Posts tagged could
Could Google’s New gTLDs Be the Custom URL Answer at Google+?
Apr 10th
Google is one of the few companies speaking out about their intention to acquire new generic top-level domains (gTLDs). They will apply for the trademarked terms you might expect, as well as some “new” ones, but how will they be used?
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Stop Blaming IT! How Communication Could Improve From The SEO Side
Apr 10th
Last time, we talked about making your Global Search Marketing Ecosystem thrive and one of the key elements for success was effective IT Integration. Adam Sherk’s recent article on Nine Common SEO Road Blocks delves into some of the IT challenges. His article identifies three of the nine…
Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
View full post on Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing
How “Facebook Search” Could Help Google Escape The Antitrust Noose
Apr 8th
Last week in the Chicago Tribune former judge and scholar Robert Bork (who is also a Google advisor) penned an opinion column arguing that by the accepted standards of antitrust law Google has done nothing legally wrong. Bork says, “There is extraordinary competition in the search engine…
Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
View full post on Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing
The Nokia Lumia 900 Could Be Today’s Best Smartphone, But…
Apr 3rd
When it hits AT&T stores next week, the Nokia Lumia 900 could be the best smartphone on the market. If Apple released a piece of hardware as sleek and beautiful piece as the Lumia 900, the world would bow at its feet and marvel at Cupertino’s latest masterpiece. But that is not going to happen with the Lumia 900.
The key phrase here is “could be.” As it turns out, the Lumia 900 is not actually the best smartphone on the market. Sure, there are tons of things to like about the device – the raised screen, its perfect size, the one-piece polycarbonate body, the sweet camera – but there is something that holds the device back that is hard to get over. This should have been Nokia’s Hero Phone. Sadly, it isn’t.
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Putting the Lumia 900 Through Its Paces
So we understand exactly what we are talking about, the Lumia 900 has a 4.3-inch screen on the diagonal with a 1.4 GHz processor, 4G LTE from AT&T, Wi-Fi, an 8-megapixel back camera and a 1-megapixel front camera. Its body is .45 inches thick, 2.7 inches wide and 5.03 inches tall. It weighs 5.6 ounces and promises 300 hours of stand-by time on 3G and seven hours of talk time.
The hardware itself is what puts the Lumia 900 in the discussion as the best phone on the market – especially the well-engineered polycarbonate body. Nobody makes smartphone bodies like Nokia, and this may be the device’s biggest competitive advantage. Thin and compact with just enough weight and solidity, it’s a joy to hold. Compared to the plastic backs of many Android devices, the Lumia 900 feels like a Swiss watch. If you have held a Lumia 800 (not likely if you are in the United States), you know what we are talking about.
The next greatest aspect of the Lumia 900 is its 4G LTE service. Say what you want about AT&T, Verizon or any other U.S. wireless carrier, LTE as a standalone technology is amazing. Properly implemented, as it is in the Lumia 900, LTE’s speed makes apps and websites extremely responsive and sends even large email attachments almost instantly.
(We did experience one hiccup with AT&T’s LTE. We tried to download the game Plants vs. Zombies over the data connection but were told that the file for the app was too big to download over a data plan and must be downloaded over Wi-Fi. We could not override the prompt and had to connect to a Wi-Fi network. This is not something you see often from Google Play or the Apple App Store. It is hard to tell where that restriction is coming from. It could be directly from the Windows Phone Marketplace or a parameter instituted by AT&T.)
Both cameras on the Lumia are impressive. There is a button on the side of the device that can be dedicated to the camera and acts as a de facto shutter. That is not a new feature for a smartphone but it is well implemented on the 900. Here are a couple of test shots:
Those shots were taken in sunlight. The Lumia 900 doesn’t handle low light conditions quite as well, which makes us wonder about the receptor. The front-facing camera, meanwhile, is completely adequate for what it is. Here is an example of the front facing camera in nominal lighting conditions:
Now for the screen. As a piece of hardware, there is nothing wrong with the Lumia 900′s AMOLED ClearBack glass touchscreen, raised above the body ever so slightly. It fits in well with the polycarbonate body and is one reason the device feels so nice to hold. Yet, if the eyes are the windows to the soul, the screen on the Lumia is the window to … Windows Phone.
