Blogosphere is the collection of all blogs on the Internet. There are more than 172 million blogs in the blogosphere. Bloggers create more than 1 million new posts in the blogosphere every day. With the Internet dominating the world in the recent past, demand for creative writers has grown tremendously. QBurst has a solid group of creative writers who contribute to various blogs. In this post, we plan to analyze the career of blogging.

Blogging as a Career:
By using the term ‘blogging’, we do not point to one blog/website built in Blogspot or WordPress. We rather put the focus on the writer and his articles in various websites. The writer or blogger may have his own website but does not limit to contributing to his website alone. There are 20 million people in the U.S. who have blogging as a career. Guy Kawasaki is a known blogger. He writes for many websites. A collection of his articles for American Express Open forum can be found here. Pete Cashmore, the owner of Mashable is another known figure in the blogosphere.

Benefits of a Blogging Career:
Another Source of Income: There is so much of global uncertainty in all sectors. Having multiple sources of income is always wise. Blogging need not be a full-time career. More than 75% of bloggers have blogging as a part-time job. eMarketer estimates that advertising on blogs will reach $746 million by 2012. A talented blogger earns up to $200 in the U.S. for one good post.

Share/Contribute to Activities & Interests: Websites are platforms that can be used to share our activities and contribute to the areas of our interests. There are news blogs, food blogs, gadget blogs, economics blogs, sports blogs, etc. Articles are also written to promote products of companies. Our QBurst blog oscillates around the services we offer and latest developments in the web and mobile fields. There is a sense of satisfaction in contributing to the things we are passionate about.

Boost Our Career: An article may not give a clear picture of the author. But many articles written by the same author, over a period of time, will reveal the depth of knowledge the author has. So if the blogs we write are related to our main-line career, they are definitely a boost. Many QBurst developers/designers have their own blogs. Some of them write for third party websites too.

Keys to Become a Pro Blogger:
Here are a few guidelines to become professional blogger. Every post must emerge as a result of hard work and dedication. The author must be passionate on every article that he writes. The author must make sure that the article is useful to the target audience in some way.

One bad article is sufficient to degrade the author. Duplication of content not only has negative technical consequences for the website but also spoils the reputation earned by the author.

Consistency is very important. Disappointing the readers when they look for new posts will create negative impact on the author. The author must have a long-term vision about his career.

We can find articles of successful bloggers in more than one website. This must be part of the game. TechCrunch, Mashable and ReadWriteWeb are currently the best tech blogs in the blogosphere. They are always in need of writers.

An isolated blogger will find it difficult to succeed. Networking within the blogosphere will help in mutual promotion. In addition to networking, social media can also play an important role. Viral sharing of articles through Facebook and Twitter will increase the number of readers.

If you are passionate to enter blogosphere, look for open positions in QBurst.

Microsoft, one of the oldest tablet developing companies, released their first tablet 10 years ago with Chairman Bill Gate’s prediction that within five years it will be the most popular form of PC sold in America. The release was a complete failure mainly because of the operating system they had used in it – Windows XP, which was originally developed for Desktop PC customers. Apple CEO, Steve Jobs, recognized the importance of having a different operating system for tablets from Microsoft’s failure. Apple wrote its name in golden letters in the history of tablets, by introducing iPad in which they included a new operating system called iOS. iPad was a big hit in the US market and very soon Google followed with Android based tablets.

Recently, Microsoft released the preview of their newest operating system called Windows 8, to compete with iPad and Android based tablets. This operating system is being developed for both Desktop and Tablet PC customers. The Windows 8 tablets will have a marvellous new interface that looks rather like Windows Phone 7, called Metro. The Windows 8 Metro interface is well-suited for tablets with the UI designed and optimized for touch.

Windows 8 introduces a number of features in its tablet and PC versions.

Windows Store:- Windows 8 comes with Windows Store that is similar to Apple Store and Android Market. Application developers will be able to upload their applications to Windows Store.

