The story began with Apple’s acquisition of mobile ad platform, Quattro Wireless, back in Jan 2010. Soon after in April, the company announced iAd, a new interactive ad network for iOS devices. The network went live just last month. Interestingly, there has already been reports of the iAd platform, generating as much as $1400 in a single day.

“The emotion of TV, the interactivity of the web, the power of mobility” – this is how Apple defines the iAd. iAds can delivers interactive and video content ads without taking viewers out of the application they are currently using. The Toy Story 3 and other demo ads built by Apple beautifully illustrate the variety of interactive options possible.

Having said that, let’s look at the major ‘takeaways’ for the different segments.

For the average iPhone user:

• Mobile ads can be more enjoyable and less frustrating. Unlike in browser-ads, the user is not taken to a different web page and can get back to his current app easily and quickly.
• An iAd ad opens up in a app-like environment and taps into all major OS features of the phone. Users can therefore buy iTunes content from within the ad, share branded content across social networks or save branded images as wallpaper.

For the app developer:

• With 60% of the advertising revenue coming to them, developers might find it an interesting way to monetize their apps while keeping them free.
• Moreover, developers can purchase iAd advertising to promote their own apps to millions of users across the iAd Network. iAd JS and supporting documentation available through the iPhone Dev Center will aid developers in designing and creating high-impact, motion-rich ads.

For the advertiser:

• iAd holds immense marketing potential with its reach of over millions of iPhone and iPod touch users around the world.
• The kind of integrated experience the iAd promises could result in more viewer-ship and more effective advertising.
• Standard targeting options like demographics, movie and television genre interests, location, application preferences, etc., could mean the ad is delivered to consumers most likely to be motivated by the message.

And Finally For Apple:

• As the company that hosts and sells this new kind of ads, it is definetly a source of revenue.
• It is also a novel approach to incentivize App store development.

However, the biggest truth of all is that iAd is a subtle attack on Flash and a more direct strike at Google’s AdSense from the house of iOS devices.

Top vendors confirm that clients were asking for more services to be provided for lesser money. How could that be possible in an industry with a growth rate of more than 15% per annum? How could vendors sustain their growth momentum and, more importantly, their profit margin under the circumstances? It was hard for companies to sustain their growth margin solely by reducing their capital expenditures. Instead, they had to look for ways to increase revenue simultaneously. That, actually led to the evolution of the business model where billing would be based on the business outcome rather than the employees work or time. Cloud Computing came into limelight as a result of acceptance of this new model.

In Cloud Computing, you needed to pay only for the services you availed of and didn’t have to bother about the hardware and other expenses. This was more than acceptable to clients because they had to pay more only if they were getting more. The disadvantage though, for the vendors, was the low margins. Vendors now looked for multiple contracts from the same client to sustain their revenues. They proposed a complete outsourcing package to clients by beefing up their portfolio and this happened through acquisition of niche players also. Clients too, were looking for a similar alternative and they awarded bulk contracts to the same vendor reducing the number of vendors drastically. By this, clients could negotiate more and concentrate on fewer vendors.

This new trend has forced outsourcing companies to integrate IT and BPO services to win more contracts. Many top IT-services players have added BPO to their portfolio to provide end-to-end service to their clients. Conforming to this model oil giant, British Petroleum, has reduced their number of vendors from 40 to 6. BPO players are also striving to add IT services to their portfolio. To this end, they are partnering up with small IT companies to create simplified systems that make life easier for their clients.  So the recession has helped clients to get more work done at a lesser cost. As for vendors, it has aided in the expansion of their portfolio and area of expertise.For the employees, it has been an opportunity to expand their skill-set and hence demand bigger salaries. A burst in the economy is inevitable after a boom and our economy is slowly gearing up for another boom. This is a natural cycle and will prevail until the expiration of earth!!

But “being out there” is not all! Social media is all about conversations, and conversations need to be listened to.

Are companies listening to the conversations that go on about them? If they aren’t, they could be in for a surprise. What some companies are yet to understand is that the Internet buzz can turn negative to the extent of even ruining businesses. It was only a couple of months back that Nestle tasted the sourness of social media. Listening and closely following Internet conversations can often aid timely interventions to deflect possible catastrophic outcomes. However, keeping track of all the different threads of online conversations is a big challenge. Social media monitoring and analytic tools go a long way in helping organizations on this front.