Implementing Windows Phone
For any smartphone, the hardware needs to be able to support the operating system. For the most part, this is not a problem for the Lumia 900. The LTE helps apps and websites run fast and render well. Location services such as the preloaded “Local Scout” accurately find your position and recognize nearby businesses.
Microsoft learned from the follies of early versions of Android and realized that if different OEMs are going to produce Windows Phone devices, then the design needs to have guidelines and be streamlined. The “Hubs and Tiles” of Windows Phone have a standard ratio, and all app and device design is centered around the tiles concept. Microsoft’s design principles make the experience consistent from one device to the next.
Nokia and Microsoft worked very closely together to mesh the operating system to the hardware. It is often difficult to tell where Microsoft starts and Nokia ends, much to the credit of both companies. Nokia runs its own version of maps and location services while Microsoft’s Bing is the default search engine. AT&T also gets in on the act with several “bloatware” applications such as AT&T Radio and U-Verse, but these can be easily uninstalled by the user.
The fundamental question to ask about the Lumia 900 is if the hardware supports the operating system to the satisfaction of user expectations. The answer to that is an unequivocal yes.
The Response Test
Whenever we get a new test device, one favorite test is to hand it to people and see how they interact. Can they find the on/off button? How do they react to the home screen? This works best with a range of consumers over a period of several days to get different levels of reaction. One day it might be a group of developers that know exactly what they are looking at and go to key areas of the device. The next day we’ll get reactions from a local bartender who is not technologically savvy. After that it’s time to give it to a friend who is familiar with various smartphone operating systems but may not fall in the realm of enthusiast.
The developers who looked at the phone marveled at the form factor and then went on to pick out various flaws with Windows Phone. The uninformed bartender held the phone and said, “Wow, this is really cool,” and proceeded to click on all of the tiles. The knowledgeable friend played with it for a couple of minutes, handed it back and mumbled, “Why would I give up my iPhone for this?”
It’s a legitimate question. Perhaps even the most important question.
The answer is that unless you are absolutely in love with the Windows Phone interface, there is little reason to dump an iPhone or a high-end Android device for the Lumia 900. Exceptional phones make people want to switch carriers just to get their hands on them. The iPhone is such a device; the Galaxy Nexus is another.
The Lumia 900? Not quite.
Instead, this beautiful piece of hardware is the quintessential Windows Phone device. At $99, AT&T will sell plenty to consumers looking for great hardware at a reasonable price. Is anyone going to ditch a new Android or iPhone for it, though? Not likely.
This is the reason that the Lumia “could” be the best smartphone on the market right now. It has all the elements of a Hero Phone and is the key to Nokia’s salvation and re-entrance into the U.S. market.
But while Windows Phone looks cool and is functional, the smartphone-buying populace of North America has been conditioned toward the apps-plus-home-screen design shared by iOS and Android. Windows Phone’s “Hub and Tiles” seem strange and uncomfortable to many people. Overall, the best smartphone on the market is the one that people actually want to use. And that smartphone does not run Windows Phone.
So, the Nokia Lumia 900 could be the best smartphone on the market. If it was running Android. If it was running iOS. But running Windows Phone, the Lumia 900 is just another piece of stunning hardware.
View full post on ReadWriteWeb
Status Update: Could Facebook Analytics Help STD Information Go Viral?
Apr 3rd
Although many Facebook users already have concerns regarding their privacy, the social network’s large user base combined with the vast amount of data available continues to motivate marketers and researchers to find new uses for the information. Now, the University of North Carolina’s Center for Infectious Diseases team is hopeful that they have found a [...]