Support for NFC:- Windows 8 also introduces APIs to support Near Field Communication (NFC) on Windows 8 devices, allowing functionality like launching URLs/applications and sharing of information between NFC supported devices just by touching the devices.

USB 3.0 Support:- In addition to USB 2.0 support, Windows 8 will have USB 3.0 support for higher data transfer.

Windows Live ID Integration:- Customers will be able to link their Windows Live ID with their Windows 8 operating system. This can be used to synchronise their settings and files across multiple computers running on Windows 8 operating system.

Windows To Go:- This feature allows Windows 8 to boot from a USB device. Windows To Go works both on USB 2.0 and USB 3.0 connections.

Protogon Filesystem:- News update states that Windows 8 will support a new file system called Protogon. However, the Microsoft team hasn’t released any more information about this file system or its features.

ARM Processor Support:- Windows 8 will will support ARM based processors in addition to AMD and Intel processors. There will be separate editions of Windows 8 for ARM based processors and x86 based processors such as AMD and Intel. ARM based processors consume less energy and this will be a plus for Windows 8 based tablets.

Windows 8 based tablets are expected to be released in the mid of 2012. The preview build released recently is getting the attention of the mobile and tablet application developers because of the wide array of supporting features and its fresh GUI.

QBurst, is eagerly awaiting the release of Windows 8 to see how it competes with iPhone and Android markets in the coming years. If you would like to hear more about apps development on various tablet platforms, just shoot us an email or contact us today.

The era of Smartphones began when Steve Jobs introduced the Apple iPhone to the world. Google followed next by introducing Android phones which gave a boost to the mobile application development. Architectural changes in mobile platforms such as iOS, Android, Symbian, etc. have brought out the need to develop multiple versions of the same application.

Today, there are many scripting packages available to develop mobile browser compatible pages, such as DynamicX, Sencha, jQTouch, Wink ToolKit, iWebkit etc. Most of these target only Webkit-based browsers/mobile phones, and are not presented as framework. However, there is now a new player in the market called jQuery Mobile, built on the rock-solid jQuery foundation.

jQuery Mobile is presented as a mobile framework rather than a plugin by the jQuery development team. jQuery Mobile framework is built on top of jQuery framework. According to the jQuery Mobile website it is,

“A unified user interface system across all popular mobile device platforms, built on the rock-solid jQuery and jQuery UI foundation. Its lightweight code is built with progressive enhancement, and has a flexible, easily themeable design”

Instead of writing unique apps for each mobile device or OS, the jQuery Mobile framework allows you to design a single highly branded and customized web application that will work on all popular smartphones and tablet platforms. The first alpha version was released on October 26, 2010. jQuery mobile developers are very fast in releasing new versions of their mobile framework and have released 8 versions so far. People began to create websites using jQuery Mobile framework extensively since the start of 2011. The first beta version of jQuery Mobile that was released in July 2011, was a big hit because it introduced a number of new functions. The first Release Candidate(RC) was released just two weeks ago and they are planning to come up with the stable version, by the end of next month.

What Makes JQuery Mobile Easy and Useful

jQuery Mobile is the preferred framework for web developers who develop websites for mobile devices. There are plenty of reasons for jQuery Mobile being their favorite.

Not a New Language: jQuery Mobile is not a new language. It is based on jQuery, so anyone who knows jQuery can easily write scripts in jQuery Mobile.

Wide array of supporting devices: It supports a vast range of mobile devices, such as iPhone, Symbian, Windows Mobile, Android, etc.

HTML5 & CSS3 Support: It is built completely on HTML5 and uses CSS3. The jQuery Mobile behaviour is controlled by the “data-” attribute in HTML5.
Effects: jQuery Mobile can show many types of transition effects that enhance application visibility.

Native functions: It is rich with native mobile functions such as ‘longtap’ or ‘taphold’, ‘tap,’ etc. which are easy to implement.

