Tag: IPhone

Attention Shoppers!

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Yes you looking at the Ragu!

We have all be using Global Positioning Systems (GPS) for some time.  We started this journey with Garmins, Tom Tom’s and other devices specific to on dash installation.  They worked pretty well but you needed to continuously update the street files to get the most out of these devices.  Then the car companies started to install in dash navigation systems.  I do not know about you, but these interfaces always seemed complex and unusable to me.

Then of course, these capabilities became part of our smartphone applications.  We first had Google Maps, MapQuest, AmAze and of course Apple Maps (Much better now)  Then we were introduced to social GPS with Waze, but they were purchased fast by Google. All great apps and all free.  Are you spending any money on Garmins or Tom Tom’s anymore?  Not me 🙂 And of course our phones themselves have Location Based Services, so retailers and the like know where you are and can send you advertising and other content

Now we are moving this indoors with Apple’s iBeacon technology.  What is iBeacon?  It is an indoor positioning system; a network of devices used to wirelessly locate objects or people inside a building.  Apple has already rolled this technology out to their retail stores.  It uses Bluetooth technology, which by the way is of course enabled on all smart phones.  Now there is a coincidence 🙂 This technology will provide the retail store with your exact in-store location, enabling them to communicate directly in the moment of your purchase decisions.  Yowsa!

On Monday, iBeacons were introduced with supermarkets Safeway and Giant Eagle.  inMarket’s (The company providing the solution) iBeacon Mobile to Mortar platform sends out a variety of information to iPhone-owning store visitors, so long as they’ve opted in to use the service via one of its compatible apps, such as CheckPoints.  By enabling the service, shoppers can expect to receive notifications to their Apple handset such as discount coupons, loyalty rewards, and reminders about what to pick up.  The technology was previously introduced in Macy’s through a relationship with shopping application Shopkick.

We are no longer lost in the supermarket.  We know where you are, always.

Webman

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Are you awake?

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Focused on expanding my horizons the last couple of week by reading about some topics that I am not familiar with.  One I focused on was the concept of being awake, living in the moment. Being awake you say?  But I am awake 12+ hours a day you say!

Are you really awake or are you just going through the motions?  Do you live in the past, present and future all at the same time? When you are engaged in a discussion, are you thinking about something that has previously happened or other things that you need to do? Or are you truly focused in the moment with all attention on that one idea, thought, person or event?

Initial thoughts:

  • Focus solely on what you are doing – this will not be easy at first but keep trying
  • Look people directly in the eye and listen hard to what they are saying – As my friend Brendan says, God gave you two ears and only one mouth, so listen twice as much as you speak
  • Give the gift of attention – focus on the present/the moment

I will spend more on this topic moving forward.  If you want some further information now, please visit http://freedomfromtheknown.com/living-in-the-moment/

And for you music lovers, let’s go to a song that you can sing and remember as you embark on your new journey of focus.

Enjoy the day and your new found focus 🙂  Wake up!

Webman

Your iPhone Just Got Better

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In case you missed it yesterday, Apple had a few new products to share with you yesterday.  As usual, the company continues to just crush it and will be providing you with new and more productive ways to leverage and use all of the Apple technology that you have.  Apple announced a major iOS 7 redesign, with countless iOS 7 features that are rolling out in the iOS 7 beta today.  They are also going directly after Pandora with their new iRadio service and killed a few competitive apps by just including these capabilities in the operating system, like the flashlight.

So in case you missed the announcements yesterday, here are a few nuggets for you.  Change is good.  But remember, as Woodrow Wilson once said “If you want to make enemies, try to change something.”  So this will identify the positives around the announcements.  Someone else can write about what they hate about Apple.  Not me.