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View full post on Search Engine Journal
Organic SEO Could be Answer For Health Advertising on the Smartphone – International Business Times
Apr 2nd
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Organic SEO Could be Answer For Health Advertising on the Smartphone
International Business Times … with greater smartphone adoption, more health-related search queries are being generated from smartphones, which carries advertising potential but also challenges that could be mitigated with a greater role for SEO in traffic-driving initiatives. |
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6 Ways Spotify Could Improve Its Mobile User Experience
Mar 30th
Spotify hasn’t even been available in the U.S. for an entire year. Still, its growth has been phenomenal, and it appears to be continuing unabated, thanks in part to its deep integration with Facebook. The product’s other big initiative of the last several months has been its third-party app marketplace, which extends Spotify’s functionality by leaps and bounds.
When the service finally did launch in the U.S. last July, I tried it for 48 hours, then swiftly dumped both Rdio and the iPod app on my iPhone. After all, Spotify combined the giant streamable cloud library of services like MOG and Rdio with the ability to sync local MP3s to your device, just as you’ve always been able to do via iTunes. Each month when my checking account is debited $9.99, it’s primarily that mobile listening experience that I’m paying for (along with the absence of advertising). For the most part, it’s worth it.
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Having used the service on my phone everyday for the last eight months, I’ve developed a list of things I wish it did better. None of these things is enough to cause me to think twice about my subscription, but when a mobile app is weaved this thoroughly into your day-to-day life, you tend to grow a little picky and particular about how it should work.
1. Improved Social Features
When it comes to social media integration, Spotify’s mobile app scrapes by on pretty much the bare minimum. You can share songs via Twitter and Facebook, and under the “Friends” tab, you can view playlists from your Facebook connections. That list includes everybody you know on Facebook who has signed up for Spotify, even if they aren’t active. As a result, I’ve got a lot of people in my “Friends” list with absolutely no music saved. This isn’t at all useful to me. Those people could be easily filtered out.
The potential here is practically limitless. Spotify’s Facebook integration presumably gives it access to data about which songs are shared most widely. Tapping into Twitter’s API could allow them to build a list of songs that are currently trending on Twitter, as well.
Spotify already has a list of your social connections, but they could be baked into the mobile experience a little more seamlessly. Music-sharing could be expanded beyond the usual players, as well. Social integration into music services isn’t necessarily a nut anybody has cracked yet (just ask Apple), but if anybody is well-positioned to do it, Spotify is.
2. Spotify Needs an iPad App
The iPhone app for Spotify works perfectly fine on the iPad, and doesn’t even look that bad when blown up to double its original size. But in this day and age, the tablet form factor calls for an application that takes true advantage of the screen real estate and user-interface possibilities.
MOG and Rdio, Spotify’s two chief competitors, both have iPad-specific apps and they both make effective use of the bigger screen. Rdio launched theirs a few weeks after Spotify launched in the U.S., and MOG just released an iPad app a few days ago.
Granted, streaming music is probably more suited to the smartphone experience, but at this point, enough people are using their iPads as a sort of impromptu radio at home to justify making the experience as enjoyable and tablet-appropriate as possible.
3. Make it Easier to Browse by Album
One thing that’s always bugged me slightly about Spotify is its user interface is not very album-centric. New releases and search results are easily browsed by album cover, but one’s own collection is basically a gigantic list of songs. In fact, the library itself is just a series of playlists, which includes starred tracks, your inbox and local MP3s, as well as any other custom playlists you’ve created.
By comparison, when you’re browsing your music in Rdio’s mobile app, it feels a lot like the iTunes UI, in the sense that content is arranged by album. It’s a natural and intuitive way for music to be organized. As a result of the way Spotify is designed, I find myself using shuffle and playlists a lot more, rather than listening to albums from beginning to end.
4. Subway (or Airplane)-Friendly App Launching
This one might seem a little nit-picky, but the last time I was in New York, I rode the subway from Queens to Manhattan to attend a conference and made the mistake of not launching Spotify before the train went underground. What I didn’t realize was that the app needed to re-authenticate my log-in info before the service would work. Thus, I couldn’t listen to any music during my subway ride, since the app needed an Internet connection to hit Spotify’s servers and log me in, even if all of my music was cached locally.