Example :

$('div').live('tap',function(event) {
alert(“You just touched”);
})

Less Complexity: Due to its simple nature, it is very easy to study and deploy jQuery Mobile on various applications.

PhoneGap Compatible: jQuery Mobile works fine with PhoneGap framework, giving the application a native look and feel.

Everything is Ajax: jQuery Mobile uses AJAX for loading pages. All the pages are loaded with AJAX to the DOM. After it loads the page, it can do any fancy transition that we have come to associate with native mobile applications.

Easy Themes: jQuery Mobile comes with 5 pre-designed themes – ‘a, b, c, d,& e’. However, the developer can extend these themes and even create his own style sheets. Besides these inbuilt themes, jQuery Mobile supports 26 themes. Since it is built on jQuery UI foundation, themes are highly customizable.

Native Look: The jQuery Mobile team worked hard in the theme section to create native looks. The framework enhances the display of normal HTML tags with its own style sheets to do so.

Large Community Support: Since jQuery Mobile is based on jQuery itself, a large number of jQuery developers are moving into jQuery Mobile web development. The jQuery team also maintains a community forum where one can post questions and get answers.

jQuery Mobile is still in active development and the first stable version is expected to be released the next month. Their plan is to release additional RCs at a quick pace as they close critical bugs and move towards the release of version 1.

QBurst always take an extra step to study and explore latest trends and our developers are eagerly waiting for the release of jQuery Mobile 1 stable. QBurst Technologies is a global software services organization with a strong focus on new generation technology platforms and has a track record of developing more than 250 mobile applications for customers across the globe. For inquiries, contact us today!

A few days back, Apple’s ‘Let’s Talk iPhone’ event was held at its head quarters in Cupertino, California. Disappointment struck gadget enthusiasts as expectations for iPhone 5 were laid to rest. Now, with the passing away of Steve Jobs, the company may continue to lose its stock value. The event, however, witnessed the unveiling of more than 200 new features for iOS 5 along with iPod updates, iCloud and iPhone 4S.The iPhone 4S will be available on October 14, 2011 in the United States, Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, and Japan. The smart phone comes in two colors – black and white. At first glance, although it looks exactly like the iPhone, it isn’t the same. Apple’s phone will feature the company’s new A5 dual-core processor. Apple boasts that the A5 is seven times faster than the previous processor. Reviewers say graphics are super detailed. Updates aside, there is one feature which differentiates iPhone 4S from its predecessors – the Siri. We will be analyzing this feature in detail here.

Siri – A Voice Based Assistant
Siri is a voice based intelligence assistant. It has a robotic female voice (like Small Wonder Vicki) and can be launched by holding down the home button for a few seconds. Siri is in Beta to start with. It supports English, French and German, that’s three major languages. Unlike the other voice assistants we are familiar with, Siri brings a conversational interface to the iPhone.

Apple has partnered with Yelp, a local business listing service, to give Siri, the access to businesses in the local area. Another key partnership is with Wolfram Alpha. Wolfram Alpha is a new service that provides meaningful answers based on every known model, method and algorithm. Siri also makes the best use of Wikipedia and location based services that are available for free.

Siri’s Intelligence
Siri is intelligent enough to combine your information and your current location with that of your contacts and tools like Yelp, Wolfram Alpha, and Wikipedia to efficiently communicate with you. Here’s an example of what Siri can do. Suppose you ask “Any burger joints around here?” Siri would locate your current position using Maps or other location services, check the local listings in Yelp for burger joints and respond, “I have found a number of burger joints for you”, by displaying the list on the screen. Siri can give you directions, the day’s weather, exchange rates, flight details and even the latest stock quotes. It can play songs from iCloud, set up meetings, alarms and reminders. Siri can also compose or read messages for you.

We know that some of these features are already available in other smart phones. What makes Siri unique is its ability to interpret natural language and respond back in the same way. iPad/iPhone users know the perfection of the touch feature in Apple’s products – in fact, the perfection is no match with any other. Imagine such perfection in voice. This will definitely make iPhone 4S a revolutionary phone. Anyway, we will have to wait and see.

