Posts tagged Launch
Microsoft Will Launch Kinect For Workplace Next Month
Feb 9th
Microsoft wants its popular Kinect to be a game changer for more than just video games.
The company plans to introduce the first version of Kinect authorized for use in the workplace next month. The product will be marketed through its Microsoft Dynamics division, which develops enterprise resource planning and customer relationship management (CRM) software applications.
Sponsor
The work place version of its motion-detecting input system for Xbox 360 will have a wide range of uses in several different industries, according to Microsoft Business Solutions Technical Fellow Mike Ehrenberg and Microsoft Dynamics General Manager Fred Studer. The two mentioned the commercial version of Kinect during an interview Thursday, that was granted as a sneak peak of the company’s Convergence 2012 conference in Houston in March.
Ehrenberg outlined a scenario where workers on a warehouse floor or in a manufacturing plant are wearing safety gloves that make it difficult for them to operate computers and other systems that may be used to track inventory or confirm that certain steps in the manufacturing process are complete. Kinect’s motion-detection technology, he said, could be adapted to allow accurate input through a gesture which does not require glove removal.
“Or what about food service? You’ve been in the store where the worker wearing gloves makes your sandwich, then has to remove the gloves to operate the cash register,” he said. “We all see a lot of things in the workplace that don’t make a lot of sense and can be improved.”
The original Kinect was released on Nov. 4, 2010 and after selling 8 million units in 60 days, the Guinness Book of World Records named it the fastest selling consumer electronics device in history.
“We mention it to companies and they think ‘Why? It’s a toy’,” Ehrenberg said. “But it doesn’t take us long to show them it has a place in the workplace.”
View full post on ReadWriteWeb
SEO Link Monster Google Ranking Booster All Set For Launch – Middle East North Africa Financial Network
Feb 2nd
|
SEO Link Monster Google Ranking Booster All Set For Launch
Middle East North Africa Financial Network COM, February 01, 2012 ) New York, NY — SEO Link Monster is currently generating waves of excitement in the Internet Marketing and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) world as the product launch draws near. Well known and respected Internet Marketer, … Benefits of SEO India for Online Business Marketing |
View full post on SEO – Google News
Launch Center’s Curious Quest to Fix the iPhone
Jan 31st
Macworld | iWorld was last week, and as Apple-watchers expected, the emphasis was on the i-part. The iPhone and iPad are becoming blockbusters, so this must have been an exciting year to be at that show. I wasn’t cool enough to be there, but I’m pretty sure I read the blogs of every single person who was. And there’s one iPhone app they’re all talking about this week: Launch Center.
To a hardcore iPhone user, it seems like it should be relatively easy to explain what Launch Center does. But as the many meditative blog posts show, there’s more here than meets the eye. Launch Center’s creators at App Cubby are still figuring out for themselves what they’re onto here. They’ve broken into something fundamental about iOS that it doesn’t have yet, and they’ve made a $0.99 app we can all use to figure out together exactly what that is.
Sponsor
Launching An Experiment
Launch Center is one app for launching tasks across many apps. It can be a simple speed-dial-Mom or text-my-girlfriend launcher, or it can hook deeply into an app and, for example, go straight to Instagram’s camera screen. You can also link to any Web URL, which it will open in Safari. It also comes loaded with some neat shortcuts like a ‘Flashlight’ button to turn on the phone’s LED. An update last week added scheduled tasks, so you can now associate an in-app action with a timed reminder. This all sounds so useful, but it’s surprisingly hard to figure out how to work it in.
@JonMwords hmm. I have “call girlfriend” and backup website.
— Federico Viticci (@viticci) January 29, 2012
I talked to App Cubby founder David Barnard today, and it sounds like he and developer Justin Youens are still figuring it out, too. Barnard says they only put Launch Center in their iPhone docks themselves in the last week or two. They’re experimenting now with different kinds of interfaces, beyond a simple list of actions, as well as different kinds of tasks to launch.
They’re also working with developers of other apps to create good URL schemes for inclusion in Launch Center. iOS apps have URLs for different screens or actions, just like websites. For example, to launch Instagram straight to the camera screen, the URL is instagram://camera. Launch Center users can input URLs themselves, and developers often make these publicly available. But it also comes loaded with some easy and common ones for users who don’t want to get their hands too dirty.