Apparently, Spotify needs to log you in every time you launch the app. I’m sure there are legitimate technical and security-related purposes for this, but it’s inconvenient when you’re not able to get online, and all you want to do is access your local MP3s and cached songs.
The easy way around this would have been to launch the app before losing connectivity, but you’d think that an app designed to work offline wouldn’t have this weird little limitation.
5. When Will Those Third-Party Apps be Ready For Mobile?
One of the most exciting things about Spotify’s desktop client is the third-party app platform it launched in December. By mashing together Spotify’s API with other services, the platform opens up enormous new possibilities for the service.
Early partners include Pitchfork and Rolling Stone for audio-augmented album reviews, Last.fm for music recommendations, Soundrop for group listening and MoodAgent for tonal analysis and song-matching based on the mood of a given track. And this is only the beginning. There are a number of other apps on the platform, presumably with more to come.
Naturally, Spotify can’t fit every third-party app into the limited real estate of its mobile applications. There are design, technical and, in some cases, legal issues to consider for each one. Presumably, the best of these apps will find their way to mobile platforms as quickly as is feasible.
6. Personalized Recommendations, Please
Another thing that Spotify does reasonably well in a desktop environment is offer personalized recommendations to music fans. Their Last.fm integration does a great job of this, and other Echo Nest-powered features such as Spotify Radio could pose a legitimate challenge to services like Pandora.
The ability to stream songs based on an individual song or artist, as Pandora has done for years, could be a huge bonus for mobile users. Incorporating MoodAgent’s emotional analysis could play a key role here as well. Whether a user wants to discover new music based on their existing tastes or just isn’t entirely sure what they want to listen to at a given moment, a more serendipitous listening experience would be a worthwhile feature to have in a mobile context.
Personalized recommendations are relatively new to the Spotify desktop client, so we’re not surprised that it’s not available for mobile users yet. Like the third-party apps, it’s something that is presumably on its way.
View full post on ReadWriteWeb
Hadoop Users Could Get Their First Taste of Real Encryption
Mar 13th
Here’s the problem: Data has already gotten too big for its britches. There are increasing corporate mergers and takeovers, greater pressure among businesses in both private and public sectors to consolidate resources, and to boot, federal regulations mandating privacy restrictions and security policies. Especially in the healthcare industry, the first “big data” technologies to emerge from the former Yahoo project that became Hadoop, have been a godsend.
Hadoop breaks simple data stores free from the bounds of single volumes, enabling them to be distributed in shards across multiple storage devices. Normally a database system hasn’t had to deal with encryption. If you encrypt the volume it’s stored on, that should be good enough – at least, that’s what the U.S. Dept. of Commerce’s NIST agency said in 2007 (PDF available here). But that was before the big data problem was even identified, and years before the first Yahoo teams went to work on it.
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Is Encrypting the Wire “Good Enough?”
Up to now, the rule has been this: If a volume housing a database can be encrypted, and the encryption of that volume is handled at the operating system level, that should be good enough. This is sometimes called wire-level encryption, and it’s handled at the file system level. If you can encrypt an NTFS volume, for instance, then anything that presents the unencrypted contents of that volume transparently to the database manager should be, well, good enough. Anyone who steals the hard drive ends up with nothing he can read.
According to guidance published by the American Medical Association (PDF available here), if you use a “good enough” disk encryption system using NIST’s standards, then when there is a security breach, you are exempt from having to notify your patients. “While HIPAA-covered entities and their business associates are not required to follow this guidance,” the AMA’s report reads, “if your practice does follow the specified technologies and methodologies, you will avoid having to comply with the extensive notification requirements otherwise required by the HITECH Act in the event of a security breach.”
So there’s a little incentive for healthcare services to encrypt their data stores. This is where the government’s best laid plans run smack into the great wall of progress. Up to now, the rule has been this: If a volume that includes clusters of Hadoop data can be encrypted, and the encryption of that volume is handled at the operating system level, that should be good enough. But as the documentation for CDH3, Cloudera’s latest commercial implementation of Apache Hadoop, clearly indicates (PDF available here), the security for the system is presumed to be provided at the access level, where an individual is granted or denied access to the system.