Other Features
Antenna Switching: There is an efficient wireless system in place now. This one can intelligently switch between two antennas to transmit and also receive signals. The switching can happen even in the middle of a call – this is to improve call quality. According to Apple’s test results, the download rate is now twice as fast as before (14.4 Mbps down and 5.8 Mbps up).

Image/ Video Capturing: The new camera has an 8 mega pixel sensor that allows to take photos at a resolution of 3264 x 2448 pixels. There is also a hybrid IR filter and five-element lens (there were four in the iPhone 4). Video recording is still a challenge for smart phones but iPhone 4S enables to take a 1080p HD video with real-time video image stabilization.

AirPlay: This feature is a plus for Apple TV users. Photos and videos can be streamed straight to Apple TV setup. There is also AirPlay mirroring. For those who do not use Apple TV, any HDMI cable can be plugged to do wired mirroring.

Our mobile development team at QBurst is excited about iPhone 4S. Get in touch with us if you are planning for an iPhone App for your business.

Mobile applications have picked up in the recent past far beyond market expectations. It is time for businesses to streamline all mobile apps for efficient development and management. MEAP (Mobile Enterprise Applications Platform) or MCAP (Mobile Consumer Applications Platform) serves this purpose. Analyst firm IDC forecasts the industry-wide MEAP revenue in the Americas to increase to $929.6 million by 2014. Many big tech firms like AT&T have already entered into this domain.

What Is MEAP/MCAP?
MEAP/MCAP are terms coined by Gartner, the analyst firm. MEAP/MCAP simplifies the complexities involved in developing and managing various mobile apps for various mobile phones. While MCAP relate to public applications, MEAP relate to applications within an enterprise. In this blog post, we plan to scan through this MEAP platform to understand the need for it and its benefits. Today, mobile apps play an important role in serving many functions of an enterprise – CRM, ERP, HRM. The most widely used mobile phones in businesses are iPhone, Android, Blackberry and Windows Mobile.

Who Should Use MEAP?
Employees and customers use mobile phones of their own choice. Most of them change their mobile phones at least once every year. This demands mobile apps to be made available for different mobile platforms. This is one complexity. Now, let’s consider another. Businesses cannot limit the usage of mobile applications to one. There will be many applications – each serving a definite purpose. The number of apps keep on increasing as the business grows. If you are a business owner, you will agree with this. Database is yet another concern. Even if only one core database is used – which is practically impossible, mapping it to various apps and synchronising is tedious. Based on these facts, Gartner advises that MEAP serves best to a business under the following situations:

1. When the business needs three or more applications.
2. When three or more targeted OSs or runtime platforms are used by the business and
3. When business projects involve the integration of three or more back-end systems.

What Is The Need For MEAP?
If your business is looking for a multi-app, multi-OS and multi-DB mobile app to function efficiently, then you need to view the project in three perspectives.

1. Development: Development is not only tedious but is also not cost-effective. The development team may have to work more and you may have to spend more. Coding has to be done separately for every app and for every type of mobile phone. Each development has to be done on separate platforms.

2. Operation/ Administration: After development, the problem of management begins – adding new contacts, managing critical data, configuring new platforms and so on. The process is complicated and will require more workforce dedicated solely for this purpose. Administration cost is also high.

3. Security: Security is always at stake when it comes to mobiles. Critical data loss may have damaging effects not only on your business but also on the reputation of your business brand. Keeping all business data in control is difficult with the rising number of hackers in the mobile domain on one side and the prevalence of careless usage of critical data on the other side. The loss of a mobile device can turn out to be a security catastrophe.

What Can MEAP Do?
MEAP makes development more flexible. Reusable codes can be detected and easily moved from one platform to another. This flexibility feature enables fast development of apps. Scalability options help to manage backends as required – moving backends among multiple apps, using multiple backends, appending backends with other databases, etc.

