebrates with you.”
MOTI will flash angry red lights at you if you slack off. (Source)
Complete your task, give it a press, and MOTI will light up and chirp. (Source)
MOTI is built around the premise that you need three things to develop a habit: a trigger, routine and reward, Matheus explained to HuffPost.
If you’re running to lose weight, for example, it would help to have something that prompts you to get off the couch and into your gym shoes. Otherwise, it’s easy to avoid doing it.
It also helps to have a reward. Sure, you’ll get endorphins from the activity, but that’s not exactly tangible. If the reward is fitting into smaller jeans, it might be weeks before you achieve that. In the meantime, MOTI’s positive feedback of bright lights and literal good vibrations could help spur you along.
MOTI might seem simple, but it’s purposefully designed to counterbalance the glut of wearables, fitness apps and push notifications you may have noticed cropping up in the world around you. You could think of it like a sort of 21st century Daruma doll. In traditional Japanese culture, an individual would set a goal by marking one of the doll’s eyes. After days, weeks or even months of staring at the thing, that person would finally mark the other eye when their wish was fulfilled.
Hey, it worked in the 1700s.
If you have MOTI sitting on your desk, it’s tough to ignore (unless you shove it into a drawer or something, defeating the point entirely). If you use a fitness app, it’s pretty simple to swipe a notification away.
“We ignore push notifications,” Matheus said. “Out of sight, out of mind.”
That said, Matheus is developing an app that will pair with MOTI to help users keep track of their goals, but the hardware comes first.
Concept art for different MOTI designs.
To make sure users don’t ignore MOTI, it needs to be cute. Currently, there are three finished prototypes: One of them has little arms, another has pointed ears and the last is simple and rounded. When Matheus was developing the idea, she fashioned a crude device out of a koala plush. She said that even in the more developed stage that MOTI is in, people tend to see either an eye or a face in it.
“We react to it like we’re being watched. Hopefully not in a creepy way,” Matheus said.
H/T Fast Company
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Four Episodes Of 'Game Of Thrones' Season 5 Have Already Leaked Online
Winter is coming and “Game of Thrones” fans literally can’t wait. A day ahead of the premiere of Season 5, the first four episodes of the new season leaked online to illegal torrent sites.
According to Variety, the episodes appeared online around 9 p.m. and 10 p.m. ET on Saturday. By Sunday morning, the episodes had been downloaded by up to 778,985 people worldwide, according to piracy-tracking firm Excipio.
While the source of the leak isn’t officially known, Mashable claims that they’ve come from HBO’s press screeners sent to reviewers in advance. The leaked screeners reportedly have had their digital watermark codes blurred out; the codes are used by HBO to track the DVDs.
“Sadly, it seems the leaked four episodes of the upcoming season of ‘Game of Thrones’ originated from within a group approved by HBO to receive them,” the company said in a statement Sunday. “We’re actively assessing how this breach occurred.”
Piracy is nothing new for “Game of Thrones.” The HBO series was the most illegally downloaded TV show of 2014 with over 8 million downloads. The second episode of Season 4, which fans know as the Purple Wedding, broke worldwide piracy records when 193,418 people shared a single pirated file of the episode simultaneously.
The piracy of the show is likely a result of HBO being inaccessible in certain parts of the world, and because it’s a paid subscription service that requires cable. The network, however, has made an effort to attract audiences who want HBO without cable service with the recent launch of HBO Now. The stand-alone service went live on Tuesday and is available exclusively through Apple devices.
“Game of Thrones” returns on Sunday at 9 p.m. ET on HBO.
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Full Console Games Might Be Coming To Your Smartphone Via The Cloud
It seems Final Fantasy publisher Square Enix is experimenting with bringing its AAA console games to mobile, as the company has launched a version of Final Fantasy XIII (in Japan) for iOS and Android that runs in the cloud and streams to your phone or tablet.
– This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.
Consumers Turning To Tabletop Options In Backlash Against Video Games
By Daniel Kelly
PHILADELPHIA, April 12 (Reuters) – When Justin Becker moved into a new home in south Philadelphia, he set the TV and video games in the unfinished basement, leaving his three children free to go down and watch when they wanted. The board games stayed upstairs in the living room.
It was all part of a subtle trick that he hoped would help his family connect.
“Television and video games are more like solo activities,” Becker said. “We lost out on quality time and we saw this as a chance to start over in the new house.”
Becker, a 30-year-old stay-at-home dad with children aged 7, 4 and 2, is part of what appears to be a growing trend of people turning to so-called tabletop games as a social alternative to screen time. The category includes board games like Candyland, a favorite in the Becker household, and card games like Cards Against Humanity.
Hasbro Inc, maker of old standbys like Monopoly and Risk, says that revenue for its line of games increased 10 percent between 2012 and 2013, and would have grown 7 percent in 2014 if not for unfavorable foreign currency conversions.
Anecdotal reports also point toward an upswing. Insiders say publishers devoted to the games are flourishing, thanks to access to crowd-sourced financing and the proven popularity of games like Settlers of Catan.
Last year, attendance the Origins Game Fair run by the Game Manufacturers Association grew by 13 percent to 39,000, said John Ward, the trade association’s executive director.
Ward says simple economics are also a factor. “You can buy a couple of cool board games for $20 or $40,” he says. “You can’t take your family to the movies at that price.
Adam Friedman, the owner of two stores devoted to tabletop games in Philadelphia’s University City neighborhood, both called Redcap’s Corner, said the social aspect of gaming helps keep him ahead of Amazon.
Friedman says inexpensive card-based games Coup and Star Realms have become popular because they are easy to set up and games do not take too long to play. Settlers of Catan, however, remains incredibly popular.
“Sales are as strong as they ever were,” Friedman said.
The stores feature rows of seating for people to play games, all for free. That drives retail sales at prices that online sellers can beat.
“Amazon doesn’t give people space to play the games,” Friedman said. “We’re more of an event space than we are a retail center.”
The number of new stores like Redcap’s is rising at the same pace in recent years and existing retailers are staying open longer.
At the Philadelphia Free School, a private school that gives children wide latitude to develop their own education, games are built into the curriculum.
“To us, it’s not just recreation,” says Michelle Loucas, a founder of the school and parent of one of its students. “Human beings benefit from playing in really substantial ways.”
But the games are not just for children.
Simon Joseph runs three board game nights a month at Frankford Hall, a Philadelphia bar.
“I like the social aspect,” Joseph says. “There’s something special about having those cardboard pieces in your hand, playing with somebody you are having a conversation with.” (Editing by Frank McGurty and Marguerita Choy)
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