“The security features in CDH3 meet the needs of most Hadoop customers because typically the cluster is accessible only to trusted personnel,” the documentation reads. “In particular, Hadoop’s current threat model assumes that users cannot: 1. Have root access to cluster machines; 2. Have root access to shared client machines; 3. Read or modify packets on the network of the cluster… It should be noted that CDH3 does not support data encryption. RPC data may be encrypted on the wire, but actual user data is not encrypted and there is no built-in support for on-disk encryption. For most current Hadoop users, this lack of data encryption is acceptable because of the assumptions stated above. However, if customers someday need data encryption, that functionality can be added later and the current security features are an important prerequisite for a complete security solution.”
If an user of an encrypted volume can read the volume, then evidently he has access, whether by grant or by force. And there’s the real problem, because NIST specifications were written at a time when the operating system took care of the whole accessibility problem. Hadoop’s standard security model is to accept that the user was granted access because, well, he’s using the data, isn’t he? If this gets to be a bother, then whenever that “someday” rolls around, we should be able to address the issue.
Enter Gazzang
That someday has already happened. The latest venture from Larry Warnock, the former executive of CMS pioneer Vignette Systems, is called Gazzang. For about four years, Gazzang has been producing an encryption solution that’s now applied to MySQL databases, called ezNcrypt. It’s had a version of ezNcrypt for Hadoop for a little while, but it’s lacked the kind of management tools that compel administrators to maintain the encryption keys on separate volumes. Today, Gazzang announced the release of a cloud-based encryption platform that provides customers with the encryption, the policy-making tools for securing and ensuring access, and the key management tools as a service.
“The cloud-based platform transparently encrypts and secures data ‘on the fly’ whether in the cloud or on premises, ensuring there is minimal performance lag in the encryption or decryption process,” reads a data sheet published by Gazzang this morning (PDF available here). “The platform also includes advanced key management and access controls that help organizations meet compliance regulations and allow users to store their cryptographic keys separate from the encrypted data.”
Citing a Forrester report that tagged data susceptible of falling through the encryption gap as “toxic data,” Warnock said this in a blog post this morning: “Organizations that fail to protect and encrypt this data leave themselves exposed to attacks and possibly even fines. Companies like Stratfor, Sony, and Epsilon – who failed to encrypt toxic data – all took severe hits to their brand and combined lost millions of dollars in potential revenue. But worse still, is these companies all lost the trust of their customers. How do you put a price on that? People will shy away from organizations that aren’t trusted stewards of their information. This includes not only the data itself but the histories of their data, application and Web usage. Retroactively trying to protect this data is far more difficult than securing it at the outset. Organizations must consider this before it is too late.”
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Camera Awesome: An iPhone App That Instagram and Apple Could Learn From
Mar 1st
The fact that smartphones have made a huge mark on photography is no breaking news. The company that was once most synonymous with taking photographs is now in bankruptcy, while the most frequently-used camera on Flickr isn’t one of Nikon or Canon’s DSLRs, but the iPhone 4.
The cameras that come built into iPhones, Android devices and Windows Phones are now capable enough to replace point-and-shoot digital cameras in most people’s lives. On top of that, we’ve seen the rise of photo-editing and sharing apps like Instagram, Hipstamatic and Camera+, all of which give new visual life to the images people snap on their phones. If you thought there wasn’t room for one more photo app, you obviously haven’t played around with Camera Awesome yet.
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The app comes from the folks at SmugMug, but is not strictly tied to the company’s flagship photo-sharing website. Instead, it’s a stand alone iOS application that gives the iPhone’s native camera a serious run for its money and includes a feature or two that the Instagram team would be wise to emulate.
Camera Awesome has basic photo filters like Instagram and Hipstamatic, but the app’s functionality goes well beyond that. Its photo-editing features are comparable to more sophisticated apps like Photo Gene, and start to make Photoshop Express look like something of a joke. You can adjust sharpness, temperature, vibrance and contrast on a photo once it’s taken. You can crop images and select from preset visual effects, filters, textures and frames. Each tab offers a handful of options for free, and then includes dozens more for a 99 cents each. That’s how they’re monetizing this otherwise free app.