In a centralised environment, it is easy to locate apps, platforms, databases and users. From an administrative perspective, this is very important, as keeping track of which data goes where, is crucial. Rolling out updates to apps can be targeted – employees, consumers may need different updates.

Business security standards can be adopted for all apps. Hence data will always be in control. Compromise of data that may result from loss of mobile device can be effectively handled. Data can be killed or reissued with the click of a button.

Which MEAPs Does QBurst Recommend?
These are few good platforms that are preferred by our developers.
1. Rhomobile
2. PhoneGap
3. Antenna
4. Appcelerator
5. WidgetPad

Now, this said, MEAP is still a new phenomenon, though it is expected to revolutionize mobile apps usage by businesses in the coming years. A thorough study of the business requirement is recommended before committing into MEAP. If you are considering MEAP for your business, send us an email mentioning MEAP in the subject. Our MEAP team can help you take the right decision.

For at least some of us, ad messages popping up on the mobile can be irksome. So how about the “50% off your meal now” offer that pops up on your iPhone as you walk past your favorite pizza outlet at lunchtime. Hmm… maybe not so annoying after all!

What if you come to know your buddy is already in there taking advantage of the offer? You could join and have a great time too – at half the price.

Wait! Get a few more of your friends to drop in to make it a group of 10 and your meal will cost only one-fourth.

That is possibly what a combination of Where app, Facebook and Groupon could do – give you a ‘happy meal’!

Way back in 2000, businesses were just starting to realize the benefits of being online. In those days, online success was synonymous with having a website with a .COM name. Soon, as the number of websites grew, it became necessary to stand out in the crowd. This realization brought forth a brand of online marketers armed with tools such as SEO, PPC ads. etc. Man being a social animal, realized before long that ‘being online’ meant ‘being on social networks’. Social media sites, Facebook and the likes, appeared and with it bloomed the era of social media advertising.

According to Wikipedia, the term social commerce was coined by Yahoo in 2005 to describe collaborative shopping tools. The term was rarely discussed until Groupon with its “cents-off coupon married to a Friday-after-Thanksgiving shopping frenzy” came into the scene. The astounding growth of this technology start-up prompted a lot of clones to come up. Not to be left out, Facebook also added ‘Groupon features’ to its offerings. Of course, the social networking giant has an advantage. While Groupon and similar sites rely on deal sharing through social networks, for Facebook sharing is the default.

So, that brings us all the way from e-commerce to social commerce to f-commerce. And now what?

Location based mobile apps seems likely to take it forward from here. Services like Gowalla, DeHood and Loopt are becoming increasingly popular. The social commerce field will continue to explode and we will see the convergence of social and mobile commerce. The recent eBay acquisitions of Milo (for real-time inventory management) and Where.com (for location based mobile ads) seem to be in line with these trends. Moreover, Google is in it too with its mobile payment app and the most recent Google+. The future definitely seems promising and it waits to be seen who will be the king of e-commerce.

A Brief History on Yesterday’s Social Networking King – Myspace

In 2003, eUniverse launched a new platform that enabled individuals to interact with each other over the Internet. Within a short span of time, the platform allured millions. Internet users were already beginning to get bored with the traditional email and chat. This platform named Myspace managed to move to the top of the list even though similar ones like Friendster were already in the market. Years rolled by and in 2007, Myspace clearly became the king of social networking with more than 100 million users.

Today’s Critical Care Unit Patient – Myspace

Myspace (Now My_____) was dethroned by Facebook in 2009. Furthermore, Myspace is now in the ventilator. With losses of around $150M a quarter, its immediate owner Rupert Murdoch is looking left and right to get rid of this dying patient. Below is Hitwise data that shows the rise of Facebook (blue line) and the decline of Myspace (green line) over the years 2008, 2009 and 2010.

The main source of revenue for Myspace was from ads. The eMarketer data released in Jan 2011 shows the decline of ad revenues for Myspace and increase of ad revenues for Facebook.