But is this something users want? Is the convenience of going straight to a common action, rather than swiping around for the app you need, tapping it and then acting, important enough for most users? Barnard and I discussed that at length, and I think we concluded that there’s no way to know without trying. So they went ahead and launched Launch Center at the unbelievably good price of $0.99, and now we can all try it. Barnard says that they’re getting about 1,000 downloads a day, and they’re especially big in Japan.
A Better Mental Model
Federico Viticci at MacStories wrote a thoughtful post last week about the shortcomings of Apple’s iOS home screen. The problem is that its “badges on a table” metaphor is not quite flexible enough sometimes. It forces users to think about launching an app and then finding a task, even though one or two taps might seem like enough to cut straight to the action. Apple has had to hack its own interface with features like Notification Center to speed things up.
Launch Center started as a way to extend Notification Center, but the first version was rejected by Apple. The Launch Center of today is like a shelf containing its own list of actions chosen by the user. Barnard says they’re considering making an “experimental” version for pro users, letting people choose from a variety of different launcher styles to see what works for them.
Whether or not we’re conscious of them, I believe these kinds of time-savers and mental models are important to everyone with a smartphone. RWW fans almost certainly don’t know this, but I co-host a weekly podcast with my friend Jamie from App Advice about what to do with all these devices. We discussed Launch Center when we first heard of it and again in great detail two days ago, because we’re both frantically searching for ways to work this app into our lives. For now, I think we’ve both decided to just stick it on our docks first and find a way to use it over time.
In my Launch Center right now, I’ve got the Instagram camera launcher, ‘compose tweet’ in Tweetbot (my Twitter client of choice), and a few Web bookmarks I use all the time, like my Kippt inbox. It’s still very much an experiment, but that’s the fun of Launch Center. If you’re looking for ways to get a little more oomph out of your iPhone, check out Launch Center and share what you come up with.
View full post on ReadWriteWeb
WebiMax Announces Launch of SEO Reseller Strategic Partnership Program – PR Web (press release)
Jan 24th
|
WebiMax Announces Launch of SEO Reseller Strategic Partnership Program
PR Web (press release) WebiMax announced the launch of an SEO Reseller Strategic Partnership Program, heavily focused on the white label resale of its award winning services. The program is designed to help the partner grow and generate more residual revenue by offering SEO … |
View full post on SEO – Google News
SEO Positive Plans to Launch New Paid Search Site – PR Web (press release)
Jan 23rd
|
SEO Positive Plans to Launch New Paid Search Site
PR Web (press release) SEO Positive unveils plans to design a brand new website that will focus solely on advertising its Pay Per Click services. SEO Positive predicts that 2012 will be an interesting year for PPC. After launching a brand new corporate website in early … |
View full post on SEO – Google News
Facebook Would Like to Launch IPO in May
Jan 21st
Facebook is reportedly planning to launch its initial public offering (IPO) in the third week of May of this year. Facebook’s IPO would be the largest from a techn company in recent years, with recent valuations reaching as high as $100 billion.
View full post on Search Engine Watch – Latest
Big Chains Launch “Hulu For Hotels”
Jan 12th
Several major hotel chains have launched what might be described as “Hulu for hotels,” a new travel search site called Roomkey. According to Tnooz, the consortium includes Choice Hotels, Hilton, Hyatt, InterContinental, Marriott and Wyndham Hotels. Starwood, operator of Sheraton and W…
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
SEO Positive Reviews New Site Before January Launch – PR Web (press release)
Jan 8th
|
SEO Positive Reviews New Site Before January Launch
PR Web (press release) The website development team at SEO Positive are making final adjustments to the SEO company's brand new website, which is set to be launched next week. SEO Positive is no stranger to the trials and tribulations associated with professional website … SEO Positive Partners With Renowned Cheshire Multi-Sensory Impairment Unit |
View full post on SEO – Google News
SEO Positive Reviews New Site Before January Launch – DigitalJournal.com (press release)
Jan 8th
|
SEO Positive Reviews New Site Before January Launch
DigitalJournal.com (press release) SEO Positive is no stranger to the trials and tribulations associated with professional website design. The Positive Media Group, which is owned and operated by Managing Director Ben Austin, also encompasses sister company Positive Web Design, … SEO Positive Partners With Renowned Cheshire Multi-Sensory Impairment Unit |
View full post on SEO – Google News
Why Would a Newspaper Company Launch a Startup Incubator?
