Posts tagged Step
Groupon’s Next Step Into Social Shopping
Jan 23rd
Andrew Mason wants to know what your friends like to buy.
Groupon is expanding its Goods section with last Friday’s purchase of Mertado, a Silicon Valley-based social shopping start-up focused on letting consumers buy products through social networks such as Facebook. Mertado’s goal is create shopping experiences that “build bridges between content, commerce and community.”
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Groupon has been working on personalizing its daily deals since going public back in November 2011.
“Mertado has shown a great level of innovation in the social commerce space–for example, the launch of Mertado TV, combining lifestyle video content and product selection,” a Groupon spokeswoman tells the Chicago Tribune. The Mertado website will officially shut down on February 28, 2012.
This announcement comes right on the heels of Facebook’s addition of 60-plus social apps to Timeline, which include shopping sites eBay, Payvment, LivingSocial and Fab.com.
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Galaxy Nexus A Step Up For Android HTML5 Performance
Dec 14th
When it comes to HTML5 implementation, Android has historically lagged behind most of the other major mobile platforms. iOS is considered the crown jewel of HTML5 performance and even Windows Phone has faired better than Android. That may all be about to change.
In Sencha’s latest HTML5 benchmark, the Samsung Galaxy Nexus running Android 4.0.1 Ice Cream Sandwich was put through the paces. The newest flagship Android device acquitted itself well. As Sencha puts it; “The Galaxy Nexus is a big step forward for developers looking to leverage HTML5 on Android.” See the details below.
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What does good HTML5 need? A good browser, of course. The native Android browser has been historically subpar. Sencha finds that the Ice Cream Sandwich browser is a big step forward for Android. It is not iOS 5 quality, but it is better than what came before. It supports most of the HMTL5 specifications and renders well.
When Sencha does its HTML5 benchmarks, it runs a series of tests including JavaScript performance, HTML5/CSS3, rendering performance and accuracy. Sencha uses Acid3 for rendering performance, Modernizr for browser optimization, SunSpider for JavaScript benchmarks along with Sencha-specific tools Animator and Touch Kitchen Sink.
The Galaxy Nexus scores a perfect 100 on the Acid3 test. Yet, Sencha found that rendering was not completely perfect, with some imperfections such as a red/pink box in the top right of the rendering that shows ICS has almost-but-not-quite perfect rendering. The Modernizr test, which is used to see the nuts and bolts of the inside of the browser, faired well. Font-face, geo-location and CSS3 were all fully supported. Animations, relections, 2D/3D transformations and transitions were all found to be supported. This means that ICS finally brings the ability to build rich user interfaces to Android.
Web Workers and Web Sockets are missing from Android 4.0 as well as weak supprt for Input Types and WebGL. It boils down to the fact that Ice Cream Sandwich does not support a variety of APIs that iOS 5 does. See the list below.
In terms of performance, the SunSpider Javascript tests were what Sencha expected with a smartphone running a dual-core ARM processor. The Galaxy Nexus does well though does not outperform other platforms like the iPad 2, BlackBerry PlayBook or Kindle Fire.
The Nexus held up well when put through the paces of the Sencha Animator, meaning most games built with CSS3 should run perfectly. Other tests such as Canvas rendering and pinch/zoom qualities also performed better than expected, far above other Android builds.
HTML5 audio and video, some of the trickier implementations of HTML5, is fully supported by Ice Cream Sandwich. Sencha said that the Galaxy Nexus was the first phone to run the html5video.org test video inline, something that iOS 5 does not do.
The final test is the Kitchen Sink test. As you might expect, this is a experiment that throws everything possible at an HTML5 app (including, as they say, the kitchen sink) to see how it performs. As expected with such a major upgrade, Ice Cream Sandwich handles the Kitchen Sink better than any other Android build. It was not perfect. Not many platforms escape the Kitchen Sink unscathed. But it was still a decent performance. Rounded corners look smooth, multi-touch is supported and scrolling is improved. White-screen flashes in the rendering were still seen and page transitions often causes the browser to “blink.”
To what does it all boil down? Android is finally an acceptable HTML5 platform. The hiccups, crashes and poor rendering seen with previous builds have mostly been eliminated. “Although still behind the current HTML5 gold standard of iOS5, Android 4.0 is night and day compared to previous versions,” Sencha reports.