What Went Wrong For MySpace?

A Competitive Intelligence analyst would be able to find the reasons for this decline of Myspace. Let’s list some of them here and learn from the mistakes of this one-time king of Social Networking.

Did not track its reputation

Users of Myspace always had the freedom to go beyond limits inside and outside Internet. When limits were crossed, the media was on the toe to spoil the reputation Myspace had earned. Unfortunately News Corp, the then owner of Myspace did not respond well to set right its loss in reputation. This resulted in reduction in traffic to the site and hence the revenue. Legal issues arose that had to be settled. The settlement with Universal Music Group was in millions. If the management had tracked their brand periodically, the damage could have been avoided or at least reduced.

Did not track new trends

Trends in market were changing the perspectives of social networking. Separate platforms began to emerge for different communities. Youtube for videos, Linkedin for professionals, Picassa for photos; Myspace did very little to convince its users with its features. It did very little to stay ahead of any new trends that rocked the market. Even though the site had the finest of the codes, there was lack of renovation in user interactivity which made Myspace look dull. Renovation would have been part of core team’s activity if latest trends in the market were periodically tracked.

Lack of in-depth analysis of its competitors

When there was a need to do something to stay alive, Myspace announced a complete redesign to its website. Any redesign requires comprehensive analyses before implementation so that there would be user acceptance. Unfortunately Myspace had to be moved to the ventilator when media hyped the redesign as a copy of Facebook. This copycatting image of Myspace completely spoiled the reputation of the one-time king. Another area where there was lack of in-depth analyses could be identified in the customization freedom given to its users. Too much customization options made the site look scrambled under many profiles. Both these instances were result of lack of proper analyses before implementing a strategy.

Sleeping while others were awake at night

There were many new players in the social media market in 2006. Facebook’s growth in traffic was witnessed by the entire world. Pioneers of social networking like Friendster and leaders of the web like Yahoo, tried to acquire Facebook. This clearly sent signal about a rising rival to Myspace. But those who had to respond to the signals were sleeping. Had they been awake, they would have sensed the danger to their throne.

Management’s pessimistic approach

Other than the Google – MySpace partnership, we have to admit that Myspace has not dealt with its issues in an optimistic way. Since Rupert Murdoch had profit in his other businesses, he had been deliberately looking to sell Myspace right from the time he faced threat from Facebook. He removed top guys like Tom Anderson who were very instrumental in bringing Myspace to the top. Myspace had never been given to young hands who could probably match to the brilliance of Mark Zuckerberg. The age factor is evident in the website for any analyst. Had the approach of Murdoch and team been different, Myspace would have still remained competitive to its rivals.

What’s The Urgent Need For Your Business?

Myspace is one example. There are many companies which have collapsed. Giants like Lehmann Brothers, Daewoo may have been in news. But there are thousands of small businesses that have collapsed in the last decade. So what must a small business do to continuously grow without experiencing catastrophes? The role of Competitive Intelligence team answers this question. Periodic reports produced by this team are vital for the existence and growth of any business. Below are few basic reports that are prepared by this analysis team.

Competitor News Report

The competitor news report can be prepared weekly or monthly depending on the frequency in which competitors make their move in your market. The report tracks every move of your direct competitors. Any mile stone achieved or any financial progress announced by them will be traced. The report will also identify new players in your market and their growth tracked in further reports.

Market Trends Report

The market trends report keeps you informed of the latest happenings in your market. The report tracks the value of your market periodically. The report also collects relevant information that forecasts the future of your product market. It also keeps you updated with different strategic changes that get accepted and rejected in the market.

Product Analysis Report

The product analysis report is the most important of all. It is a comprehensive feature by feature analysis of your product. This report will identify the major players in your market and also give an idea of how the leaders present the product to its prospects.

For more information on these reports and the complete role of Competitive Intelligence team in a business, contact QBurst team.