A typical social media monitoring tool scours the Internet for specific keywords/ search phrases and aggregates relevant bits of ‘mentions’ to display collectively on an easy-to-use dashboard. These mentions can be tagged or grouped based on a number of factors like sentiment of the article, type of media source, credibility of the source, etc. While many of these online tools are fully automated, there are a few like Trackur that provide for human intervention to make the results even more meaningful.

Snapshot of the Trackur Dashboard showing results for the search term “Qburst”.

Based on the data collected, grouped and analyzed, users can generate customized reports and trending charts which can also be exported. Some of these tools have extensive collaboration features which make them all the more attractive to companies. Radian6 and ViralHeat are examples of tools that go beyond just monitoring, to offer value-added features like third party application integration. Tools in their genre also provide co-branded or white label products for agencies.

Reputation management services go one step deeper. These monitor, analyze as well as take proactive or reactive measures to help maintain a general good impression on the web. Media monitoring and analysis is only a part of online reputation management services (ORM). ORM covers a wider range of services including creation of social media profiles, search engine optimization, development of microsites, promotion of positive content, link building and removal of negative content.

As a result, ORM services can be much more expensive. While social media monitoring tools are available for as low as $1/month, streamlined ORM packages fall in the price range of $100 – $5000 per month. Some providers have a set-up fee in addition to the monthly or yearly charges. WebpageFX is a web design and development company that offers Internet marketing services. Their reputation management packages are bundled with an interesting variety of features for which they charge a one-time investment along with the monthly fee.

As with SEO services, online reputation management services are also offered on a consultancy basis. Tailor-made solutions can be drawn up to suit specific requirements. Large corporations and enterprises may opt for such customized services while SMBs would probably find the streamlined services or tools more affordable.

Big or small, companies do need to monitor social media chatter to maintain their reputation and increase customer base. The options are many; businesses just need to sift and sort through the market to find a solution that best suits their need.

So, what makes iPhone 4.0 superior?
Why should I have it?

1) Multitasking
A simple task switcher (might remind you of a windows task manager plus app switching ability) can be used to see all running applications while allowing user to switch between running applications. For now, the multitasking is limited to audio streaming, VoIP and GPS applications. Other applications can be suspended in the background. The question of whether it is actually multitasking is valid. To the user, it is, but under the hood, all system resources are available to all applications, with the system assuming the role of a traffic controller, giving preference to some tasks and less preference to others as needed. Obviously, the question of RAM involved will be raised — but it is to be remembered that iPhone does not load the entire application to the memory; only that part that accesses the service is loaded. Hence, there will not be an issue of slower performance on devices with lesser RAM.

2) Information Safety and security
From the perspective of an IT manager, the number one feature of iPhone 4.0 is that the device pass key is used as an encryption key to protect email messages and attachments stored on iPhone 3GS. This security enhancement means that business critical information is safe even if the device is compromised.

3) Resume or fast application switching
With iPhone’s multitasking, actually, certain functions of applications (GPS lock or video stream) can be “paused” so that it gives the feel that the application is running the background. When the application is re-opened, they are restored to exactly the same state they were in when they were closed/switched.

4) Alerts and notifications
Would you like to know when your farm is ready to be harvested when you are using another application on your iPhone? Since the iPhone does not have a start bar or a dock-type interface, it might be assumed to be difficult. Well, rejoice! Notifications will be sent between applications on the phone and not just from remote servers. In other words, if something important or fun happens in an application you have opened and moved away from, a notification will pop up in the application you’re using at the time.

5) Better Mail
This is a feature that makes iPhone 4.0 so much better than its predecessor. The OS allows users to set up multiple Exchange ActiveSync accounts and now works with Exchange Server 2010. The new unified inbox feature allows users to see messages from all their email accounts conveniently displayed in a single inbox, or they can quickly switch between inboxes to see messages from any single account. If users receive an attachment that they want to save or edit, Mail now lets you open attachments with compatible apps from the App Store.

6) Application sharing
Apps can be updated without requiring users to connect to their computers or go through the App Store. iPhone OS 4 enables enterprises to securely host and wirelessly distribute in-house applications to employees over Wi-Fi and 3G. This is bound to increase popularity of iPhone OS 4.0 in enterprises.

Pushing past the observation that there seems to be a 4 application limit, the point that not much RAM will be used may not be all that great after all. Lets say, iPhone comes up with a device with enough RAM, it might never be used. It is questionable how much it will benefit a user, which means Apple may have no need to give users more RAM. The penalty is that developers are more limited to what they can do in the background.