For developers working to create an HTML5 mobile Web app ecosystem for the largest mobile platform in the world, that is welcome news to ring in the new year.
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Siri, Step Aside – Another Tech Giant Embraces a Voice-Controlled Future
Dec 5th
Tomorrow, Microsoft will push out a huge update to its XBox Live platform, adding a host of new content options, including both Web-based video and live broadcast TV. It marks a significant step in the device’s evolution from a gaming console to an all-in-one entertainment hub, which Microsoft hopes will be the digital heart of every family’s living room.
The update also brings improved voice search capabilities to the platform, which allows viewers to simply ask for a given TV show, movie or video game and have it pop up on the screen. It’s not unlike what many people think Steve Jobs was dreaming up for the upcoming Apple HDTV, and indeed it’s something a few developers have already started to cobble together by hacking Siri.
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By itself, the fact that a product like the XBox 360 is getting better voice controls is not huge, breaking news. But in the broader context of where human-computer interaction appears to be heading, it’s pretty interesting.
The XBox 360 adds this feature on top of an already revolutionary user interface control mechanism in the Kinect. Users can swipe through Netflix movies by reaching out and waving their hand right to left, for example. From browsing content to playing complex video games without a handheld controller, the Kinect has already begun to change the way people interact with machines. Like Siri, it was also hacked by users, leading to a wide range of new uses and applications, some of which Microsoft is even willing to pay developers to create.
Kinect, Siri and the Future of Human-Machine Interaction
The iPhone 4S has only been available for a matter of weeks, but already users are growing accustomed to verbally asking their phones for information. Aside from a few gaffes and the occasional abortion controversy, people seem to be pretty enamored with Siri, which is already being hacked to do things Apple never intended. If the company follows Microsoft’s lead and embraces the fact that users are creatively tinkering with its product, we could see voice control built into apps and controlling everyday appliances and objects. Then again, this is Apple we’re talking about.
Voice search. Wireless motion-based control. Multitouch screens. In just the last few years, we’ve seen several viable glimpses of what the future of human-computer interaction will look like. It’s not just one big tech company pushing the envelope. Several companies big and small are doing their part. It’s worth recalling that each of these innovations is very much in its early days. Imagine what things will look like a decade from now.
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Next Step in Crowdfunding Growth: Make It Legal
Dec 5th
In previous months, we’ve covered here in ReadWriteWeb a new and emerging concept called crowdfunding – a way for entrepreneurs, especially apps developers, to obtain just enough funding to get off the ground, by way of a handful of collected funding sources contributing no more than $1,000 each. It’s a superb alternative for businesses as small as one person to build an app and place it in the cloud.
The problem is, it’s not officially legal. Not that there’s any enforcement against the practice at the moment; in fact, last week the House of Representatives overwhelmingly approved by a vote of 407 – 17 language that amends the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, in order to exempt crowdsourced funds from having to clear legal hurdles from every state from which a member contributes funding.
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But a last-ditch effort to rile up some opposition to the Senate version of the bill, perhaps from Senate Democrats, is being put together by the North American Securities Administrators Association (NASAA). Their theory is this: Internet-based ventures are more speculative, and are thus more susceptible to carpetbagger-like shysters who could take advantage of entrepreneurs through spamming techniques.
Aren’t there plenty of banks?
In testimony before the Senate Banking Committee last Thursday, NASAA President Jack Herstein argued that crowdfunding would not even be necessary if entrepreneurs could easily get the funding they needed from banks. And since such easy funding from banks is readily available, then perhaps there’s something wrong on the entrepreneurs’ end.
“If a company cannot get financing from a bank, an SBA loan, a venture capital fund, or even friends and family, it is probably because there is a significant risk that the investment is extremely risky,” Herstein told Congress. “The critical questions are: Have these sources stopped funding small businesses? If so, why?
“If the answer is that funding is not available because banks are not lending as they should, or because traditional sources of small business capital are unavailable even to well-qualified, established, or very promising small business endeavors, then this has the potential to stifle small business growth and hurt the economy,” he continued. “Therefore, Congress might consider certain steps to minimize or remediate this needless loss of productivity. On the other hand, if the answer is that traditional sources of small business capital have reviewed the particular small business applicant and determined that the risk is too great, then we should not allow that applicant to seek investment from unsophisticated, ‘mom and pop’ investors without appropriate investor protections. The typical retail investor, unlike the traditional small business financier, does not have the ability to conduct a reasonable investigation of a start-up or development-stage entity.”