What is Competitive Intelligence?

Working as a Competitive Intelligence analyst, I am able to see Competitive Intelligence as an important organ in the business body. Wikipedia defines CI as ‘The action of defining, gathering, analyzing, and distributing intelligence about products, customers, competitors and any aspect of the environment needed to support executives and managers in making strategic decisions for an organization.’ Competitive Intelligence reports are mainly prepared for a product that a company might be offering. Not restricted to this, there are market reports, company profile analyses and many others that a CI Analyst prepares for his company. Few product reports focused on web products that support senior level management are listed.

1. Feature Analysis Report – This is a comprehensive analysis which helps the management to view all available features of any product and their distribution across various competitors.
2. Positioning Report – The way a product is messaged in the web varies from competitor to competitor. The reader of this report gets an overall picture of how the product is presented and messaged by the leading players in the market.
3. Marketing Analysis Report – This report covers the various marketing strategies used by competitors to promote the product.
4. Pricing & Discount Report- The pricing methodology used has to be easily understood by the customer. In other words, the most prevalent methodology used in the market has to be followed in order to remain competitive. This report helps the management to satisfy its customers with pricing.
5. Competitor News Report – Latest trends in the market, new initiatives to promote the product and every move the competitors make. This report has them all.

Competitive Intelligence Analyst and Business Intelligence Analyst

CI analysts are often considered similar to BI analysts. Although both these professionals aim to support business decision making, they vary in the way they work. The table below has few differences.

Competitive Intelligence Tools

There are tools available for CI analysts to aid in the Intelligence work. Here are a few of them.

• Similar Sites – This tool helps in Competitor Identification phase. It identifies websites of companies offering similar products.
• Crunchbase – A directory maintained by Techcrunch; this tool helps in Competitor Identification phase.
• Compete – The Company with more customers has more visits to its website. Compete tool helps in Competitor Culling phase to filter companies before Feature Capturing phase.
• Copernic Tracker – Offers, discounts, seasonal changes get reflected in the company website. Copernic tracker tool tracks any change in the website and is mainly supportive for the Competitor News reports.
• KeywordSpy – Marketing in the internet is mainly done by promoting the product for keywords in various public portals. This tool gives data on efforts made by competitors in popular portals thereby helping in Product Marketing reports.
• Forrester – Trends, market predictions, competitor performance, researches by senior analysts; here we get information needed for any Market Analysis report.

CI Reports – The Making

CI reports go through many phases before it reaches the senior management team. After every phase, the report gets its version number incremented. Here let us get a glimpse of how a product feature analysis report is prepared. A successful product feature analysis report (useful for the management team to make strategic decisions) should have gone through the following phases.

1. Competitor Identification Phase
2. Competitor Culling Phase
3. Feature Capturing Phase
4. Value Propositions Identification Phase
5. Categorisation and Simplification Phase
6. Data to Graph Phase
7. Change Demanding Points Presentation Phase
8. Report Aesthetics Phase

If you like to know these phases in detail, you can contact us. We would be glad to educate and help you take right decisions in your business. The team @ QBurst has been providing intelligence to some of the leading tech companies like Network Solutions and ClearSpring. Our experience will certainly help you grow in your business.

mCommerce

Mobile commerce or m-Commerce is creating a lot of buzz in the web space and is poised for further growth. It has never been easy to shop online any time, anywhere from the comfort of our palm. According to a study by ABI Research, it is estimated that people around the world will spend around $119 billion shopping online. There’s a massive opportunity for not only improving the way mobile purchasing works but also for inventing new ways to sharing and promoting services and merchandises.

Strategies for mCommerce

Even though e-commerce has flourished into a billion dollar market, most of the e-commerce retailers are not willing to cater to this ever growing market of net savy mobile shoppers. “Let’s develop an app” seems to be the game plan for many vendors – which is not enough. Below are some of the online marketing strategies that all the online vendors need to consider if they are looking to unleash the power of mCommerce.