Apple New Design

  1. Control Center – In iOS 7 Apple adds a Control Center, which allows users to swipe up from the bottom of any screen for access to toggling WiFi, Do Not Disturb, Brightness, controlling music playback, AirPlay and more. There’s also a flashlight built-in and shortcuts to apps.
  2. Swipe to Go Back – When in Safari or other apps, if you need to go back, don’t bother looking for the back button, swiping in from the left will go back.
  3. Scrolling App Folders – The new app folders in iOS 7 aren’t limited to a few apps. If you want to put all your games into a folder you can now do that and scroll through apps in a folder.
  4. Better Sharing Menu – The new iOS 7 sharing menu includes a scrollable list of apps and other iPhones to make sharing photos and more simpler.
  5. Great New Look – Apple changed the look of IOS, from the font and dock up to the status bar at the top of the iPhone. This is a brand new look that many users are already excited to try out.
  6. New Multitasking With Previews – The new iOS 7 multitasking uses the full size of the iPhone 5 display to let users see what’s going on in apps. Users can also swipe up to kill an app, instead of long pressing on it.
  7. Siri Voice Options – In iOS 7 Siri offers a new female voice and a male voice for the first time.
  8. More Control of iPhone with Siri – Siri can now control more of the iPhone. In the demo Siri on iOS 7 controlled brightness, returning calls and controlling iRadio.
  9. iOS 7 Looks Change to Match Your Background – When you change the background of the home screen, elements of the IOS system will change to match the colors. This includes the dialer and other parts of iOS 7.
  10. New Camera App – iOS 7 features a new Camera app that includes faster access to panorama, a new look and much more.

These are just 10 of the great new things developed by Apple and announced yesterday.  Thanks to the folks at Gottabemobile for the summary.  An additional 40 new items can be found at http://www.gottabemobile.com/2013/06/10/50-ios-7-features-youll-actually-care-about/

And the hits just keep on coming.  Speaking about hits, here is one of my favorite summer songs from The Alarm:

Webman

Go Inside

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“If you are not on the inside, your are on the outside”

Gordon Gekko – Wall Street

Well apparently Apple wants to be on the inside.  The last mile in the marketing, promotional, geo-location part of the food chain. There is still one slightly uncharted territory that will — without question — be the last mile in marketing. It is the ability for a brand to deliver contextual and highly targeted marketing at the local retail level. We may be inching ever-closer to this reality.

On March 23rd, 2013, The Wall Street Journal reported that Apple acquired a company called WiFiSLAM for an estimated $20 million. WiFiSLAM is GPS for the indoors. It is able to triangulate the location of consumers, track their every move and deliver contextual marketing messages to them while capturing a tremendous amount of consumer data.

For Apple, this may be the next big thing. Some speculate that Apple will try to grab the mapping of the inside spaces while Google continues to map the oceans and the arctic. Google is just as busy trying to capitalize on this idea of mapping the inside of spaces as well. But it’s not just a game for Apple and Google. Amazon has been hard at work capturing tons of consumer information at the retail level.

A little Eve 6 for you.

Look no further than their Price Check for iPhone app that enables consumers to scan a barcode, snap a picture of a product or use text/speech search to find out how much the product is on Amazon. This business of showrooming has become a contentious talking point in the retail sector, as more and more consumers are using their smartphones and tablets to find a better price at the physical location. These consumers are using the stores as a showroom, but completing their purchases on their mobile devices and having the products shipped to their homes. What we don’t hear much about is the data and information that Amazon is capturing about consumers, how they walk through stores, what they’re price checking, the price variances from store to store, trends in merchandising and more. All of this (and more) is being captured, each and every time a consumer uses the app to find a better price. While it’s not real-time information like WiFiSLAM is offering, Amazon still has tremendous information about consumers and how they make their way through many different retail environments.

It looks like stores are going to become as dynamic and intelligent as their e-commerce counterparts. So long as retailers seeks permission from their consumers and use this technology to drive more value to the consumers, these types of technologies could well be the linchpin that secures the future of retail.

Inside game is now officially on.  Just as spring arrives.