The Senate bill’s key sponsor is Sen. Scott Brown (R – Mass.), who suggested last week that “mom and pop” investors should have greater opportunities to fund “mom and pop” entrepreneurs without as many as 50 state governments standing in the way, arguing over jurisdiction.
“At a time when technology and social networks are shaping our daily lives and driving our economy to new frontiers, the small business and start-up communities are stuck with investor regulations that predate the first computer,” stated Sen. Brown. “With these fossil-like rules tying down our entrepreneurs, it’s no wonder a lasting economic recovery has been so hard to achieve. This bipartisan jobs bill seeks to replace outdated restrictions so that small businesses have new ways to access capital and can more effectively compete in the global marketplace. It cuts the red tape that prevents small businesses from connecting with investors and, while retaining important investor protections, opens the door for more Americans to invest in new companies and their cutting edge ideas. If we pass this bill, opportunities to invest in the next Facebook or Google won’t be limited to the most affluent Americans.”
It’s always sunny in Washington
Recent amendments to the Senate language could improve the chances for the bill among some opponents, who had previously sided with Prof. John Coffee of Columbia School of Law. Last week before the same hearings in which Sen. Brown testified on behalf of the bill, Prof. Coffee suggested that passage of the bill could lead to carpetbagger chaos. He suggested a compromise approach would prevent crowdsourced funds from actively soliciting potential customers, including via the Internet, and also make certain that any party that does solicit potential investments as well as customers register themselves with federal and/or state authorities.
In an effort to make his testimony more memorable (which probably worked), Coffee added this: “Failure to adopt this approach or some similar variant would likely mean that every barroom in America could become a securities market, as some unregistered salesman, vaguely resembling Danny DeVito, could set up shop to market securities under the crowdfunding exemption. Under the current version of S. 1791, such a person could open his laptop on the bar, show slides of a half dozen companies to the bar’s patrons, and solicit sales. This will create few jobs – except for dubious unregistered salesmen – and much fraud.”
Under the amended bill, entrepreneurs could be introduced to the existence of such funds by way of so-called broker intermediaries, which may include consultants such as Sramana Mitra. Her One Million By One Million (1M/1M) initiative (not to be confused with a brokerage) has a goal of enabling one million entrepreneurs to obtain $1 million in investments annual revenue by 2020. Perhaps not coincidentally, the Brown bill would limit the total size of securities available through crowdsourced services to $1 million.
[Danny DeVito photo from ComicCon 2010 by Gage Skidmore.]
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A 4 Step Multivariate Testing Process That Works
Nov 22nd
When we talk about website testing, we mostly talk about what to test: unique selling propositions, headlines, calls-to-action, etc. It’s equally important to understand howto test (i.e., the process that produces better results).
The more…
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Organic Keywords: The First Step In Search Engine Optimization
Nov 1st
In this and some following articles, I’ll outline the steps we’ve developed over the years to optimize pages to improve organic search results – not just rankings, but click-throughs and conversions, too. The first step is to choose the keywords to focus on and then map those keywords to…
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
Big Question (Answered): “Did the Onion Step Over the Line Today with the #CongressHostage Tweets”
Sep 29th
The outrage over The Onion‘s Orson Wells-like faux terrorism tweets today has touched off a firestorm. Is The Onion shining a needed light on our reactionary culture? Should comedians be allowed to do whatever they deem satirical? Even we could not agree, as you can see in the comments within our post on The Onion’s #CongressHostage tweets.
We asked you what you thought about the story and you answered and then we culled your responses from Twitter and Google Plus and we used Storify to present it all back to you. If you have additional responses, please leave them in the comments.
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Facebook To Step Up Acquisitions: Report
Aug 23rd
There was a time before the “Great Recession” when a cluster of companies were seemingly always bidding against one another to acquire the hot startup of the month. The core of that group consisted of Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, eBay, AOL and News Corp. But while AOL and Yahoo still buy…
Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
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12 Step Program For Improving The Load Speed Of Online Stores
Aug 18th
In my last column, we talked about why website load speed matters and how important it was for online retailers. Guess I touched a nerve. I got more emails and phone calls about that one than any other column I’ve written! Load speed issues affect all websites, but we’re retailers, so today, I’ll…
Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
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