• Search Engine Optimisation & Search Engine Marketing
• Affiliate tracking tools
• Mobile web analytics
• Social media presence and compatibility

Mobile web has the power to implement a complete m-Commerce portal. The above listed strategies work on mobile web pages. But it’s quite impossible to fully accomplish these in native apps. Native apps have to be discovered, purchased & downloaded prior to use.

According to market share data published by AdMob earlier this year, iOS makes up 50% of the worldwide smartphone market, with the next-highest OS on the list being Android at 24%. We can still create robust, native-looking web applications using HTML, CSS and JavaScript. Even though Safari on iPhone OS does not support flash, we have to agree that it is still a really great browser. It is also one of the most efficient browsers with its out of the box slick interface elements, which at times may vary between the iPhone and iPad.

Web Apps

Not everyone out there are aware of the fact that Apple has a section called “web apps” featured on its website, which is dedicated to showcasing optimized websites. Web applications or “web apps” as apple calls it - amalgamates the power of the Internet with the simplicity of multi-touch technology, all on a minuscule 3.5-inch screen. Visit the tApple website to check the 1700+ web apps featured in .

Below are the advantages of building a web app instead of a native app.

Advantages:

• No Apple approval process or red tape, which is especially important given the terms of service dispute going on right now.
• Optimizing the app for other popular platforms like Android, Blackberry, etc with the same code is comparatively easier and cost effective.
• Don’t have to learn Objective-C or download iPhone SDK.
• Don’t have to share any revenue with Apple.
• 100% control over the means of payment, promotion and distribution to the user.

If you haven’t spotted this niche yet, it’s time to dive in and familiarize yourself with the tools required to optimize websites and web applications for this OS, because it’s going to be very exciting to watch this space unfold in 2011.

QBurst has an excellent track record in developing web apps for iPhone, iPads, iPod touch and other major mobile operating systems including Android, Blackberry and Windows Mobile. QBurst have all the tools needed to create a great web experience on the platform that’s currently dominating the mobile space are out there. Visit QBurst Mobile Apps page for more information.

The latest news about Apple launching an app store for Macs is creating waves in all the tech circles. A few days back, the company unveiled the eighth version of its operating system, OS X. The OS is dubbed  ‘Lion‘. During this function, Steve Jobs also spoke about the Mac App Store. This move by Apple is supportive to developers who are ‘objective C’ nerds.

Just a year back, Apple introduced the app store for iPhones. The introduction was made by an upgrade through iTunes. Applications were developed in iPhone SDK and put in the app store. The store was a hit and the developers were allowed to take away 70% of the revenue the app generated. Following this success, Apple is now attempting to bring the same into the Macs. OS X is scheduled to be available only next year. However app developers may not need to wait for such a long period for Mac App Store. The store will be ready to kick off in 90 days.

The Mac App Store is similar to the app store for iPhones. The app store will be first available in the current OS X 10.6, Snow Leopard. From the user’s point of view, there is no need for a separate account to use the app store. With the same iTunes credentials, one can browse through various apps that are listed categorically, scan a few screenshots and make a preferred order. There will also be free apps which can be installed immediately. Apple says, the installation will happen in one step. The apps, when installed will update automatically allowing the user to use the latest of the app.

For developers, it’s the same 70 – 30 proportion on revenue as it is with iPhone apps. Apple has listed various guidelines for developers to adhere with. These guidelines are accessible only after registration. A few to list:

• No betas
• No duplicates
• No frequent updates
• No third party installers. Only XCode
• No location based APIs
• No complex UI
• No change to the native UI element and behaviour of the OS
• No stores inside the app
• No pornography

Developers will be able to learn more about the store in Apple website. Apple will start to accept apps from next month. Jobs is striving to move things faster and to get the store fully functional before 3 months. QBurst has good experience in developing apps for iPhones and iPads. After dropping many apps into the iPhone App store, QBurst developers are all set to deliver apps for the Mac.