Webman

Hello, Hello

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You say “Yes“, I say “No”. You say “Stop” and I say “Go, go, go”. Oh no. You say “Goodbye” and I say “Hello, hello, hello”. I don’t know why you say “Goodbye”, I say “Hello, hello, hello”. I don’t know why you say goodbye, I say hello. I say “High”, you say Low”. You say “Why?” And I say “I don’t know”. Oh no. You say “Goodbye” and I say “Hello, hello, hello”. I don’t know why you say “Goodbye”, I say “Hello, hello, hello”. (Hello, goodbye, hello, goodbye. Hello, goodbye.)

From the Beatles – Hello Goodbye

hello

So hello everyone.  Thank you for your patience.  I said a new blog was coming soon, but a long time has passed.  Well today is the day and I am thrilled to be back in the blog saddle.

The power of saying hello.  Such a simple thing to do, so why don’t more people do it?  Are you a person that says hello or just walks by?  Saying hello to a stranger on the street is one thing, but how about your co-workers?  How many times have you walked past a co-worker in the hall/corridor and said nothing, even if you know them?  How many times does this happen to you?  Do you wonder, why didn’t he/she say hello to me?  Did I do something?  Are they pissed at me or the world?  Do you even care? Do they even care?

While a simple gesture, like saying “hello” or “good morning” daily to your colleagues can help to reinforce a respectful (and friendly) workplace, there’s more to it than that. Taking the time to acknowledge and learn more about your co-workers is what turns a workplace into a community.

Saying hello makes people smile.  Sure we are all busy; sure we all have too much to do; but, whatever happened to common decency and respect?  You’re thinking about that impending due date or that e-mail message you probably shouldn’t have sent. You’re thinking, I have to go to another useless meeting. To accomplish daily goals and get where we’re trying to go, we feel that we have to block out the stimuli around us. We put on perceptual blinders to conserve mental energy, allowing us to focus on the task at hand.

But these blinders also leave us less aware of what’s happening around us. You’re less connected to other members of your community/workplace when you walk briskly down the hall, head down, lost in thought, thumbing through your iPhone or looking at your computer.

Whether or not we mean to, we send a message when we do this. While you know that you’re a friendly and welcoming person (Maybe you are not :)) who’s just temporarily busy, distracted or running late, passersby form less generous impressions. And, thus, a company full of personable and warm individuals inadvertently becomes less hospitable in the aggregate—particularly in the eyes of anyone who already had doubts regarding his or her own social/intellectual identity at work.

So this week, make sure to say hello. Say it to the casual acquaintance, the co-worker, even to a person that is sitting in a meeting that you do not know.  Walk straight up to them and say “Hello”. In those few minutes before your meeting starts, don’t use the time to fire off one last email; instead, make the minimal effort required to introduce yourself to the guy/girl next to you.

So Why Does Saying “Hello” Help?

1. It boosts our own self-esteem when we take the time to acknowledge others.
2. It esteems and values others when we recognize and acknowledge them.
3. It reinforces relationships and the willingness to help each other.
4. When coupled with a smile, a simple “hello” can’t help but put the greeter into a good mood.

Try It Today

Say “hello” (with a smile) to at least 3 people at your workplace and see what happens!

A little tuneage for you to start the week.

Webman

Mobile – Muy Importante!

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We often talk about what is happening in mobile.  Well, with the holiday shopping season now in full swing, we will cover some of the more recent trends in mobile shopping and the ever increasing impact of how these little hand held devices are changing everything we know about how people shop.

I found a great new web-site, Quartz, www.qz.com, that covers a variety of interesting topics including mobile.  The facts below were provided in an article by Christopher Mims.  He is the science and technology correspondent for Quartz. He believes that the most interesting things about the universe have yet to be discovered, and that technology is the primary driver of cultural change.

