Tag: Siri

Your iPhone Just Got Better

swebman2 Comments

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

Voice Search – Back to the Future

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Technology is really amazing.  Consumers have become more and more reliant on using technology is our day-to-day lives.  From searching for a service or business, identifying activities for the kids, checking for traffic conditions, looking for a new mate or a new job, we pretty much use search for everything.

Employees are constantly connected to their companies and their lives with smart devices, providing ease of access to company research/databases, competitive information, business intelligence and many other nuggets and information that power the knowledge workers.

Business owners, from retailers to e-commerce to service providers, are highly dependent on search and SEO in order to be found by perspective customers, connect with their existing customers and build their brand.

Search and SEO are essential for businesses.  Today we basically type a few words into a browser and we are prompted with a list of possible options enabled through the power of Google, Bing and Yahoo.  These choices help us to become more focused in our search and cut down on the amount of time we are on the hunt.  We have become highly dependent on this option as well as the preview screen so we do not even have to go to a site if it does not look right.  This is how we find those local businesses today.

Now that this is a norm, we can all relax right?  No as search has just started to change again.  No more word searches, image searches, contextual searches etc.  – Now we do voice search.  Can you say flux capacitor?

Siri, the recently released voice recognition app that allows iPhone users to control their cell phones verbally — seems like a cool party trick, sending text messages from your spoken instructions, checking the weather and setting up calendar reminders.

But that is not all it does or will do.  It will rapidly become the way you search for everything.  “Call me a cab” and it will do that.  As your personal assistant, Siri will continue to learn with you and provide you with what you need, when you need it.  Are we there yet?  Not quite.  Will we be there soon.  Yes we will!

For small businesses, start the learning process now.  Connecting with your customers via search and SEO just changed…… again.  Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water.

Webman