Jan 4th
For most print publishers, the transition from ink to pixels has been at least somewhat painful. Over the last few years, the industry has seen widespread layoffs, furloughs, bankruptcies and newspaper closures. The Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News are no exception. The company that previously owned the two daily papers filed for bankruptcy in 2009 and ended up selling them the following year. The new owner, a company called Philadelphia Media Network, has since been trying to reposition its publications for the twenty-first century.
Today, PMN fulfilled a promise it made last year by doing something few would expect a newspaper company to do. Project Liberty, the company’s tech startup incubator, is now open for business.
Sponsor
Project Liberty is launching with three hand-picked local startups, all of which are recent graduates of the DreamIt Ventures accelerator program. The companies will be housed in the same building as the Philadelphia Inquirer, Daily News and Philly.com for the next six months. During that time, each company will receive free office space and access to resources within the building. The products they’ll be building all have a potential future home at PMN, but there are no guarantees.
Digital Tools Fit For a News Publisher
CloudMine, one of the companies enrolled in the incubator, is a mobile backend-as-a-service provider for developers. It offers a pay-as-you-go API that hooks into their hosted server-side platform, freeing developers up from having to code custom backends. Why would a newspaper company have any interest in the success of such a tool? In PMN’s case, a service like this could aid the company’s ongoing efforts to bolster their mobile products and tablet strategy. Last year, the company made headlines by offering a $99 Android-based tablet with specialized news-reading apps for the Inquirer and Daily News. It was a bold move for a print media company, even if its earliest iteration was largely based around print-to-digital shovelware.
An even more obvious choice for a newspaper is SnipSnap, a smartphone app that lets consumers scan printed coupons to save and redeem later. SnipSnap CEO Ted Mann, a veteran of the newspaper industry, left his position as Digital Development Director at Gannett New Jersey last year to launch the startup. Today, Mann returns to the newspaper world, however temporarily, as he and his team set up shop in the Inquirer building. They will work alongside the newspapers’ digital sales team, although SnipSnap is not officially a product of PMN.
Those on the editorial side will have the opportunity to collaborate with the folks working on ElectNext, a Web app that helps voters choose the best candidate in an upcoming election on the local, state and federal levels. The app works by asking users a series of questions about social and political issues and then matches them with the appropriate candidates.
Rebranding the “Newspaper”
Beyond the nature of the companies being incubated, there are few other obvious reasons for a newspaper company to make a move like this. For one, it serves as a marketing tactic to help rebrand a print publisher as a forward-thinking, tech-savvy multimedia company. By selling news-reading tablets and housing tech startups, PMN can paint itself as a media organization of the future rather than a soon-to-be relic.
Another formerly bankrupt news company, the Journal Register Company (now known as Digital First Media), is taking a similar approach this year by launching a tech incubator of its own, which will be geared toward startups specializing in advertising, editorial content and audience development. Like PMN, this move helps Digital First Media find innovative potential future partners and fits in with a larger strategy of rebranding itself for the twenty-first century.
PMN’s experiment may be the first of its kind at a big city daily newspaper, but its not the first time that any publisher has tried incubating startups. Hearst and Conde Nast have both launched digital products built by in-house startups, some of which have nothing to do with the publishers’ traditional businesses.
A few years ago, moves like this would have been seen as particularly revolutionary and forward-thinking. Today, they’re still to be considered smart, but are more about survival than thinking ahead. As print revenues continue to decline, traditional news publishers desperately need to find new ways to both build their audiences and monetize their efforts in a way that can make up for the cash they keep hemorrhaging on the print side. The Web has made the former significantly easier than the latter.
Incubating tech startups may not lead to an explosion in revenue overnight, but it’s a smart step in the right direction. As PMN CEO Greg Osberg said during a presentation at Temple University last year, “I want us to find the next Foursquare and house it at Philly.com.” In time, revenue growth is more likely to come out of innovative efforts like these than from clinging to print and milking hideous Web banner ads for every last nickel.
Newspapers and Startups: A Two-Way Incubation
The intimate relationship PMN is establishing with local startups serves not only to fuel the growth of those new companies, but it may also help adapt the culture within the host organization itself. A lot of “future of news” types like to talk about how old media companies should adopt a startup culture if they want to survive. As anybody who’s ever worked at a legacy media organization knows, that’s far easier said than done.
Having had no other choice, PMN has already started the process by making moves like this, merging its newsrooms and demoting a top editor that they saw as not being digital-savvy enough. What better way to encourage a startup culture than by bringing startups down the hall from the newsroom?
View full post on ReadWriteWeb