  • 55% of mobile users buy products on their devices, but 80% research purchases on them
  • Less than half of top retailers have a mobile site and app
  • 88% of mobile users engage in some kind of mobile commerce
  • 72% of consumers aged 20-40 in US and UK will use mobile devices to compare prices in-store
  • 48 million US shoppers will use their smartphone as an “on-demand aide-de-camp” in stores
  • $43.4 billion is what US holiday shoppers are expected to spend online this season, up 17% from last year
  • 14% of people with mobile phones have used them to make purchases while drunk
  • 23% of holiday shoppers in the US will spend more online than offline
  • 28% of US adults with a mobile device will use them to shop on Thanksgiving, vs. 16% last year
  • 32% of smartphone owners plan to download a shopping app for the holidays
  • 89% of all website traffic from tablets comes from iPads
  • 61% of all website traffic from smartphones comes from iPhones
  • 1 in 3 US consumers is thinking about buying a tablet computer this holiday season
  • 388 million Chinese access the web through their mobile phone, more than do so via PC
  • There are 260 million mobile connections in Brazil, higher than its population

So are these smart devices that we are using really that important?  You bet!

  • 90% of 18-29 year olds sleep with their smartphones
  • 1 in 3 people would rather give up sex than their phone
  • 95% of people use the phone for something just before going to bed
  • Half of people check their phones immediately if they wake up during the night

The game has changed.  What game are you playing?  If you are a retailer without a mobile strategy, time to make a change and get one.

Webman

The New E-Mail Champion

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Where are people opening their e-mails?  This is a critical piece of information for all e-mail marketers today.  E-mail access has changed radically over the last couple of years with the rapid emergence of mobile and of course new devices such as the iPad.  Well, we have a new number 1 in where people access e-mail.  And the winner is:

In a recent study completed by Litmus, www.litmus.com, a leading e-mail testing and marketing analytics company located in Cambridge, MA, the iPhone and the iPad now represent 28% of all opened e-mails.  The results of this study were sourced from over 1 billion e-mail opens from Litmus’ global e-mail analytics solution.  Take a look:

Even more amazing is that mobile is now the number 1 platform for opening e-mails:

And yes, Apple dominates mobile:

So for all companies using e-mail to drive business and customer satisfaction, what is your responsive design strategy to capitalize on this rapidly changing trend?  Your competitors are surely looking at this opportunity with a keen eye.

Thanks to the folks at Litmus for the awesome analysis and infographics.

Webman

Indoor Location Based Services

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With the continued growth of smartphones, location based services have become pretty useful.  From finding a restaurant or ATM in your present location to turn-by-turn directions based on your actual location, these capabilities have now been baked into our everyday lives.  On your iPhone or iPad, you have the option to turn these location based services on or off, and just about every app is trying to learn where you are to improve relevance, whether for news, directions, are your friends nearby etc..

With most of the great outdoors pretty well mapped, indoors is the final navigation frontier. Nokia has announced “In-Location” an alliance of 22 companies with the goal of driving and unifying industry innovation in mobile indoor positioning.  Founding members include: Broadcom, CSR, Dialog Semiconductor, Eptisa, Geomobile, Genasys, Indra, Insiteo, Nokia, Nomadic Solutions, Nordic Semiconductor, Nordic Technology Group, NowOn, Primax Electronics, Qualcomm, RapidBlue Solutions, Samsung Electronics, Seolane Innovation, Sony Mobile Communications, TamperSeal AB, Team Action Zone and Visioglobe.

Nokia announces In-Location, 22-strong industry alliance for mobile indoor positioning

Accurate indoor positioning opens up plenty of possibilities for new mobile services. Consumers can receive directions to the right products and personalized product promotions in nearby shops; using real-time navigation inside a building; finding the precise location of assets and people; and even increasing security in emergency situations. For facility owners and local service providers this could enable, for example, increased local customer identification; enhanced product placement; and better customer satisfaction by deploying resources when and where needed.