Before you even get to the filters and editing features, though, the act of taking a photo is markedly improved from what’s possible with most other photography apps out there. There are visual guides to help with composition, including a level to help ensure the horizon is straight and a grid that splits the screen into thirds so budding photographers can craft images that adhere to the age-old “rule of thirds.” Using multitouch, you can tell the camera to focus on one part of the image and adjust the exposure on another part.
Other features they managed to cram into the camera include image stablization, multiple exposures and timed exposures. These are all things that come standard on many digital cameras these days, but are not built natively into most smartphone cameras. Apple could learn a thing or two here.
Camera Awesome also shoots video, and even has the ability to record things that happened up to five seconds before you hit the “record” button, which is kind of insane.
Of course, this is, at its heart, a photo-sharing app. Yes, they’d like you to upload images to a SmugMug account, but you don’t have to. It works with Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Photobucket, Picasa and YouTube. They’re interested in adding support for Instagram, Path, WordPress and Tumblr, CEO Don McAskill said on Twitter. It’s not clear if integration with services like Path and Instagram are feasible.
Camera photo by Alan Levine
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FCC Commissioner: Ending ICANN Could Lead to “an Engineering Morass”
Feb 28th
The man who helped put the issue of possible United Nations oversight of Internet governance back on the radar in the United States, stepped up his rhetoric Tuesday at a speech at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell told the audience that a move back to the regulatory model of the International Telecommunications Union – the UN-sponsored body that Russia and other nations would like to see put in charge – would lead to a nightmare scenario of bureaucracy and multi-government regulation.
But learning a lesson from the SOPA/PIPA debate, this time Comm. McDowell added one more element to the mix: He argued ITU oversight could threaten the way the Internet actually works.
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“We are at a crossroads for the Internet’s future. One path holds great promise, while the other path is fraught with peril,” stated Comm. McDowell. “The promise, of course, lies with keeping with what works, namely maintaining a free and open Internet while insulating it from legacy regulations. The peril lies with changes that would ultimately sweep up Internet services into decades-old ITU paradigms. If successful, these efforts would merely imprison the future in the regulatory dungeon of the past. Even more counterproductive would be the creation of a new international body to oversee Internet governance.”
ICANN has recently come under fire for the way it has handled the expansion of the top-level domain system. It will eventually add any number of generic TLDs (gTLD) purchased by private registrants. More recently, however, it’s been criticized for letting the .XXX domain system become a kind of legitimized blackmail, where institutions are registering themselves all over again – sometimes at a premium – just to prevent others from registering those same names in an exploitative fashion.
Any amount of ICANN controversy is enough to trigger the ire of Russian President/Prime Minister/President Vladimir Putin, who openly supports replacing ICANN with the ITU in a move that he says would be good for private enterprise and the global economy.
Though Comm. McDowell is a Republican and thus in the minority under a Democratic president, his views on this subject have never failed to be forceful and emphatic. “Whatever the complaints are regarding ICANN, they should not be used as a pretext to end the multi-stakeholder model which has served all nations – and the developing world now more than ever – so well,” he told MWC.
While modification of the governance structure may indeed be necessary, McDowell conceded, that fact should not be used as a guise to inject certain governments’ regulatory structures into the system. Doing so may disable smaller countries’ ability to be perceived as equal players, and some countries, he added, may end up surrendering some of their sovereignty in a new and mostly digital economy.
“It would be a travesty to create a world where the Internet is partitioned between countries that live under an intergovernmental regulatory regime and those member states who decide to opt out,” McDowell concluded. “A balkanized Internet would be devastating to global free trade and rising living standards. It would also render an engineering morass. Nations that value freedom and prosperity should draw a line in the sand against new regulations while welcoming reform that could include a non-regulatory role for the ITU. Venturing into the uncertainty of a new regulatory quagmire will only undermine developing nations the most. As a world community, we cannot afford to make that mistake.”
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