QBurst Technologies has already starting working on the iPhone OS 4.0’s development kit (SDK). If you wish to know more, do not hesitate to contact us at: bdg@qburst.com

The term ‘Cloud Computing’ has been creating a buzz in the Information Technology space for a couple of years. There are so many articles, blogs, pod-casts and web-casts available in the Internet about Cloud Computing. More and more companies are moving to tap the opportunity in it to stay competitive. Merrill Lynch predicts that Cloud Computing will be $95 billion industry in 5 years and 12% of the software industry would be pulled into it. So what’s Cloud Computing all about? Why is it considered as an unprecedented solution to reduce the IT costs?

According to Wikipedia, Cloud Computing is “Internet-based computing, whereby shared resources, software and information are used by computers and other devices on-demand, like a traditional utility.” In simple words, we can say that, “The delivering of services that is hosted in the Internet”. Google Apps, Sales-force.com, Zoho web applications are all examples of services hosted in the Cloud. Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) is another example of a web service that provides re-sizable computing capacity in the Cloud. The Internet is often represented in diagrams and flow charts by the Cloud symbol and from that the name has been derived.

Cloud Computing is broadly classified into three categories – 1. Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) 2. Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) 3. Platform as a Service (PaaS).

1. Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) – In Software-as-a-Service model, the vendor hosts applications on the server and it is distributed to the customers over the Internet. The price will be based on the usage of a subscription. It has been estimated that this model will be worth $15 billion by 2011 and take way more than 30% of the software market. Salesforce.com is a good example.

2. Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) – In this model, the vendor owns the infrastructure like storage, networking devices, hardware etc and will be responsible for facilitating and maintaining it. The user will pay for the service on the basis of the usage. This model is often helpful for web 2.0 start-ups who are keen on reducing their IT costs. IaaS model also helps companies to reduce their expenses in creating and maintaining data centers, which contributes heavily to the capital expenditure of the IT companies. Amazon web services is an example of IaaS model.

3. Platform as a Service (PaaS) – In PaaS, the vendor will host a set of software and product development tools on a provided space. The biggest advantage is that the user needs just a computer and internet connection to start building applications and he doesn’t have to worry about the infrastructure. Some vendors even provide pre-built business applications, which helps developers to build applications from the scratch. Google Apps is a perfect example for this model.

We have seen the different types of services offered in Cloud Computing. Now, the Cloud itself can be classified into three – Private, Public and Hybrid Clouds. In Public Clouds, the vendors offer services ranging from storage, servers and other services to different customers within the Cloud. The vendor can achieve ‘economies of scale’ through this endeavour and is considered as an effective pricing model even in recession. Data Security is an issue, which the vendors have to deal with and that is the only disadvantage these type of Clouds possess.

Private Clouds are often used by individual companies, who deal with service level issues and want data security. In Private Clouds, the particular company controls the access, the applications that run on the Cloud and the complete administration. They own all the facilities including networks and servers.

Hybrid Clouds are the combination of Private and Public Clouds, i.e., in a controlled way, the vendors use some part of the Cloud and share other parts. Hybrid Clouds are useful for customers who own simple applications that will not require any synchronization or have complex databases.

There is no doubt that Cloud Computing will revolutionize the entire IT Industry and it is just a matter of time before majority of the players move to this platform. By 2020, at least 40-50% of the entire software providers will embrace cloud computing.

Amazon’s kindle, a wireless electronic portable reader which facilitates e-book reading has now become more capsuled, making it more convenient for people on the go.  BlackBerry users no longer need to carry a separate kindle to read their favorite e-books. Amazon, has now launched a Kindle app for BlackBerry, enabling the readers to purchase and read e-books. The iPhone/iTouch users already having Amazon’s kindle app, can sync the BlackBerry app with it.  The readers can thus maintain their book marks consistently across devices. Users can download the kindle app free of cost. Just like subscribing for magazines, books and news papers  using the Amazon kindle, readers need to pay only for the content they wish to download and read.

BlackBerry models, Curve 8520 & 8900, Tour 9630, Bold 9000 & 9700, Storm 9500, 9530, & 9550, supports this kindle app.

However, the user experience through a BlackBerry screen needs to be judged when compared to a Kindle device that provides a crisp black-and-white screen with regular paper readability.

Amazon is further in the process of developing similar kindle app versions for Mac and iPad.

Click here to read more.

Finally Google has arrived at the ‘Micro-blogging’ platform with a real ‘buzz’. On 9th February 2010, Google introduced ‘Buzz’, the new social networking application to embark on its battle to limit the popularity of Twitter. So, now there are lot of competitions going on in the Internet space. Google Vs Microsoft (Operating System & Enterprise Application Suits), Orkut (Owned by Google) Vs Facebook (Social Networking) Google vs Apple (Smart phone market). Before acquiring YouTube, they fought against them with Google Videos. So what we understand from all these competitions is that Google is not just targeting a niche or industry, rather it want to rule the entire IT Business.