Brick and mortar retailers are working overtime to make sure that their businesses are not disrupted by the rapidly emerging mobile commerce phenomenon underway.  How will they continue to get people into their locations in addition to providing them with the best possible on-line shopping experience?  What is it going to take to make sure that their very image conscious brands are perceived as technology leaders in a world of Newism?

What is Newism?  One of my favorite web-sites for emerging retail trends is www.trendwatching.com. They are on the forefront of many of the newest and most creative ways brands are interacting with consumers and how consumers are interacting with brands.  Newism is a consumer trend whereby “New” is the thing to do.  (Who knew I was a poet?) The ‘new’ has never been hotter. For consumers, the very notion of the ‘new’ has become a positive one. Given the obsession for new technology – see the upcoming releases of the iPhone 5 and the iPad Mini, we have become highly conditioned to expect new.  New products can be tried easily with little if any risk. New means interesting, new means cool, new means (more) experiences, new means first, new means “I am awesome.”

So how cool will indoor location based services be?  How will this impact retailers and consumers? Time will tell.

Webman

Price Check Please!

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Before all the awesome technology that we now have at our disposal, cashiers would yell out to someone in the store “Price Check Please” and someone would come up to the register, take a look at the product, go back to the aisle to find a similar product and then hurry (In some cases) back to the register to provide the correct price or to confirm.  Usually this was followed by “Spill in Aisle 5”. 🙂

Well, things have certainly changed.  As we know, products are scanned via a UPC (Universal Product Code), we present coupons that are also scanned using a bar code (either on our smartphones or by handing over a coupon) or using a QR (Quick Response) code to redeem our deal or special offer.  When on-line we use promotional codes that we have access to via our e-mail or through a quick search to find one that may be active.  Most on-line commerce sites provide an area for promotional codes at check-out.  These have become a standard for most on-line shoppers looking for a better deal; and aren’t we all.

When visiting a brick and mortar store, we have access to price check kiosks where we can scan an item for the price and other details, such as nutritional, before we get to the register to check-out.  We also have access to in-store hand held devices that enable us to scan all of our products while we shop and to access our frequent shopper history so that we know what we purchased in the past, what specials we can use, product and nutritional recommendations and many other “benefits” for the customer – as you know there is huge benefit for the retailer as they learn more and more about your behavior so they can improve the relevance of their communications with you.

And then of course we have these incredible smartphones that not only give us information and pricing about that product in that store, but also the price for that same product in competitive local retailers and for on-line retailers as well.  The power to find the best price sits in the palm of your hand.  Retailers are certainly responding to this “threat” in different ways.

Last holiday season for example, Amazon offered shoppers $5 to scan items in retail stores and to send that information back to Amazon so that they could understand the local competitive market pricing and make sure they had the best price.  Amazon’s Price Check app, which is available for iPhone and Android, allows shoppers to scan a bar code, take a picture of an item or conduct a text search to find the lowest prices. Amazon is also asking consumers to submit the prices of items with the app, so Amazon knows if it is still offering the best prices.  Now that is proactive “crowdsourcing” at its best.

Some retailers, like Target, are encouraging that behavior, giving shoppers gift cards and other rewards for checking in and scanning merchandise. Others, like Best Buy, are doing their best prevent it, even going so far as to strip the standard bar codes on products to discourage shoppers from running price comparisons with other retailers.

Empathica, recently issued a survey among 6,500 U.S. Internet users — a little more than half (52%) of whom identified as smartphone owners — to take a closer look at how they’re using mobile in stores. Impressively, 55% of smartphone owners said they’ve used a mobile device to compare prices between retailers. Thirty-four percent said they’ve scanned a QR code, and 27% have read online reviews from their devices before making purchase decisions.  Empathica provides Customer Experience Management programs to more than 200 of the world’s leading brands.

According to Empathica’s survey, here is how consumers are using their smartphones in store:

What your customer and prospect can now do while in your store is revolutionary.  You want to win?  Make sure you give your shoppers with what they need to engage.  It is no longer just about the product, but about the entire experience and how the shopper expresses themselves about you.

Let me know what you think about this post by commenting below.

Webman

Touchscreens

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Since the beginning of our computing experience, we were tethered to the computer either through a mouse or a touchpad on the computer.  This devices enabled us to interact with our e-mail, games, browsers etc. and enabled us to navigate through the many options that exist in this wild, wild world.  But now all of that has been changed by the touchscreens available on our smartphones and tablets.  And what a new phenomenon this is.  We push, we pinch, we use all five fingers to make new and even more amazing things happen, all with our phalanges.

And this reminds me of a song:

Come on, come on, come on, come on
Now touch me, baby
Can’t you see that I am not afraid?
What was that promise that you made?
Why won’t you tell me what she said?
What was that promise that you made?

Now, I’m gonna love you
Till the heavens stop the rain
I’m gonna love you
Till the stars fall from the sky for you and I
[ Lyrics from: http://www.lyricsfreak.com/d/doors/touch+me_20042756.html ]
Come on, come on, come on, come on
Now touch me, baby
Can’t you see that I am not afraid?
What was that promise that you made?
Why won’t you tell me what she said?
What was that promise that you made?

I’m gonna love you
Till the heavens stop the rain
I’m gonna love you
Till the stars fall from the sky for you and I

Touch Me – The Doors

A classic of course.  But now back to the touchscreen topic.  What is a touchscreen you might ask?

A touchscreen is an electronic visual display that can detect the presence and location of a touch within the display area. The term generally refers to touching the display of the device with a finger or hand. Touchscreens can also sense other passive objects, such as a stylus. Touchscreens are common in devices such as game consoles, all-in-one computers, tablet computers, and smartphones.

The touchscreen has two main attributes. First, it enables one to interact directly with what is displayed, rather than indirectly with a pointer controlled by a mouse or touchpad. Secondly, it lets one do so without requiring any intermediate device that would need to be held in the hand (other than a stylus, which is optional for most modern touchscreens). Such displays can be attached to computers, or to networks as terminals. They also play a prominent role in the design of digital appliances such as the personal digital assistant (PDA), satellite navigation devices, mobile phones, and video games. (Sourced from Wikipedia)

There are many forms of touch technology. The first touchscreen appeared in 1965, and while we think of them as a relatively recent development, it’s easy to forget we’ve been using them in devices like cash machines for nearly 30 years.

More recently, we’ve seen two main types of touchscreen technology. The older resistive type uses a screen comprising two separate layers with a small gap between them. Pressing down on the top layer makes it touch the bottom layer, and the connection is recorded as a tap. The biggest drawback with resistive screens is that they’re far less accurate than other technologies, and most don’t support multi-touch.

Capacitive touchscreens use glass displays insulated with a conductive layer. As our fingers are also conductive, touching the screen produces a small charge that produces a disruption in the screen’s electrostatic field, which is recorded. Capacitive technologies are more accurate than resistive, and support multi-touch gestures.

Despite their obvious advantage, capacitive screens have their disadvantages too: they rely on the charge in your finger, so they won’t work with gloves.

These days, a new technology based on old standards is gaining ground. Optical touchscreens are developed by a company called NextWindow.  Working together, two optical sensors track the movement of any object close to the surface by detecting the interruption of an infra-red light source. The light is emitted in a plane across the surface of the screen and can be either active (infra-red LED) or passive (special reflective surfaces).

At the heart of the system is a printed circuit controller board that receives signals from the optical sensors.  Its software then compensates for optical distortions and triangulates the position of the touching object with extreme accuracy.

Some techno babble for you today.  All I know is that I love my iPad and my iPhone and the touchscreen capabilities are just awesome.

Enjoy the day.

Webman