At the first look, we may feel that Google Buzz is an integration of Facebook and Twitter, but it is beyond that. First and foremost advantage is that you don’t have to go to another web page to see the ‘buzz’, it’s there right below the inbox in  the Gmail. The conversation will go like an email thread which is the fascinating aspect of Buzz. You can post in the Buzz, which can be held as private or public. Also, you can connect your profiles in Flickr, Piccasa, Google Reader and Twitter to Buzz. That means you aren’t missing any of your friends and by start ‘Buzzing’, you are increasing your friend and professional network. See this wondeful Video of Buzz, to get more insights.

Now we can perhaps clearly say that it is now ‘Google Vs. Rest of the World’. Apple and Microsoft are companies that are worth more than  $ 100 billion each, Facebook and Twitter are the champs of their respective niche, though they are not monetizing it well. There is no doubt that the internet and enterprise software market will come under the reign of Google, which is not far away.

The website showcases the latest products to stuff your iPhone and iPod touch and that too with regular updates. This site enables users to post comments, reviews and rate the available apps.  This in turn helps to easily locate the desired category and effectively sort the applications based on rating and price preferences.

What is Ning?

Ning is an online platform for creating social networks. More than 2.5 million networks have been created so far and there are 41 million registered users. The number of people visiting Ning sites  in a month come to around 92 million. Similar to Facebook, Twitter and Linked in, Ning also does not have a direct competitor. However Crowdvine, KickApps, CollectiveX, ONESite and few more companies offer similar services. Let us capture few of the features that Ning provides.

1. White Label – Ning allows its platform users to customize it with their own brand. There is no fixed frame or color scheme which has to be followed. The entire site can be created in the user’s interests.

2. Domain Name – There’s more than just vanity URLs in Ning. It provides options to create new  domain names and map already existing ones. Community links for most of the companies in their website are mapped to the Ning site.

3. Even More Social Experience – Ning provides a deeper social experience. Interaction with brands, celebrities, musicians go to the next level here: Personal profiles, events, forums, chats and many more.

4. Ads and Other Premium Features – Best of all, Ning platform also allows its network creators to generate money from their networks through ads. Premium features like virtual gifts also does the same.

None of the popular social networks offer all of the above features. It convinces us to conclude that Ning stands in a different dimension without aligning itself along any other already existing social networks and therefore compel businesses to be a part of it. Let us also look at a few networks created in Ning.

Ning Networks

(a) Gaither

Gaither.com is the official website of the Gaither vocal band. The band has a Ning network for its community. The community has sub-groups, micro blogging, forums, latest events and many more for their fans. The Connect section in the snapshot below shows links to various social media links from the Gaither website including Ning.

(b) Ellen Degenres show

One of the popular show in the United States, the Ellen Degeneres Show has many active members in its Ning community. The sub domain http://community.ellen.tv is being mapped to the Ning network.

The above snapshot is taken from the Ellen official website. We can see the links to Twitter, Facebook, Ning (community) along with the other main links .

(c) Techcrunch (Zorapcrunch)

Techcrunch, one of the leading reporters of web developments and happenings are also having their presence in Ning.

(d) Content Wrangler

Content Wrangler is a popular destination for communication professionals seeking information about content management. This is an initiative of Scott Abel, a content management strategist. The screen shot below shows the community created in Ning where a global network of content professionals from around the world meet and collaborate.

Similar to these communities, there are more than 2.5 million networks created so far. Celebrities,  politicians and established organizations have already made their presence. For more information on Ning, visit Ning Help.

Competitors

Analysts foresee Apple’s launch of this handy device, as a possible threat to the notebook and PC makers like HP, Dell, and Acer who have attained considerable growth in the notebook market in recent quarters.

Pricing

Aiming at a deeper market penetration, Apple has reasonably priced the Tablet at $500. Surveys project a sales estimate of approximately 3 – 4 million Tablets in the first year.

Available Models

Three basic models were introduced at the launch with WiFi capabilities. However, 3G connectivity which is expected towards March 2010 needs to be ordered separately. Price tag starts from $500 with 16GB of memory increasing to $600 and $700 for 32GB and 64GB memory. The device comes with a Dock connector to USB cable, 10W Power Adapter and documentation.

Interested to know more on iPad Tablet? Find it here: Apple.com.